My eight-year-old skipped lunch for six weeks to buy a red dress for the little girl across the street. The next morning our lawn was covered with fifty lunchboxes — and taped to the biggest one, a beat-up metal thing sitting alone in the middle of the grass, was a note that said OPEN THIS ONE FIRST.

Those were the worst ninety minutes of my life. I'll take the fifty lunchboxes and the dress and all of it, and I will still tell you that the ninety minutes I spent sitting on the floor of my own hallway with my son's head against my shoulder, thinking about someone photographing him from a distance for months, was the worst time I have ever had.

Dean came home from his shift at 8:15 and stood in the kitchen with his hands on top of his head, saying the same four words over and over.

At about eight o'clock, Officer Kell knocked and came in and sat down at my kitchen table and asked me if she could show me some things.

She had the photographs in an evidence sleeve.

"I need you to look at these," she said, "and I want to tell you before you do that we've already identified who left them, and I want to tell you that our assessment right now is that this is not what it looks like."