“This here’s a live search, right?” Nate asked.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t I walk with Jess? Leave Sprite for later and hope we don’t need her.”
“That’s a good plan. She can stay near me at the command center,” Susan said. “I’m giving you segments to search in two-hour shifts. We’ll try to stick to that. Work two hours, rest an hour. This could be a long search. We want to stay fresh.” She looked over the handlers. “Any questions? The sheriff’s office is bringing us topo maps with the areas they want us to search marked. We’ll set up the command center at this location, a small park near where Laney was last seen. The weather looks good for today, but there’s wind coming in tomorrow night along with a cold front. The sooner we find this young woman, the better.”
When Susan finished talking, I walked up to the easel she had set up, lifted up the topo map, and looked closer at the regular map. I used the light on my phone to see it better, tracing the marked location the girl had last been seen to the nearby college. There it was—Smithson College. My heart dropped.
“Something wrong?” Nate asked, coming up behind me.
“Brooke. My sister Brooke goes to this school.”
“The missing girl’s name is Laney.”
“Right, but still…”
Nate put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll find her.”
I checked my watch. How early was too early to call Brooke?
“All right people. First team, let’s go!” Susan called out.
That would be me. And Nate. We put the dogs in our cars, but before I got in, I said to Susan, “I’ll be there in a few minutes. I want to take a quick detour to orient myself on the way there.”
“That’s fine. It’ll take us a few minutes to set up.”
I followed Susan and Nate out of the farm property. When we got to Main Street, they went straight, and I took a right. I’d never seen Smithson College, even though my sister was in her third year there.
I knew the campus was small, much smaller than George Mason, where I had done my undergraduate work, but Smithy, as the students called it, was really tiny. Eight classic Colonial brick buildings, which I presumed held classrooms and offices, faced onto a central, grassy mall. At the head of the mall was what I guessed was a library. Dorms and administration buildings lay nestled into the hills around the mall.
I saw a few students walking on the campus paths, but no one who looked like Brooke. At a small college like this, you’d probably really get to know your fellow students.
No wonder I’d chosen a big school.
I plugged the park Susan had chosen for our search headquarters into my GPS and proceeded to drive there. I pulled up and parked and noticed a familiar figure talking to Nate. Scott, wearing his cargo pants and FBI raid jacket, stood pointing to something on a map. His whole body looked tense.
Sitting there in my car watching him, I suddenly saw him differently, not as an arrogant, aggressive, in-control man, but as someone haunted by his sister’s death—a man who had to force all those feelings of anger, helplessness, frustration, fear, and despair behind a wall in order to function. I could imagine the shape that wall most often took was control.
As I said, hanging out with Nate was teaching me to see the world in layers.
I got out of my car and walked over to them. I thought I saw Scott’s eyes change as he turned and saw me. I gave Hurting Man a smile.
“Thanks for coming out,” he said.
“Glad to help.”
“I was just telling Nate, we’re canvassing the whole town. The campus is small—about four thousand students. The sheriff’s office has the boyfriend and the roommate in for questioning.”
“Her car?” I asked.
“It’s still in the apartment parking lot where she lives. No damage. We’re told she’d walked to the party.” Scott looked at the mountainside in front of us. “This is going to be hard searching.”
Indeed. The pocket-sized park was the only flat place around. The hills rose steeply behind and around it.
Nate touched Scott’s arm. “We’ll be fine. You take care of yourself.”
I could hear my dog’s tail banging against his crate. “I’d better let Luke out,” I said. “He’s ready to go.”
Scott drove off. As Luke watered the bushes, I tried calling Brooke. No answer. I left a voicemail.
When Luke finished sniffing the bushes, I put his vest on. Then we gathered around the back of Susan’s Explorer. She showed us the segment we were to search, a small creek valley that ran up the side of the mountain. “No one else has checked that.”
“How about the bloodhounds?” I asked. I knew the sheriff’s office had one, and so did the state police. There is no dog that can beat a bloodhound when it comes to tracking a specific smell. Their ability to distinguish one scent from another is unsurpassed.
