Scott stood up, his pulse pounding in his temples. He’d investigated other cases involving missing young women, but this was the first time he’d been in a small room face-to-face with the parents of one. It was like watching a terrifying remake of his teenage years.
As he tried to regroup, he realized the sheriff was talking to him. “… we’ll find out if he has a concealed carry permit, and if he don’t—”
Scott raised his hand. “Don’t fight that battle yet.” He ran his head over his brow. “I need to check on something, and then I want to meet with you and your lead detective.” He checked his watch. “Say, fifteen minutes.”
39
I was still messed up when Nate met me at the barn about an hour later. “How’d you do?” I asked, looking up from grooming Luke. He’d gotten a few briars in the woods, but I needed the rhythmic stroking as much as he did to calm me down. “How’s Scott?”
“Never did see him.”
“What?”
“They wouldn’t let me in. I ain’t law enforcement. What’s more, they wouldn’t even confirm Scott was there. I tried to leave him a message.”
Nate’s eyes flicked down to Luke, who had started licking my neck like crazy. I felt a flush of embarrassment as Nate read the signs of my emotional distress in my dog. I straightened my back. “So did you call him?”
“Called. Texted. He’s busy.” His eyes focused on mine. “So what’s going on?”
There was no point in hiding. I told him about Deputy D. Foster and his attitude. I got more than a little dramatic.
Nate shook his head. “Sorry you and Susan had to deal with that.” He looked at me with those blue eyes. “Folks in these small towns, they don’t know how to handle stuff like this. They’re in over their heads, and to them, we’re just the dog people. Volunteers. Hardly to be trusted.”
“If they only knew,” I sputtered, “what it takes.”
“I heard on the radio they got the whole town searching now. Hundreds of people— college kids, hunters, moms. They’re all out in the woods looking for this girl.” Nate made a clicking sound with his mouth. “The deputies got no clue how to handle it.”
I tossed my head. The truth is, I’d been on the other side as a law enforcement officer. I’d kept my cards close to my chest, viewed volunteers (and sometimes other officers) with suspicion, and limited what I said, even to family.
The word “family” triggered a thought. I pulled out my phone and checked. Still no message from Brooke. I texted her. Call me, please. I’m in your area.
“What are we doing now?” Nate said, breaking my chain of thought.
“Kelly and Ron are searching Segment 28.” I checked my watch. “They should be about halfway through.”
“Segment 28.” Nate spread the topographic map out over the hood of his Tahoe and traced the marked segment with his finger. “Man, that looks like another rough area.”
“Why aren’t they using drones in those places?” I asked.
“Good question.”
Nate took out a Virginia road map and laid it over the other one. As we were discussing better search areas, he got a call. Scott.
While Nate talked to Scott, I tried Brooke again. Still no answer. Was she avoiding me? Then I had another thought. Was she out searching?
I didn’t like that idea at all. Instantly, images of the dead young women ran through my mind.
I sat down on a straw bale. Luke nuzzled me, shoving his nose under my hand until I petted him. I rubbed behind his ears, on his neck, and stroked him between his eyes. Soon, he flopped down, his head resting on my foot.
Nate clicked his phone off and walked back to me. “That was Scott.”
“I figured.”
“I told him we were being asked to search areas that weren’t safe and made no sense.” Nate sat down in one of the camp chairs we’d brought. “He said he’d talk to the sheriff.”
“Did you tell him about Deputy Foster?”
“Sure. Thing is, Scott’s limited too. They haven’t officially linked this case with the others, so he’s here on an advisory basis. He’s not in charge.”
“And the locals are territorial.”
“Exactly.” Nate stroked his beard, his eyes fixed on the floor of the barn. Then he looked up at me. “Something’s going on with Scott.”
I absorbed that statement for a minute. “What makes you say that?”
“Heard it in his voice. Felt it as he was talking.”
Before I could pursue that further, Susan called on the radio. “Nate, we need some help.” Her voice carried a bit of panic.
“What’s going on?”
“Kelly fell. She’s hurt.”
“We’re on the way.”
40
After Scott called Nate, he grabbed a cup of coffee and met the sheriff and his chief detective, Grady Hunsaker, in the conference room.
He’d asked Tom, the state police investigator who had worked with him on the Sandy Smith case, to come in as well, but he was busy. As he sat down with the sheriff and Hunsaker, Scott fought to maintain his cool, to keep his jaw loose, and his tone moderated, to belie the anger and frustration that gripped him. He had to stay diplomatic, or the locals would shut down.
“So what do we have for a timeline for Laney on Friday night.”
Detective Hunsaker went through the basics. “She was last seen about midnight.”
“No text messages after that? Social media posts?”
Hunsaker shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Have we done a door-to-door of the apartment building, of people who live on that street?”
“Yes, sir. Did that first thing.”
“You should do it again.” Scott scratched his jaw. “Cab drivers—has anyone checked cab companies to see if any of them picked her up, or even saw her that night?”
“Ain’t but one in town. Caters mostly to old folks and the college kids with no car.”
“We need to check with them. How about Uber or Lyft? Do you have that here?”
