He adjusted his glasses and held out his hand. “Thank you.”

We shook and then his face took on an odd expression, something I couldn’t read.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said, then nodded at the doors behind me.

I turned to look.

Marc and Jessica were on the other side of the glass doors. She had him by the arm and they were making their way up the walk. The swelling had subsided around Marc’s eyes and I could see that his eyes were brown, like his father’s.

They stood on the other side of the door, unsure as to what to do. They exchanged a few words and then Jessica held the door open for him. They stepped into the foyer, stomping their feet to shake the snow loose.

“Guess you were persuasive,” Anchor said.

Jessica and Marc saw us, hesitated, then came toward us.

“Isabel said we might see you,” Marc said. He looked at Anchor. “Hey, John.”

“It’s good to see you,” John said, smiling. He held out his hand to Jessica. “I’m John.”

Jessica took his hand. “Hi.”

Marc turned to me. “We borrowed Isabel’s car.”

“Good,” I said.

“Is he upstairs? My dad?”

Both Anchor and I nodded.

He looked anxiously at Jessica. She just smiled and nodded at him.

Marc looked at Anchor. “Is it okay if we go up?”

“Of course,” Anchor said.

Marc squinted at me through his swollen eyelids. “I thought about what you said. That’s why I’m here.”

I nodded.

“Thanks,” he said. “Really.”

I nodded again.

He and Jessica moved toward the elevator. Anchor lingered for a moment, then turned to me, adjusting the glasses again.

“Anytime, anything,” he said. “You call me if you need something.”

He followed Marc and Jessica to the elevator, stepped in behind them and the three of them disappeared behind the closing doors.

I didn’t know what was waiting for them upstairs, but I guessed that Codaselli would be surprised. And pleased. I hoped Marc would be glad that he’d made the decision to come. And I hoped they’d have some time together.

My phone buzzed as soon as I stepped outside. The number on the screen was unfamiliar.

I pushed the button. “This is Joe.”

“Joe, it’s Tim Barron. You free to stop by this morning?”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

THIRTY-SEVEN

 

 

Tim Barron smiled across his desk. “You look beat.”

It had taken me almost an hour to get from Codaselli’s office to his. The roads were plowed but the roads were slick. Spun-out vehicles peppered the ditches and other cars proceeded cautiously, heeding the warning. I found myself tapping the steering wheel with my fingers and not sharing their patience as I made my way across town.

“I’m a little tired,” I said. “Late night.”

“Hope there was a good reason.”

I gave a non-committal shrug.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got a few things that I think may help. Again, I’m sorry for the wait, but I hope you understand.”

“I do and I appreciate you doing it.”

“All I ask is that if you do find something here that helps, that it stays between us,” he said, staring across the desk at me. “I’m violating a boatload of things here—and don’t get me wrong, this seems worth it—but I also like my job. The vaguer you can be about where you got the info, the better.”

“Understood.”

He laid his hands down on the desk. “Great. Okay. The exact class rosters weren’t available. I kinda figured they wouldn’t be. I thought we might be able to take a look specifically at the Detwiler girl’s classes and see who she was in a room with but our system doesn’t have those. I don’t think we have them anywhere at this point.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“But what I was able to pull up was the entire grade enrollment,” he said. “Doesn’t separate it by class, but gives us a complete list of names for everyone in the grade level.”

He slid a manila folder to me across the desk. “I ran the list for each year Detwiler was enrolled. I know you said fourth or fifth grade, but this shows the rosters from kindergarten to fifth.”

I opened the folder and pulled out the printouts. Columns of names looked back at me from the paper.

He stood. “Look those over for whatever you’re looking for. I gotta run down the hall for a minute.”

He left and I wasn’t sure if he was really going to look for something else or if he was just giving me a few minutes to look at the lists alone.

I started with Bailey Detwiler’s third grade year. I thought about the photo Mike had given me. There was no way Elizabeth would’ve been enrolled in a lower grade, given her age when she’d disappeared. I saw two students listed with the last name Tyler, but both were boys. I grabbed a pen from Tim’s desk and quickly crossed off every name that I identified as belonging to a boy. I took a highlighter from the same cup of writing utensils and highlighted Bailey’s name on each sheet. It left me with about sixty names in each grade.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but for once, I felt like maybe there was something truly tangible in my hands. The paper felt like hope.

There were four Elizabeths in the third fourth grade, so I highlighted those. The fourth grade listed the same four. On the fifth grade list, there was one new one.

Elizabeth Sansero.

I circled that name and stared at it for a long moment.

Then I shook my head, irritated with myself. I didn’t see any possible way that my daughter had been abducted and been allowed to use her real first name. It was a foolish, wistful thought. The only reason it made sense was because I wanted it to.

I pushed the list away. It had random names that wouldn’t mean anything to me. It might as well have been written in a foreign language. The hopelessness and frustration washed over me like a bucket of water dumped over my head. I’d gone from optimistic to pessimistic in about half a second. My entire trek to Minnesota seemed like an utter waste of time at that moment.

“Anything?” Tim asked, walking back in, a small stack of books in his hands.

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I said. “I think I may be wasting your time.”

“Well, I wondered how names might help, given that I’m assuming your daughter’s name was changed,” he said, sitting back down in his chair and setting the books in a neat stack on the desk. “But you’re the expert so I figured you knew something I didn’t.”

“I don’t,” I admitted. “Grasping at non-existent straws.”

“Maybe these will help then,” he said, pushing the stack on the desk toward me. “Yearbooks. I picked them up yesterday from the district office. Left them in my car this morning because I had my hands full of other stuff.”

I hesitated, then reached for them. There were three of them, all hard-covered with the name of the school, the school year and a small emblem with the school’s name on it.

“I wasn’t sure if we had them or not,” Tim explained. “We don’t do them at every school because of the cost. But the parents at Hawkins formed a club and covered the expense.” He motioned at the books in my hands. “Same years as the years I printed out.”

And on a dime, the pessimism morphed back to optimism.

I paged quickly through the first one, the year that Elizabeth would’ve been in third grade. I scanned the small black and white photos of the kids. I stopped at Bailey Detwiler’s photo. Her face was slightly younger, slightly chubbier than the photo in my pocket, but I had no doubt she was the girl in the photo next to Elizabeth.

I scanned the faces again, but didn’t see Elizabeth’s.

I handed that one back to Tim. “Not this one.”

He nodded and took the book. I appreciated that he wasn’t chattering just to make noise and was just letting me look.

I opened the fourth grade book and found Bailey Detwiler again. Her face had thinned from the photo a year earlier and more closely resembled the photo in my pocket. I started at the beginning of the class, taking a moment to stare at each girl’s face. I didn’t want to rush and I didn’t want to miss my daughter if she was there.