creamy skin. He’d heard her laugh, saw her haunted eyes in his mind. She wasn’t a naïve teenager anymore. She was a woman whose eyes had secrets to tell.
Connor would find her again.
He stood and strode into the dining room, switching the light on. He took a small trash can from the living room and swept the contents of the dining room table into it, calculator and all. He opened Claire’s file and began spreading the pages across the table. He froze when he noticed the quarter-inch-wide streak where Claire had run her finger through the dust.
She had been there. It wasn’t his imagination. He wasn’t creating invisible women to distract his mind from his failed marriage or the stress of his job.
Careful not to disturb the streak Claire had left on the table, Connor sat down and began reading Mitch’s first reports on Claire Fletcher’s case.
On the morning of February 21, 1995, Claire left 1201 Archer Street at seven thirty a.m. to walk to school. Her high school was six blocks from her home. She never arrived. At eight fifteen a.m. her homeroom teacher reported her absence to the school’s main office. At nine a.m. the school secretary called the Fletcher home and left a message that Claire had not shown up at school that morning. Rick and Jen Fletcher did not receive the message until Jen returned home from work at four p.m. that day.
Jen Fletcher searched her home and then called all of Claire’s friends. No one reported seeing Claire that day. Jen Fletcher called her husband at his office and then contacted the police.
Connor made a note to himself to get all the police reports on the case. They likely said the same things as Mitch’s reports, but one never knew. Sometimes the outcome of a cold case depended on some small, seemingly insignificant detail that had been overlooked.
Connor turned to the second part of Farrell’s initial report. The morning of Claire’s disappearance, there was a 911 call made by a thirty-six-year-old housewife named Dinah Strakowski. Strakowski reported seeing a white male, approximately five foot ten, one hundred eighty pounds with light brown hair, pushing a girl into a blue station wagon just outside her home at 656 Miller Avenue.
Connor went to the kitchen and pulled out a city map from one of the drawers. He brought it into the dining room and spread it out on the opposite end of the table. He found Archer Street and circled the 1200 block. He did the same with the 600 block of Miller Avenue. It was roughly four blocks from Claire’s home.
“So close,” Connor muttered to himself.
He’d known of children being abducted right in front of their homes, sometimes without a single witness. Vanished into thin air, as if a great void had opened up in the ground beneath them and swallowed them whole. One moment they were there, the next moment they were gone.
The thought chilled Connor. He knew that stranger abductions were rare. The majority of missing children were either taken by their non-custodial parent or had run away from home. He also knew that most stranger abductions ended in the worst-case scenario. The children’s bodies would later be found abused and violently killed, as in the cases of Polly Klass, Megan Kanka, Samantha Runion and Danielle Van Dam. Few stranger abductions actually remained unsolved. Even fewer saw the child returned alive to their family.
Both the police and Mitch had interviewed Dinah Strakowski. In fact, emergency responders arrived at Strakowski’s residence five minutes after she placed her 911 call.
“Not bad,” Connor said.
Strakowski said she looked out her living room window and saw the man forcibly push a young girl into the backseat of his car. She estimated the girl to be about twelve or thirteen years old. She saw neither the man’s face nor the girl’s. She didn’t get the plates on the car.
Police canvassed the area, four miles in every direction but turned up nothing. They gave up after that. They had no
Connor would find her again.
He stood and strode into the dining room, switching the light on. He took a small trash can from the living room and swept the contents of the dining room table into it, calculator and all. He opened Claire’s file and began spreading the pages across the table. He froze when he noticed the quarter-inch-wide streak where Claire had run her finger through the dust.
She had been there. It wasn’t his imagination. He wasn’t creating invisible women to distract his mind from his failed marriage or the stress of his job.
Careful not to disturb the streak Claire had left on the table, Connor sat down and began reading Mitch’s first reports on Claire Fletcher’s case.
On the morning of February 21, 1995, Claire left 1201 Archer Street at seven thirty a.m. to walk to school. Her high school was six blocks from her home. She never arrived. At eight fifteen a.m. her homeroom teacher reported her absence to the school’s main office. At nine a.m. the school secretary called the Fletcher home and left a message that Claire had not shown up at school that morning. Rick and Jen Fletcher did not receive the message until Jen returned home from work at four p.m. that day.
Jen Fletcher searched her home and then called all of Claire’s friends. No one reported seeing Claire that day. Jen Fletcher called her husband at his office and then contacted the police.
Connor made a note to himself to get all the police reports on the case. They likely said the same things as Mitch’s reports, but one never knew. Sometimes the outcome of a cold case depended on some small, seemingly insignificant detail that had been overlooked.
Connor turned to the second part of Farrell’s initial report. The morning of Claire’s disappearance, there was a 911 call made by a thirty-six-year-old housewife named Dinah Strakowski. Strakowski reported seeing a white male, approximately five foot ten, one hundred eighty pounds with light brown hair, pushing a girl into a blue station wagon just outside her home at 656 Miller Avenue.
Connor went to the kitchen and pulled out a city map from one of the drawers. He brought it into the dining room and spread it out on the opposite end of the table. He found Archer Street and circled the 1200 block. He did the same with the 600 block of Miller Avenue. It was roughly four blocks from Claire’s home.
“So close,” Connor muttered to himself.
He’d known of children being abducted right in front of their homes, sometimes without a single witness. Vanished into thin air, as if a great void had opened up in the ground beneath them and swallowed them whole. One moment they were there, the next moment they were gone.
The thought chilled Connor. He knew that stranger abductions were rare. The majority of missing children were either taken by their non-custodial parent or had run away from home. He also knew that most stranger abductions ended in the worst-case scenario. The children’s bodies would later be found abused and violently killed, as in the cases of Polly Klass, Megan Kanka, Samantha Runion and Danielle Van Dam. Few stranger abductions actually remained unsolved. Even fewer saw the child returned alive to their family.
Both the police and Mitch had interviewed Dinah Strakowski. In fact, emergency responders arrived at Strakowski’s residence five minutes after she placed her 911 call.
“Not bad,” Connor said.
Strakowski said she looked out her living room window and saw the man forcibly push a young girl into the backseat of his car. She estimated the girl to be about twelve or thirteen years old. She saw neither the man’s face nor the girl’s. She didn’t get the plates on the car.
Police canvassed the area, four miles in every direction but turned up nothing. They gave up after that. They had no
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