Fear Collector by Gregg Olsen Page A

they said she didn’t show up today.”
    Officer Lorenzo had a kind, calm face, which in that moment and in the hundreds of others that preceded it, was put to good use.
    “Is this unusual for Emma?”
    Diana’s face tightened. Not facelift smoothed out, but stretched with worry. “ Very . Of course it is. We wouldn’t have called the police if it was commonplace, now would we?”
    Dan, now sitting next to his wife on the sofa facing the officer, who’d taken a seat on the brown leather recliner in the living room, put his hand on her knee. He patted her a few times to remind her to stay calm. Thinking the worst was ludicrous. Their daughter was a good girl. An environmentalist. A great student. If she’d gone off somewhere they were going to hear from her.
    “Are you sure she didn’t come home last night?” the officer asked.
    “I didn’t hear her come in. I’m a very, very light sleeper,” Diana said.
    Officer Lorenzo made some notes.
    “Are all of you getting along?” he asked, his voice soft and nonjudgmental.
    “What is that supposed to mean?” Dan asked.
    “Just asking. Just need to know if there were any problems here at home. Were all of you getting along with Emma?”
    Dan leaned closer. His brow narrowed. He didn’t want to be angry just then, but the implication of the police officer’s words seemed directed at him.
    “Do you mean to suggest she’s run away, left home?”
    “Did she, Dan?”
    “There would be no reason I could think she would do that. She is our only child and we’re a very close family,” Dan said, still stiff with resentment.
    “My husband is right. We are extremely close. Sometimes too close, I think. Emma didn’t go to college this year because of my illness.”
    “Sorry?”
    “I’m cancer free now,” she said. “But the past couple of years have been rough and Em didn’t want me to go through it all on my own. Even though the surgery was a year ago and I’m fine, she just decided to postpone college for a year. Does that sound like a girl who would run away?”
    “No, I don’t think so,” the officer said. “Is it possible that all the responsibility became too much for her and she needed a break?”
    “But I am fine now! Look at me! My daughter even got me Mocha when she’s so allergic because she knows how much I love cats,” Diana said, looking over at Mocha as the furry feline wandered across the living room floor, her dust mop tail pointing upright like a skunk’s.
    Officer Lorenzo took a few more notes about Emma’s height and weight, and asked for a picture. Diana got up to get one off the bulletin board in the kitchen.
    “We can’t report her as missing until she’s been gone for twenty-four hours,” he said.
    Dan looked at his watch, an old Seiko that had belonged to his father. “Well, as far as we know, that’s in two hours. She closed up the Lakewood Mall Starbucks last night. She gets off between nine and ten, depending on how much cleaning is needed after a day of coffee drinkers.”
    Diana returned and handed over a five-by-seven.
    “Her senior photo,” she said.
    Officer Lorenzo looked at the photo and then looked up quickly. He didn’t want to say what he was thinking, so he said something else.
    “She looks like a very nice girl,” he said.
    “She is. Very nice,” Dan answered.
    “She’s everything to us. She would never not come home. She would never not call us. Never,” Diana said.
    The officer got up, still looking at the photo.
    He didn’t know Emma Rose, of course. But he’d seen her face before. The nineteen-year-old was a ringer for Lisa Lancaster and Kelsey Caldwell. All three wore their dark hair long, parted in the middle. Kelsey’s was slightly wavy, but her mom said she’d taken a flatiron to it over the past year to give her the long, straight look that she’d sought. It was very, very seventies, which in turn, was very, very cool.
    “I’m going to make a run over to Starbucks to see what I can