Search for Her

by Rick Mofina

  “Thank you.” John sat down, let out a long breath and covered his face with his hands.

  Blake put his arm around his father.

  * * *

  Riley was sitting up in her bed, her adrenaline still surging, telling the Las Vegas detectives all she could remember.

  With Elsen taking notes and McDowell recording a video on her phone, Riley recounted how Sherry had said she’d followed the family in her car across California to Nevada, noticing that she’d been left alone in the RV at the truck stop.

  “I woke up, everyone was gone. I didn’t see a note, I couldn’t get my phone. My mom locked it up. When I went into the place to find my family, Sherry said she followed me inside.

  “I looked everywhere, even back into the parking lot then back in the complex then I realized they’d left without me. I was upset, kinda scared, then this creepy guy who said I looked lost tried to get me to go with him. I thought he was a perv when he touched me. That’s when I saw Sherry waving to me. It was a miracle. I was so happy, so relieved.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “I told Sherry what happened, that I was so friggin’ angry that they left me; that I didn’t have a phone and I was going to go to security or somewhere, and call my mom. Then it hit me and I asked Sherry what she was doing there. She’s like, ‘This is a cosmic sign, or something,’ then she touches her moon and stars bracelet to the one I was wearing, the going away gift she gave me at the party, saying how it was like fate because she was driving to Utah to see her sick aunt, ‘taking the scenic route’ she says, and she’s all like, ‘Oh my God, this is such a huge cool thing that I’m here at the same time as you!’

  “I said it was like a miracle for me—but I was so pissed at my family for leaving me, on top of being pissed about breaking up with Caleb and moving away. I asked her to call my mother to come back and get me, because I’m way too pissed to talk to her. So Sherry calls, tells my mom that I was too upset to talk to her and that my mom was all sorry and asked Sherry to drive me to our hotel in Las Vegas, the Golden Nugget, and we’ll meet up there. Now I know that was all a lie.”

  Riley took a breath.

  “So we got in Sherry’s car—but it wasn’t her car, which was weird—rented for the trip, she said—and she had a cooler in her car, she gave me a cold drink but she must’ve put drugs in it because I passed out and when I woke up I was in that house, tied up to the bed and she was keeping me drugged or something, telling me all this stuff that made no sense, like how I was her daughter now, that my family leaving me proved they didn’t love me like she did and how she was going to take me away and we’d have new names, new lives.”

  Riley sobbed.

  “But then she left me alone for days, saying she had to go and she put these milkshakes with a straw near me, but I got so scared, hungry and couldn’t go to the bathroom. Oh God, it was disgusting, so awful. Then she came back, cleaned me a little, fed me and the whole time I’m thinking it’s just not right! I always thought she was like the coolest, nicest person, like family. But there’s something wrong with her.”

  Riley caught her breath then told them the last of it.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her, but she was trying to murder my mom!”

  “You didn’t kill her, Riley,” Elsen said. “The fire she set killed her.”

  The detectives were wrapping up when Riley asked about Caleb.

  “He didn’t get on the plane,” McDowell said, “because he wanted to be with you.”

  “Really?”

  The detectives related how Caleb took his dad’s SUV to follow Riley. But he made a wrong interstate turn, got lost, abandoned the idea and started back to San Diego. That’s when he learned from news reports that Riley was missing in Nevada. He drove there to help search. Knowing Riley’s mom wouldn’t want him there, he searched alone at the fringes, keeping out of sight before he learned she might be back in San Diego.

  “Then came a radio news report of a body found near Baker, California. He thought it was you,” Elsen said. “We found him alone, distraught in the desert.”

  Riley covered her face with her hands.

  “He’s fine,” McDowell said. “He’s not facing charges. He’s with Family Services in Las Vegas. His mother is on her way there, and his father is flying back from Africa, to help him.”

  * * *

  McDowell and Elsen then talked to Grace.

  She recounted everything. They told her how they thought Sherry had joined the search after Grace told some of her friends about faulty security footage, and that Sherry placed Riley’s shoes in the desert to thwart the search and investigation.

  When they were done, Riley, John and Blake had a tear-filled reunion around Grace’s hospital bed.

  * * *

  The story became international news, drawing headlines for weeks.

  In that time, the FBI, Las Vegas and San Diego police continued investigating.

  Following an autopsy on the body of Sherry Louise Penmark and using fingerprints, DNA and some of her documents recovered from the fire, investigators learned her true identify: Etta Dolores Orenscu.

  McDowell and Elsen received calls from investigators across the country fearing there were other cases involving “Sherry” as they continued probing her background.

  One day, McDowell and Elsen arranged to meet Grace at her home in San Diego. Stunned by the revelation that her friend was an impostor, Grace had questions. The detectives had answers but warned Grace to brace for what they’d learned.

  “Not everything was lost in the fire.” McDowell slid her tablet to Grace. “We recovered videos and a video diary from her laptop.”

