by Rick Mofina
She was so hungry.
She started thinking about a cheeseburger, fries, a milkshake, tacos, the fridge at home, a ham and cheese sandwich, yogurt, fruit, orange juice with shaved ice, her mom’s spaghetti with mushroom sauce and garlic bread, homemade apple pie.
She missed San Francisco, their house near Golden Gate Park, her room with her cool loft bed, her books, the computer, her poster of Leonardo DiCaprio. The big beautiful picture Mom took of her and Kobee at the beach.
Where was Kobee?
She called for him. “Kobeeee!” Stupid beagle.
Paige stopped to sit on a flat sun-warmed rock. She was so hungry.
The trees, the slopes and mountains that went on forever and ever. She hated this place. It was not beautiful; it was scary. Something had chased her last night. Something frightening that she did want to even think about.
Paige had overheard her mother telling someone on the phone once that her monster “dwelled in the mountains.” Paige now knew monsters were real. One almost got her last night. Would she ever get back home? She had no idea where she was going. Her feet were sore.
She was so hungry.
She swallowed and searched her pack.
Two granola bars, an apple and a bottle of water.
She was starving. Licking her lips, she forced herself to eat only the apple, to eat it as slowly as possible. Savoring every bit, sucking the juice, actually tasting the skin, nibbling down to the core, leaving no meat on the seed pockets or the stem, contemplating eating them too.
When she finished, she was still hungry. Gripping the two packaged granola bars. One blueberry. One strawberry. Sitting there craving, aching to eat them.
But then what?
What would she eat when they were gone?
She wept.
Mommy. Daddy. Come and get me. Please. Take me home. Please.
She sobbed, believing her parents, the entire world, had forgotten about her; fearing she would never see them or her friends again. At first, she didn’t hear the distant sound as it drew closer, familiar, pricking her ears. A jingling, then panting.
Paige blinked.
Kobee?
Suddenly, out of nowhere, he was in her lap.
“Kobee!”
Licking her face.
Squeezing him, hugging him, kissing him.
“You bad, bad wonderful mutt. I love you--don’t you ever leave me again!”
Paige placed her hand on either side of his head, staring at him eye to eye.
“Now you have to show me the way back! You!”
What was wrong? His eyes were not right. They held something bad. Terror. Body trembling. Her fingers. Wet. Something gooey on them pulling them away, stained red. Blood. Kobee was bleeding. Paige’s heart raced.
“What happened?”
She swallowed.
His side had been sliced. Like it been raked with sharp knives. Flesh torn.
What was that?
Huffing. Snorting.
Coming toward her, crashing through the forest. Branches snapping. Louder than the sound of the distant search helicopter.
“Oh God!”
Paige scooped Kobee in her arms and ran for her life.
NINETEEN
In the task force room, while the investigators awaited Doug Baker’s arrival, Inspector Walt Sydowski reviewed Frank Zander’s approach to go hard on Emily Baker, then have Tracy Bowman pick up the pieces.
“You are pushing the right buttons, but--”
“But what?”
“I think you need leverage before going any harder. We have nothing but disturbing circumstances. Things are not always what they seem. We need something physical, irrefutable. The father’s wound might be a start, or finding the ax.”
Zander hated being second-guessed. He glared at Sydowski, on the verge of snapping at him, but chose to hold his words.
“Well, I for one do not approve of this approach,” Elsie Temple, the park’s superintendent, peered at Zander over her glasses. “Why put the Bakers through this? It serves nothing. I think you should wait until you have evidence of a crime.”
“And your opinion is based on how many criminal investigations, Ms. Temple?” Zander shot at her, causing her face to redden. “We’ve seen what happened in Yellowstone when people waited until they tripped over the evidence.”
“Agent Zander, it just appears--”
“Ms. Temple, a liar tells a tale a thousand ways. The more distance you get from the crime, the more opportunity for the suspects to fortify themselves. It seems Emily has already lied about stress in her family before the trip and counseling, if the San Francisco information holds up. There is the domestic call, Doug Baker’s wound, the absence of his ax. You rarely get the truth the first time around. If you collect statements while aggressively searching for physical evidence that contradicts the family’s account of things, then your case strengthens.”
“And if you are wrong?” Temple said.
“Then it’s a price I’ll gladly pay, considering the alternative,” Zander said. “If we are wrong, then hopefully the Bakers get their daughter back alive and well. But if Paige Baker has been harmed and we have bungled so badly that no one answers for it, consider the legacy. Not something you will feature with pictures on the lovely brochures for your pretty park, is it?”
Temple jaw dropped. “How do you live with yourself?”
Zander did not answer her. Instead, he took a call advising the task force that Mr. Ropa had arrived.
Bobby Ropa was wearing a New York Giants T-shirt and faded Levis. Looked to be in his early thirties and in good shape. First thing he did after introducing himself to the investigators was produce his NYPD blue-crested shield.
Zander seated Ropa, professionally reminding him about confidentiality; then got down to business.
“You looking at the dad?” Ropa said, eager to help.
“We’re talking to everybody, looking at everything.”
“You should look hard at the dad.”
