by Wendy Qualls
“Twit.” Dave gave her an extra-thorough ear scratch. “I know, I know. I’ll be back later, you two. Try not to tear up the house too much while I’m gone.”
Lumpy rolled over onto her side and tried to lick his leg without exerting the effort to actually raise her head.
He finished loading the SUV and let them both outside one last time, in case the search went all night, then ushered them back in through the garage and closed the door. They never caught on that he was actually leaving without them until about five seconds after he started the engine. When he got home there would probably be drool all over the sofa and possibly a disemboweled dog toy on the bed—Woozy took it personally when she wasn’t invited along. It was a good thing she kept her destructive tendencies to her own toys…and didn’t mind that all her chewables came from the dollar store.
Lito’s house turned out to be a charming little white ranch, identifiable even at a distance by his distinctive orange Saturn in the carport. The houses in the neighborhood were all what a real estate agent might call “cozy.” Lito came out to meet him in the driveway.
“Thanks,” he said, climbing into the passenger seat. “Siri is great for helping me find my way around town most of the time, but I’m not sure I’m up to the ‘After three miles, turn left onto unnamed road’ level of navigating quite yet. Especially if cell reception is spotty.”
“It usually is.” That was a main reason the team still kept two-way radios on hand—often they were well and truly in the middle of nowhere. “You have a preference on music? Feel free to pick a station.”
“What do you usually listen to?”
“Whatever’s not on commercial at the time.”
“Gotcha.” Lito found some inoffensive pop music and they made small talk for the rest of the drive. He was an unabashed fan of Taylor Swift, Dave learned, as well as having no shame whatsoever about singing along to the good parts when something came on that he liked. He had an amazing voice, something Dave had always envied. His own wasn’t terrible but was nowhere near “amazing.” Finally pulling into the White family’s driveway and needing to get his brain into work mode created a fair bit of cognitive dissonance.
The farmhouse was set well back from the road, up a bit of a hill. Sharon, the county sheriff, and a dark-haired woman who was presumably the boy’s mother were already waiting on the porch. Rick was organizing papers in the back of their van and gave a little wave as Dave pulled up. Two patrol cars were parked in the yard, lights on but no sirens, with officers leaning on them and chatting quietly with each other. A perfect low-key first search for Lito. The sheriff broke off to come greet them.
“Thanks for making the drive,” he said, offering a solid handshake to Dave and Lito both. “Been a while since you’ve been out our way.”
It had. Probably three or four years, at least. “Given the current circumstances,” Dave answered, “I’m going to say that’s a good thing.” The last one had been, what? The schizophrenic transient guy, maybe? Dave had vague memories of searching for a man who’d supposedly been a regular at the local soup kitchen until suddenly he wasn’t. The search was mostly memorable because people rarely bothered checking up on the homeless. He’d run Woozy on that one—yes. Winter, almost four years ago. No luck, but a police officer found the guy panhandling in Birmingham a few weeks later.
The routine of setting up the search quickly took priority over anything else. Dave headed over to join Rick, Sharon got Scratch and Sniff sorted, and Lito ended up chatting with the boy’s mother on the porch while they waited for everyone else. Even with his brain on autopilot, though, Dave kept finding himself sneaking glances at Lito. The mother seemed to be opening up to him, occasionally smiling and once even letting out a surprised laugh. Lito talked with his hands as well as his words, graceful gestures as he described something to her, and Dave had to look away. Really not the time. The other three team members rolled in right as Dave, Rick, and the sheriff were finishing up the nitty-gritty of splitting the woods into single-unit quadrants. It was a fairly straightforward search—no water in the immediate area, neurotypical search target who was presumably capable of answering when called by name, the usual terrain. Dave sent Scooter to round up everyone for a pre-launch briefing while the sheriff did the same with his own team.
“What did the kid’s mom say?” Scooter asked once they’d assembled, nodding subtly toward where the woman now stood alone on the porch.
Dave looked to Lito. “Anything new? Seemed like you two were having a good long conversation. We don’t usually talk to the families much—”
“Shit, I didn’t mean to—”
“—but what I was about to say was, it’s really useful when someone does make a connection.” Heaven knew Dave sucked at dealing with frightened or grieving families, but Lito seemed like a natural. “If you’re good at looking approachable and you can help the family understand what we’re doing, it can really be a help. Did she add anything new?”
Lito relaxed his stance a bit. “We were just chatting about Grayson,” he said with a shrug. “Kid likes basketball, has a crush on a classmate named Beth that he thinks his mom doesn’t know about, and gets decent grades in school. It sounded to me like he’s a bit of a loner, though—he’s on the basketball team but his mom said none of his teammates were particularly friends. I didn’t ask about anything too specific about him going missing because I figured she’d already been over it with someone else.”
“That’s good. Perfect.” Dave jotted the info down on the edge of his command sheet and handed it off to Rick. “On the off chance he’s not somewhere else and we do find him, he may be non-ambulatory. Sometimes the ability to chat about something else—basketball, probably, in this case—makes the difference between a panicking search target or a calm one. Okay, assignments.”
