by Rick Mofina
Pulling out of Turly’s, driving deeper into the night and the Rocky Mountains, she realized that she was heading into a significant case. One that was going to draw plenty of attention: a mother and father grappling with their fears for their lost daughter while the FBI investigates the suspicion that one, or both of them, killed her.
TEN
FBI Special Agent Frank Zander watched the icon on his laptop computer indicate his fax had gone through. He disconnected the computer line from the plane’s air phone. Repositioning himself in his seat, he subtly inventoried his immediate area. The jet was sprinkled with passengers. Zander was alone in his section, the row of seats to himself to stretch out. Still, that Montana Agent was right. He was guilty of risking security.
Who was she anyway? This Tracy Bowman from, what the hell was it, Internet GFP in Missoula? So she scored high on course work and was near the scene. That was justification for inflicting her on him? He had no time for training a junior agent. Maybe she was good. Maybe she was somebody’s favor. Zander shook his head. Nobody had talked to him that way. He did not need her… or any women in his life, for that matter.
He shut down his computer, set it aside, switched off the overhead reading lights and peered out the window at the night. He had digested everything they had so far on this case and formulated a plan on how he would go at it. Before he landed in Montana, he would go over everything once more and fine-tune his strategy. For now, he should try to get some sleep. Thirty-five thousand feet below, he saw the lights of cities and towns flowing by. He sometimes felt he lived in jet planes. With this Montana case, he will have investigated in all fifty states. What an achievement to go with his broken marriages. Some people get gold watches, a nice pen. What did he have? A collection of court papers calling him the defendant.
His first wife was Denise, the nurse at George Washington. They were young, sexually addicted to each other but incompatible as spouses. After three years, it ended as passionately as it began, with dishes smashed, screaming, tears, door-slamming and a call from her lawyer. Last he had heard, Denise had moved to London, married a doctor, had a baby girl.
Meredith, his second wife, ended things quietly six months ago with an e-mail. Error-free, grammatically correct, as surgically effective as a scalpel to the heart. That was her style. Zander could just imagine her calendar that day, certain it went something like: White House Counsel meet, book, spa, New York trip, Ritz for one hour of illicit sex with D.A. lawyer in Manhattan, alert husband it is over, pick up gown for Lincoln Center gala. They lasted six years until she typed the words, “As of this date, I am seeking a divorce.” Typical of Washington’s cover-your-ass bureaucracy. “As of this date.” Nice one, Meredith. Near the end, when she booked the sessions with the counselor for them, she never made the appointments. Twice, he had sat alone in the waiting room of the counselor’s office in Alexandria, leafing through the same outdated cope of People magazine. Looking out at the Potomac and the capital, realizing her no-shows were intended to humiliate him. A metaphor for her middle finger.
He remembered that day he received her marriage-ending e-mail, he typed back five words.
“I know you’re fucking Pearson.”
She responded, “Good.”
She loved what he loathed: the power, the politics, the parties, the sycophants, the networking. It actually turned her on. He was a federal cop who dreamed about escaping his life inside the Beltway to a place with real people, who looked you in the eye and meant what they said. A place like Montana or Idaho. Lots of antigovernment sentiment there. I’d fit right in, he laughed to himself. But for now, he’d settle for his small rented bungalow on a dead end street shaded by forest in College Park, near the university. Thank God, no kids. Zander then realized he was forty-three, and it saddened him.
For the past twenty years of his life, the only marriage that had worked for him was the one between him and his job. Zander had always been a front-line agent. He had developed a reputation for being a stubborn, thorough, SOB investigator, one of the Bureau’s best. He missed nothing. It was common for him to be assigned to the FBI’s top teams on major files, like Oklahoma City, Lockerbie, the World Trade Center. He joined Bureau teams assisting other police agencies, or helping salvage a messed up case. His expertise grew out of his early successes in crimes against children: parental kidnappings, exploitation, stranger abductions. Zander took those cases personally. He was the champion of the victim and virtually everyone else, living or dead, was a suspect in his eyes until he seized the truth by the throat and presented the file for prosecution.
