And then my daughter, who had actually been in that house, who had seen what I only imagined, said Mom tried to help me, and the whole ugly structure I’d been building came down in an instant, and I was ashamed of it, and I was flooded with a different and worse fear, which was fear for Elena instead of fear about her.

Because if Elena had tried to stop him — if she had stood up to a man capable of all this — then Elena was not a bystander.

Elena was another one of his victims, and she was the one still missing.

About an hour in, a detective came.

She introduced herself as Detective Vance, and she had the steady, unhurried manner of someone who has sat in a lot of these rooms, and she took me out into the hall to talk where Maya couldn’t hear.

Officers had been through the house, she told me.