Cold Fear

by Rick Mofina

  “Excuse me, Officer, can you point the way to San Francisco?”

  Inspector Walt Sydowski’s eyes widened slightly at seeing Reed.

  “And it started out being a good morning.”

  “I am so happy to see you too, Walter. It’s been how long?”

  “Not long enough, Reed. Go away.”

  Reed planted himself toe to toe with Sydowski, who looked around to ensure they were not drawing anyone’s attention.

  “Walt, I am not leaving until you help me with the obvious.”

  “Boychik, have I not taught you anything? You should be home with your family, counting your blessings,” Sydowski went back to his clipboard.

  “Walter,” Reed dropped his voice. “What is the best homicide cop with the SFPD doing here?”

  Sydowski looked up to the peaks, blinking, remembering what happened the last time Reed tried this dance with him.

  “I got nothing to say to you, Reed.”

  “There’s more going on here than a search for a child lost in the woods, right, Walt?”

  A low, distant thunder rumbled. A helicopter, one returning from the command post, was approaching.

  “I have to go, Reed.”

  FOURTEEN

  The cutlery on the table rattled as a helicopter passed over the crowded Eagle’s Nest Restaurant, a log cabin in central Glacier National Park. It was filled with the aroma of bacon and the murmur of customers hunched over coffee, talking about the activity out there.

  “What do you think is going on, Dad?” Twelve-year-old Joey Ropa looked out the window.

  “Guys at the counter said it was a search for somebody lost in the backcountry,” Joey’s mother, Lori, said.

  Her husband Bobby’s attention was outside in the parking lot, on the arrival of two park ranger trucks and a Montana Highway Patrol four-by-four. Their waitress arrived, taking their orders, chatting.

  “So are you guys from Brooklyn? I love your accents.”

  “You know what’s going on outside?” Bobby said.

  “A mountain rescue, or something. I’ll get a newspaper for you.”

  After collecting the menus, she left.

  “Why you pumping her, Bobby? We’re on vacation.” Lori pulled postcards from her bag, spreading them out.

  Bobby steepled his fingers, mulling something eating at him from the other day when they were coming out of Grizzly Tooth. Something unsettling. Ah, maybe it was nothing. Forget about it. Why get in a knot over it? He looked around the restaurant--a great place, log cabin motif. Cedar floors and tables. Rustic. The fragrance of the forest, the frying bacon. He loved it.

  This trip was a celebration of sorts for his promotion and Lori getting a raise as a manager with the Port Authority. They were thinking of moving to Glen Ridge, or buying a cabin. He should be thinking in that direction, not on something from the other day on their trail. He said little when the food came. He watched the parking lot, the increasing activity with the rangers.

  “What is it, Bobby?” Lori knew. “What is your quandary?”

  “I should have said something.”

  “About what?”

  “The other day.”

  “What? The other day? A few details would help here.”

  “With that family the other day on Grizzly Tooth.”

  “Would you drop that? You are not working.”

  “Something was not right with them.”

  Another helicopter passed overhead.

  “I should have said something.”

  “Bobby, this is crazy. You’re upset because you missed a chance to what, fight with the guy? Tell him off?”

  “No, Lori, it’s not like that at all.”

  “What then?”

  “Look around. The helicopters. The search.” He left their table and approached a ranger at the cash register.

  “Excuse me,” Bobby said. “I understand there’s a search.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young ranger was all friendly. “A little ten-year-old girl wandered away from her campsite and is lost.”

  “What trail?”

  “Grizzly Tooth. Real deep in there near the border.”

  “That so. We were there two days ago. When was this reported?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Seems that dad double-timed it out of there to alert us. Sir, you have to excuse me. We’ve got a lot on the go.”

  Bobby returned to his table.

  “What happened, Dad? Is it that girl we saw the other day?”

  Bobby looked at his son. Tenderly. “Could be, Joe.”

  Another helicopter, or maybe the same one, pounded overhead.

  “Dad?” Joey said. “Can’t you do something? You’re a cop.”

  Bobby had just made detective first grade with the NYPD. The guys in his detective squad respected Bobby Ropa for his superior eye for detail. Or so they said, following a shift and several beers at Popeye’s Bar on Flatbush Avenue. Now, he sat here, hands covering his face. Eyes blinking. Thinking. Had he dropped the ball on something? He knew why he was so unsettled. It was not that they happened on a family having a blowout in public. You see that in stores, restaurants, supermarkets--stress spots--but that it was here, in such a serene setting.

  And that it was so disturbingly intense.

  “Maybe you will feel better if you talked to somebody.”

  “Here you go,” the waitress set that day’s Daily Interlake near Bobby’s plate. “This is the cook’s copy. More coffee?”

  Paige Baker’s pretty face stared at Bobby. When he finished reading the article, he looked for the Montana Highway Patrol vehicle in the parking lot.

  It was gone.

  “Bobby, what is it?” Lori asked.

  “Hurry up and finish,” he said. “I’ve got to find out who is in charge of this case.” Then he flagged the waitress. “Excuse me, miss, is there a phone and park directory I could use?”