Whenever his name came up--and it always did whenever agents sat around over a beer--the younger ones would inevitably ask: Anybody work with Frank Zander? What’s his story? I hear that guy is a cold machine, a guilt detector. He does not miss. Was he born that way or constructed in a secret basement lab in the Hoover Building? Case-hardened agents, those who knew, would usually recount a variation of the legend that circulated among the tribal camps of the FBI across the country.
Francis Miller Zander was a rookie working a junior role for the Bureau assisting locals in Georgia. A young mother of two small boys, who lived in a rural trailer park, supporting her family as a hairdresser, reported her older son missing. She told police she suspected her abusive ex-husband, with the help of one of his ex-con friends, took the boy with him to Florida, violating a custody order. The mother’s story held up because the abusive ex had done time and had been seen in the area arguing with her. The locals and supporting lead agent went with it, letting their guard down, concentrating on the information she provided. Soon the locals and the Bureau and Florida police were all over the ex.
But Zander had a bad feeling about the mother from the start. He noticed empty whiskey bottles in her trash, saw a variety of medication in her medicine cabinet. He also noticed, under the seat of the mother’s car, a crumpled toll receipt for the Florida Turnpike dated the day she said her boy vanished. Zander was a rookie; the local old boys knew the ex, a cop-hater who gave off the vibe that he would have done anything “to hurt that bitch who put him in jail.”
They found the little boy’s body in a Florida swamp near the apartment complex where the ex-con lived. Days later, while the full force of the investigation remained focused on the ex, the mother vanished with the younger boy, who was four.
They found the mother and the four-year-old in their van at an I-75 rest stop between Lexington and Cincinnati. She had tied a plastic bag over her son’s head and had overdosed herself on pills from six different prescriptions.
Within fourteen months of that case, every cop connected to it had resigned from police work, unable to deal with the fact a child was murdered right under their noses. The lead FBI agent took his own life. He died in a single-vehicle traffic fatality. Cops knew how guys did it so their families still got the insurance. Zander nearly resigned. He could not forgive himself for also buying the mother’s story, for not speaking up, for not insisting they go harder on the mother.
He vowed from that point on never to fear to get in someone’s face, to never hold back. He would never apologize and would follow every gut instinct no matter whose feelings he hurt. He vowed to assume that everyone was hiding something, that no one told the truth at first, and to never, ever lose sight of the reason why he had to be that way. To remind himself, Zander would go to a little cemetery outside a small Georgia town every year or so, and look at the headstone under a peach tree.
Two very good reasons were buried there.
The jet began its descent to Salt Lake City. Zander fired up his laptop and opened his file on the Baker family. This time he reviewed photographs of them, the recent ones Emily Baker had given to the rangers.
He studied the girl’s face. Sun in her eyes. Hugging her Beagle. Smiling in the majestic Rockies against a blue sky. A pretty California kid. Her name was Paige Baker. She had her mother’s eyes.
Emily Baker was thirty-five. Attractive. A photog
rapher. Looked energetic. Zander gently covered her smile with his finger, concentrating on her eyes. They betrayed something unsettled about her. Something sad.
Whatever it is, Emily, you are going to tell me.
Zander’s eyes then met those of Doug Baker. The teacher. The former U.S. Marine sergeant. The high school teacher. Football coach. Positions of authority. Positions of control.
Did you lose control, Doug? How did you hurt your hand? What was going on in the time before your daughter had vanished?
How long had she been gone now? Zander checked the file. Made his best estimate. Thirty-one hours. Zander set a special timer on his Swiss watch, adjusting it to tell him at a glance how many hours had passed since Paige Baker disappeared into the Rocky Mountains. They had to move fast on this one. He was going to have to push it. Smart and hard. He closed his laptop. Soon he would learn the truth about Doug and Emily: every fear, every heartbreak, every secret. If the Bakers were hiding something, he would find out.
