Magic Hour

Julia opened the car door.

Penelope stood alongside the passenger door, waving happily. Behind her was a battered old pickup truck. She was already into her sentence when Julia stepped out. “—said you could borrow old Bertha for a while. She was his daddy’s hay truck when they lived in Moses Lake. The keys are in it.”

“Thank you, Penelope.”

“Call me Peanut. Heck, we’re practically related, with Ellie being my best friend and all.”

Julia had a sudden memory of Penelope at Mom’s funeral. She’d taken care of everything and everyone like a den mother. When Ellie had started to cry, Penelope bustled her out of the room. Later, Julia had seen her sitting beside Ellie on the end of her parents’ bed, rocking a sobbing Ellie as if she were a child.

Julia could have used a friend like that in the past year. “Thanks, Peanut.”

Ellie got out of the cruiser and came around to where they stood. Her police-issue black heels crunched the gravel. As they stood there, the clouds drifted away to reveal a watery moon. “Get in the car, Pea. I’ll walk her to the front door.”

Peanut fluttered her fingers in a sorority girl wave and lowered herself into the cruiser, slamming the door shut.

Julia and Ellie walked up the gravel path to the library. As they neared the entrance, moonlight fell on the READING IS FUN! poster that filled the front window.

Ellie unlocked the door and opened it, leaning forward to flick on the lights. Then she looked at Julia. “Can you really help this girl?”

Julia’s anger slipped away, along with the residue of her fear. They were back on track, talking about what mattered. “Yes. Any progress on her identity?”

“No. We’ve input her height, weight, eye and hair color into the system, so we’re narrowing the possibilities down. We’ve also photographed and logged the scarring on her legs and shoulder. She has a very particular birthmark on her back left shoulder, too. That’s the one identifying mark we know has always been on her. The FBI advised me to keep it secret—to weed out the kooks and crackpots. Max sent her dress to the lab, to look for fibers, but I’m sure the dress is homemade, so it won’t give us a factory. Maybe DNA, but that’s a real long shot. Her fingerprints don’t match any recorded missing kids. That’s not unusual, of course. Parents don’t routinely fingerprint their kids. We’ve got her blood, so if someone comes forward, we can run a DNA test.” Ellie sighed. “In other words, we’re hoping that her mother reads tomorrow’s newspaper and comes forward. Or

that you can get her to tell us her name.”

“What if it was her mother that tied her up and left her to die?”

Ellie’s gaze was steady. It was obvious that she’d thought the same thing. They both knew that the overwhelming number of child abductions were by family members. Cases like Elizabeth Smart were incredibly rare. “Then you’d better get the truth out of her,” she said quietly. “It’s the only way we can help her.”

“Nothing like a little pressure.”

“On both of us, believe me. Until this week, my toughest law enforcement job was taking car keys from people at The Pour House on Friday night.”

“We’ll take it one step at a time, I guess. First off, I need a place to work with her.”

“I’m on it.”

“Good.” Julia smiled. “Don’t wait up for me. I’ll be home late.” She stepped over the threshold and onto the serviceable brown carpeting.

Ellie touched her shoulder. “Jules?”

Julia turned. Her sister’s face was half in shadow and half in light. “Yes?”

“I believe you can do it, you know.”

Julia was surprised by how much that meant to her. She didn’t trust her voice to sound normal, so she didn’t say thank you. Instead, she nodded, then turned on her heel and went into the brightly lit library. Behind her, she heard Ellie sigh heavily and say, “I believe in you, too, big sis. I know you can find the kid’s family.” Then the door banged shut.

Julia winced. It had never occurred to her to return the sentiment. She’d always seen her sister as indestructible. Ellie had never needed approval the way she had. Ellie always expected the world to love her, and the world had complied. It was unsettling to get a glimpse of her sister’s inner nature. There was a vulnerability in there somewhere, a fragility that belied the tough-girl-meets-beauty-queen exterior. So, they had something else in common after all.

Julia walked around a grid of tables to the row of computers. There were five of them—four more than she’d expected—sitting on individual desks beneath a cork bulletin board studded with book covers and flyers announcing local events.

She pulled a legal-sized yellow tablet and a black pen out of her briefcase, then scouted through the interior pockets for her handheld tape recorder. Finding it, she added new batteries, turned it on and said: “Case file one, patient name unknown.”

Clicking the Stop button, she sat down on the hard wooden chair and scooted closer to the screen. The computer came on with a thump-buzz. The screen lit up. Within seconds she was surfing the Net and making notes. While she wrote, she also talked into the recorder.

“Case number one, patient: female child, age unknown. Appears to be between five and seven years of age. Name unknown.

Child presents with limited or no language ability. Physical assessment is severe dehydration and malnutrition. Extensive ligature-type scarring on body suggests some serious past trauma. Socialization impairment appears to be marked, as does her ability to interact in an age appropriate manner. Child exhibited utter stillness for hours, broken by period of high excitability and irritation. Additionally, she appears to be terrified of shiny metal objects.