  FIFTEEN

  Community Building #215, originally a school house built in 1923, is a green frame hall found among the government compound buildings in the shade of lodgepole pine at Glacier National Park’s headquarters.

  Used primarily for fire-rescue exercises, staff meetings and social functions, it was now the command center in the search for Paige Baker.

  The wooden walls of its large meeting room were papered with huge, detailed maps of the park, dotted with colored locator pins. Large tables were covered with radio chargers, new phone lines, fax machines, photocopiers, computers, TV monitors and VCRs, all for the operation.

  Inspector Walt Sydowski arrived shortly after dawn watching it fill with local, state, and federal authorities. He was met by FBI agents and taken to the criminal investigative section, which was hidden within the massive operation. Known only to a few officials, the specially formed secret joint forces unit was headed by the FBI. It had one aim: to investigate the disappearance of Paige Baker as if she were the victim of a criminal act.

  Its operations were set up out of sight, in a storage room where Sydowski had not yet seated himself at a table to await the unit’s first meeting when the door opened.

  “Inspector Sydowski,” a young male FBI Agent said softly. “You have a call, sir. You can take it in here. And I’ve been advised that Agent Zander will be here momentarily to convene a briefing with all team members. He and Agent Bowman are en route from the command post.”

  Sydowski nodded his thanks and picked up the land line phone, noticing a number of other senior ice-cold police-type men in jeans and casual shirts taking seats at the meeting table, studying files. Sydowski nodded a hello to them as he took his call.

  “Hi Walt, it’s Linda. Been up all night, I’ve got some stuff.”

  Sydowski sat down to make notes on his clipboard.

  “First off Walt, you got a fax there?”

  He saw a machine and got its number from the young agent.

  Turgeon took it down, continuing.

  “Emily Baker is a professional photographer. Has her own stud
io. No charges, convictions or warrants. Not even a traffic violation. Nothing much on her family. She has an aunt in San Francisco who is on vacation in Eastern Canada with her husband. The feebees have a line to the RCMP, who put them on the tourist alert.”

  “Hope you reach them before the press does. What about the domestic call to SFPD?”

  “Pulled tapes from dispatch, had them transcribed. I am faxing that to you along with the summary from the responding unit. Trying to hook up with the officers who took the call and the neighbor who made the complaint. No charges, convictions or warrants for Doug Baker either. He’s an ex-marine. Honorable discharge, a high school teacher, football coach at Beecher Lowe in the Richmond District. Very respected.”

  “That it for now?”

  “Talked to one of Doug’s teacher friends late last night. Seems Doug confided to him there was stress in the Baker family that he refused to elaborate on, only to say that his wife was receiving psychological counseling and that they needed to go to Montana.”

  “Why did they need to go?”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “Or wouldn’t tell you. Know who the shrink is?”

  The word “shrink” prompted one of the cop strangers to look from his file as if Walt had found a key to the case.

  “Not yet,” Turgeon said.

  “Go back on that friend,” Sydowski said. “Also find out if Paige talked about her family with any little friends; try to get some profile on her. What has she been telling other kids, that sort of thing. Time’s working against us.”

  “I am working full throttle on all of that--damn, Walt, what is that?”

  A helicopter hammered the morning air overhead, sounding as if it was about to crash through the roof.

  “I think my briefing’s about to begin here, Linda. I’ll take your information to the meeting. Talk to you later.”

  The helicopter landing outside made conversation impossible. A gray-haired man stared at Sydowski and passed him his card:

  LLOYD TURNER FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE OF SALT LAKE CITY DIVISION.

  Turner was the boss here. Sydowski received other cards from other agents under Turner. Then Park Superintendent Elsie Temple arrived, accompanied by Nora Lam, legal counsel from the U.S. Justice Department, and several local officials.

  The helicopter subsided and within minutes more people entered, led by Special Agent Frank Zander, followed by Agent Tracy Bowman, and Pike Thornton, law enforcement officer with the park.

  Zander, who was carrying a file folder, acknowledged the FBI brass. He shut the door, took his place at the head of the table and control.

  “I am Agent Frank Zander, the case agent in this matter. Park rangers received a report approximately fifteen hundred hours yesterday by Doug Baker that his ten-year-old daughter, Paige Baker, got lost in Grizzly Tooth Trail, some twenty-four hours previous to his contacting help. The Baker family was on a camping trip in the Devil’s Grasp region. By all estimates, the girl has been lost for about forty-three hours. We will not waste time. Before we go further, I’ll go around the table, make sure everyone present should be here.”

  Introductions went fast. Satisfied, Zander then stressed the critical need for confidentiality of the aim of the task force. “Our objective is to rule out foul play or lay the foundation for prosecution,” Zander said.

  “Why?” Park Superintendent Elsie Temple was upset. “Could it be we’re moving too fast here? Can’t we let the search run its course? It all seems pretty circumstantial to me.”

  “I believe we are proceeding responsibly, given the facts Ms. Temple,” Turner said.

  “Which are?”

  Zander supplied them.