He always did.
ELEVEN
The sun was setting when Reed stopped his rented Taurus as instructed by the Montana Highway Patrol officer at the West Gate of Glacier National Park.
“Who you with?”
“The San Francisco Star.”
The officer directed him to where the rangers had set up the command center. It was busy with people and vehicles coming and going. Reed saw TV-news satellite trucks from Spokane, another from Great Falls. A ranger was explaining something to news crews while handing out sheets of paper. It was an updated press release on the search for Paige Baker and an advisory explaining how federal authorities had designated the airspace over Grizzly Tooth restricted. No TV or still news cameras could fly over the area. It was dangerous to aerial search operations. This angered the networks who were arguing about establishing elevation levels for the press, or at least pool access.
“We’ll sort it out in the morning. We’ll discuss reviewing the restriction with the park superintendent and the incident commander,” the ranger told the TV people. For that evening, no press could access the area, period. They could drive to the trailhead, which was nearly ninety minutes away by way of Going-to-the-Sun road, then the Icefields Highway. But all information would be coordinated from the community center.
“Where are the parents?” a TV crew member asked. “Can you bring them here now?”
“They’re deep in the trail at the command post. At this point, the only way in and out is by chopper, really. We’ll look into the request.”
Aware his deadline was ticking, Reed needed to find better data. He strolled around the area of small and large buildings. At the rear of one, he found a young ranger talking on his radio. Reed kept a respectful distance until he was finished, then approached him.
The ranger was in his early twenties, built like a college defensive tackle. A blond brush cut, ruddy tanned face. From what Reed overheard, he was one of the first searchers to the family’s campsite. He had just returned to gather more maps and radios before heading back to resume searching at dawn. Sensing the guy was pumped from the search, Reed took advantage, drawing him into a quick conversation.
“Sorry, they sent me to wait for somebody over here.”
“Who are you looking for, I can--”
Reed cut him off. “They say the parents are having a rough time?”
“Yeah.” The ranger nodded. “They’re pretty shook up. She ran off yesterday afternoon. Looks like she was chasing her dog. Rained last night, washing away her trail. It’s been well over twenty-four hours. I don’t get it. Why did her parents take her there? That region is for advanced hikers, experienced hikers.”
“I guess it doesn’t look good.”
“Not good at all. Elevations are high. The temperature drops drastically. We could get snow. There are bears up that way who feed in that sector. Between you and me, if we don’t find a trace of her soon, some kind of sign, we’re not looking for a lost kid, we’re looking for a dead one.”
“Who else we got helping?”
“The FBI’s got jurisdiction. Nobody really knows what they’re doing--” The young ranger stopped himself. “Who did you say you’re with? You’re with SAR, right? I’m a seasonal. Was at Yellowstone last year. I just finished some rescue training on Grizzly Tooth a few weeks back--”
“Ronnie!” Somebody from inside called the ranger, who pointed a finger down at Reed. “You better not be a reporter, pal.” Then he shouted: “Coming!” Then back to Reed as they parted. “You’re with SAR, right?”
Reed waved but did not answer.
Back near the satellite news trucks, one of the rangers was standing in a halo of white light, a small microphone clipped to his shirt, an earphone inserted in his left ear as he talked to a camera, summarizing the search for Paige Baker. He said nothing about what Reed had learned from the young searcher. As the ranger wrapped up, Reed overheard a crew member saying that the feed had gone smoothly to CNN. When the TV interview ended, Reed, along with several arriving reporters, talked to the ranger.
The story was skyrocketing, Reed thought later, making notes from the on-record interview with the ranger who was on TV, mixing in details from his conversation with the searcher and the press release.
He tried his cell phone, getting through to the Star’s night desk, coming up on first-edition deadline. Alice Buchanan, a senior copy-editor, took his material. He could hear her keyboard clicking rapidly as he read to her from his notebook.
“Things look pretty dire for our little San Francisco girl, don’t they, Tom?” Buchanan said when Reed finished.