“Three teams,” Rick said, smoothly taking over the lead. The two of them had done this a million times, it felt like. “Steve, you and Nikita take the wedge from the road south. You’re bounded by the road on this side, the cotton fields on the west, and the two-lane road a mile south of here. It’s paved, so you won’t miss it. Work your way east and pay special attention to places a thirteen-year-old might have gotten hurt, particularly any gullies or steep rock faces. Take a couple of the sheriff’s guys with you and make sure they’ve got appropriate gear for the terrain before you leave.”
“Got it.”
“Scooter, you and Cheerio have the east side, from the road north. Sharon, take Scratch and cover the west. Make sure you take two deputies apiece. Janet, I’m keeping you and Zeus here as the relief team, or for when one of the other three calls for a second opinion on a hotspot. Who’s got cell reception?”
Nobody had more than one bar, which meant they’d all have zilch once they were out in the woods. Te-fucking-riffic. The radios made for one more thing to carry. Maybe someday the team would get the money to upgrade to a newer, lighter model. Steve, Scooter, and Sharon ran a quick radio check with the base station in Rick’s truck, then they went to get their dogs ready. Lito hovered attentively next to Rick, silently taking it all in.
“You go with Scooter,” Dave told him. It would have been nice to pair up together, but Scooter tended to get more frustrated the longer the search took. Lito had the people skills to counteract that. “He’s a good kid with a good head on his shoulders. Cheerio likes to range out pretty far, though, so help keep an eye on her. She’s going to be focused on the scent and Scooter will be focused on her, so your job is going to be keeping the rest of the group from making it harder for them.”
Lito huffed quietly. “Dunno how effective I’ll be at that, but I’ll try.”
“It’s not bad.” Dave glanced over to where the sheriff’s deputies were milling around. “Law enforcement in areas like this are almost always good ol’ local boys. Most of them are comfortable with being in the woods, but that doesn’t necessarily mea
n they know about how an air scent search is run. Keep them back behind Scooter, follow the exact path he takes so you don’t mess with the scent cone, and try to keep them from doing anything stupid.”
“Define stupid?”
Dave took a moment to review his mental “most frustrating search moments ever” reel. “Had a guy light up a cigarette right next to me once. Killed Lumpy’s sense of smell for a good forty-five minutes. Car exhaust does that too, for future reference. Um…sometimes you get guys who don’t bother bringing their own water, or who don’t have a flashlight because it was daylight when you started. Inappropriate footwear for the terrain, although that’s more an issue with volunteer searchers. Just—be aware, be polite, and be helpful. And absorb what you can for next time. I’m going to shadow Steve doing the same thing.”
“Got it.”
“Also…don’t tell him I said this, but help Scooter keep his head on straight, okay? When he get tired he gets sloppier and starts missing Cheerio’s tells. Don’t worry about that part, just stay positive for him.”
Lito nodded solemnly. “I’m ready to give it my best shot.”
* * * *
Lito had only shared the usual kinds of casual interactions with Scooter at practices before, so it was nice to get a chance to chat as their crew picked their way through the woods. Scooter had close-cropped blue hair, was twenty-one to Lito’s twenty-five, and was going to school part-time to become an EMT. He worked evenings and weekends at his parents’ restaurant.
The EMT thing prompted some chatter back and forth with one of the sheriff’s deputies, a blunt-spoken blonde who apparently had been considering a similar career path before she went into law enforcement. Lito focused on not twisting an ankle, trying to watch Cheerio as she ranged back and forth in a wide arc in front of them, and interjecting occasional noises of agreement as the conversation called for them. Dave had made it sound like Scooter would be paying full attention to Cheerio and therefore shouldn’t be distracted, but he didn’t seem to be having any problems walking and talking at the same time—unlike Lito—so Lito gave up and settled for calling Grayson’s name every few minutes.
“Think we’re going to find him?” he asked the other deputy, who was walking next to him.
The man grunted something that sounded like a negative.
“I’m honestly not expecting to,” Scooter called back over his shoulder. “Our task is to clear the area. If he’s in our quadrant, Cheerio will pick up his scent, but chances are he won’t be.”
“Most runaway teens are found hiding out at a friend’s house,” the male deputy explained to Lito. “No reason for him to be out in the middle of nowhere by himself.”
“Gotta check, though.” Scooter held back a branch for the rest of them as they squeezed through an overgrown patch, Cheerio bounding along ahead. “Once you get to the point you can trust Spot to not find someone who’s not there—and to tell you when she’s sure—that’s when you’re ready for call-outs.”
It was going to take forever, judging from Spot’s performance in training over the past several weeks. She was all about getting extra treats but less enthusiastic about the “finding people” part. “She’s excellent at ‘not finding things’ already,” Lito admitted. “Should see her when I have to give her a pill.”
Scooter snorted. “You know what I mean. But speaking of seeing things…” He unclipped a flashlight from his belt and thumbed it on. Lito hadn’t noticed how dark it was getting, but the light made a big difference. Being able to see his feet, for one. “Y’all make sure not to break your necks out here, okay? It’s harder at dusk. If it comes down to you either falling down a hole or blinding Cheerio by shining your flashlight right in her face, though, it’s a good thing we’ve got two almost-EMTs right here with ya.”
