Not only am I a fugitive, I’m premeditating breaking and entering again. That makes me a criminal even if I’ve never killed anyone.
At Home Depot, I get out in the drizzling rain and check the trunk of my car. There’s a jack in a compartment next to the spare tire, along with a pry bar. I shove the bar into my backpack, since the police kept my crowbar. I try to think it through. There’s a padlock on the outside cellar door. I need bolt cutters.
I pull my hair up in a ponytail and put on my Braves baseball cap to shelter my face from cameras, then I hurry in and grab the biggest bolt cutters I can find, along with another flashlight, and check out.
Then I drive to the Dotsons’ house again. Their car isn’t there, so I drive by the bar to see if Frank and Arelle are there. They are, so I hurry back. I have to get into that house. It’s now or never. I park my car up the street, slip on my backpack, and walk to their house, but this time I avoid the side of the house where the neighbor called the police. I go around the opposite side, next to a big fence enclosing the other neighbor’s yard. It’s raining harder now, soaking my shirt and jeans.
In the backyard, I position the bolt cutter blades over the padlock on the cellar door and squeeze. I’m not strong enough to snap it cleanly, but I work at it and finally cut through the metal. I pull the padlock off and pull on the door handles—the doors don’t budge. They must be locked from inside too. Frank Dotson was thorough.
I can’t give up, so I go back to the side of the house. There’s a window that must be a bedroom, maybe the master. I drop my backpack on the dirt and pull out a T-shirt. I hold it against the glass to muffle the sound, then tap it with the pry bar. The glass cracks nicely. I wrap the T-shirt around my hand, then knock away enough of the glass that I can reach in and unlock the sash. The glass shards don’t make much noise as they fall, so I assume there’s carpet below.
I raise the sash, then look into the dark room. I dust the glass off the pane, lift myself up, and climb into what looks like a guest room. I close the window and pull the curtains shut.
I use my flashlight to look around the room. There’s a twin bed in a corner. The place is dusty and has a vinegar-like smell. I leave that room and go up the hall to the den off the kitchen. The furniture is old, the upholstery split and oozing batting. I go into the kitchen and see the sidebar behind the table, the one in the picture that showed Laura Daly’s article. It’s gone now. I’m sure Dotson discarded it before the police searched, just as he might have somehow done with Laura.
I look around for the basement door. There it is, right next to the refrigerator. I hurry across the room, throw it open, and shine my beam into deeper darkness. I go down the stairs carefully. Since I know the windows are boarded, I turn on the light.
At the bottom, I look across the room and see the cellar doors at the top of another set of concrete steps. As I thought, it’s padlocked from inside. Shelves line the walls. There’s no sign of Laura.
Still, I call out. “Laura? Laura? Are you here?”
There’s only silence.
Since the basement light is dim, I shine the flashlight around the tops of the walls, trying to get my bearings. Where was the window I tried to get through the other night? It wasn’t the window near the corner of the house—I can see that one, and it’s boarded up too, but I know it’s not the one. There was another one. I don’t see it. Maybe they’ve moved the shelves in front of it and stacked them with things to camouflage it. I step in that direction and move a toolbox, an old boat motor, a box with a tangle of cables, a wadded tarp. There’s nothing but cinderblock wall behind the shelves.
No wonder the police gave up. There’s really nothing to see here.
Exhausted, I sit on the stairs, wondering if I’ve imagined the whole thing. Am I losing it? Did I really talk to Laura Daly? Did I really hear a baby?
Tears push to my eyes. Is it possible that I imagined it all? Am I so desperate to solve someone else’s problems, since I can’t solve my own, that my brain would manufacture something this bizarre?
No. I’m not crazy. I’m not an alarmist. I’m not a drama queen. Anyone who knows me knows that. I heard what I heard.
I try again, louder. “Laura? Laura, please, if you’re here, say something! I don’t know where to look.”
Nothing.
One more time, I shine my flashlight around the walls, desperate for any sign that Laura was here. No footprints in the dust on the floor, no diaper pail, no baby supplies.
But that missing window plagues me. Where could it be?
Again, I shine the light slowly along the top of each wall. There are two boarded-up windows in here, and only two. I know I counted three windows outside. I try to orient myself. The one I heard Laura through wouldn’t be on this side of the house.
I can’t accomplish anything here. I go back up, closing the basement door behind me. I shine my light through the house, checking every room and every closet for any sign of Laura, or of any place Dotson might have taken her. There’s nothing. No baby equipment. No diapers in the trash. No careless notes with an address of some secret hiding place.
What if he’s already killed and disposed of them?
Sick at the thought, I realize it’s time to leave. I open the side door that opens into the carport, but before I can step out, headlights sweep across the carport’s back wall and grow larger as a car pulls up the driveway. I jump back inside, close the door. I turn and look around, panicked. I can’t go out the front door, and I don’t see a back one. I hurry back through the house to the room I broke in to. I start to open the damp curtains to climb back through, but then I hear their voices.
I freeze, listening. Maybe they’ll talk about Laura. Maybe they’ll mention where she is.
Instead of escaping, I hide behind that room’s door and strain to hear.
They’re both clearly inebriated. Their words are slurred.
“Need to go down and check on her,” he says.
“Don hurt her again,” the woman says, her words running together. “Just leave her be for tonight. I don’t wanna take care of the baby. Come to bed.”
My heart jolts. They’re talking about Laura! She’s in the house. Down must mean that she’s in the basement. But where? A secret room? There weren’t any doors.
Determined to find her, I resolve to stay. I will find her. I’ll spend the night here if I have to.