“Tell us about your information,” Zander said.
Ropa recounted how his family was coming out of Grizzly Tooth, along a twisting part of the trail, when they heard voices carrying loud and clear.
“This family, the Bakers from the news pictures, it was them. They had stopped for lunch in a clearing but were arguing.”
Ropa explained how quiet it can get up there and how they heard much of the argument before they came up on the Bakers.
“First thing I picked up was the girl, Paige, upset, says she thinks she knows why her parents brought her to the mountains. Then her old man says, tell us. The girl figures her parents are divorcing because of her mother’s problems, that she’s got to choose a parent to live with.
“The mother denies it, and the kid is crying. The mother says it is complicated. We kind of round a bend and come up on them, in time to see the old man explode. Big time. It all goes down fast.
“He demands the mother tell them ‘exactly what the hell is going on with you!’ She starts wailing and he screams at her that he is sick and tired ‘of this veneer. This pretense of a happy family’. He blames it all on the mother.
“We’re just stunned, like we’re watching a play. Street theater.
“She gets hysterical, accusing him of thinking she’s ‘wigged out,’ dragging them all to the mountains for some inexplicable reason. The kid gets into it, threatens to run off a mountain because of the parents. The mother answers her with something like, ‘Don’t ever say that.’
“That’s when I step in with, you know, ‘Everything okay there?’ The old man gets cool fast, switching it off as I eyeball him. He makes a joke, a little first-day stress, or something. I see he’s got an ax, a small hatchet, hanging from his pack. I ask them if they have bear spray, because we spotted a Grizzly sow with cubs in a meadow by a river a day or so earlier.
“Then I see they got a dog concealed in one of the packs, against park regs. Part of the family, the father s
ays, could not leave home without him.
About then I marshal my family out of there. It was a weird scene. We see nothing more until the news hits that the father reports the daughter lost.
“The way I figure it, we saw their fireworks display the day before she vanished. I don’t know what to make of it. Don’t know what else you got, but this thing--she smells to me.”
None of the task force members spoke for the longest time as they ingested the new disturbing information from Robert L. Ropa, detective first grade with the NYPD’s 67th Precinct in Brooklyn.
TWENTY
Worry gnawed at the pit of Doug Baker’s empty stomach as he scanned the forests from their campsite command post.
Radios broadcasted reports and instructions between the planes and helicopters overhead, the search teams scouring the high country and the scores of rangers and now FBI agents ferried in to help.
So far, they found no trace of Paige.
Doug’s fear for her was like a leaden cloak enshrouding him, weighing him down, exhausting him. How long could she survive? Now, Emily was with the FBI. It all seemed out of control since police arrived. The way they never let them help search, the way they always watched them, kept from being alone.
“…We’ll take you in separately….”
The tone of that remark implied so much. The FBI knew something. Doug felt it in his gut. They suspected a crime. Something. There was that other family. Or maybe strangers on the trail. What did they know? He had to do something. Anything. He was supposed to wait here until Emily returned and they sent for him. But Doug was tired of waiting. It was time to do something.
“Excuse me,” he said to the nearest FBI agent. “Could you find out if my wife is still at the command center or on her way back?”
The agent made a radio inquiry.
“She’s still there, sir, but they say we can take you there now.” He indicated a helicopter whose pilot was climbing into the cockpit, engaging the ignition.
The helicopter rattled, making its landing approach over the command center. Like Emily had been, Doug was astonished by the scene below, the news crews, satellite trucks, the dizzying scale of the operation geared to finding Paige. Some fifty feet from the ground, Doug saw the banks of news cameras aimed on the landing pad from behind yellow police tape, just as the voice of the young FBI agent alerted him to it.
“Sir, we advise you not to talk to the press at this stage.”
“Why not?” Doug was growing more resentful of being controlled.
“Better to first coordinate with all the agencies, when we know more. So we’re all on the same page.”
Doug swallowed hard. The agencies had failed to turn up anything or offer much hope. It’s time we took control. He searched the scene for his wife as his chopper touched down.
Emily recognized Doug in the cockpit of the descending chopper.
“There’s Doug,” she said, leaving Bowman in the FBI SUV.
“No! Please wait!” Bowman said to the slamming door. Damn.
Emily hurried to the edge of the helipad, waiting for Doug as he crouched until clearing the rotors, taking her tenderly in his arms.
More than three dozen news cameras recorded the scene, pulling in tight to catch the fear, exhaustion in their faces: Emily’s anguished beauty, Doug, haggard but handsome. The image of the well-groomed middle-class couple trapped in torment would become a touchstone for the nation gripped by the drama of a ten-year-old child facing death in an American paradise.
“Doug! Emily! Please talk to us!” Reporters shouted over the chopper, which was lifting off. Bowman and the male agent were tugging at the Bakers.
Doug stopped in his tracks, considering the request.
“This way, Doug, please,” Bowman had his arm. “They’re waiting to talk to you inside.”
Doug ignored Bowman and searched Emily’s glistening eyes. “I think we should make a statement to the press, Emily.”
“I don’t know what I would say.”
“We’ll speak from the heart. Let’s go.”
