(A/N: I guess I kind of threw a curve ball at you in that first chapter. I realize that’s a tough case to start off with, but the more I write these things the braver I seem to get. Anyway…here were go into the next chapter. Still in Anna’s POV.)

Chapter 2: Noticing Differences

It had been over a week since we’d found the body of three-year-old Madeline Lowery. I breathed a sigh of relief as days went by without a missing child. Though the work was getting us seemingly nowhere, I was happy to not be faced with another missing girl and another devastated family.

Staring at case files, yet again, I was startled by a whistle from the door.

“Come on,” Nick called in his thick Texas drawl. “We’re rollin’ out.”

Grabbing my kit I met him at the car. “What have we got,” I asked as I climbed in the passenger seat.

“Missing child.”

Instantly my heart sank. “Let me guess,” I groaned. “Three-year-old girl?”

“Yeah,” Nick sighed. “But maybe this one will be different.”

“Maybe,” I repeated, though not believing it.

Right away I started noticing differences. Danica Rollins was a three-year-old black girl. All of the other girls had been not only white, but with blond hair and blue eyes. This just didn’t fit. Aside from that, the circumstances surrounding her disappearance were not line with the other girls. The first three had been abducted out in the open in public places; a supermarket, a doctor’s office, a department store. They had all been taken in a matter of moments when their mothers were distracted. Danica had disappeared from her own backyard.

“I came home from work and found my oldest daughter in the kitchen doing her homework,” Beth Ann Rollins said when we asked her to tell us what happened. “I asked her where Danica was and she said she was outside playing. I went to the back door and I didn’t see her. I called out, thinking maybe she was just next door playing with her friends but she didn’t answer. Then I told Leta to start on one side of the street and I started on the other. After an hour of ringing door bells I called you.”

“Mrs. Rollins,” I asked, “is Danica an adventurous child?”

Mrs. Rollins looked confused.

“What I mean is; does she wander off a lot?”

“Not really. I mean she climbed the neighbor’s fence last week to play with their new puppy but I thought she’d learned her lesson.”

Nick was talking to sixteen-year-old Leta when I finished with the mother.

“How long had it been since you last checked on her?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said indignantly, “about an hour? I was doing my homework. She knows she’s not supposed to leave the yard without me.”

“She’s three,” I said appalled.

The girl’s eyes snapped to me.

“Since when does having a kid sister make me an automatic babysitter?”

“Since your mom asked you to watch her,” Nick retorted. “Your little sister is missing; you could show a little concern and drop the attitude.”

“Whatever.”

“Stokes, Sanders,” an officer called across the lawn and waved us over. “We found this in the bushes just down the street.” The officer held up a small purple sweater. “The dogs got a scent leading off into the woods.”

An hour later we’d followed the trail through a small thicket of trees that surrounded a drainage ditch. The dogs lost the scent at the edge of the ditch. Feeling that the only natural direction to search was in the direction of the water flow, Nick and I walked along the ravine for about a mile until we saw something floating in the water.

Not forty-eight hours later officers had returned to the Rollins home and where leading Leta Rollins away in handcuffs. After minimal interrogation the girl came forward with the truth. She’d been watching TV when Danica asked if she could play outside. Annoyed Leta simply opened the back door allowing the girl to run outside. An hour later she got up to check on her and found Danica lying on the ground with a gash on her head.

“It was an accident,” she insisted. “She must have been trying to climb the fence again. She fell.”

“What will happen to her,” Mrs. Rollins watching her daughter cry through the window of the interrogation room.

“If the coroner’s report supports her story it’s neglect at the very least,” Nick answered.

“If not they could reach as high as man-slaughter or even homicide.”

As Mrs. Rollins broke down at the fate of her oldest daughter and the unfortunate lost of her youngest, I couldn’t help but be relieved at the simplicity of the case.