by Tony Hayden
Deputy Watts was writing rapidly.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Any scars, tattoos, or other identifying marks?”
Mike closed his eyes again.
“Just a small scar at the outside corner of her right eye.” He smiled. “She tried to follow me over a barbed-wire fence when she was two. Jean was so upset. I thought she was going to ring my neck.”
Watts looked up from his form.
“Jean is Sara’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“And the two of you are still together?”
Mike opened his eyes and looked toward the corner of the small room.
“Yes,” was all he said.
Deputy Watts followed his instincts.
“Are there any problems at home? Any conditions that might cause Sara to be angry?”
Mike saw through the line of questioning.
“No,” he shook his head. “Sara was raised in a loving and stable home. She was excited to start college in Wyoming, but she is very close to Jean and I.” Mike leaned forward in his chair. “This disappearance is highly out of character for her.”
Ryan Watts understood and relented.
“Does Sara have a boyfriend?”
Mike sat back again, “No one steady. My uniform made it difficult for her to date, and I was completely fine with that.”
The deputy laughed quietly, “I have a four-year-old daughter at home,” he shared. “So I know where you are coming from.”
A light knock at the door interrupted the conversation and Sheriff Barnes stepped through.
Deputy Watts stood and looked a bit uncomfortable.
“Sheriff,” he said politely.
Sheriff Barnes made eye contact with Mike. Ignoring Watts, he closed the door and sat in his deputy’s seat.
“I took some time to question Jordan about the events that led to your daughter’s car being towed to the impound lot.”
Barnes pulled a small spiral notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped it open.
“Jordan says that he received a request to tow your daughter’s Honda Civic around two-thirty yesterday afternoon. He says that he was busy in the yard and didn’t get out to the vehicle until after four. He says that when he arrived, the car was unlocked, with the keys in the ignition.”
Sheriff Barnes looked to his notes.
“The right front tire was flat, so Jordan says that he towed the vehicle back to the lot and parked it before calling it a night.”
Mike’s eyes showed his skepticism.
Sheriff Barnes leaned back in his chair and softened his expression.
“Look, I already mentioned that Jordan is my stepson. His momma convinced me to legally adopt him after we married, so I’ve been his pop since he was a little boy.”
Barnes stuffed the notepad back into his shirt pocket.
“Being the boy’s father, I know when he is lying to me.” He leaned forward and pointed a finger at Mike. “I knew, just like you did, that something wasn’t adding up. That boy was lying to me straight out. So I slapped the handcuffs on him, brought him down here, and threw his scrawny little butt in a holding cell.”
Barnes paused and smiled, “He wasn’t in there more than ten minutes before he was blubbering all over himself and promising me that he would tell me the truth.”
Barnes waited in silence and stared at Mike with a hard look.
Mike wasn’t sure he could ask, but he finally found the strength.
“What did he tell you, Sheriff?”
Barnes reached in his back pocket, pulled out a small device with a thin cord wrapped loosely around it, and tossed it on the table. Mike recognized Sara’s iPod.
“Jordan wants to apologize for taking this music player from the front seat of your daughter’s car.”
Mike looked at the sheriff and shook his head in confusion.
“The boy has a girlfriend,” Barnes shared. “And he thought she might like this thing.” Barnes pushed the player toward Mike. “That’s all,” he said. “End of story.”
Sheriff Barnes slapped his hands to his knees and stood.
“Now, Mr. Haller, I will let you finish your interview with…” Barnes looked at his deputy.
“Watts, sir,” the deputy sounded off. “Deputy Ryan Watts.”
The sheriff looked back to Mike, “Deputy Watts is going to take your statement, then I suggest you go on home and wait for your daughter to call. We’ll release her car to you once the investigation is complete.”
He laughed out loud, “Teenage girls in their first year of college. I do not envy you, Mr. Haller.”
Mike completed his interview with Deputy Watts and left the county building. His stomach growled loudly, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten or slept in more than thirty hours. The iPod in his hand felt small and fragile. He turned it over and over, wrapping the cord for the headset tightly around the base. His stomach turned again, but not from hunger this time. Doubt coursed through his veins, feeding the lead weight that seemed eternally seated in the pit of his stomach.
Where are you, baby girl? Mike asked to himself. Send me a sign and I will bring you home.
Tears spilled from his tightly closed eyes. Blinking them away, Mike looked west toward the mountains and the setting sun. He knew that Sara could be anywhere. If the sheriff and the tow truck driver were being straight with him, Sara could have easily been taken from that lonely two-lane highway by a passerby and carried off to, God only knows where. She could be in the next state, her trail growing cold as Mike wasted valuable time chasing his “gut feeling”.
Closing his eyes again, Mike tried to make a connection with his missing daughter. Give me a sign, Sara. Please help me find you.
A slamming door shook Mike from his reverie. He turned to see Jordan walking from the county building. The boy looked at him and snickered with a slight smile on his face and Mike sensed that this young man had hurt his daughter. Anger boiled in his blood.
