Here She Lies

perfect quiet, that they weren’t here and hadn’t been here for a while and probably weren’t coming.
    We began in the kitchen, opening cupboards and cabinets. In the dining room and living room we checked in and under and on top of furniture. I took a flashlight from the downstairs coat closet and shone it into the two oversized ceramic urns Julie had picked up at a local antique shop, finding cobwebs and a mouse skeleton but no abandoned electronic devices. Upstairs, Bobby looked through the loft and the unused guest room, while I looked through the Yellow Room and the Pinecone Room. We opened every drawer, looked into the corners and high shelves of every closet, checked under every bed. The longer we looked and found nothing, the more my rebellious hopes began to return. Noon arrived and I found myselfpausing to listen each time a car drove past the house.
    “I’m finding nothing,” I called to Bobby. “How about you?”
    “Nada,” he said, joining me in the second-floor hall. He opened the door that led up to Julie’s third-floor suite. “Shall we?”
    “Wait,” I said. Across from the Pinecone Room was another closet. When I opened the door, an automatic ceiling light showed a neat color code of linens: sheets below, towels above. On the floor were two stacked laundry baskets and an empty humidifier. I bent down to pull forward the baskets — and there it was, lying on the floor. The GPS unit from my rental car. The satellite-signal receiving device looked like nothing but a small hunk of black plastic surrounding a sleeping grayish screen. A single suction-cup leg extended from its back. It was a relatively inexpensive model, probably bought by the rental car agency in bulk and considered expendable.
    “Here it is,” I whispered.
    Bobby joined me and looked at the unit, such an innocuous little thing. After a moment he took it from my hands and we walked down the stairs and out of the house. A band of sweat had formed down the back of his shirt and as soon as I noticed it I realized that my own forehead was damp, my temples dripping, my heart filled with cold fright.
    The only reason someone would remove a global positioning system from a car was so they couldn’t be easily found.
    Detective Lazare was sitting on a shallow stonefence twenty feet from the kitchen door. A neon-winged dragonfly had balanced on his bent knee and he appeared to be watching it. When he saw us, and stood, the dragonfly fluttered away.
    Bobby showed him the GPS.
    “You’re sure that’s the one that was in your car, Annie?” Lazare asked.
    “Positive,” I said.
    Lazare flipped open his cell phone and calmly told us, “I’m requesting an Amber Alert. Is Lexy her given name?”
    “Alexis,” Bobby answered.
    “What color are her eyes?”
    “Brown.”
    “Any birthmarks?”
    Bobby looked at me; he didn’t know.
    “Behind her left knee,” I said. “It’s maroon, small, like a lopsided triangle.”
    “The car,” Lazare said. “It’s sky blue, right? Toyota? Four-door?”
    “Yes,” I answered.
    “Interior?”
    “Pale blue.”
    Lazare scrolled down his cell phone’s stored-numbers list and dialed. He announced himself officially, without any of his usual chitchat. “I need an Amber Alert stat for a baby girl. Alexis Goodman, goes by Lexy. Almost six months old, short reddish peach-fuzz hair, brown eyes, maroon birthmark in the shape of an uneven triangle behind her left knee. Presumably in the care of her maternal aunt, Julie Milliken. I’ll e-mail a photo in the next few minutes.”
    It would be crucial to know what Julie looked like. There had to be thousands of blue cars on the road in which a woman might be driving a baby any number of places or just lulling her to sleep. It would be so easy for Julie to pass through the world as a mother, as me, raising Lexy. It could really happen: I could lose her forever.
    Lazare followed Bobby and me inside the house and upstairs to the loft computer, where I opened the file of images I’d downloaded on Sunday night. He selected a picture of Julie alone, standing in front of a living room window behind which rain poured in an unfocused haze, facing me (facing the camera) with the blank expression of listening. A moment before the picture I’d asked her if she wanted chicken for dinner; a moment later she’d answered yes. In the end we went out to Rouge.
    I typed my sister’s name and clicked send as e-mail. Lazare put in an address, wrote a short note