Best Laid Plans

by Allison Brennan

  “It’s not our fault he left,” Tom said.

  “Shut the fuck up, Tom!”

  Art took a step toward her. She wasn’t scared of the kid, but he was certainly hot under the collar. “Get out of my room. Now.”

  “Your reaction tells me you’re a liar, Arthur. I will prove it.”

  He pushed her. She took a step back, raised an eyebrow. “Touch me again, and I will put you down, little man.”

  His eyes narrowed and he fisted his hands. Carlos stepped up. “Hey, Art, campus security is on their way.”

  “Get out!” Art screamed at her. This time, he kept his hands to himself.

  Art was a powder keg. She glanced at Tom before she turned to leave. The kid was pale. She definitely needed to talk to him again, alone.

  She opened the door. Art’s eyes filled with hate and fear. A big temper problem. Known as a prankster. Maybe he took out his anger through cruel jokes.

  Maybe one of his pranks turned deadly. She mulled that idea over in her head. Something to dig into, and Jess Sanchez was the best resource.

  She left the dorm with the intention of hunting down Jess and pushing her about her past relationship with Art and asking her about the types of pranks he played—the ones that went beyond writing on his drunk friends. But as soon as she left the dorm room, she was confronted by two campus security officers.

  “Ma’am, visitors need to check in with the administration.”

  She showed them her visitor’s pass. “Were either of you on duty the weekend that Scott Sheldon disappeared?”

  “You’ll have to speak to the chancellor, ma’am.”

  “I should instead speak with your security chief.”

  “I’m sorry, we’re not authorized to talk with the press. All press inquiries must go through the communications director.” He paused. “But you know that.”

  “I do. I spoke to her earlier and she helped me get this visitor’s pass.” Which was true. Adair did direct her to the appropriate office to obtain it. “Thank you for your help.”

  She turned to head to the bookstore, hoping that the staff there would point her to Jess Sanchez’s dorm. The taller officer said, “Ma’am, we’ve had a complaint that you were harassing three of our students. Your visitor’s pass has been canceled, and we need to ask you to leave. If you would like to return, you’ll need to check in with the administration.”

  She considered her options. She really wanted to talk to Jess, but she also wanted to investigate the picture she’d downloaded. She didn’t want Art to figure out that she’d spoken to Jess, either. He might scare her into being silent. She seemed like a tough girl, but under the surface had been skittish. And fearful of Art.

  “I’m leaving,” she told the security officers. They escorted her to her car. She turned and thanked them. “You can tell your boss I’ll be back with more questions.”

  She got into her car and saw the campus cops standing in the rain, watching her drive off.

  Her phone rang. She’d forgotten to set up the Bluetooth in the rental, so pulled over to the side, right by the main entrance to the campus. She answered the unfamiliar number.

  “Ms. Revere? This is Chuck Pence from the park service. I head up search and rescue. I got your message.”

  “I’m in town and would like to talk to you about the search for Scott Sheldon’s body.”

  “You’re in Colorado?”

  “Yes, just leaving Cheyenne College right now after an enlightening conversation with Scott’s friends. Do you have time to meet? I can come by your office now.”

  “I’m still on the road. I can meet you somewhere in two hours.”

  That would be close to six. “I’m staying at the Broadmoor. I’ll meet you in the main lobby at six.”

  “I’ll be the man with the dog.”

  She smiled and hung up. With a final glance at the Cheyenne College sign, Max pulled back onto the road and headed for her hotel. She would most certainly return.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Max’s friends had often criticized her that she was prone to judgment. She assessed people quickly, and experience had proved that her initial opinion was generally accurate. Even with her college roommate, Max had been dead-on with her assessment—which included the fact that Karen had a big, fat, trusting heart. Max was drawn to that, maybe because she found it so difficult to trust anyone.

  Chuck Pence walked in promptly at six with a beautiful golden retriever. But it wasn’t just the dog that identified Pence to Max; it was also his no-nonsense manner and his no-nonsense voice, which Max remembered from their phone conversations.

  Pence had the sharp eyes of a cop, but with a focused calm Max didn’t often see in the police she worked with. His movements were minimal, suggesting both confidence and military or police training. His dog, which wore a service collar, was young, not much more than a puppy—maybe two years. That the dog obeyed the subtle commands of its owner told Max more about Chuck than anything else.

  Quiet. Focused. Sharp. Max suspected he preferred dogs to people and probably didn’t like crowds.

  She already liked him.

  She approached Chuck with a smile. “Mr. Pence, I’m Maxine Revere. Thank you for meeting with me.” She surveyed the lounge.

  “Trixie is a service dog,” Pence said. “She can stay.”

  “There are heat lamps outside. It would afford more privacy.”

  “Lead the way.”

  She opened the terrace doors that led to the outdoor lounge. A few other brave souls were enjoying the crisp evening under heat lamps. The intermittent rain from the afternoon had cleared up; moonlight lit the high clouds. She found a table away from the doors.

  The hostess approached with a smile. “May I get you and your guest anything, Ms. Revere?”