“Mike! Why haven’t you called? I have been worried sick about you and Sara all day long.”
Jean took a deep breath before continuing, “My God! I would hope that you would have the common decency to at least let me know that our daughter is safe. Where are you guys?”
Mike switched the cell phone to his left ear. His tone was sharp, “She’s not here, Jean. I haven’t found her yet.”
Mike sat in his car outside a small bed & breakfast in Ranch Springs. He had dreaded making this call.
Jean was stunned to silence on the other end, so Mike began to fill her in.
“Her car is here. It’s parked in an impound lot. No one claims to have seen Sara. The sheriff thinks she may have caught a ride to Laramie with another student.”
“That’s ridiculous, Mike,” Jean yelled into the phone. “Sara would have called us. She would have let us know, did you tell the police that?”
Mike leaned forward and rested his head against the steering wheel.
“Sara’s cell phone and purse were on the front seat of the car,” he said. “The tow truck driver says that she was not with her car when he arrived.”
Jean was crying hysterically now. “Jesus Christ, Mike! Am I the only one who can see that something terrible has happened to our daughter? Are you really that blind?”
Mike sat back and rubbed his right temple, “Jean, getting hysterical is not going to---”
Jean exploded, “I am not hysterical, mister! I am afraid for my daughter!”
“I know, I know,” Mike said soothingly. “I’m sorry, honey. I am afraid, too. I need you to pack some clean clothes and bring them to me in the morning.”
Jean listened quietly, so Mike continued.
“Transfer our home phone to your cell phone so we don’t miss any calls, okay Jean?”
“Okay,” was Jean’s only reply.
“I’m in Ranch Springs at the…” Mike looked out the window at a dimly lit sign on the bed & breakfast. “Sightseer Inn. It’s just across the street from the only chu
rch in town. You’ll see it on the hill when you turn off the highway.”
Jean was crying now, “What have they done to my Sara, Mike? Why did you make her leave?”
Mike sat quietly before responding, “We’ll find her, Jean. We’ll bring her home.”
After listening to his wife’s sobs for several seconds, Mike added, “Jean, I want you to bring my Ruger and a box of ammo. Make sure the box says .45 caliber on it, and make sure it’s full, okay?”
“Okay,” was all she said. Mike noticed the exhaustion in her voice.
“I’ll see you in the morning, honey. We’ll find her, okay?”
Jean hung up the phone without responding.
twelve
The seasonal stream offered a quiet solitude with its reluctant trickle over moss covered rocks. Sara dipped her cupped palm into a narrow pool and brought the cool liquid to her lips. The water offered solace. It calmed a place in her soul that had been laid open to an acrid dimension she once thought existed only in fiction.
The sun was setting, feeding an instinctual desire to find shelter and safety, but Sara could not abandon this sanctuary. A smile turned the corners of her mouth and she eased herself to the ground to run a finger through the crystal surface of the brook. A water spider darted from its hiding place and skated across the face of the pool.
“EEK! Daddy, come look at this spider!”
Five-year-old Sara squatted near the edge of a beaver pond and poked at the floating Fisher Spider with a long blade of Indian grass.
“What did you find, Sara?” Her father had always been interested in her thrilling discoveries.
“How does it do that, Daddy?” Sara asked. “How does the spider walk on water like that?”
Her father sat his fishing pole aside and knelt beside her to watch the spider skitter away to safety. Gently taking her hand and turning her palm up, he explained, “That spider has tiny little hairs on the bottom of his feet that support him on the surface of the water.”
He tickled her palm and sent her into a fit of giggles.
“If fish had hair, would they float too?” she asked.
Sara relished her father’s patient answers to her never-ending questions.
“Well, honey, if fish had hair and floated, they would certainly be easier to catch.” He lifted her into his arms and held her close. “But, would you be willing to wear a coat made from fish fur?”
Sara wrinkled her nose, “Yuk, Daddy. That would smell terrible.”
“It wouldn’t smell terrible to the other fish, Squeaky. They would love the way you smelled.”
Sara giggled again.
“Do fish have noses, Daddy?”
Sara’s father hoisted her to his shoulders, retrieved his rod, and began walking along a well worn trail.
“Fish have very good noses, Sara. They can smell a tasty worm clear across this pond.”
He held her hands tightly and ducked under a tree branch.
Sara pulled her hands free and grabbed her father’s ears for balance.
“Do fish have ears, Daddy?”
Mike held tightly to his little girl’s legs to keep her from falling.
“Now you are just being silly, Sara. Can you imagine how goofy a fish would look with ears?”
Sara giggled and stretched her daddy’s ears out as far as she could.
“Horton hears a who!” she said in a gruff voice.
Mike set his little girl to the ground and took her hand to lead her through a grove of Aspen trees.
“And you must be Mr. FarFloogin of the Cloogin FarFloogins,” he recited.
Sara continued in well rehearsed theatrics, “In my world everyone is a pony, and we all eat rainbows and poop butterflies.”
Mike laughed out loud and tried to think of another line from a long list of favorite bedtime stories.