But I’d put Luke up against any of them when it came to air-scenting—searching for any human in an area. He stood at my feet, looking up at me, tail wagging, ready to go.
Susan shook her head. “They used them starting at the apartment where the party was, the place Laney was last seen. But they didn’t go up here.”
“The hounds alert on anything?” Nate asked.
“One of them followed a scent to the curb and then lost it. They’re guessing Laney got into a car there.”
I hoped not. Too many ugly scenarios could follow that decision.
Nate looked up the mountain we were supposed to tackle. “Helmets would be a good thing,” he said. “A fall could result in a clunk on the head.”
I nodded. “I’ll get mine. C’mon, buddy,” I said to Luke, turning back toward the Jeep. His tail dropped, thinking he wasn’t going to get to search. “I just need to get something, then we’ll go.”
The word “go” made his tail wag again.
“Okay, we’re going to follow this creek up here to this outcropping. Then we’ll work our way back,” Nate said, pointing to the topo map.
Three minutes later, I said the magic word—“Seek!”—and Luke took off running, his joy spilling out as he swept back and forth through the woods searching for a scent.
The climb was hard going, even following the valley that little creek had carved. Trees towered above us, and more than once, I used a tree trunk to pull myself up the incline. Beneath my boots were rocks, running pine, mushrooms, and fungi. A couple of crows squawked at us, protesting our invasion, and once I heard the jungle-bird cry of a pileated woodpecker.
After twenty minutes, out of breath, my leg muscles shaking, I stopped. “This doesn’t make sense,” I said to Nate. “Who would come up here, much less drag a woman up?”
He nodded. “You’re right. It’s steeper than we thought. And rockier.” He looked above us. The mountain got even steeper. He lifted his radio to his ear. I called Luke back to me, sat down on a rock, and waited.
Nate finished on the radio and came over. “We’re gonna cross the creek and work our way back. I told Susan this is a no-go.”
So we crossed over the water, stepping on stones to keep our boots dry, and I sent Luke to seek again. I was watching him race off when Nate suddenly grabbed me and jerked me back about two feet.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
His arm around my waist kept me from falling. He pointed to a copperhead snake gliding off into the underbrush.
“He was ready to strike,” Nate said. “Sorry for scaring you.”
I shook my head, trying to release my tension. “I’m glad he didn’t get Luke.”
I watched the ground more carefully after that as we worked our way back to base. By the time we arrived, we’d shot sixty minutes of search time and a lot of energy.
“Not sure why they wanted us to search up there,” Nate said. His kindness kept his comment understated. I’m sure he was as frustrated as I was.
I got Luke some water and a jerky treat, then put him in his crate to rest. Nate sat down in the back of his Ta
hoe, staring at a map. I sat down beside him.
“Susan’s got another team about to go in over here,” he said, pointing to a section of the map. “But I think the most likely areas would be here and here.”
“Could be anywhere, though, couldn’t it? If he got her into a car?”
Nate folded up the map. “I’ll ask Susan if she’d mind if I go over to the search headquarters.”
“Why don’t I take Sprite back to the farm with me? She and Luke can relax until we need to go again.”
Nate nodded. “Great idea.”
He’d only been out of sight for about five minutes when a cruiser drove up. It was marked K-9 Unit, and I heard a roar of angry barking as the canine inside spotted or smelled Sprite. I quickly put her in my Jeep and closed the door.
The deputy who got out looked enough like a pit bull to raise my hackles. He ignored me and strode over to Susan. I couldn’t quite hear what they were talking about, but it was easy to feel the tension in their conversation. I decided I could not abandon her right then.
“Officer? I’m Jess, one of the SAR handlers. Is there a problem?” I quickly read his nametag (D. Foster) and stood so I was facing him, hands on my hips. I kept my expression friendly, but I wanted him to know I wasn’t intimidated.
