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around to the TV stations, and asked them to show it on the news.”
    “That was very smart of you,” I said.
    I opened the driver’s door for her. Heather started to climb in, then paused to look at me with her sad eyes. “Please find my baby, Mr. Carpenter. I can’t live without him.”
    I never made promises when I was looking for missing kids. They only filled people with false hope, and that was not the business I was in.
    “I’ll try, Heather.”
    She nodded woodenly, and left without saying good-bye.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    H eather’s taillights hung like an afterimage in the darkness. I stuck the bumper sticker to the trunk of my car, and tossed the DVD onto the passenger seat. Then I clapped my hands for my dog. Buster exploded out of the bushes around Jed’s house.
    “Time to go to work,” I said.
    I started to climb over the police tape, and glanced at the OC trailer. Normally, I would have told the detectives inside the trailer that I was here. But Cheek’s threat had changed my mind. I wasn’t going to talk to anyone with the sheriff’s department unless it was absolutely necessary.
    I walked around the side of Jed’s house to the backyard. The backyard was like most in Broward County, and the size of a postage stamp. Kids’ toys were scattered around, including an expensive-looking tricycle and a plastic swimming pool. Jed had obviously indulged his son.
    I shined my flashlight at the house. Three windows on the house faced the backyard, all of them screened. The screen on the corner window looked damaged, and was flapping in the breeze. I approached for a closer look.
    The screen had been sliced horizontally, the cut about three feet wide. I shined my flashlight through the window, and found myself looking at Sampson’s bedroom. A Spiderman mobile hung from the ceiling, and the walls were papered in cartoon characters. Like the backyard, there were toys everywhere. Throughout the room I could see traces of white powder from where a police technician had dusted for fingerprints.
    I found the bed with my flashlight. It was built to resemble a miniature race car. The bed was unmade, and the impression of Sampson’s body was still in the sheets.
    A tiny light beside the bed caught my eye. It was faint, and difficult to see. I shut off my flashlight, and tried to determine what it was.
    I realized it was a night-light. Then I saw the second one by the door. A lot of children slept with night-lights, but two was unusual.
    Sampson was afraid of the dark.
    That bothered me. Most children who were afraid of the dark were also light sleepers. I wondered how Sampson’s kidnapper had entered his bedroom without the boy hearing him, and yelling for help.
    I was missing something. I stepped back, and started over.
    The damaged screen: I had assumed that the kidnapper had popped it out, and stolen into Sampson’s bedroom. But I didn’t know that for a fact. I decided to see how difficult it would be, and I put my hands through the slice, and attempted to remove the screen. It refused to budge.
    “What the hell,” I said under my breath.
    I inspected the screen’s metal frame with my flashlight. It was held down by four screws covered in rust. This screen hadn’t been removed for a long time.
    I stepped back into the yard. The kidnapper hadn’t gone into the bedroom. The boy had come to him and climbed through the slit. That was why no one had heard him leave. The boy had been an accomplice in his own kidnapping.
             
    I turned off my flashlight. There was a picnic table in the backyard. I sat down on one of the benches. I had dealt with hundreds of child abductions and never encountered anything like this.
    Little kids who were afraid of the dark didn’t climb through windows at night, even if someone they knew was coaxing them. It was too scary. Yet that was exactly what Sampson had done. Whoever had stolen the boy had worked some special magic on him.
    I looked around the yard. I had no