“Sir, I would not advise--” the male FBI agent was cut off.
“Doug, it would be best if you spoke with all the officials first.” Bowman did not want a scene in front of the cameras and realized it was futile. Doug put a protective arm around Emily and approached the press line. The chopper was gone, underscoring the quiet, and the pack began murmuring over cell phones to newsroom across the USA.
“Grab the air! Go live! It’s the parents. Right, first time they’ve spoken!”
Bowman rushed into the private joint forces room and alerted Zander and the others, who were wrapping up their interview with Bobby Ropa.
“You try to stop them, Bowman?” Zander fired.
“Yes, Doug refused.”
Zander was scanning the networks, finding one with the BREAKING NEWS graphic, then cutting to Doug and Emily Baker, embracing, standing before a cluster of microphones less than one yard away.
“Why not stop it?” Ropa asked.
“Too late now,” Zander said, picking up the nearest phone and ordering the event recorded. “I’m not sure we want to,” he said, watching the TV as if contemplating a chess move.
Different questions were called out simultaneously. Doug took the ones he could pick up.
“Please share with us your thoughts at this point.”
“We came here as a family. We’ll leave here as a family. We will not go home without her,” Doug said.
“Emily, has Paige ever run away?”
“No. Never.”
“Does she have wilderness training or experience?”
“No,” Emily replied, “this was her first outing.”
“It rained after her first night. The temperatures are expected to plummet tonight, which will mark over forty, maybe close to forty-eight, hours for her alone in some of the most dangerous terrain in the nation. What are officials telling you her chances are, Doug?”
“It’s serious. We are well aware this is a life and death situation for our daughter, but we are praying. We will not give up hope.”
Emily joined in. “Paige is an intelligent child, she has her dog, Kobee with her--”
“What breed, ma’am?”
“Beagle. We’re told that will give her some psychological comfort and a source of warmth. She had a sweater, some food.” Emily’s voice began to break. “She has our hearts, our prayers….”
“Mr. Baker, there’ve been reports, your daughter used the Internet. Has the FBI indicated any suspicions of an abduction scenario that may be a line of investigation here?”
“Yes, we’re aware of that possibility also and understand they are examining every potential aspect, but primarily the thinking is Paige wandered from us and became lost. Thank you, I thank that is all we can...”
Is that what the thinking is, Doug? Why don’t you wave that hand for the cameras? Zander thought coolly.
“Sir, sir, just what happened?” Tom Reed asked.
“As I said, we were camping along the remote Grizzly Tooth Trail and Paige wandered from our campsite--”
“Can’t you please elaborate a little?” Reed persisted.
I like that guy, Zander mused. Yes, Doug, please elaborate a little.
“We have a meeting with officials, thank you--”
The Bakers turned but were stopped by one last reporter. It was an older woman from a local newspaper.
“Mr. and Mrs. Baker, do you have any other children?”
“No,” Emily wept, her face crumpling. “She is all we have in this world.”
Doug comforted her and they headed to the command center
Nearly a fifth of the nation had witnessed the event.
Zander switched off the set.
“I’ll tell you guys something right now,” Ropa said to Zander and the others on his way out after watching the Bakers’ press conference. “That guy on the tube was acting totally different when we came upon him the day before his daugh
ter disappeared. To me, it’s like they’re two different guys.”
Ropa left a motel card on the table.
“Call me if you need more. We’re here for a few more days.”
Zander thanked him, waiting until the door was closed, before polling the others. “Walt, what’s your read on the press conference? What do you think Doug’s up to?”
“Hard to say at this point. Could be totally innocent.”
“Pike?”
“Curious that he went to the press before talking to us. Like maybe he felt he had to do something preemptive.”
Zander nodded.
“Emily tell you anything, Bowman?”
She hesitated, reflecting on Emily’s pretty, pain-filled face on the TV screen. Her heart breaking for her as she deliberated on how much of their conversation she should reveal.
“Bowman?” Zander reminded her she was an FBI agent assisting in an investigation. “Did Emily tell you anything when you were alone with her?”
“She said she came here to bury the past.”
The others exchanged glances.
“What past?” Zander demanded. “She offer any more on that?”
“No,” Bowman said.
“Well, what do we have on her background? Walt, the SFPD was chasing her aunt, right? We need to nail this quickly. What past?”
“I have a strong feeling she wants to tell me about it,” Bowman said.
“Fly back with her, work on her.” Zander told Bowman to make notes on everything that Emily told her.
The task force had a few minutes before they interviewed Doug Baker.
Zander studied his watch, how long did their daughter have? If she had any time left at all?
“Frank, what’s your take on the news conference?” Sydowski said.
“I think it’s a cunning, calculated move, if they committed a crime.”
“How so?”
“If they’re culpable, Doug knows where they are vulnerable, maybe with Emily talking to us. So he moves, preemptively as you say, to put his face and Emily’s face out there through the press. Let America see the image he wants them to see, built up huge credit in the bank of public opinion. That is vital strategy because it puts us among the forces of evil, should we go after them. We all know that often cases are not won in courts based upon evidence but in the press based upon perception.”