He got a huff from the male deputy and a giggle from the blonde. More than a hint of flirting there. She looked to be in her early twenties too, and Scooter was obviously trying to be charming. Lito had to wonder whether the whole “pick up women during a missing kid search” ever actually worked for him. It didn’t seem like it should—but then again, he and Dave had been maybe-possibly flirting ever since that first meeting in the pet store. Mostly via little “that was good” texts back and forth the morning after practice, but also the occasional joke when Lito did something stupid or Spot did something particularly clever. Even if Dave wasn’t into dudes, he was—at the very least—okay with being subtly flirted at. And Christ, Scooter and the deputy had left “subtle” behind several miles back. The male deputy caught Lito’s eye and made a face. Not just me, then. The blonde’s attention kept Scooter from grumbling, at least.
They slogged on for another two hours in the dark. Which was an hour less than it should have been, thanks to the time change. Normally an extra hour of sleep in exchange for an earlier sunset would have sounded like a decent trade, but then again he normally didn’t spend his whole afternoon and evening traipsing around a rocky hillside with only a flashlight to see by. Eventually Scooter relegated him to map duty. Lito called out Grayson’s name every few minutes—shushing everyone else when he had to so they could hear if there was a response—but all he could ever make out were the distant sounds of sparse traffic.
“I think we’ve pretty thoroughly covered our grid,” Scooter said, several miles of walking later. “Cheerio hasn’t found a scent trail that’s interested her for more than a hundred yards or so. Unless our kid has fallen into an underground cave or stumbled onto a magic invisible castle, he’s probably not here.”
Probably didn’t sound like enough. “You going to have her keep searching on the way back, just in case?” Lito asked.
“Sure, but she’s about ready to call it a day too. Look.”
Cheerio was, indeed, not zipping around quite as enthusiastically as she had been in the beginning. The bright red glow stick attached to her vest appeared to be doing slow laps all on its own, now that it was dark enough for her chocolate coat to thoroughly blend in with the dead leaves on the ground. Lito checked his watch. Barely seven. He had protein bars in his backpack, but there was probably something better back at incident command. Something warm, if they were lucky—Dave had insinuated Rick kept a portable coffeemaker in the truck.
“Team Cheerio?” Rick called a few minutes later, his voice staticky from the mediocre radio connection. “Relaying from Team Nikita—Grayson has been found! You can stop searching and head straight back in.”
Scooter whooped. “Roger that.” He shoved the radio back into Lito’s hands and jumped around, pumping his fist in the air a few more times. “Safe and unhurt! That’s awesome.”
Rick hadn’t said that, at least not in so many words. “How do you know he’s not hurt?”
“Called him Grayson.” Scooter jiggled his shoulders in a move that would have gotten him laughed off the floor in most of the clubs Lito had ever been to. “We never, ever give details of a search over the radio,” he added. “You never know who might be listening in, or standing next to a family member or a reporter. If a search target is deceased, injured, or anything else other than healthy and grumpy, we say we found ‘Waldo.’”
Seriously? “Not a very complex code name.”
Scooter shrugged, still twisting his hips and flailing his hands in what could loosely be termed a “raise the roof’ gesture. “Blame Rick. Hang on—one last boogie.” He finished with a final display of jazz hands. “Okay, let’s get back. I’m freezing.”
The female deputy was watching Scooter’s strange victory celebrations with a raised eyebrow, but nobody seemed inclined to argue with the chance to get back and get warm again. Lito was appreciating the heavy NALSAR coat Dave had presented him with at the previous practice—his one-month mark with the team—but his search kit needed better gloves. And socks. Somehow over the course of the last forty-eight hours they’d gone from seventy-degree highs to what felt like seventy
below zero. Even if the real temperature was only in the high thirties, that was a good thirty degrees colder than Lito was ready to appreciate. He couldn’t even put both hands in his pockets at once without dropping the flashlight.
So Grayson is safe. Team Nikita had the find. Nikita was Steve’s dog, which meant Dave had been in the group that found him. Maybe that meant he’d be willing to share details on the way home. It would probably be a bit rude to ask outright—“Hey, you know that missing kid you found? How hypothermic and scared was he? Tell me all the gruesome details.” Yeah, not so much.
“This is my first,” Scooter was telling the blonde when Lito caught back up to them on a flatter stretch of trail. “Been doing this for three years now, but most of the time we don’t find out whether we were right or not until they get divers in the water or get the ground-penetrating radar thingy out to check for human remains. Live finds are usually ‘live not-finds,’ you know?”
The deputy shrugged, not slowing her pace in the slightest despite the terrain veering sharply upward for their last climb back to Grayson’s house. “We don’t get many either,” she answered. “Mostly meth labs and regular old bar fights out here. I like the routine.”
Cheerio came back as they passed the last of the trees and climbed the final rise alongside them. Her tongue was hanging out to one side and she looked glassy but happy. Scooter took her off to his car for some treats and an enthusiastic petting once they got back to the yard, but Lito headed straight for Dave’s SUV and slung his pack into the back where Dave was tying down his own bag. Dave caught it, winked, and held up his keys.