Jim Hopper POV:
The Sinclair house looked normal.
That was the first thing that bothered me.
Nice neighbourhood. Trim lawn. Curtains open. A couple of bikes sitting near the house.
Nothing about it said missing kid.
Then again, neither had the Byers place until I'd walked inside.
I pulled up in front of the house, killed the engine and sat there for a second.
Two kids.
Two fucking kids.
I grabbed my notebook and got out.
The front door opened before I reached it.
Charles Sinclair stood there.
He looked worse than he'd sounded on the phone.
"Chief."
"Mr Sinclair."
"Come in."
I stepped inside.
The place had that particular kind of silence I'd learned to recognise over the years.
Not actual silence.
People were moving around. Somewhere deeper in the house, a television was playing quietly. I could hear someone walking upstairs.
But nobody was talking.
Nobody knew what to say.
Sue Sinclair appeared from the hallway.
Her eyes were red.
"Chief."
"Mrs Sinclair."
"Did you find anything?"
I'd been in their house for approximately five seconds.
"It's too early to say."
Her face fell anyway.
Charles put a hand against her back.
"Where's Lucas?"
"In the kitchen."
"I'll talk to him in a minute."
I looked between them.
"First, I want to see Erica's room."
Sue nodded immediately.
"Upstairs."
She started towards the stairs.
Charles followed.
I didn't.
They both looked back at me.
"I'd rather look at it alone first."
Sue hesitated.
"But we already—"
"I know you searched it."
I kept my voice level.
"I'm not blaming you for that. But from this point on, the fewer people walking around in there, the better."
Charles nodded.
"Sue."
She looked like she wanted to argue.
Then she stepped back.
"Second door on the left."
I headed upstairs.
The broken door made Erica's room pretty easy to identify.
The wood around the lock had splintered where Charles had forced it open.
I stopped outside.
Didn't touch anything.
Just looked.
Bed.
Desk.
Books.
Clothes.
Normal kid's room.
At first glance, anyway.
Then I looked closer.
The room wasn't destroyed, but it had definitely been searched.
Drawers weren't completely shut. A few things had been left on the bed. The wardrobe door stood open.
Exactly what Sue had warned me about.
Whatever Erica had left behind, I was going to have to separate it from whatever her terrified family had moved afterwards.
Wonderful.
I stepped inside carefully.
The window was open.
That was where I went first.
I crouched beside it and looked at the frame.
Then outside.
The rope ladder hung down the side of the house.
Jesus Christ.
Charles hadn't been exaggerating.
I leaned slightly through the window.
The ladder reached all the way to the ground.
A ten-year-old girl had climbed out of a second-storey window in the middle of the night.
I stared down at it.
Then frowned.
If Erica had left sometime during the night, that ladder had presumably been hanging there for hours.
There would've been no one left in the room to pull it back inside after her.
And this wasn't exactly an isolated farmhouse.
There were houses on either side. Houses across the street.
People got up for work. Collected newspapers. Walked dogs. Looked out their fucking windows.
And nobody had noticed a rope ladder hanging from a second-storey bedroom?
Possible.
People missed obvious things all the time.
Still.
I wrote it down.
Ladder visible from street?
Something to check.
I pulled myself back inside.
No obvious damage to the window.
No sign anybody had forced their way in.
That matched the letter.
Erica had probably left this way voluntarily.
I straightened and turned towards the rest of the room.
If she'd really planned this herself, then she'd needed supplies.
Clothes.
Money.
Food, probably.
Whatever the hell a kid thought she'd need for a week-long trip across state lines.
And if she'd been planning it before last night…
There might still be something here.
I moved towards the desk.
Books. Pencils. Papers.
Nothing immediately useful.
Then I noticed the cups.
Two of them.
Sitting near each other on the desk.
I stopped.
Both looked used.
I picked up my pen instead of touching them.
Could mean nothing.
Probably did.
Kids left shit everywhere. Maybe one was from yesterday and the other had been sitting there for three days. Maybe Lucas had been in here. Maybe Sue or Charles had brought something upstairs.
Considering half the family had already searched the room, I wasn't about to start inventing theories over two dirty cups.
Still.
I wrote it down.
Two cups on desk. Ask family.
Then left them exactly where they were.
I kept looking.
That was when I noticed the bag.
It was tucked beside the desk, partly hidden underneath the chair.
A backpack.
I crouched without touching it.
Food.
A few sandwiches wrapped up. Crackers. Fruit. A couple of other things that looked like they'd been grabbed straight out of the kitchen.
Enough for a couple of days if it was rationed.
I stared at it.
Well.
There were my supplies.
Except they were still here.
I looked towards the open window.
Then back at the bag.
Erica had written that she'd be gone for as long as a week.
She'd apparently thought far enough ahead to arrange transportation, plan two different places to search and get herself out of a second-storey bedroom without waking her family.
She'd packed food.
And then she'd left it behind.
Maybe she'd forgotten it.
People forgot things all the time.
But something about that didn't sit right.
This wasn't some kid who'd climbed out her window on a whim. She'd written a letter designed to keep us running in circles looking for her. The kid was obviously intelligent, and according to that same letter, this wasn't supposed to have been a last-minute decision.
So she'd planned for a week away, packed food for the trip…
And forgotten the food?
That was one hell of a rookie mistake for a kid who'd apparently thought through everything else.
I wrote another line.
Bag of food left behind. Why?
I looked around the room again.
At the two cups.
The open window.
The ladder hanging outside.
Then back at the backpack.
Individually, none of it meant much.
But put together…
I rubbed a hand over my face.
What the hell was I missing?