“I’m not a reporter. I’m a senior in high school.”
She craned her neck to get a better look at him. “You don’t live around here. I’ve never seen you before, and I know everyone.”
He heard scratching on the other side of her screen door.
“I’m coming,” the lady hollered at whatever was on the other side. It took her a moment, but she opened the door and a tiny orange puffball trotted out.
A Pomeranian? That was the dog she’d threatened to sic on him?
Mulder raised an eyebrow.
“She’s meaner than she looks,” the woman said defensively.
The puffball ran down the porch steps and straight to Mulder, yipping and wagging her tail. He bent down and scratched behind the dog’s ears. The old lady seemed shocked.
“Do you have bacon in your pocket?” she asked, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to carry around.
“No, ma’am. Why?”
The lady clapped and the dog ran back up the steps. She scooped up the ball of fur and sat down in her rocking chair. “Gidget doesn’t like strangers.” Her logic was a little off, but at least she was talking to him.
Gidget sat up on her owner’s knees like a tiny lion.
“She seemed to like me,” Mulder reminded her.
“I noticed.” She rocked for a moment, then added, “And Gidget is an excellent judge of character. Last year, the post office messed around with the routes and we got a new mailman. Gidget hated the man the first time she laid eyes on him. Three months later we found out he was stealing social security checks out of the mailboxes.”
“My dad won’t let me have a dog.” Mulder wasn’t sure why he said it, but it was true. He glanced at Billy’s house.
Did Billy have a dog?
“Every child should have a dog,” she said. “You keep looking at the Christians’ house. Do you know the family? Or were you just curious?”
“Neither.” Mulder stared at the sidewalk. Somebody had traced a heart with two sets of initials in cement while it was still wet. “Someone kidnapped my sister when she was eight. I was home, too, but they only took her. So I know what it’s like. I just wish there was something I could do.”
“I’m sorry about your sister. Did the police find her—?” The old lady stretched out the word her, as if she’d caught herself before she said her body.
Mulder shook his head. “No. She’s still missing.”
The woman hugged her fur ball. “A child should be safe at home. It’s bad enough that I can’t walk Gidget outside after dark anymore without worrying about getting hit over the head. But after what happened to that sweet little boy, now I have to worry about a monster walking right through my front door.”
He sucked in a sharp breath.
She can’t mean …
“Is that what happened to Billy? Someone came into the house?” His heart pounded in his ears as he waited for her answer.
The old lady walked over to the railing and lowered her voice. “Billy’s mother said the police didn’t want to release too many details, because it would take longer to look into all the tips people were calling in.”
Detective Solano had complained about following up on false tips and dead ends.
“But now that the little angel is gone, it can’t hurt to tell you.” She hugged Gidget. “Billy’s mother told me that he was playing on the living room floor with his Matchbox cars. The green one was his favorite,” she added, as though she was sharing a secret. “The phone rang and his mom walked into the kitchen to answer it. She swore she wasn’t gone for more than a minute or so. But when she came back, her baby was gone and the door was open.”
Mulder’s stomach bucked, and he almost puked. “The front door?”
She nodded, and the pink curlers jiggled. “That’s right. Can you imagine? His mother called the police, and they arrived in less than five minutes, but there was no trace of Billy. I looked out the window when I heard the sirens.”
“Do you remember what time it was?” His chest tightened.
“Must’ve been a few minutes before nine. I go to bed at nine o’clock on the dot every night.”
The sidewalk seemed to shift under Mulder’s feet. Billy Christian had been kidnapped from his home around the same time that Samantha and Sarah Lowe were taken. Even the details were eerily similar—all three children were eight-year-olds, playing in the living room just before they disappeared, and the front doors of their houses had been left open.
What if he was right and the same person was responsible?
Mulder had been so focused on finding a connection between Samantha’s disappearance and Billy’s and Sarah’s abductions that he hadn’t stopped to think about what it would mean if he found one. Mulder’s throat burned and he stared at the sidewalk, blinking back tears as he processed the truth. He didn’t want to be right anymore, because if he was …
It means my sister is dead.
CHAPTER 10
Mulder Residence
9:32 P.M.