Chapter 5 - Why Linda Shaved HerThe blue rain boots were gone.
Police searched Linda's room twice.
They found shoes, sandals, slippers, and an expensive pair of leather boots.
No blue rubber rain boots.
Detective Ortiz looked through the photographs taken during the original missing-person search.
One picture showed Linda standing on the porch Tuesday evening while officers questioned the family.
She was wearing blue rain boots.
Sarah stared at the photograph.
“Emma hid the drive in one of those before she was taken.”
Ortiz nodded.
“And Linda was wearing them while pretending to help search for her.”
The cruelty of it made Sarah feel physically sick.
“What happened to the boots?”
“We don't know.”
A search was issued for Linda, Wade, Wade's SUV, and the boots.
Emma slept for several hours.
When she woke, she asked for chicken noodle soup.
Sarah almost cried from relief over something so ordinary.
After she ate, Emma became quiet.
Her fingers moved toward her shaved scalp.
“Does it look bad?”
Sarah's heart broke.
“It looks like you survived.”
“Kids will laugh.”
“No.”
“They will.”
Sarah pulled her close.
“Then they'll answer to me.”
Emma managed the smallest smile.
Later, she began talking without being asked.
“Grandma found the red thing.”
Sarah glanced toward the hallway, where Ortiz stood.
“When?”
“At night.”
Tuesday evening.
Linda had apparently kept Emma inside the downstairs bedroom while Daniel searched the neighborhood believing his daughter had wandered away.
The idea made Sarah shake with rage.
“You were inside our house?”
Emma nodded.
“For how long?”
“A long time.”
“Did you hear us calling?”
Her eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Sarah had stood in that same hallway screaming Emma's name.
Linda had comforted her.
Linda had brought Sarah water.
While Emma was locked behind a door fewer than thirty feet away.
Sarah turned her face so her daughter wouldn't see the anger.
“What happened when Grandma found the flash drive?”
“She came in with her boots.”
Linda had apparently felt something beneath her heel.
She removed the boot.
The red drive fell onto the carpet.
Emma said Linda stared at it.
Then at her.
“She asked if I put it there.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
“What did she do?”
“She slapped me.”
Sarah went completely still.
Emma had never mentioned that.
“She told me lying made everything worse.”
Daniel, standing near the window, covered his mouth.
Emma continued.
Wade returned shortly afterward.
The moment Linda showed him the flash drive, he became frightened rather than relieved.
“He said, ‘If she knew enough to hide this, she knows enough to talk.’”
Linda argued.
She wanted Wade to leave.
He refused.
Then he looked at Emma's long brown hair.
Search alerts were already being issued.
Emma's school photograph showed her with hair past her shoulders.
Wade said, “Everybody in Tennessee is going to be looking for that hair.”
Sarah knew what came next.
“Grandma got the clippers?”
Emma nodded.
“Mr. Bennett told her to.”
“But Grandma did it?”
“Yes.”
Emma started crying.
“I asked her not to.”
Sarah held her.
“She said it would grow back.”
The sentence was somehow more monstrous than a threat.
Linda had tried to turn cruelty into practicality.
Emma remembered sitting in a wooden chair in the laundry room while Wade watched the window.
Linda plugged in Daniel's old hair clippers.
The first pass removed a thick strip from the side of Emma's head.
Emma screamed.
Linda covered her mouth.
“Stop fighting.”
Emma cried harder.
Another section fell.
Then another.
Linda worked quickly and badly, leaving uneven patches because Emma kept moving.
“She told me people wouldn't recognize me.”
Sarah pressed her lips against Emma's forehead.
“What happened after?”
“They put different clothes on me.”
“Whose?”
“Grandma had bought them.”
Ortiz stepped closer.
“When?”
Emma didn't know.
That detail mattered.
If Linda already possessed child-sized clothes suitable for disguising Emma, perhaps the decision to take her had begun sooner than anyone realized.
“Then what?”
“Mr. Bennett put a hat on me.”
They waited until after dark.
At 8:43 p.m., while volunteers searched a wooded area two miles away, Linda drove Emma out of the neighborhood.
Wade followed separately.
“Where did she take you?” Sarah asked.
“A house.”
“Do you know where?”
“No.”
“What did it look like?”
“Small.”
“Anything outside?”
Emma thought.
“A horse mailbox.”
Ortiz wrote it down.
“What else?”
“A broken swing.”
Daniel suddenly looked at her.
“What color was the house?”
“Green.”
He stared.
Sarah knew that expression now.
Recognition.
“What?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Wade owns a hunting property south of Franklin.”
“Does it have a house?”
“A green cabin.”
Sarah stood.
“And you didn't think to mention this before?”
“I didn't know Emma had been there.”
Ortiz was already calling.
Daniel reached for his jacket.
“We're going.”
“No,” Ortiz said.
“I know where it is.”
“So do we now.”
Daniel looked furious.
“My daughter was held there.”
“And if Wade is there, I don't need you arriving first.”
Before Daniel could argue, Ortiz's phone rang.
She listened.
Her expression hardened.
“What?”
She ended the call.
“Patrol found the cabin.”
Sarah's heart jumped.
“Wade?”
“No.”
“Linda?”
“No.”
Ortiz looked at Emma.
“But they found a child's hair all over the laundry-room floor.”
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Then she looked at Sarah.
“And blood on the chair.”
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