Page 8 of The Sister's Curse

“Where did you look?”

“He likes to hide under his bed. I checked there first. Then the playroom…” She recited a list of places she’d looked.

“Did you think he could get outside?”

“No? I mean, I always make sure the doors are locked and the alarm is set when I’m here.”

I crossed the kitchen to the door to the garage, where there was an alarm panel. I noticed that the readout saidFault Zone16. I flipped open the panel and saw that zone 16 was labeledKitchen Door. That door had been open when I arrived.

“Did you have any trouble arming the system?” I asked.

“No. I always do it right when his parents leave.”

Monica continued. “When did you call for help?”

“When I didn’t find him, I called 911, and then his parents. I thought someone might have taken him.” Her voice hitched.

Not an unreasonable thought. The Sumners were clearly wealthy. Someone could’ve abducted their child for ransom. Maybe someone tried to take him, he kicked up too much of a fuss, and his abductor threw him into the pond.

“How much time passed from when you realized he was missing and when you called 911?” Monica asked.

“Maybe…ten minutes? I don’t…I don’t know.”

“What did you do after you called?”

“I went outside to wait for help.”

“Did you go out the front door, or the back door, or…?”

“Front door. I wanted to be able to flag them down in case they got lost. Then I saw the lady…the police lady coming through the field.”

“Did Mason seem sick? Was he injured?”

“No, no…he was fine. He was playing with his toys.”

I drifted into the living room. A massive leather sectional dominated the area before a stone fireplace. Family pictures were arranged on the cherrywood mantel. There were professionally taken pictures of Mason holding dinosaur plushies, candids of him at the zoo, and portraits of him with his family. His father was in his early forties, in a polo shirt and with an artificially white smile. Now that I saw him when he wasn’t raging, he did look vaguely familiar, like I might’ve seen his picture on television. Mason’s mother was fashionably dressed, with a very heavy ring set on her left hand. There were no siblings, but some extended family appeared in wedding pictures: grandparents and some aunts and uncles, it looked like. I counted ten groomsmen and ten bridesmaids arranged before an altar with a clergyman. It must’ve been a winter wedding, since the women all wore high-necked dresses with sleeves, but the bridal bouquet was full of summer flowers: lilies and dahlias.

I scanned the vacuum cleaner marks in the carpet. I imagined the Sumners had a cleaner, as there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. I paused before the massive front door, frowning at something on the lintel above the door.

I donned gloves and reached for it. It was heavy, cold, and rough to the touch. I realized it was a rusted railroad spike, the kind used to keep tracks pinned to railroad ties.

In the distance behind the house, toward the pond, I glimpsed photography flashes. Though this was likely a tragic accident, there was still evidence to be recorded.

Just in case things were not as they seemed.

Monica led Leah to the door. “I’m going to take her to the station. I’ve called her father, and we’ll meet him there.”

“I’ve got this,” I assured her.

It was weird that Leah hadn’t called her father. She’d called 911. She’d called the Sumners, to tell them their son was hurt. But she hadn’t called her parents. Hmm.

I watched from the living room window as Monica pulled away. I took pictures of my own…of the alarm-panel fault, toys on the floor, the railroad spike above the door. I directed evidence techs to dust the wet bathroom windowsill, the alarm panels, and the door latches.

I did a quick sweep of the house to make sure Leah hadn’t left behind any evidence of alcohol or drugs, and that there wasn’t an abductor hiding in a walk-in closet. The Sumners could afford to be minimalist. Their closets were empty of everything but well-chosen designer clothing, and there was no clutter. Trash cans were empty. The rest of the doors and windows were locked. I didn’t see any way the boy could’ve exited the house except through the kitchen door. The garage was locked, and there were no other ways in or out. With the doors closed, the house smelled odd, like incense in a church. I found a bit of fragrant ash in a coffee cup in the kitchen sink. I smelled sandalwood in the cup, and it had a tiny burn mark inside it.

Slowly, law enforcement filtered away until I was left alone with Gibby. Gibby sat on the back patio, his ears twitching, staring at the pond, growling.

“Yeah,” I said, “I felt it, too.”