  Heartbreak and humiliation twisted Grace in knots as she watched a video of Sherry and Tim, naked in bed together. They were having sex in the bed at his Chicago apartment. The apartment Grace had visited with Riley—the bed where she and Tim had made love.

  Wiping away tears, she swiped to another file and Sherry’s face filled the screen.

  “Another entry because you, Dear Diary, will know the truth,” Sherry began. “Tim was lonely in Chicago and looking online for company. That’s how we met. He told me Grace was suffocating him and he was going to leave her. That’s why he took the job. He said he loved me. He promised me a life together, but Saint Tim LIED!”

  McDowell and Elsen said nothing as Grace listened.

  “I couldn’t let him get away with what he’d done,” Sherry said. “I called him that night, begging, pleading. You know what that saintly family man said? He told me to go to hell. He never wanted to see me again.” Sherry laughed. “But he was going to see me again because what he didn’t know was that I was parked down the street from his perfect home in San Diego. I’d seen his plane tickets and knew when he’d be back in San Diego. When he got here I was waiting for him, prepared to end my life and take him with me.”

  Grace covered her face in disbelief.

  “So the night Tim got home I watched the house from my car, waiting in the rain for the right time.” Sherry paused. “I knew it could’ve been the next day, or the next week. But lo and behold, Tim comes out almost as soon as he went in, and drives off alone.

  “I followed him to the drugstore, waiting, realizing this was the time. Few cars were on the road when he started home. I raced ahead, pulled a U-turn, mashed my foot on the pedal and drove at him head-on, shutting my eyes, ready for the impact that never came. Saint Tim swerved, crashed and, well, you know the rest.”

  Tears streamed down Grace’s face.

  “Grace got the best of Tim and I got the worst of him.” Sherry shook her head. “But, things happen for a reason. That’s why I moved to San Diego, to claim what is rightfully mine, little by little! The life I was promised! The life I was owed, a good life with the daughter I was meant to share with Tim. Ever since Tim died I listened to Grace mourn and pra
ise him while I seethed, because I knew the truth.”

  Grace was shaking her head, sobbing, devastated.

  “We know this is painful,” McDowell said.

  “Orenscu targeted your family with an obsessive fatal attraction because Tim rejected her,” Elsen said.

  “And it wasn’t her first time,” McDowell said.

  Her DNA matched a sample collected in a cold case investigated by homicide detectives in Boston and Maine. That’s where Orenscu had lived before moving to Chicago after assuming a new identity, using records of Sherry Louise Penmark, who drowned in Rochester, New York, at age two, but would now be similar in age to her.

  In the Boston case, Orenscu had stalked and wormed her way into the life of a Boston man. In the months that followed, the man’s wife and young son died in a suspicious cabin fire in Maine.

  The man confessed to having an affair with Orenscu that she’d refused to end because she wanted to start a family with him. Police sought to question her, but she vanished.

  The sickening truth of Tim and Sherry’s deception had gutted Grace—yes, she accepted that she was not perfect, had almost cheated on him. Still, she couldn’t believe that Tim had done what he did, betrayed her and Riley. It was mortifying. Deepening the wound was the awful truth that Sherry—or Orenscu—had tricked her into believing they were such good friends. Sherry had seemed warm, honest and true, helping Grace and Riley endure so much pain over the years, while secretly intending to destroy her.

  Can you ever really know a person?

  The detectives tried to help her find consolation in the fact that she had Riley back, and that her case had helped solve the tragedy of another teen who would never be coming home. For in continuing their work on Rykhirt, Las Vegas forensic experts, combing through his 2015 Nissan Versa, found a fingernail fragment and traces of hair and blood. Analysis determined that it matched the DNA of Eva Marie Garcia, aged seventeen, of Riverside, California.

  The online reward fund for information to find Riley had surpassed $83,000. Grace closed it and requested contributors redirect their donations to the Garcia family. Nearly all did and the family set up a memorial scholarship in their daughter’s name.

  * * *

  John got Blake an attorney who advised the teen to cooperate with police.

  In exchange for immunity from charges, Blake continued helping federal agents. Studying photos and surveillance footage of known cartel members, Blake worked with investigators, identifying suspects, which ultimately led to a series of arrests, including those to whom Blake owed gambling money.

  In a related development, several weeks after Riley was rescued, Arlo Compton parked his Ford pickup in a visitor spot at Las Vegas police headquarters. Unshaven and wiping his moist brow, Compton went to the reception desk.

  “I gotta talk to one of your drug people right now,” he said.

  After a brief back-and-forth—“don’t got an appointment but you better get somebody, please”—Detective Rico Flores from Narcotics came down and took Compton aside in the main lobby near the memorial plaque for officers slain in the line of duty.

