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while he wrote up reports and fielded telephone calls.
     The place was busier than usual, the atmosphere in the building a little more serious. The Chief of Police had been knocking
     heads together the day before and the entire Criminal Investigations Department was still buzzing following the murder of
     two elderly French tourists the previous week.
    ‘Now’s a good time, Jeff,’ the sergeant said. ‘It’s been six weeks, and with everything that’s going on around here right
     now, the truth is nobody’s paying that woman’s case a whole lot of attention at the moment.’
    ‘We’re still treating it as a homicide though, right?’
    ‘For sure,’ the sergeant said. ‘We’re looking for a body now, no doubt about that.’ He waved an arm towards the dozen or so
     detectives who were working flat out on the tourist murders. He lowered his voice. ‘But we
got
bodies with this one, we got two of the damn things. There’s nothing much we can do on the Wilson case until that little
     girl turns up.’
    ‘I guess not,’ Gardner said.
    The sergeant – a well-built black man, same as Gardner, but a dozen years older – reached for his coffee cup and swirled what
     was left in it around, like it might help. ‘And there’s no point in that little girl’s mother being here to see us do
nothing much
, is there? You know what I mean?’
    ‘I know what you mean.’
    As far as the Sarasota Police Department was concerned, it might well have been a good time for Patti Lee Wilson to go back
     to Atlanta. It certainly made a degree of sense in terms of workloads and the allocation of manpower, but this was not the
     reason Jeffrey Gardner had woken up thinking about the mother of the missing girl. He knew that going home would be the right
     thing for Patti Lee Wilson. How in God’s name could sticking around in the place where she’d lost her daughter, waiting on
     the only news she was ever going to get, possibly be doing her any good?
    ‘
Until that little girl turns up
…’
    At lunchtime, Gardner sat in a delicatessen full of cops on Ringling Boulevard – a paper napkin tucked into his collar to
     keep food off his shirt and tie – and tried to come up with other things to say that might convince the poor woman to leave.
     Perhaps it would be better to take a more common-sense approach to this, he thought. Be practical about it. In the end, he
     decided he would just start talking and see how it went, so as soon as he’d finished his turkey-breast sub, he got in his
     car and went to pay Patti Lee Wilson a visit.
    It had been on Good Friday, six weeks and one day earlier, that Amber-Marie Wilson had been reported missing from the Pelican
     Palms Resort on Siesta Key. That initial 911 call – Patti hysterical and struggling to breathe – had come in just after four
     o’clock in the afternoon, and by Easter Sunday, Gardner had known it by heart.
    Every whisper and strangled sob.
    ‘
She just wandered off … must have … and I’ve searched and looked everywhere and … she wouldn’t go far, she would never do
     that
.’
    ‘
Could you repeat that address?
’
    ‘
Jesus Christ, you have to get over here right now, OK?
’
    ‘
You need to try and stay calm, ma’am
.’
    ‘
Listen, you need to know that she has some problems, you know? She has some … mental difficulties. Oh God … she’d trust anyone.
     Do you understand what I’m saying? Anyone
…’
    He drove five and some miles east on Fruitville Road, then turned south just shy of I75. He was soon moving through an area
     of town dominated by industrial parks and warehouses. He could hear the sand and grit striking the side of the car as he drove.
     He passed lumber yards, repair shops and plumber’s merchants, then slowed as he approached a budget motel next door to a low-rent
     strip mall.
    Where she had been living this past month and a half.
    By sundown on that first night, the smart money was on Amber-Marie having been taken. Every