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closed as I held out the picture. “Is this your daughter? Is this Chanita?”
    Regina didn’t take the picture. Her eyes dipped once to the image there, then jumped back up to meet mine. “She dead?”
    I said, “Yes.”
    Her nostrils flared. “Soon as the sun set and rose on Saturday, I knew … And then the news yesterday, saying that y’all…” She shuddered and gasped and crumpled into a ball.
    Out in the hallway, Alberta wept and called on Jesus.
    Colin sat next to Regina on the bed. I perched in the chair at the desk.
    And we sat like that until the billowing curtains lay flat against the window.
    Alberta entered the room and handed her daughter a box of tissues.
    Regina plucked several sheets from the box, then wiped her face. Then, she sobbed into her hands again.
    Colin moved so that Alberta could sit next to her daughter and hold her.
    â€œWe need to ask a few questions,” I said. “We need to know what happened that day, okay? I know this is hard, but it’s very important.”
    Regina took several deep breaths, hiccupping as she exhaled. “Uh huh.”
    Alberta took her daughter’s hand and kissed it.
    Regina wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “On Friday, my mom went to get Nita from school. Nita gets out late cuz she had newspaper—she’s one of the photographers.”
    â€œAnd where did she go to school?” Colin asked.
    â€œMadison.”
    My pulse jumped—I was a Madison alum. But then so was almost every kid who lived in this area.
    â€œAnd where were you?” Colin asked Regina.
    The woman scratched her cheek, then cleared her throat. “I had an appointment.”
    We waited for the rest of the explanation.
    Regina sat there, though, scratching her cheek, staring at the carpet.
    â€œI waited in the car for twenty minutes,” Alberta said, ending the silence. “Then, I went to the classroom. Mr. Bishop—he’s over the newspaper—he was getting ready to leave. He said that Nita didn’t come to newspaper, which was odd cuz she went to school.”
    â€œSo Mom called Nita’s cell phone,” Regina said, finding her voice again. “No answer. Mom called me and told me that Nita wasn’t at school, that she didn’t know where she was. I flipped the hell out cuz that didn’t make no sense. I was like, What you mean, she ain’t there ?”
    â€œI drove over to the mall,” Alberta recalled, “and walked around Walmart cuz that’s where she gets her pictures printed. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere.”
    â€œWhen I got home,” Regina continued, “I started looking around the streets. I asked everybody : ‘Did y’all see Nita? Y’all talk to Nita today?’ Nobody knew nothing.”
    â€œAnd I didn’t believe that,” Alberta said with an angry shake of her head. “Not for one second. Folks just don’t up and…” She choked and clutched her neck. “After talking with some of her friends and with Mr. Bishop…” She shook her head and gazed at the carpet. “Nobody had seen her since lunchtime.”
    â€œGone since lunch and nobody noticed?” Colin gawked at me. What the hell?
    â€œWhen did you call the police?” I asked.
    â€œAround eight thirty Friday night,” Alberta whispered.
    I did the math: 12:30 to 8:30. You could drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and back. In eight hours, you could fly from Los Angeles to Miami. Forty percent of children abducted were killed before we were even called. Within twenty-four hours, ninety percent of those abducted kids were dead. Chanita missing for eight hours? Too much time.
    â€œThe cops who took the report didn’t seem worried,” Regina said. “They thought she was probably off with some boy doing who knows what. I knew she wasn’t cuz Nita not that type. But this time I hoped that they