All That I Dread

by Linda J White

Nate’s long silence suggested he didn’t agree with what I’d done. And from the weight in my heart, part of me concurred.

  “You coming to the training today?” he asked. It was for cadaver teams. But there wouldn’t be any bodies there, just tiny fragments of human remains.

  “No, I don’t think so.” I was avoiding him and the conviction I was feeling.

  “We could use your help.”

  After a little more convincing, I finally agreed to come. “Sure, okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  I’d been so caught up in my own drama I hadn’t read the details of the training. When I arrived at the address, I saw it was a small house that had burned to the ground some time back. Only the chimney remained standing. A couple of charred lumps suggested they might have been metal cabinets once. A few bigger beams and timbers lay scattered about. Other than that, what had once been a family home was a heap of cinders.

  No one had died in the blaze. We’d plant the human remains (a tooth and a small fragment of bone) after the trainees were out of sight. Nate began to speak. I suddenly wished I’d brought Luke.

  I watched Nate stand in the middle of all that burned-out mess and explain about searching the remains of a fire. He talked about protecting your dog’s feet with boots, about checking with law enforcement before turning over piles to potentially expose human remains. He spoke about what to do if your dog alerted, about good note-taking, and the importance of wearing good boots because of the possibility there’d be nails in the debris.

  In the middle of his talk, I saw Sprite lean against him and put her paw on his foot. Just standing on a pile of burned rubble, smelling that smoke, was raising his stress level. She knew it, and now, so did I. Fire was not Nate’s friend.

  One day I hoped to be able to stand on the burned rubble of my life and function in a way that only my dog would know my stress, just like Nate.

  Later, as Nate loaded up his car, some of the newer members came over and started asking him questions. He sat down on the edge of the Tahoe’s cargo area and patiently answered them, all the while stroking Sprite who sat on his lap.

  When they were all gone, I sat down next to him. “So,” I said, “when will I get to the stage I can deal with my stress by petting my dog.”

  He laughed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw the signs. The smell of that fire bothered you. But you still functioned.” I slid off the back of his SUV, crossed my arms in front of me, moved a few steps away, and turned back to him. “That’s all I’m asking for, to get to that level. I’ve tried to get you to help me, and Sarah Pennington, but you’re not! You’re not helping, either of you.”

  “In fact, you’re getting worse.”

  “Right. And now you’re judging me because I called out my mom—”

  “Whoa, whoa. I didn’t say anything about that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “That ain’t me that’s convicting you,” Nate said, getting up and scooping Sprite into her crate. Even Nate had limits to his patience.

  “Nate, I’m asking you for help! I need a way out of this.” I kicked a little rock, searching my brain for a way to keep this conversation going. “You said … you said shame runs strong enough it can only be covered by another strong emotion, like anger. So maybe that’s why I got so angry with my mom.” I tossed my head, proud of my confession. “So what else will do it?”

  He stopped moving and fixed his bright blue eyes on me.

  I threw my hands up in the air. “I want a plan!”

  “There is one more thing.”

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Tell you what,” he said, closing the back of the Tahoe. “You read that little book, then I’ll tell you.”

  I knew instantly he’d seen the title. The Gospel of John. Right up his alley.

  It was an alley I refused to enter.

  35

  Sometimes you have to go backward to move investigations forward. Scott Cooper knew that, and yet driving out to reinterview Sandy Smith’s friends irritated him. It gave him too much time to think.

  A big argument the night before had turned into a sleepless night. The problem? He’d called off Mandy’s visit. Postponed it. He told his ex-wife he was in the middle of a big case.

  You’re always in the middle of a big case, Suzanne had snapped back. So, after trying to avoid the details, he finally broke down and explained why he didn’t want Mandy here. Because this suspect was targeting women who looked like her.

  “He’s killed three, Suzanne. Three so far. And I don’t want her at risk.”

  Even that didn’t calm down his ex. Apparently, Suzanne had a new boyfriend and her plans didn’t include having Mandy around those two weeks.

  He’d hung up the phone, furious. Really? She’d rather have her daughter in danger than miss some whoopee time with her boyfriend?

  “Aren’t you going a little fast?”

  Dana’s question jarred Scott. He’d brought her with him to help with the interviews and also, he admitted, because he was asked to check her skills. He glanced down and realized he was doing eighty in a sixty-m.p.h. zone. He was also gripping the steering wheel so hard his hands ached. He eased up on the accelerator and relaxed his grip. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “So, Scott, I don’t get what my part in this is.”

  “We’ll be interviewing friends of Sandy Smith and Julie. When one of us is asking questions, the other looks for nonverbals. Some of the women may be more comfortable talking to you, or vice versa. We work as a team and learn what we can.”

  Dana sighed. “Hasn’t all this been done before?”

  Scott bristled. “What do you care? You’re getting paid.”

  “I had plans for today.”

  When he looked over at her, he swore she was pouting.

  Thirteen-year-old Mandy did it better.

  The whole day continued that way. Scott felt like he was dragging an anchor behind him. The anchor analogy made him think of Nate and thinking of Nate made him remember what Nate said about the dogs who were good at SAR: They’ve got to have a good play drive. Prey drive, some folks call it. They got to want to do the job and get that reward.

