A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

I picture our own plastic toy chest. It’s maybe two feet high by two
feet wide by three feet long. Leo, at his last exam, was thirty-eight
inches tall. If Charlotte’s toy chest is about the same size as ours,
that means Leo’s little legs wouldn’t have been able to stretch fully
out inside it. He would have had to bend at the knees. But is there
enough width inside the toy chest for that? And what about the toys
inside it? Was he lying on them, too, or did this Brody Parker have
the decency to remove those before forcing Leo in?
My mind is racing. But all I can say is, “It’s raining outside,
Charlotte. They were playing outside?”
“Brody asked if they could get the Nerf guns and bring them in. I
said yes, because with all this rain, we’re running out of things to do.
Brody asked if Leo could help him carry the guns back in. I said yes.
Then one of the toddlers wet herself, and I got all caught up in
changing and washing her clothes. I didn’t know that Leo hadn’t
come back in. Brody,” she says by way of explanation, “goes to the
elementary school. We walk and pick him up, same as we do
Delilah. We didn’t get home until close to three-thirty, and then the
kids wanted a snack before they played, so...” Her voice drifts. She’s
holding something back.
“What are you saying, Charlotte?” I ask.
“It was less than an hour that he had Leo locked inside that chest
of mine,” and I gasp, imagining Leo trapped in a dark, cold toy chest
all alone for an hour.
“What grade is Brody Parker in?” I ask, imagining him as a
kindergartener, like Delilah.
“Fifth,” Charlotte says. This would make him ten or eleven. What
kind of eleven-year-old boy picks on a four-year-old? I wonder if Leo
was lured into that toy chest, if he was double-dog dared, or if this
little hellion picked Leo up and forced him in.
“Why wouldn’t Leo just get out of the chest?” I ask. Leo may be
shy, but he’s a capable boy. He could have just climbed out.
“It has a lock on it.”
“Dear God,” I say, pressing a hand to my mouth. I wonder if there
are air holes in that toy chest, how much oxygen it holds. And then,
because I can’t get her off my mind for anything, I go back to Shelby