White Space Season 1

and said something about Sarah being taken by ‘men in the sky.’ When I woke up this morning, she denied it, saying she was drunk, but when I brought it up to Jon, he said he had a dream once about something happening to Sarah when we were kids. She’d been taken while we were playing hide and seek. And the weirdest thing is, I vaguely had a dream just like that. And the really weird part is that I didn’t even remember ever having the dream until Jon mentioned it. Like déjà vu.”
    “OK, so you’re saying Emma was taken by … um, an alien or something?” Houser said, trying not to laugh.
    “I don’t know what I’m saying, but when Jon mentioned the dream, and where we’d been playing in the dream, the woods by Mom’s house, I thought maybe we should try looking there.”
    “It’s not near Whistler’s house, though, is it?” Houser asked.
    “Well, the island isn’t that big. Everything is relatively close to everything else,” Jon said.
    Houser was going to ask why they were going on a hunch, but there was something in Cassidy’s eyes, that look of guilt, that made him wonder if maybe she had something to do with the missing girl, after all. Was she leading them to the girl’s body now that they had someone to pin the crime on? He’d seen this story play out a dozen times or more on the news, and hoped to Christ this wasn’t the case this time. He had no tolerance for monsters, especially those who killed their own kids.
    She didn’t feel like a murderer to him, however. But there was definitely fireworks behind her eyes — s omething bad she was hiding. Perhaps it was an accident and she panicked, and hid the poor girl’s body in the woods. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened, either, and certainly not the last. Cassidy looked back at Houser and their eyes met.
    Yes, she’s guilty of something.
    What did you do, Cassidy Hughes?
    If she were friends with anyone other than Jon, he would have her in a room next to Whistler, and hedge his bets. But since she was Jon’s friend, and this was Jon’s daughter, Houser would keep his suspicions to himself — for now.
    “So, you gonna tell me more about the bear?” she asked.
    Houser looked up and caught Jon’s face in the rearview, about to open his mouth and spare Houser from retelling a story Jon knew by heart, every version.
    “It’s okay,” Houser said. “I don’t mind.”
    Maybe the story might move Cassidy to come clean about whatever she was hiding.
    “It was 10 years back. Me and my partner, Chan, were searching for a missing girl. Cecilia Ramirez, and she was six years old. You hear of her? It made the national news.”
    “No,” Cassidy said, shaking her head.
    Houser told her the story, and how they’d failed to get a search warrant in time. By the time they finally got to her, the girl was dying. It was the case that more or less closed the coffin on Houser’s career.
    “About two weeks after she died, I was on desk duty when this little Spanish guy came in. He was wearing a mechanic’s uniform, dirty as hell, and I barely recognized him at first. But then, as he approached my desk, I remembered. It was Juan Ramirez, the girl’s father. He and his wife had been devastated. They heard on the news before I was able to tell them in person. Goddamned fucking media. Anyway, the minute I saw him, I felt like shit. Because I’d done something I’d never done before.”
    Cassidy’s eyes were starting to well up. Houser went on.
    “I promised him we’d find his girl. Alive. I don’t even know why the fuck I made the promise, except maybe I wanted it to come true so bad. When I came to their house to tell them, he and his wife were furious with me. His wife punched me on the chest. Juan told me to please leave. And never come back.”
    “Oh shit,” Cassidy said.
    “Yeah, so here he was in the station, and I’m dreading it. He’s holding a brown paper bag, and part of me is thinking he might have come in with a gun to either shoot me or himself. But instead, he pulled out this teddy bear here. He said it had been Cecilia’s. He handed me a picture of her and the bear together. She was smiling so brightly, and it was so unlike every other image of her that I had in my head. She was so sweet and happy. He said he wanted me to have the picture and the bear, so I’d have a good memory of Cecilia.”
    “Oh God,” Cassidy said, now crying fully.
    “I about lost it right there, and he hugged