  So far, he wasn’t seeing a lot of prey drive in Dana. He wondered how long she’d last in the FBI. One thing he was sure of, he wouldn’t have hired her.

  Just as they arrived back at the office, Scott got a phone call from Robert Hudson, who’d been checking on the victims’ cars. He answered it as Dana got out, slammed the door, and walked into the office. “What do you have for me, Robert? It better be good.”

  “It is! It is good.” Robert paused. “So I was talking to my brother, who’s a mechanic, and he gave me an idea. So I went back and had the shop take the front grill off Faith’s car. Somebody had punched a hole in the radiator, a small hole, near the bottom, but it would have been enough to drain the coolant while she was getting coffee.”

  “Yeah? Why didn’t they catch that before?” Scott sat up straight and jotted notes.

  “Guy was clever. He angled the awl or whatever he used just right. You had to take the grill off to see the hole. So then we looked at Sandy’s car. The radiator had split when she hit that tree, so that’s why the fluid was gone.”

  “And Julie’s?”

  “Bingo. Same little hole. Same technique.”

  “Wow. Good job!”

  “They’re analyzing it now to see if they can figure out what made the hole. But it’s a definite link—between those two cases anyway.”

  That news was enough to inspire Scott to stay at the office late and write up the 302s on the interviews they’d conducted that day. He was nearly done before he realized he should have made Dana stay and do them. It would have been good discipline.

  “I’d rather have it done right,” he said out loud as he closed his computer. He stood to leave but had another thought. Keying in Gary Taylor’s number, he composed in his head the voice mail he wanted to leave.


  Much to his surprise, Gary answered. “You back from your trip?” Scott asked.

  “Flight got in an hour ago. My wife has a meeting, so I thought I’d come into the office and get a few things done. What’s up?”

  Scott told him about the holes in the radiators.

  “I wonder how many radiators he punched before he got his technique down?” Gary said.

  That sparked a thought in Scott. “I wonder if we called a bunch of mechanics who’d fixed radiators in the past couple of years if we could find a pattern? A geographic connection?”

  “That’d be interesting,” Gary said.

  As he clicked off his phone, Scott smiled. He was guessing Dana wouldn’t find the task he was about to give her all that interesting.

  As Scott drove home, he found himself thinking about Jessica Chamberlain. He wondered how she was dealing with what Gary had told her about her dad. Was she encouraged, or did it just stir up a lot of hard memories?

  He almost called her. After spending the day with Dana it would be a relief to talk to a woman with a little, well, prey drive. But in the end, he didn’t pick up his phone.

  36

  I slouched on the couch, a cup of tea steaming on the table next to me. The weekend stretched before me like the final walk of a condemned man. I could hear the rain pouring down and weathercasters predicted it would continue. Battlefield had postponed SAR practice, leaving me at loose ends. Nate said he was busy. In fact, I thought he was avoiding me. Since when were we unable to find something to do, even in the rain? But even Luke seemed to ignore me, lying on his side next to the wall, his mouth half-open. If he were a man, he’d be wearing a wifebeater undershirt and holding a can of beer.

  It wasn’t like I couldn’t work weekends. With my job, I could work whenever I wanted. But the particular cases I had right now were best worked on Monday through Friday when people were in their offices and not in their homes.

  Next to my tea sat the little black book, indicting me for neglect. I tried to think of something else I could do—another project, another phone call, another Internet search. But in the end, curiosity overrode my stubborn resistance.

  After all, I rationalized as I picked it up, it wasn’t as if Nate were making me read it. I was a big girl. I could make choices.

  I opened the book, traced my father’s unmistakable signature, and began to read.

  At first, the thoughts seemed strange, almost like I was reading a foreign language I only partly understood. I couldn’t put it together. What was he talking about, being born again? Raising up the temple in three days? Why were people so angry with Jesus? Why didn’t he realize he was offending them?

  I’d always pictured Jesus as meek and mild. Sort of effeminate. But the Jesus in this book was tough, almost abrasive at times. I didn’t understand him.

  I read about healings. Mercy. Loaves and fishes. Arguments. Bread. And then, the woman caught in adultery.

  Oh, how I could see in my mind’s eye that mob of men hauling that poor woman into the street. My anger rose, my jaw tight as I pictured it. Was she naked? Had she had time to even grab a sheet? And if she was committing adultery, where was the man? Why didn’t they drag him out too? How dare they shame her like that?

  I gripped that book, furious with those arrogant, abusive men. I knew I was about to judge Jesus based on how he responded to that poor woman. Because if he got it wrong, I’d know I couldn’t trust him. Or Nate. Ever again. I braced myself for the lecture. The condemnation. The soul-baring, sin-revealing, heart-to-heart talk.

  The mob of men threw the woman down on the street and challenged Jesus. He was surprisingly quiet. Then he bent down and wrote in the dirt. Wrote what? I wanted to know, but the book didn’t say.

  The men pressed him. He wrote again. And then finally he faced them and said the oddest thing: Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.

  Let the one without sin throw a stone.

  And one by one, the men left.