The sheriff and Hunsaker exchanged looks. “We got a few people do that. Though why you’d get in a car with a stranger is beyond me.”
“Does the college have a safe-ride program? Or a safe-student plan?”
“Don’t know.”
“That’d be good to check on.” Scott went over some other ideas he’d had. “Any calls in the last couple of years about a guy acting aggressively toward women, approaching them in bars, that kind of thing?”
“You know how college kids are. Things going on all the time. Mostly, it’s women coming on to these guys, dressing the way they do, and then wondering why they’re hittin’ on ‘em.”
Scott could feel he was losing patience. “Okay, look. Here’s what I suggest … we need the most detailed timeline we can get of Laney’s last evening, I mean, the evening she was last seen.” He thought again. “Make it the last day. Every phone call, every text, every Tweet or whatever else we can get. Instagram posts. Whatever. My tech people are working on that, but it all needs to be merged with what you’ve gotten from interviews.
“Then we want a detailed search of the area. I can bring the dog team. They might pick up on something of hers, a purse, a sweater, something like that. Anything we might be able to get DNA off of. We’ll match that with what’s on her hairbrush. We need to interview that taxi cab company, Uber, Lyft, and reinterview everyone at the party.”
The sheriff inhaled deeply. “You must think we got five hunnerd deputies. We got twelve, Agent Cooper. Twelve. And some of ‘em gotta sleep now and then.”
“Okay, look, I can get you more help. But we need to do this. Every hour we don’t make progress, her chances of survival get slimmer and slimmer.” He stood up. “Now, I want to interview the boyfriend myself. If that’s okay.”
Fifteen minutes later Scott was sitting in an interview room, along with Detective Hunsaker, across the table from Jared Lawson, Laney’s boyfriend. The kid had been at work, but h
is boss readily let him leave. He’d been pretty useless anyway, distraught over his missing girlfriend.
“Jared, I want to remind you of your Miranda rights.” He pushed a form over to the young man. “You have the right to remain silent, the right to a lawyer …”
“Yes, sir. I understand all that. I got nothing to hide.” Tall with curly dark hair, he looked strong, and Scott figured most young women would find him good-looking. Jared glanced at the form. “You want me to sign this?”
“Yes, after you’ve read it.”
“No problem,” Jared said, putting his signature on the line and passing the form back. “I just want Laney back safe.”
“You from around here, Jared?” Scott asked. He always liked to get a read on the people he was interviewing before he got to the hard questions.
“Yes, sir, born and raised here.”
“You go to the college?”
“On a basketball scholarship.”
“But you still have to work.”
“Yes, sir. My mom, she’s real sick and they got no insurance. So my scholarship pays for school, and my job, it’s to help out my folks.”
“What are you studying?” Scott heard Hunsaker, sitting to his left, shift in his chair.
Jared didn’t hesitate. “I plan to be a PE teacher. Hope to coach one day. That’s my goal. That and have a family.”
Scott nodded and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Jared, when did you last see Laney?”
“Thursday, sir. We had lunch at the college cafeteria.”
“Did she seem normal to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing off?”
“No, sir.”
“Had she talked about anything strange happening lately—some guy she didn’t know approaching her, some car trouble, some weird interaction with a stranger?”
Jared leaned back in his seat. He took a deep breath. “They asked me that before, and I’ve thought about it. I don’t remember her saying anything about a guy like that.” Tears came to the young man’s eyes.
Scott looked straight at that kid, reading his face. The kid looked right back at him. “When’s the last time you had a text from her?”
“8:36 on Friday.” Jared didn’t have to look at his phone. “She texted me that she was at the party, having a good time, and she’d see me later.”
“So what was the plan?”
“She was supposed to meet me at my apartment around midnight.”
“How would she get there?”
“She could walk from the party to where her car was parked. Then she was supposed to drive over.”
“Did Laney drink a lot?”
Jared nodded, looking down toward the table. “I got upset with her about that. But she said,” his voice choked, “she said she was just having fun.”
After a few more questions, every fiber in Scott’s body told him Jared had nothing to do with Laney’s disappearance. “Jared, when Laney didn’t show up like you expected, why didn’t you report it?”
“To who? Her parents hate me. And it didn’t seem like I should tell the police, I mean, that could get embarrassing.”
“Why? Why would that be embarrassing? Jared, where did you figure Laney was?” he asked softly.
Tears spilled out of the young man’s eyes. “I figured she was with another guy.”
“Voluntarily?”
“Yes, sir.” Jared shook his head. “Laney’s … well … she’s a party girl, and sometimes…” He let his voice trail off.
“Sometimes, what?”
Jared took a deep breath. “She thinks I’m boring. So I figured she met somebody at the party and just took off with him.”
Scott nodded.
“It’s happened before, so, I didn’t call the police. I figured she’d show up. We’d have our usual fight. Then we’d get back together.”
“I understand. Thanks, Jared, for talking to us.” Scott rose and shook the kid’s hand.
“Well that was a sheer waste of time,” Hunsaker said, after he left.
“Think so?”
“I know so.”