“Yeah. Very grave.”
“Your stuff will likely top Molly’s for front. She’s on the phone and asked me to tell you to check your e-mail in the morning. She has stuff for you. Says it will all be there.”
“Got it. Thanks, Alyce.”
Reed drove to the Sunshine Motel outside Kalispell, where he had reserved a room. He had a late supper of nachos and a ginger ale at the sports bar while watching the Mariners game on the big-screen TV. He reflected on Ann and how lucky he was to have her and Zach. Wondering, for an intense moment, where things could have gone had he taken Molly up on her offer. He pushed the empty nachos plate aside, pulled out his cell phone, and made a short call home to say good night to Ann and Zach. Then he called the rangers while watching the game.
“Command center, Wilcox.”
“Tom Reed, San Francisco Star. Any developments in the search?”
“None. Things have tapered off for the night. Operations will resume at first light with more personnel.”
Reed went to his room, settling into his comfortable bed, thinking of what it must be like for a ten-year-old girl lost in the Rockies with nothing but the night, the cold, the dog. Nothing for her hunger to feed on but her fear. Jesus. Reed shuddered under his blankets.
Only one thing could be worse.
Daddy’s got a hurt hand.
Reed tried to imagine the terror Paige Baker would have felt in the final seconds, knowing what her father was going to do…Reed drew on images of his son, Zach, the horror in his boy’s little eyes when he exploded on him during the dark days, his drinking days. Back when he had lost himself in an investigative series on the murder of a two-year-old girl who was abducted and whose body was found in a garbage bag in Golden Gate Park…Christ.
The picture of Paige Baker smiling in the mountains. Would it haunt him like the others he had written about? Was she alive? What the hell happened out there? Maybe Sydowski would tell him. He had to find him.
TWELVE
The pilot of the idling FBI helicopter at West Glacier signaled to Zander and Bowman that it was clear to board.
They emptied the remainder of their coffees on the ground, tossed their paper cups in the trash, and trotted to the pad, crouching against the noise and pulsating air currents that whip-snapped their jackets. They buckled in with Zander next to the pilot. He lifted off without wasting a second as m
orning broke.
It had now been some thirty-eight hours since Paige Baker vanished in the backcountry.
“The command post’s at Grizzly Tooth,” the pilot said. “Should have you there in twenty-five minutes. A lot of updrafts with that range. Ride could get rough.”
Zander nodded.
Behind those classic FBI aviator sunglasses, with the early light in his face, Zander cut an attractive but icy all-American profile, Bowman thought as they swept over the Rockies. He was stone-cold, all business.
It was evident when she picked him up here a few hours ago at Kalispell and they made their way to her Blazer and the motel. He was wearing a sport coat, no tie. About six one, 180, with a solid, firm build. Deep-set blue eyes, square-jawed, dark hair. No smile. The instant she saw him she felt self-conscious about the way she had bitched at him over the phone. Zander stared into the night, checking the luminescent face of his watch, saying nothing as they came to the motel. Bowman saw three TV-news satellite trucks parked and felt the magnitude, the immensity of this case building. Was she ready for this? She wanted to call Mark. It was too late. She took a few deep breaths and forced herself to calm down and relax.
She thought of Paige out there in the night.
Alone. Lost. Dead?
That morning, during their predawn drive from the motel to the chopper, Zander told Bowman of their objectives, talking almost in point form. Confident. Authoritative. Cold. He knew what he was doing.
“Everything is confidential. This is the FBI’s file and I am the case agent. Publicly, we are assisting the National Park Service in a missing person’s case. Operationally, we are conducting an investigation on the assumption foul play is involved. Only the primary investigators will know this, those from NPS and the Inspector from SFPD. It is a small JTF. Our job is to eliminate foul play here, or establish the foundation for prosecuting a case. We are not here to make friends with Mom and Dad. With a situation like this, you only get one shot. It is critical you start the process as quickly as possible. This is going to require careful work, knowing when and how to push and when to back off. Got it?”