  “Now look, my family’s got nothing to do with that missing girl case, Riley Jarrett, now that it’s all done with. I want that understood.”

  “All right,” Flores said.

  “Way back when their RV crashed on the interstate near Jean, my no-good, shiftless son-in-law and his no-good shiftless cousin took something from the wreckage.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s in the back of my truck and I want to return it in exchange for a promise they don’t get charged with nothin’. What they did was wrong and I’m here to make it right.”

  “Let’s have a look,” Flores said.

  They walked to Compton’s truck and he drew back a canvas tarp in the bed, revealing four bundles the size of small pillows, wrapped in plastic and tape.

  “It’s drugs,” Compton said. “They stole it when they stopped to help people clear the wreckage. They were fixin’ to sell to Lord knows who when all the attention died down. Hid it in my shed. When I found it, I got the truth out of them, don’t ask me how, but I got it.”

  Staring at the bundles, Flores shook his head, knowing the substance would need to be analyzed and Compton’s story verified.

  He looked at Compton. “All right. After I get someone to tag and process this, you and I will go inside and talk further.”

  * * *

  John and Blake moved to Pennsylvania without Grace and Riley.

  Having never learned about his troubled parting with SoCal SoYou, the Pittsburgh company welcomed John into its operation and he secretly started repaying his debt.

  But Riley’s ordeal had fractured Grace and John’s relationship because it had unearthed secrets about John, Blake and Grace, too. It resulted in a breakdown of trust leading Grace and John to agree to a trial separation, to battle their ghosts and determine if they had a future as a family.

  * * *

  Grace and Riley remained in their San Diego home, taking it off the market. They underwent intense therapy and worked to come to terms with the trauma of what happened with Sherry, Tim’s affair and all the tragedies of their lives.

  But what they realized was that when it came down to the final moments, they’d saved each other. It drew them closer.

  After detectives had processed and returned the moon and stars bracelet Sherry had given Riley, Riley and Grace took a trip to La Jolla. They went to the beach, and Riley tossed the bracelet into the Pacific.

  Grace allowed Riley to spend some time with Caleb, but it amounted to another break, a long goodbye, before he moved to Paris where his dad got a new job.

  Eventually, through an attorney, Grace and Riley agreed to tell their story through a book to be written by a celebrated true-crime author who lived in Orange County, California. It would go on to become a New York Times bestseller and a Netflix miniseries, entitled Search For Her.

  It took time and overcoming their trust issues, but Riley resumed dating boys her own age, and Grace returned to nursing. Caring for her patients and her daughter helped her to heal.

  * * *

  Acknowledgments &

  A Personal Note

  In writing Search For Her, I aimed to make the story as realistic as possible. Very early in 2020, I traveled to California and took the same route on Interstate 15 that the family took from San Diego to Nevada. Researching the book, I met, or was in touch with, a number of experts who kindly made time to suffer my questions.

  My thanks to Sergeant Matthew Botkin of the San Diego Police Department; Dan Letchworth of San Diego Magazine; Officer Larry Hadfield, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department; Tina Talim, Chief Deputy District Attorney, High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, Clark County District Attorney’s Office; Sandy Breault, Public Affairs Officer, FBI Las Vegas Division; Trooper Travis Smaka, Nevada Highway Patrol; Guinevere Hobdy with the Nevada Department of Transportation; and Donald Moore and Erin Pavlina, with Red Rock Search & Rescue.

  If the story rings true, thanks go to them for their generosity. For any errors, blame me for taking creative liberties with police procedure, jurisdiction, the law, technology, geography and the virus. In fiction you stretch reality. I did my best to keep it real.

  In bringing this story to you, I also benefited from the hard work and support of a lot of other people.

  My thanks to my wife, Barbara, and to Wendy Dudley for their invaluable help improving the tale.

  Very special thanks to Laura and Michael.

  My thanks to the super-brilliant Amy Moore-Benson and the team at Meridian Artists, to the outstanding Lorella Belli, at LBLA in London, to the ever-talented Emily Ohanjanians and the incredible, wonderful editorial, marketing, sales and PR teams at Harlequin, MIRA Books and HarperCollins.

  This brings me to what I believe is the most crit
ical part of the entire enterprise: you, the reader. This aspect has become something of a credo for me, one that bears repeating with each book.

  Thank you for your time, for without you, the story never comes alive and a book remains an untold tale. Thank you for setting your life on pause and taking the journey. I deeply appreciate my audience around the world and those who’ve been with me since the beginning who keep in touch. Thank you all for your kind words. I hope you enjoyed the ride and will check out my earlier books while watching for my next one.

  Feel free to send me a note. I enjoy hearing from you.

  Rick Mofina

  www.Facebook.com/rickmofina

  www.Twitter.com/rickmofina

  www.RickMofina.com

  ISBN-13: 9781488078347

  Search for Her

  Copyright © 2021 by Highway Nine, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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