The Girls Are Missing Read Online Free PDF

of a marriage.
    She was putting the tea glasses into the dishwasher when Anita appeared at the kitchen door.
    “Hi, Mrs. Gilwood. Can I play with Gail?”
    “You didn’t come through the woods, did you?” Joyce asked.
    “No, I came by the road. Hi, Gail, I’m not mad at you anymore.”
    Gail did not look pleased, but led the visitor up to her room, where no doubt the dolls and their paraphernalia would be out all over the place.
    Better here than in the woods, Joyce thought as she went upstairs to take care of Adam. How close it might have been, the two of them there alone. What would she do if something happened to Gail? What did people do? There had been Larry,
    and that was bad enough, but to lose a child …
    She was in her bedroom, nursing the baby, when Mary Ellen knocked at the door.
    “Joyce, there’s a policeman downstairs. He wants to talk to you.”
    “Oh—” Joyce removed the baby from her breast. He let out a thin cry of protest.
    “Shall I tell him to come back later?” Mary Ellen asked.
    “No, we might as well get it over with. What does he want?”
    “Just to ask some questions. Anita said somebody got murdered, is that true?”
    “Yes. I should have told your mother. I didn’t want to alarm her.”
    She slipped a pacifier into the baby’s mouth and carried him downstairs. Mary Ellen had installed the policeman on the living room sofa. He was a powerful-looking man, perhaps in his late thirties or early forties. His eyes were dark, his black hair flecked with gray, and his nose seemed slightly flattened, as though it might have been broken once.
    He stood up as she entered the room. “Mrs. Gilwood? Police Chief D’Amico.” He held out an identification. She studied it carefully. It could have been a trick.
    “You’re the one I talked to on the phone last night,” she said.
    “That’s right. I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Gilwood. Just a few questions.” He edged back toward the sofa, but did not sit down until she did.
    “This won’t take long,” he explained. “We only want to get some idea of who’s been in the area. Do you recall seeing anybody, any strangers around here, anybody who doesn’t live in the neighborhood or have business here?”
    “No, I don’t.” She tried to think. “I don’t see too many people at all. It’s a kind of secluded house.”
    She glanced at the picture window. A secluded house, and at the same time, a fishbowl, with all those windows.
    “And a long driveway,” she added. “We can’t even see the road.”
    “That’s why I thought you might have been aware of somebody passing through here. We can’t tell which way they came, but they’d have had to be on foot, going into the woods.”
    Had someone walked right past this house—to his doom? Or someone, perhaps, at gunpoint. Or—
    “No,” she repeated, “I haven’t seen anybody.”
    “You said your daughter goes there quite often.”
    “I guess so. But not now. She wouldn’t—Do you mean it was there—how long?”
    “Not too long, probably. We think it was kept somewhere else, and we’d like to know where. Someplace cool, it looks like. A cave, or something. We think it was only recently dumped in those rocks. Somebody might have reconnoitered there first, or gone back to look. They’ll do that sometimes.”
    “How could anybody look at it? How could they carry it—like that?”
    “It’s hard to tell about people,” he said.
    “It would have to be someone who’s a little bit crazy, wouldn’t it?”
    He only smiled. “If you see anybody, or remember seeing anybody, would you let us know? Anyone who seems to be hanging around, or walking in the woods, or doing anything different than usual.”
    “I will.” But there had been no one. She would have noticed somebody near her house.
    “Do you mind if I talk to your daughter?” he asked, “since she was out there? The same kind of question.”
    “I’d rather she didn’t—” But there was no way to protect her.