Scott watched the detective leave. He’d just learned that Laney was the more outgoing and stronger person in her relationship with Jared. He was more dependent. She was a party girl prone to risk taking. And it wouldn’t surprise Scott a bit if she had gotten into some dude’s car.
41
Susan filled Nate and me in on the details when we got there. Kelly had slipped and fallen while crossing a rock face. She was injured. Her dog, a border collie named Pip, was missing. And her walker, Ron, didn’t know what to do.
“Where are they?” Nate asked.
Susan read off the coordinates and then pointed to a spot on the topographic map. “I think this is it.” She looked at Nate. “Should I call 911?”
“Not yet. Let me talk to Ron.” He walked away, his radio at his ear. When he came back, his face was intense. He looked at me. “Will you go with me?”
“Of course.”
“Does Pip like Luke?”
“Yes. They play.”
“Okay, let’s take him and see if she’ll come to him.”
It took us about ten minutes to get packed and ready to go. We were carrying an emergency stretcher, first-aid supplies, and Nate’s climbing gear in addition to our usual stuff. I put extra water bottles in a pack on Luke’s back.
After a brutal half-hour climb up a wet, slippery trail, my legs were shaking, and I was out of breath. When we finally reached the rock face where Ron waited, I put Luke on a down-stay until we could scope out the situation.
I looked around. The granite outcropping they’d tried to cross was wet and sloped down. Irritation rose in me. I could see how Kelly fell. We should never have been sent up that trail.
Kelly was about twelve or fifteen feet down a steep slope. Nate was talking to her, figuring out what to do.
“I could safely make it down there,” I said, suddenly. I wanted to help, wanted to do more than just stand there. And it was just a slope … it wasn’t like I was volunteering to jump off a cliff.
“Going down ain’t the problem,” Nate said.
“I know! But I’m lighter than you.”
“But Nate’s got the EMT cert,” Ron said. He was an older guy, around fifty, with gray hair and a grizzled beard. He’d picked up SAR later in life, and I could tell he was frustrated.
“It better be me,” Nate said. “Let’s rig it up.”
Ten minutes later he had his ropes, carabiners, and anchors set. He got into his climbing harness. It seemed a lot of trouble for twelve feet, but when I saw how loose the rock was, when I saw Nate slip even with all that gear, I was glad he was roped up. He knew what he was doing. Nate climbed down to where he could assess Kelly’s injuries.
While he did that, I took Luke and went looking for Pip. “Where’s Pip?” I said to my dog. “Go find Pip.” Would he understand that, I wondered?
We had no luck at first, but then I decided to use the emergency whistle. A lot of the dogs were trained to respond to that. Maybe Pip was one of them.
I heard Nate on the radio, talking to Susan. “She’s got signs of a concussion, and I think her ankle’s broke. Ron and Jess can help me get her back on the trail, then we’ll head back.”
That sounded easy, but it wasn’t. Nate put an Aircast on Kelly’s ankle. Using this cool emergency stretcher that folded into a neat, portable package, he set it up, helped her lie down on it, and roped her in. Then he rigged the anchored climbing rope to it. While he supported the bottom, Ron and I pulled her up to the trail. Her first words to me were, “Where’s Pip?”
“We’ll find her,” I said. I unhooked the rope from the stretcher and threw it back down to Nate. Then I helped Kelly get more comfortable.
I straightened up just in time to see Ron give Nate a hand up. And then I saw Ron slip and Nate fall, and my heart leaped out of my chest.
“Nate!” I raced over and looked down. Na
te hadn’t fallen far, but when he looked up at me, I saw a bloody abrasion on the side of his face. “How can I help?”
“Check the rope and get out of my way.”
“It’s secure.”
Nate pulled himself back up. “I shoulda done that in the first place. How’s Kelly?”
“She’s fine.”
He looked at Ron. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry, I slipped.”
Nate nodded. I could tell he was annoyed.
“Let me fix your abrasion,” I said to him.
“I want to get her down.”
“I know. It’ll only take a minute.” I grabbed some antiseptic wipes from Nate’s kit and cleaned his wound. I felt bad when he winced, but I knew it was for the best. I could tell it was going to continue to seep blood for a while.
“All right, let’s go,” he said when I was not quite done. “Ron, you okay to carry the bottom of the stretcher?”
“Sure.”
Nate looked at me. “You and me, we’ll take the top.” He called Susan on the radio. “It’ll take us twenty to thirty minutes to get down. Have an ambulance waiting.”
Kelly’s hand was on her brow, her face twisted in pain. Nate tucked a blanket around her. “I don’t want to leave without my dog!” she said.
“Don’t you be worrying about the dog. We’ll find her,” Nate said. “Jess is gonna keep blowing the whistle.” He glanced at me. “She’ll show up.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I stuck that whistle in my mouth before I picked up the stretcher, and I blew it. I kept doing that all the way down that slippery, treacherous hill. Luke seemed to understand his job was to follow us, and he did that well, until about twenty minutes into our descent. Then, he took off.
I started to call him back, but Nate said, “Let him be.” He’d switched places with Ron, who was having trouble supporting the downhill weight on his own as well as picking the best way down. Twice he’d slipped, and we almost dropped Kelly.
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