“I’m just telling her you volunteers need to stick to the area you’re assigned. We determine the search assignments, not you.” He spit off to the side, then looked at Susan. “So I’ll let them know the assignment wasn’t completed.”
“Wait, are you talking about the area we searched this morning?” I said, my voice rising. The look he gave me combined disdain and disinterest. How he did that, I’ll never know. “Segment 30? Here?” I took the map from Susan’s hand and held it in front of him.
“Yeah.”
“My partner and I almost made it to the top, and determined it not only was not safe to continue, it was fruitless to do so.” I was on my toes. I hoped “fruitless” wasn’t too big a word for him.
“That’s not your decision.”
“Safety is my decision. It’s always SAR’s decision. Furthermore, whoever set that search location doesn’t know a whole lot about finding lost people.” Okay, I should have left that last part out. But this guy was getting to me.
“If y’all can’t do it, fine,” he said. “I’ll report that. But don’t tell us how to do our business.” He pronounced it “bidness,” and I almost laughed. “This is a law-enforcement operation. We’re in charge. You need to remember that.” Then Deputy D. Foster scanned my body from head to toe and back again.
In an instant, shame flooded me. I felt like he was raping me with his eyes. My fists clenched.
“I’ll tell ‘em you couldn’t finish.” Then he turned and walked back to his cruiser, and I was left standing there, feeling naked and ashamed, my mouth open, unable to retort.
38
Scott Cooper stood in the conference room of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office looking at a wall on which was posted everything they knew so far about the disappearance of Laney Collier. She lived in a dorm on campus. She had a boyfriend. She was last seen Friday night at an off-campus party at which the alcohol flowed freely. An art major, she had a reputation as a party girl, a free spirit who could always be counted on for a good time.
After she left the party, information got murky. She’d told her friends that she was spending the weekend with her boyfriend, who lived in an apartment across town. So when she left, around midnight, they assumed that’s where she’d gone.
Was she drunk? Scott had asked one of them. Everybody was drinking, the girl had responded. Now, staring at the wall, he wished that somebody, anybody, had looked out for Laney, had refused to let her leave alone, had protected her in that crucial moment.
Now, was she lying in the woods somewhere, staring up at the sky with sightless eyes?
Scott shook his head to dislodge those thoughts. He went back over in his mind what they were doing to find her.
The sheriff had called for volunteers, and hundreds of people were now searching sheds, woods, barns, garages, and other hidden locations for Laney. The state police bloodhound had tracked her scent out of the apartment, but then lost it.
They were interviewing everyone they could find who knew her—every resident of the dorm, people in her classes, folks who worked with her at the coffee shop where she had a part-time job—everybody.
There weren’t many security or traffic cameras in the area where she was last seen, but a video tech was already pouring over the data they’d recorded. Laney’s DNA, retrieved from a hairbrush secured from her dorm room, was being analyzed. Her credit cards and phone were being tracked live. Specialized agents were analyzing her social media and studying her cell phone calls and text messages.
Meanwhile, Scott was working the case backward from the evidence gathered from the other three cases, even though he wasn’t sure Laney’s was connected. So he had Dana, working from their Northern Virginia office, calling people who sold firewood in Jackson County. She was also calling mechanics who’d fixed radiators in the last year. He had Robert Hudson checking on the condition of Laney’s car and running down information on every sex offender, every felon, in the area.
Scott hadn’t revealed the details of the other murders to the local LEOs. He didn’t want a deputy’s cousin Jethro finding out about the whittling or the posing or the punched radiator in case cousin Jethro was the UNSUB. All they knew was that Scott was there to help them solve the disappearance of Laney Collier.
“Agent Cooper?”
The voice of the sheriff interrupted Scott’s thoughts. He turned to face Bill O’Boyle. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Laney’s parents are here. I told ‘em we’d brought the FBI in.”
That was a bit of a twist on reality, Scott thought. The state police had asked him to come aboard.
“They’d like to talk to you.”
“Sure,” Scott said. A feeling of dread washed over him, but he followed O’Boyle back to his office.
