CHAPTER 7: MISSING

Michael Hartley disappeared on a Thursday afternoon in November. He was coming home from school, walking the same route he walked every day. He had his backpack. He had his homework. He was supposed to be home by four o'clock.

At four-fifteen, Diane called the school to see if there had been any reason Michael might have been kept after class. There hadn't. She called the police at four-thirty. She called again at five, and then again at six. By seven o'clock, there was an official missing persons report filed, and by eight o'clock, there were police officers searching the neighborhood, and by nine o'clock, Diane was sitting in her apartment with a photograph of her son and a voice that had stopped working.

The school had no security footage. The streets had no witnesses. Nobody had seen Michael. He had simply ceased to exist between point A and point B, between school and home, in the ten-minute span that should have been safe.

Vernon Cole had done it cleanly, the way he'd done everything—with patience and precision. He'd been waiting on the corner near Michael's school, in the brown sedan, watching the boy come out. Michael had recognized him—Cole had spoken to him twice before, casual interactions, nothing suspicious. "Hi, Michael, how's school?" That sort of thing. Building familiarity. Making himself harmless.

Cole had told Michael that his mother had asked him to pick him up, that there'd been an emergency at the hospital, that Diane had called the school but they'd sent the wrong car, so he'd come to help. Michael had believed him. Children believe things. They haven't yet learned that strangers lie.

Cole had driven him to a secondary location—not the hospital basement, somewhere different, somewhere more secure. He'd told Michael they were waiting for his mother. He'd given him juice with something in it. Michael had fallen asleep. By the time Michael woke up, he was in the basement room beneath the old hospital, and there was no escape.

Mercer heard about the disappearance while he was sitting in his apartment. His phone rang at eight-fifteen. It was Chen.

"Another one's missing," she said. "Nine-year-old boy. Michael Hartley. Last seen at school."

Mercer's stomach dropped. The hospital basement. Cole had been using the hospital basement. And Mercer had destroyed the evidence.

"I'm coming in," Mercer said.

"You're on suspension. You're not supposed to—"

"I'm coming in."

He hung up and drove to the precinct, badge and gun in his pocket despite the order to surrender them. He'd kept them. He'd known he would need them.

The precinct was chaos. Uniforms were being dispatched. Detectives were making calls. Hawkins was in his office, coordinating with the FBI and other agencies. Shaw was running the investigation from the center of the room, trying to maintain order while the city teetered on the edge of panic. A child had been taken. The killer was active. This was the moment everyone had been dreading.

Shaw saw Mercer and his face went cold.

"You need to leave," Shaw said. "You have no authority here."

"The hospital basement," Mercer said. "You need to search the hospital basement. That's where he keeps them."

"I know about the basement," Shaw said. "But without evidence, without probable cause, we can't legally search it."

"He has the boy," Mercer said. "He's there. Right now. He's there with Michael Hartley."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. I know he kills, and I know he positions the bodies, and I know he keeps them in the basement. We can get him right now."

Shaw made a decision. He called a judge and explained the situation—the previous evidence found in the basement, the missing child, the pattern of the killer. The judge, understanding that a child's life might be at stake, issued a warrant for the hospital basement.

It took forty minutes to assemble a tactical team and get to the location. Mercer rode with them despite Shaw's orders to stay back. He had to see this. He had to know if his obsession had inadvertently helped the killer or inadvertently stopped him.

The old hospital was surrounded by police vehicles. Officers moved through the building with weapons drawn, moving toward the basement with the knowledge that they were searching for a predator who killed children.

They found the basement room locked from the inside.

They broke the lock, and they found the mattress, the blankets, the supplies. But there were no children. The room was empty. Cole had moved them. He'd known, somehow, that the basement had been compromised. He'd known the police were coming.

Mercer stood in the empty room and understood that he'd failed again. His obsession, his illegal search, his desperation—all of it had alerted the killer to the fact that he'd been found. All of it had driven the killer deeper, further away, impossible to locate.

Shaw was furious. He placed Mercer under arrest right there in the basement, in the room where children had been kept, in the place where Mercer's desperation had destroyed everything.

Mercer was read his rights. He was handcuffed. He was taken to the police station and booked for breaking and entering, trespassing, contamination of a crime scene. He was placed in a holding cell. And Michael Hartley remained missing, in some location that nobody knew, with a killer who had decided to move, to relocate, to adapt to the threat that Mercer posed.