Today.

Pickup is at three, correct?”

At two forty-five, I stood at the edge of the school’s parking lot, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap.

Detective Ramirez and two plainclothes officers waited in a minivan across the street.

A teacher named Ms.

Alvarez, who had been briefed that morning, walked Harper’s empty place in line back inside and told Spencer, when he arrived, that Harper had been picked up early by her mother.

He didn’t believe it.