Tim and Rachel Collier sat in two leather chairs facing the desk in the sheriff’s small office. O’Boyle, apparently rattled by the presence of Laney’s parents, forgot there were no other chairs until they were in the room.
“No problem,” Scott said, stepping out to grab another seat. His chest tightened as he returned and settled into it. The mother, Rachel, had red-rimmed eyes and sat clutching a crumpled tissue in her hand. The father, Tim, held her other hand. His face looked hard as stone. Behind that face, Scott knew, lay a boiling cauldron of fear and anger and sorrow and regret. He had an instant flashback to two other devastated parents—his own.
Feeling sick, Scott began. “I’m Special Agent Scott Cooper,” he said. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through.”
“You don’t have a clue,” Tim said, bitterness edging his voice. “What are you doing to find our daughter?”
Scott deferred to the sheriff, in part to be diplomatic and in part to collect himself. The coffee he’d just had wasn’t sitting well with him. The tightness in his chest was creeping up into his shoulders and his neck.
He half listened while the sheriff outlined the search methodologies they were using. O’Boyle spoke slowly, almost casually. If he was doing that to keep Laney’s parents calm, his technique was backfiring.
Mrs. Collier sobbed softly, dabbing her nose with the crumbled tissue. Mr. Collier perched on the edge of his seat like a hawk waiting for the mouse to move.
Finally, Tim Collier had had enough. He stood up quickly. With his hands on his hips, Mr. Collier glared at O’Boyle. “I don’t think you could find your nose if you had a mirror.” He turned to Scott. “What’s the FBI doing that’ll get my daughter back? ’Cause this yahoo…” he didn’t finish his sentence.
Scott looked straight at Laney’s father. He saw the blaze in his eyes and rigidity of the tendons in his neck. He heard the anguish fueling the anger in his voice.
“Mr. Collier,” h
e said, trying to ignore the golf-ball-sized lump in his own throat, “I believe the sheriff and the other law enforcement officers are working hard to get Laney back.”
“She’s been gone since Friday!”
“But she wasn’t reported missing until last night.”
“That’s forty-eight hours!”
“Sir, I understand how frustrating this is.”
“You couldn’t possibly.”
Anger flashed through Scott. He paused to collect himself. “Sir, the FBI is helping with evidence analysis, manpower, strategies, and in many other ways. I assure you, sir, we all want to get your daughter safely home.” His neck felt frozen, the muscles were so tight. He turned toward Mrs. Collier.
“Ma’am, did you notice any changes in Laney’s behavior lately? Either being really happy, or really sad, or secretive?”
Rachel Collier shook her head. “She was happy about going back to school. We’re a conservative family, and well, sometimes our rules don’t match what she wants to do.”
“Yeah,” Tim Collier added, “like staying over with that boyfriend. Have you talked to him? What’s he got to say? Why wasn’t he with her?”
Mrs. Collier touched her husband’s arm.
“Yes, sir,” Sheriff O’Boyle said, “we ran him through the wringer, we did. He had to work that night. Missed the party. Doesn’t have a clue where she is.”
She’d told a friend she was going to spend the weekend with him, Scott thought. So why didn’t the boyfriend report her missing? Or call her friends to find out where she was?
He made a mental note to ask about that once the parents had left.
The tension had sucked all the air out of the room. If Scott had any excuse to leave, he would—in a heartbeat—but he knew he had to press through it. “Mr. and Mrs. Collier, here’s what I suggest. Don’t lose hope. I understand the sheriff arranged lodging for you. So stay together. Keep your phones charged. I promise you, we will not give up until we find Laney.”
Tim Collier’s face turned red. “If you think I’m going to hang out in some motel room while my daughter is missing, you’re crazy.” He took his wife’s hand and almost pulled her to her feet. “I’m going to find my girl.” He moved to the door. “And just so you know, I’m carrying.” And with that, Tim Collier stormed out.
All That I Dread Page 20