A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

LEO
NOW
On your third day home, you start talking about some kid named
Gus. It’s by accident that it happens. Someone’s playing ball outside.
The thump of the ball hitting concrete carries inside. It gets your
attention. “It’s just a basketball,” Dad says, seeing that you’ve gone
white. Ever since you’ve been home, Dad’s neurotic about keeping
doors and windows shut and locked, the blinds closed. You can
never be too careful. He spends his nights awake. He sits in the
parlor and reads. No one’s taking you on his watch.
“Gus plays basketball,” you say.
Dad looks up from his scrambled eggs and asks, “Who’s Gus?”
You tell him. Dad goes white, too. He excuses himself and leaves
the room, taking his cell phone with him.
You weren’t alone in that basement. Someone was with you.
Someone got left behind.
We drive back down to the police station. The lady cop becomes
more assertive in her questioning. She no longer tiptoes around you
like you might break. Now that we know someone else is still there,
it’s time, she says, to get down to business.
She asks what you know about this kid Gus. You don’t know
much. You can’t even tell the lady cop what he looks like because,
for all your time together, you never got a good look at his face. You
don’t know how old he is. You don’t know where he’s from.
The lady cop looks in those missing kids’ databases. She and her
henchmen come up with a handful of missing kids named Gus, or
some variation of it. Argus. Augustus. Gustavo. They show you
pictures, and ask if any of them is your Gus. You don’t know. A
missing kid from Cookeville, Tennessee, might be, you think. But
really, you don’t know. You’re just trying to please the lady cop by
saying something. I probably would, too.