The Disappearance Read Online Free PDF Page B

mumbles, hating that word: “abductor.”
    “That’s possible,” Williams concedes. “But if he did, he’d have to know about it, and the code. Which brings us back to this being an inside job, if in fact she was kidnapped, which we shouldn’t jump to, not yet.”
    He’ll tell them about the partial footprint and the girls’ tracks leading to the gazebo later, after his people have left. Right now they need a breather.
    Doug Lancaster, standing behind his wife, starts shaking his head.
    “Yes, sir?” Williams asks.
    “No one turned this off,” Doug says. “No one except Emma.” He looks at Williams. “She was outside, wasn’t she? She and her friends—after she said good-night to her mother. They went outside, didn’t they?”
    Williams looks at the man. There’s no point in being indirect now.
    “Yes, Mr. Lancaster,” he answers. “We believe they did.”
    The police photographer takes infrared pictures of the floor of Emma’s room to see if the unique footprint they found outside might have left a mark in the carpeting that would be invisible to the eye but discernible to high-tech photography. Outside, the casts of the potentially case-breaking shoe prints are bagged. Then the deputies load everything into their cars and vans, and leave.
    The sheriff puts a tap on the telephone, with a direct connection to FBI regional headquarters in Los Angeles. If anyone calls regarding Emma’s disappearance—a kidnapper with a ransom demand, an anonymous tipster, or anything else—they’ll be ready to jump into action. Doug and Glenna are instructed how to handle this—keep the caller on the line as long as possible, and don’t do anything that will spook a prospect into hanging up prematurely or, even worse, running away from the situation altogether. If a ransom demand is forthcoming, the sheriff’s people, with FBI and state police assistance, will come back and set up a command post in the house. For now, though, that isn’t necessary or advisable. If (again if ) it is a kidnapping, whoever did this might be watching the house, or having it watched. The police don’t want to spook him.
    The abduction ( potential abduction, everyone hopes) is under wraps for now, but that will change, maybe as early as tomorrow morning. A reporter from the Santa Barbara News-Press , the local daily, picked up the incident from the open police lines and was outside the mansion earlier in the evening, hoping to find out if there was a story. Doug refused the reporter’s request to come out and give him anything, and the sheriff was similarly mum. “No comment” was his only comment as he got into his car and drove away.
    Sitting in his oppressively quiet house, Doug Lancaster thinks about how to handle this. He has to do something—this is news, it can’t be stonewalled, he won’t be able to keep the lid on for more than a day. If anything, that it’s happening to his family makes it all the more newsworthy. He’s going to have to deal with it, even though that’s the last thing he wants to do.
    He telephone-conferences with Jane Bluestine, his station manager, Wes Cobb, the head producer of his news team, and his top anchorman, Joe Allison. They decide to put out a short, innocuous announcement on tonight’s eleven o’clock news: there was an incident at the home of a prominent Montecito resident, involving a possible missing juvenile. That’s all. Overnight they’ll polish the story, hope for more details—a phone call or other communication from the kidnapper, some kind of breakthrough on the evidence (flimsy as it is) that was discovered at the site, a possible profile by the police psychologist who’s been called in to go over the known facts and come up with the kind of person who might have done this. Already the police are all over their computers, checking for known sex offenders who might be in the region, anyone recently released from a prison in any of the western states, anyone missing from