  My heart was pounding as I pictured this scene. Jesus, quiet as he was, conveyed authority. Those men could not stand before him. They slunk away like whipped puppies.

  I could see the woman, cowering in the dust, full of shame. I could see her cringing, waiting for the lecture, the judgment, the harsh words, the mocking. I could see her looking up cautiously as he gently questioned her.

  And I could imagine the compassion in his eyes as he said, Neither do I condemn you: go, and from now on, sin no more.

  I’m very analytical. Three things hit me all at once: First, Jesus poured mercy all over this woman. He didn’t condemn her. He was gentle and kind. Second, he gave her hope: Go and sin no more. What you’ve done doesn’t need to define you. From now on, you can be different. Third, he told those men they had no right to condemn her. None.

  And that both encouraged and convicted me.

  I had been the victim, the woman thrown down and scorned in public, feeling naked and ashamed, abused by a bunch of men.

  But I had also been a perpetrator. I had not only picked up stones against my mother, I’d thrown them. As if I had the right.

  Oh, this little black book was a lot more unnerving than I ever imagined it would be.

  That story worked on me all weekend. By Sunday night, I knew I had something I had to do. I left Luke in his crate, put the book in my pocket, and drove to my mother’s house.

  She was there. So was Frank. I wasn’t sure they were going to let me in at first—they were so guarded when they answered the door. But they did, and we sat in the living room, and I apologized. It was difficult. Humbling. We all cried. But in the end, I felt like I’d laid down a burden. I hugged my mother, silently forgiving her and hoping she would forgive me.

  Before I left, I showed her the book. She fingered it carefully and said she’d never seen it. I didn’t ask her for any explanation. I just took the book back from her, put it in my pocket, and told her I’d come back soon.

  The drive back that night seemed to fly by, I felt so light. When I got home, I took Luke for a run, then showered and went to bed. I felt happy. Happy. That was new. And I wondered if I’d discovered the second thing strong enough to overcome shame.

  37

  I slept soundly until a callout triggered my phone just before 4:00 a.m. A young person was missing up in the mountains. No details beyond that. I called the incident commander and told her I’d respond. Then Nate called me. “You goin’?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “You bet.”

  “Want to drive together?” I was anxious to talk to him. I had so many questions.

  “Might be handy to have two cars where we’re going.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But we can follow each other. That way, one of us gets into trouble, the other’ll be there.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  We met thirty minutes later at a big gas station on Route 29. We got coffee, then Nate gave me more information. “Scott just called me. He’s on this case too.”

  A flash of adrenaline raced through me. “This is one of his cases? Does he think it’s connected?”

  “Small female. Reported missing last night. Scott got the call about 9:00 p.m. When he got up here, he asked for us to be deployed. Sheriff’s office isn’t too happy about that—they got their own dogs. But Scott said he wanted our group called out. He phoned me to make sure that happened.”

  “So he’s thinking this is the same perp?”

  “He thinks there’s enough similarities that it’s got him worried. Thing is, he wants to find her alive this time, not laying in some forest with her neck broke.” Nate paused. “Probably be best if we kept quiet on what we know.”

  “Okay.” I shivered. Another young girl missing. When Nate showed me the map, I shivered again. The area was near my sister’s college.

  I decided to consider that a coincidence. Brooke was fine, or I would have heard from my parents.

  We took I-64 over
to I-81, then drove north. Thankfully, it had stopped raining, but the roads were still wet. A surprising number of cars had mixed in with the trucks on I-81 on this Monday morning. I’d heard people say folks commuted to DC from places like Front Royal and Winchester. I couldn’t imagine it.

  Nate called me as I was thinking about that. “They’ve got a search command center set up at the county sheriff’s office. But they want the dog teams to report to a farm nearby. It has a yard we can pitch tents in and a big barn where we can get out of the weather. Even an outhouse.”

  “Yahoo!” I said, laughing.

  “We’ll get off this road up yonder about five more miles, then follow me. I’ve got the directions.”

  “Will do.”

  We arrived at the farm off Shady Creek Road at 5:30 a.m., just as the sky was getting light. The rain over the weekend made the yard around the barn a mess, but the owner, Hank Stanley, said we could pitch tents in the front yard or in the barn. Nate suggested we make that decision when it got toward evening.

  The stalls in the barn were empty, so we let the dogs hang out in them while we huddled up. They were getting their snoots full of animal smells for sure.

  Susan was once again the incident commander. By 6:00 a.m., she had muffins and coffee brought in. By 7:00, she was ready to brief us.

  “Laney Collier, 19, was reported missing yesterday evening. She’s a local college student.”

  College? What college? Brooke’s college? How many colleges could there be up here?

  Susan continued. “Her friends say she was at an off-campus party on Friday night.” She pointed to a location on a blown-up area map. “They thought she was spending the weekend with her boyfriend, but her roommate saw him Sunday night, and he said he hadn’t seen her since Thursday.”

  I was standing back too far to read the place names on the map but worry nagged at me.

  Susan clipped a topographic map over the first map. “We’re being asked to search this area.” She pointed to a wooded area near an off-campus housing project. “We have four dogs present, but we’re short on walkers.”