  “Pinot grigio for me.” She turned to Pence. “You?”

  “Coffee,” he said. “Black.”

  The hostess left and Max leaned back. Pence didn’t. She began.

  “First, thank you for coming out here. I would have been happy to meet with you tomorrow at your office.”

  “I’ll be in the field tomorrow,” he said. “You said you wanted to discuss the Scott Sheldon disappearance.” He looked her in the eye. “I hope you’re not here to give his mother false hope that he might be alive. It’s been nearly six months, much of it in subzero overnight temperatures.”

  “I suspect, as you do, that he’s dead. And has been since the weekend he disappeared. But I read the police reports and today spoke to some of the people involved, plus a girl who knew him and the three boys he went camping with. Something is off about their story, and I want the truth. Scott’s mother deserves to know what really happened.”

  Chuck didn’t say anything as the hostess delivered their beverages. Max sipped her wine. She was in no rush.

  “What makes you think that anything other than what’s been said happened?”

  He didn’t have an accusatory or suspicious tone. Matter-of-fact with a hint of curiosity.

  “I can’t point to one specific reason why I think that the boys are lying. It’s more a big picture feeling I get.” She paused, not for the first time wondering if her past and everything that had happened with Karen were clouding her judgment. And, not for the first time, she dismissed her worries.

  I need to know what happened to my son. I need the truth.

  “Adele Sheldon wrote to me after your office started looking again for Scott’s body. She convinced me that Scott wasn’t the type of person to put himself in danger. She has questions that haven’t been answered. He didn’t hike or camp, and—”

  “And that makes him that much more likely not to understand the dangers of wandering off.”

  Max gave Chuck a nod. “It also makes me wonder why he agreed to go camping that weekend with three boys he barely knew. He had no relationship with the kids before college. None of the kids was his roommate. They had some equipment, but not the type of gear seasoned campers would take in t
his climate.”

  “I agree with you on the latter point, but I’ve been doing this for years. If I had a nickel for every camper who went up unprepared…” His voice trailed off. “What else? They were college students, irresponsible. Frankly, I’d call them stupid, and their stupidity got one of their friends killed.”

  “That’s the thing—I don’t think they were friends.”

  Max continued. “Jess Sanchez, who works in the bookstore, was a friend of Scott’s. She let me access her social media pages. She’s Facebook friends with all three boys. I looked through each photo archive, and there were no photos of Scott with any of them except for one.” She knew she was about to tread on dangerous ground here—but since there was no criminal investigation into Scott’s disappearance, and the picture had been posted publicly, she figured she was warranted. “I downloaded a photo taken at the campsite. However, it was uploaded the morning after it was taken. I sent it to a friend of mine in New York who can get the GPS data off the photo, when and where it was uploaded.”

  “What is that going to tell you?”

  “I don’t know yet, but in the police reports, the boys claimed they had no cellular reception at the campground, yet they also claim they didn’t leave until noon on Saturday. They must have uploaded it elsewhere. Then, on Twitter I found tweets from Tom Keller—who can’t seem to go ten minutes without telling the world something trivial about himself—sent Saturday. Mostly innocuous stuff, but again, no cell coverage, so where was he when he was tweeting?”

  Chuck said, “I have a daughter in college. I’m moderately tech savvy, and if I understand my social media, there’s the option of setting tweets and posts in the future, and it’s automatic, correct?”

  “Yes. But the content didn’t appear to be preplanned, they were responses to other tweets. So my conclusion was that either they weren’t at the campground they said they were at, or they weren’t at the campground at all.”

  Max let that information sink in. She drained her wine and put the glass aside.

  Then she added, “Jess tried to talk Scott out of going. I learned after I talked to her that she had been in a relationship with Arthur Cowan last year, but hasn’t spoken to him—at least publicly or through social media—since Scott disappeared. I plan to talk to her soon, but campus police ran me off this afternoon.”

  “Some cops don’t like reporters,” he said.

  “That wasn’t it—trust me, I know when a cop doesn’t like me because of my job.” She smiled. Sometimes, it was fun playing with law enforcement, getting them riled up. But usually, she tried to be professional. “I cornered the boys in their dorm room, and they called security because I asked hard questions they refused to answer. They’re lying,” she said, not for the first time. “I’m going to prove it.”

  “Your observations are interesting, but I still don’t understand what you’re getting at. Unless you’re saying that my team is looking in the wrong place.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I’d like to go up with you tomorrow.”

  “I planned to go today, but we had to call it off when a child went missing. We found her, thank God. She could have died tonight the way she was dressed. It may be April, but it still gets damn cold in the higher elevations. There’s one more quadrant that needs to be searched. At oh-eight-hundred.” He sipped his coffee.

  She thought she might have to do a harder sell, but he seemed amicable to including her. “It bothers me that they waited twenty-four hours before telling campus police, and then the campus police waited until Monday morning before contacting the park service.”

  “You and I read the same reports, Ms. Revere. And as I said, college boys can be brainless. But even if my team had been told Saturday night when the boys got back to campus, we couldn’t have gone up there. It was the first big storm of the season, came in earlier than anyone thought. Even me, and I’m pretty good about predicting storms.” He shrugged. “It was a tragedy, and those boys are going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives.”

