“All right,” she finally said, used to doing what people in authority told her. She stepped backward into her trailer. “But she’s sleeping right now, so keep your voices low.”

They followed her inside. It felt crowded and smelled like cooked hamburger meat. A black plastic sofa sat across from a television with a built-in VCR resting on top of a cardboard box. A window-unit air conditioner chuffed out frozen air beneath the venetian blinds. Wanda gestured to a rickety table in the kitchen alcove and Patricia and Mrs. Greene sat down in its padded, thrift-store chairs.

“Do you want some Kool-Aid?” she asked. “Lite beer?”

“No, thank you,” Patricia said.

Wanda turned to her kitchen cabinets, took out two snack packs of Fritos, pulled them open, and poured them into a Styrofoam cereal bowl.

“Help yourselves,” she said, putting it on the table between them.

“We really should see Destiny for a minute,” Patricia said. “I’d like to ask her some questions about her condition.”

“You have to talk to her now?” Wanda asked.

“Wanda,” Mrs. Greene said. “You need to do what the nurse tells you.”

Wanda took three steps down the hall and scratched on a beige, plastic accordion door.

“Dessy,” she whispered in a singsong.

The window-unit air conditioner froze the air. Patricia’s skin prickled with goose bumps. The top of the table felt sticky. She kept her hands in her lap.

“Dessy, wakey wakey,” Wanda sang, sliding open the partition.

She clicked on a lamp in the bedroom.

“Dessy?” Wanda said.

She stepped into the hall and opened another door, this one revealing the bathroom.

“Dessy? Where’re you hiding?” Wanda said, and her voice had an edge to it.

Patricia and Mrs. Greene crowded into the little hall and stood in the door of Destiny’s room.

“She was right here not half an hour ago,” Wanda said, kneeling on the floor.

The bedroom was so tiny Wanda’s legs stuck out into the hall as she leaned her head underneath the sleeping platform. On top lay a foam mattress covered with a My Little Pony fitted sheet and a folded plaid blanket. All the little girl’s toys and clothes were stacked up in clear plastic boxes in the corner. A window over the bed was an uncurtained black rectangle looking out at the night.

“Where’s Dessy?” Wanda said, her voice starting to fray. “What did you do to her?”

“We just got here,” Mrs. Greene said.

Wanda shoved past Patricia and ran into the living room like she was going to catch her invisible daughter at the door.

“Dessy?” she called.

“What do you think?” Mrs. Greene asked Patricia, voice low.

In the kitchen, Wanda yanked open every cabinet and moved every box and bag.

Patricia pulled on the window over Destiny’s bed. Smooth and easy, it slid wide open. There was no screen. A wave of warm air and insect screams rolled into the tiny bedroom. Patricia and Mrs. Greene looked out the open window into the woods just a few feet away. Patricia knelt on the sleeping platform and looked down. Outside the window stood a large wooden spool that telephone cable came on. Someone standing on it could reach right through the window.

They walked back to the living room.

“We need to call the police,” Mrs. Greene said.

“What?” Wanda Taylor asked. “What for?”

“Mrs. Taylor,” Patricia said. “There is a man named James Harris who has been dealing drugs to children. You need to call the police and tell them that your daughter is missing, and you think he’s taken her.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus,” Wanda said, and she belched loudly, filling the living room with the stench of her stomach acid.

“He has her in the woods,” Mrs. Greene said. “He’ll still be close by.”

She got Wanda seated on the sofa and helped her light a menthol cigarette to settle her nerves. Wanda looked helplessly for an ashtray and finally just tapped her ashes on the carpet. Patricia stretched the kitchen phone into the room, dialed 911, and handed it to Wanda.

“Hello,” Wanda Taylor said, smoke puffing out of her mouth to the rhythm of her words. “My name is Wanda Taylor and I live at 32 Grill Flame Road. My daughter is not in her bed.” She paused. “No, she is not hiding in the house.” Pause. “Because I looked all over and there isn’t much house for her to hide in. Please send someone, please. Please.”

She didn’t know what else to say so she repeated “Please” until Mrs. Greene took the phone from her hand. Wanda looked helplessly from Patricia to Mrs. Greene like she was seeing them for the first time.

“Would you like Kool-Aid or lite beer?” she asked. “It’s all I’ve got. The water out here smells like eggs.”

“We’re fine, thank you,” Patricia said, kindly.

“We need to sit and wait for the police,” Mrs. Greene said, patting Wanda’s knee. “They’ll be here soon.”

“If you hadn’t come I wouldn’t know she was gone,” Wanda said. “The police will be here soon?”

“Real soon,” Mrs. Greene said, taking her hand.

“I should check her bedroom again,” Wanda said.

They let her go. Patricia thought about the three-minute response time in Mt. Pleasant.

“How long until the police get here?” she asked.

“Could be a while,” Mrs. Greene said. “This is the country.”

Wanda came back into the room and stood in the kitchen.

“She isn’t back,” she said, then noticed them for the first time again. “Would you like something to drink? I have Kool-Aid and lite beer.”

“Wanda,” Mrs. Greene said. “You need to sit down and wait for the police.”

Wanda pulled a chair out from the sticky table and went to take a drag on her cigarette, but it had burned down to the filter. She searched for her pack. Patricia thought about James Harris, somewhere out in the woods with a little girl in his arms, doing something unspeakable to her. She couldn’t picture that part clearly, but she imagined it was Korey. She imagined it was Blue. She imagined the police would be a while.

“Do you have a flashlight?” she asked Wanda.

CHAPTER 17

Patricia went down the shaky front steps with a silver Boy Scout flashlight in one hand. Mrs. Greene stood in the doorway.

“I’m just going to look around the back of the trailer,” Patricia said, but Mrs. Greene had already closed and locked the front door. Patricia heard her slide the chain into place.

All over Six Mile she heard the hum of air conditioners. The woods around her were a tornado of screaming insects. Every breath felt like it came through a towel soaked in warm water. She made her legs move, taking her around the dark corner of the trailer.

She clicked on the flashlight and played it over the big wooden spool, as if she might see an incriminating footprint outlined in black ink on its top. She shined her light down on the sandy soil and saw indentations and shadows and lumps but didn’t know what any of them meant. She straightened and shined her light at the woods.

The pale yellow beam played over pine trees. They were spaced pretty far apart and she realized she could walk along the edge of them and still keep an eye on the trailer. Before she could think better of it she stepped around the first one, then the second, the flashlight beaming a lamplight circle on the ground in front of her, leading her into the woods step by step, as the screaming insects closed in around her.

Something grabbed her foot and yanked and her heart flooded with cold water before she saw that she’d snagged it on a rusty wire stretched along the ground. She looked back behind her, feeling confident, but the lit windows of the houses were farther away than she’d expected. She wondered if the police had arrived but knew she’d see their blue lights if they had.

The smell of warm sap surrounded her, and pine needles were thick underfoot. She knew this was the last moment when she could turn back. If she kept walking forward she wouldn’t be able to see the lit windows at all anymore and then she was going to be out here alone with James Harris.

Hang on, Destiny, she thought as she started walking deeper into the woods. I’m coming.

With the flashlight beam bouncing before her, she concentrated on each tree trunk, not the entire dark mass of them crowding around and behind her. She went carefully, not wanting to step in a hole, conscious of the loud crashing sounds her body made as she brushed through the branches, bushes, and vines.

Something that wasn’t her rustled to the right. She froze and clicked off her flashlight so it wouldn’t give her away. The night rushed in around her. She strained to listen over the sound of blood throbbing in her ears. Her pulse thumped in her wrists. Her breath rasped in her nose. Then she realized: the insects had stopped screaming.