Chapter 2 - Beneath the Floorboards
The air that rose from the basement was chill and damp, smelling faintly of concrete lime and old paper. I reached for my duty flashlight, snapping the heavy beam across the wooden steps. ""Stay right behind me,"" I instructed softly, stepping down one riser at a time, testing each board before putting my full weight down. The basement wasn’t an unfinished cellar used for storing seasonal tools or old paint cans. It had been partitioned into two distinct rooms with fresh drywall that looked newly taped and painted. In the center of the main room sat a steel folding desk, illuminated only by a small battery-operated camping lantern. Arranged across the metal tabletop were neat stacks of printed school schedules, district bus route maps, and blue folders labeled with names I recognized immediately. They were the names of children enrolled at Evergreen Elementary. My jaw tightened as the beam of light swept across the left wall. A large magnetic whiteboard was pinned with detailed notes: car makes, license plate numbers, dismissal times, and the regular routes taken by parents picking up their kids along Cedar and Elm streets. The boy walked over to the desk and reached into a small cardboard box tucked beneath the table legs. He pulled out a laminated card and held it out toward me. It was an official volunteer badge from our school district, bearing the photo of a middle-aged man with neat gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, identified as Gregory Vance. ""He works the morning crosswalk twice a week,"" the boy said quietly, looking down at the concrete floor. ""He says he’s my uncle, but he doesn't know my mother's birthday. Whenever I ask him where my mom went, he tells me that children who ask too many questions end up living in cars."" My mind raced through the roster of morning volunteers who stood by the perimeter gate every Tuesday and Thursday. The man had always been polite, wearing an orange safety vest, waving cheerfully at passing squad cars, and handing out stray mittens left behind on the playground. The entire neighborhood had trusted him without a second thought. Yet here, beneath the floorboards of an ordinary rental house, was a systematic record of dozens of families who lived within walking distance of the school.