  “Doug Baker has a very bad wound on his left hand. He said he injured it chopping firewood with an ax, which appears to be missing. Both he and his wife, Emily, were evasive when asked about the emotional state and details of their daughter before she vanished with her dog. Both parents state they did not see her. A few days prior to departing for their trip here, the San Francisco Police Department was called to the Baker home after a neighbor reported a violent family argument. When that complaint was investigated by the SFPD, Emily Baker dismissed it as a misunderstanding. Last night, at the command post, Emily Baker screamed into the night, ‘You can’t have her. Oh God it is all my fault’. We are just beginning to assemble résumés on the parents.”

  “I do not like this approach to build something against the family at this stage. I’ll say it again, it still seems pretty circumstantial,” Temple said.

  “Excuse me, Superintendent Temple, there is more,” Sydowski was looking at his fresh notes. “This is unconfirmed, but late last night Inspector Linda Turgeon of the SFPD Homicide Detail learned that Doug Baker had recently told a friend there was stress in the Baker family. Emily Baker was receiving psychological counseling and apparently the family had to come to Montana, for reasons unknown to us.”

  Temple weighed the information, while Turner reasoned.

  “Ms. Temple, given these factors, it would irresponsible if we did not act quickly to confidentially probe the background of the family and the circumstances under which the child disappeared, in the possible tragic event that criminal intent is confirmed.”

  Temple placed her face in her hands.

  “This is just terrible. Horrible.”

  “It is possible there was an accident and they are trying to cover it up,” Zander said.

  “It is also possible Paige Baker wandered off and has become lost, like her parents have told us,” Bowman said.

  Zander dismissed her comment by looking at his watch.

  “Time is working against us. Weather could destroy a crime scene or damage physical evidence that would either support what the parents say or contradict it. And we cannot rule out any possibility.

  “The Evidence Response Team should be here shortly,” Turner said.

  Zander nodded.

  “Bowman, you will escort Emily Baker here straight away. We’ll conduct an interview for more details from her, then we’ll bring in the father. We’ll likely request a polygraph very soon.”

  Zander noticed the concern in the eyes of Nora Lam, the Justice Department lawyer. “At some early point you will have to Mirandize them,” Lam said.

  “Of course.”

  A message came from an agent at the door. It was passed to Zander. His face creased. A Mr. Ropa was holding on the phone with information on the case of Paige Baker.

  “I’ll take it here,” Zander said. “You have information?”

  “I do. My family encountered the Baker family on Grizzly Tooth the day before she disappeared.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ropa. Bobby Ropa, R-O-P-A.”

  “What sort of information do you have?”

  “We saw her family having a terrible argument the day before she vanished. They looked like a family imploding. It was not good.”

  Zander immediately shuffled through the small stack of permits until he found one for Ropa. Address was Brooklyn. As if the accent didn’t give it away. “Where you from Mr. Ropa?”

  “New York. We’re here on vacation. Look, I’ll come in and give you a statement. You’re at the command center?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’re in the north, but we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  Calling in was the right thing to do, Bobby told Lori after hustling everybody into their rented Explorer, driving off to the center. In his experience as a New York cop, Bobby knew how an isolated tip, even a crumb of mundane information, could be the lynchpin in a complex case.

  “Joey, try to remember everything you saw, heard and felt about that girl’s family we met in the backcountry the other day.”

  A C-130 rolled overhead.

  “I think it would be hard to forget, Dad.”

  Lori saw Bobby’s jaw muscles bunching the way they did when he was working on a case. She knew her husband was on the job now. Their vacat
ion ended the instant they came upon that girl’s family and saw what they saw. Then came the news story and the search for her. Lori wished with all her heart Bobby was wrong, but he was a good cop. She worried about Joey. What if this turned into something and he had to pick somebody out of a lineup, or testify, or hear details? She stopped herself. The places your brain takes you as a wife to the NYPD.

  They left the Icefields Highway for the narrow fifty-mile ribbon of asphalt named Going-to-the-Sun Road. It slithered east to west, severing the huge park in two. It bordered mountain lakes, passed through clouds, necklaced sheer rock faces as it followed a breathtaking roller-coaster route, clinging to cliff edges that dropped so suddenly your stomach quivered.

  The entire drive Bobby kept running his hand over his chin, his mouth. It dawned on Lori what he was really thinking.

  “Bobby, tell me you are not thinking those parents--”

  “I should have done something. I should have said something.” Bobby slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “I should have jumped in his freaking face. If this goes bad, I’ll never forgive my--”

  “Bobby!”

  He slammed the truck’s brakes in time to avert a collision with the back end of a slow-moving car. Lori said nothing. Bobby took a deep breath.

  SIXTEEN

  Zander entered the investigation room, setting his clipboard on the table.

  “Are we all set over there? Confirm with two knocks,” he said aloud.

  Two knocks sounded on the wall.

  The FBI had equipped the room with a tiny powerful microphone in the overhead lighting system and a hidden camera lens near a wall poster of the park.

  Only Zander, Bowman, Sydowski and Thornton would be present for interviews with the Bakers. The others would observe from the second adjoining room. Before she left, Nora Lam had taken Zander just outside of microphone range and cautioned him.

  “You know you cannot use anything unless you Mirandize her?”