“And now, cried Max, let the wild rumpus start.”
Sara pulled her hand from her father’s and crossed her arms across her chest.
“No, Daddy,” she said. “I don’t like that story.”
Mike stopped and mused over the change in his daughter’s demeanor.
“What’s the matter, Sara?” he asked. “I thought that, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, was one of your favorites.”
Sara stopped and puffed out her bottom lip.
“No,” she pouted. “A monster from that story lives outside and tries to come in my window at night.”
Mike pulled Sara into his arms and ran his fingers through her fine hair.
“Oh, sweetie,” he cooed, “Daddy will never let the monsters get to you. Daddy will always be here to keep his little girl safe.”
Mike sat at the edge of his bed in a small room at the Sightseer Inn. His eyes were closed, his shoulders slumped, and his head bowed.
“Daddy will always be here to keep his little girl safe,” he whispered to himself.
thirteen
“Tell me every detail of how you snagged this girl.”
Jordan sat at the dining room table and picked at the dirt beneath his nails.
“She was broken down a mile or so north of town. When I got there, she was sitting in the front seat, listening to her music player.”
“Did any cars pass by while you were there? Did anyone see you with the girl?”
“No!” Jordan sat up a little straighter, “There was no one on the highway that afternoon. I wasn’t even going to take her. I was just going to fix her tire and let her go, but when I knocked on her window to get her attention, it scared the heck out of her. I don’t know; it made me excited to see her scared like that.”
“Did she make any calls on her phone while you were there? Could she have told anyone that the tow truck driver was there to help her?”
Jordan leaned back, placing his hands behind his neck to support his head.
“No, she was just sitting there listening to her music.” A smile crossed Jordan’s face and he closed his eyes to remember more clearly. “She got out of the car to show me the flat tire. She was so pretty in her little skirt. I knew she wanted me to fuck her right---”
A hard slap across Jordan’s head shook him from his reverie.
“Watch your language, young man. Nobody respects a man with a filthy mouth.”
Jordan braced himself in his chair, prepared for another slap.
“I’m sorry, Pop,” he said.
“How did you get the girl into your truck?”
Jordan leaned forward, spreading his elbows across the table, rubbing at the sore spot on his head.
“She started getting nervous. I think she knew what I was thinking. No cars had passed since I had gotten there and she caught me staring at her as……..butt.”
Jordan winced a little, but the slap never came.
“She opened her cell phone and started to make a call. I didn’t even think. The next thing I knew, she was struggling in my arms and I was dragging her to my truck. I tied her up, gagged her, and threw her in the tool box. I was scared to death. You’re always the one who gets the girls.”
“I am always the one who gets the girls because I know what I am doing. There is never any connection between them and me. No one ever knows that I was anywhere near the girls that I take. You screwed up, Jordan. You left a huge trail right to our doorstep. You, and only you, have a connection to this missing person. Everyone will now focus on you.”
Jordan’s head was bowed.
“I’m sorry, Pop,” he said. “I thought you would be proud of me.”
“You buried the girl’s body like I told you, right?
Jordan nodded.
“I’m not going to hear that hunters stumbled across the nude body of this missing college student, am I?”
Jordan shook his head, “No,” he mumbled. “I buried her under the mattress. Just like you told me to.”
“If this doesn’t work, Jordan, I am going to cut your throat and bleed you out real slow. I am not going to let you take me down with you, do you understand that
?”
Jordan sat back and bowed his head, nodding scarcely.
“Do you understand what I am saying, Jordan?”
“Yes, Pop.”
fourteen
Morning peeked through the heavy curtains in Mike Haller’s rented room at the Sightseer Inn. Its advance had been agonizingly slow as Mike lay in his bed and questioned every decision he had made over the past twenty years. His confidence was gone and he began to wonder if his choice to stay in Ranch Springs was based on sound principle.
Mike sat up and rubbed at his temples. Migraine headaches were a persistent reminder of his run in with a contract killer earlier in the year. The thought of Butch Dawson brought memories flooding back of Mike’s boss and good friend, Sheriff Danny Blum. If Danny were alive now, he had no doubt that Blum would be here and Sara would be found in short order. Looking around the empty room, he was run over by a sense of loneliness. His best friend was dead, his daughter vanished, and his wife of twenty years was pulling away.
Mike worked his right shoulder to loosen a kink, then scraped the crust from his eyes. Each time sleep had found him throughout the night, he was jolted awake by the sounds of Sara screaming and begging for her life. He swung his feet to the floor and checked his cell phone for the time and to see if he had missed any calls. A haunting vision of Sara reaching to him from a hole in the ground kept forcing itself from a fog that clouded his consciousness. Deep in his soul, he knew that his daughter was alive, but he also felt that she was far away. Urgency pounded at his heart, but uncertainty paralyzed his muscles.
“Sara,” he said quietly. “I need some help, baby doll. I need a sign. Anything.”
Mike’s stomach growled loudly and he felt a wave of nausea pass over him. He rubbed both hands through his hair and stood.