  It was hard for Max to explain her gut, what her instincts said, but she tried. “I think there was something else going on that weekend, something that put Scott in danger. And—” She stopped. What more could she say without treading into conjecture?

  “And the only proof you have that the boys are lying is your gut.”

  She wanted to say she had more than that, but she couldn’t. “I would call it … circumstantial evidence. The photo. The fact they weren’t close friends. That Arthur Cowan is an expert skier and should have known better about weather conditions, or at a minimum alerted the ranger station the same night Scott disappeared. That they all acted suspicious when I asked questions. Nervous.”

  He tilted his head and smiled. “Most college boys would be nervous when a beautiful, intelligent woman questions them.”

  She laughed. “I hardly think that was the reason. Certainly not for Arthur Cowan, who was belligerent and threatening. If you need credentials, I can give you references, people in law enforcement and others who can vouch for me.”

  “Ms. Revere,” he said, “why are you so far from home? You have no ties to Colorado or Colorado Springs. The Sheldons aren’t longtime family friends, are they?” She shook her head. “So why do you care?”

  What did she tell him? That she didn’t know why she’d flown two thousand miles on her own dime to find out what had happened to Scott? That wasn’t completely true. Did she share a half truth? That Adele Sheldon’s letter pulled her heartstrings? Stirred her curiosity? She couldn’t stop thinking about him, or shake the deep belief that she could uncover the truth.

  But lying wasn’t something that came natural to her. Too many people in her life had lied—either to her face or by omission. She spoke the truth, but kept it simple.

  “My best friend disappeared when we were in college,” she said. “Her body was never found. I know she’s dead, just like my instincts tell me Scott Sheldon is dead. Except with Karen, there was evidence that she’d been murdered.” She paused, wished she had ordered a second glass of wine, but she sent the hostess away with a look ten minutes ago. “Her family still suffers with the unknown. I visit them every year, and the pain—it’s never left. But they still harbor an ounce of hope. That hope is trumped by the pain they feel with her loss—not the loss specifically anymore, but the not knowing. When I heard about this case, when I talked to Adele—I think I can help her find peace. I don’t want her living with the unknown, like Karen’s family. If Adele knows what happened, she can grieve and be there for her daughter.”

  Karen’s sister had lived in the shadow of Karen’s disappearance for the past seven years. Laura would have graduated from college last year if her life hadn’t been turned upside down. As it was, she barely graduated from high school, never went to college, was in and out of rehab. Scott’s sister wasn’t Laura, but Max had seen firsthand how the pain of grieving parents forever marked the surviving children.

  “Do you have the proper clothes and footwear for a prolonged search?” Chuck asked.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Be at ranger headquarters by oh-eight-hundred, properly geared up. Like I said, there’s one more grid to search. If Scott’s body is up there, Trixie will find him.”

  At the sound of her name, the golden retriever perked her ears up. She stood as her master rose. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  “Thank you, but I’m already late getting home. My wife is a patient woman, but I need to get back.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  On Wednesday morning, Max arrived at the ranger headquarters at quarter to eight. The morning was cold but completely clear, and the weather report had said it would warm to the fifties.

  Chuck introduced her to Tim and Ann Callow, volunteers with search and rescue. They were both lifelong residents of the area and had been part of the initial search team. Older than Chuck, but both appeared fit.

 
“Chuck told us you’re a reporter from New York,” Ann said, overtly curious. “Sounds fascinating.”

  “You won’t catch me dead in a city like that,” Tim said with a grin.

  “I’m a city girl at heart,” Max said. “Though I enjoy the mountains. My cousin owns a ski resort in Vail, and I try to visit every year.”

  They chatted as they loaded up the four-wheel-drive truck and Chuck checked provisions. Chuck drove and asked Max, who sat in the passenger seat, “Is that a map of the search area?”

  “Partly—I printed it from the park service Web site and marked it up based on the information I learned from the police reports. They parked here—” She put her finger on the map, then traced it south. “—and camped here.”

  “We’ve been focusing on the area between the campground and where they parked. The witnesses said he walked toward the car. But at night, he may have inadvertently left the trail. We’ve covered every area between, but now that we have had warmer weather, Trixie can be of more use. She’s still young, not fully trained, but our last cadaver dog died.”

  From the backseat, Ann said, “We owned Mickie, Trixie’s mother. She died six months ago, cancer. We still have the two male dogs from her last litter. Chuck took Trixie, and the other two bitches went to friends of ours in Denver who are training them for their own unit.”

  “Trixie is a great dog,” Chuck said, “but training takes time. She’s smart, though. Smartest dog I’ve had, and I’ve had plenty.”

  Max absently reached back and scratched Trixie behind the ears. She loved dogs, and the only thing she regretted about her career—and all the travel it entailed—was that she couldn’t have her own pup. But it wouldn’t be fair to the animal to be alone so much, or left with neighbors when Max was out of town.