by Rick Mofina
That was several months ago. Interest was trailing off. Reed was thankful. Looking at Zach and Ann’s snapshots taped to his computer made him smile. The ordeal had changed him. He found peace and focus with Zach and Ann. Zach was doing well in school. Ann’s children’s clothing stores in the Bay Area were successful. Their marriage was better. They were a family back in their house in the Sunset. He was working on his book, declined job offers with the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post and returned to the San Francisco Star with restored self-confidence, minus the ego and obsession. He was a solid crime reporter, just working his beat today, fishing for news at the Homicide Detail.
“Come on Reed, in dismemberment cases, who’s got jurisdiction?”
“Louisville catches it. It’s where they find the heart.”
“You’re a smart-ass, you know that, Reed?”
“So you going to give me my prize now?”
“Got my hand on it right now. Know where my hand is?”
“Keep it up and I’m going to come down there.”
“I got to go, Reed.”
“Hey, wait a sec. I’m looking for news. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Some addict in the ’Loin. Guys are in court, working on stuff.”
“What’s Sydowksi doing?”
“Not sure. Linda’s out. Something to do with the feebees in Montana.”
“What’s going on there that’s connected to here?”
“Remember when the Forty-niners had Montana?’
“You had more hair then.”
“Missing kid.”
“Missing how?”
“Like in not there.”
“Harry, come on, I’m going on vacation in a few hours.”
“Just a friggin’ minute. You are a burr in my boxers, you know that Reed.” Lance put Reed on hold. Then came back. “Ten-year-old San Francisco girl lost in the Rockies in Montana.”
“Why call you guys?”
Lance was silent.
“What’s the real connection to here?” Reed said. “The physical evidence doesn’t match the story. Some link to San Francisco?”
“I don’t know.”
Reed had reported on so many homicides he thought like a detective.
“Something awry in the family’s history?”
“I don’t know.”
“A conviction?”
“I don’t know.”
“That it?”’
“Daddy’s got a hurt hand.”
“How did he do that?”
“I don’t know anything, but your questions are interesting.”
“Is there a mommy? What’s Mommy’s story?”
“I don’t know.”
“But they’ve got no body? Just a missing kid, right?”
“I suppose. I am not up on the details. I am sure the very capable FBI has it under control.”
“Who’s the family? Got names?”
“Don’t know. All I heard is the feds are going hard on it. Walt might be going out to Montana to help. I got to go now.” Lance hung up.
This was intriguing, Reed thought, checking the newsroom clock again. He was meeting Ann and Zach to pick up some things for Chicago. Going full out on a kid lost in the Rockies, as if it were a homicide. Secret suspicions about Dad. Flying Sydowski to Montana. He’d better alert the desk soon so they could pass it to somebody.
Maybe there was something out on this. The keys clicked on Reed’s computer keyboard as he called up the newswires, entering terms like “Montana”, “girl” and “missing” in the search mode. In seconds, one story appeared on his screen. A short one slugged LOST GIRL. It just moved out of Kalispell, Montana.
KALISPELL, MT--Searchers began combing the Rocky Mountain foothills of Glacier National Park for a 10-year-old girl whose parents reported her missing to park authorities earlier today.
The girl’s family told park rangers that she had wandered from their backcountry campsite along the Grizzly Tooth Trail several miles deep into the park’s rugged northern sector, near the Canadian border.
She was last seen some 24 hours prior to the time her father alerted authorities after hiking alone out of the trail. The isolated area where she is lost is known as the Devil’s Grasp.
The girl, whose name has not yet been released, is believed to be from California.
Reed’s investigative juices stirred. The wire item was the first take on the case so far. No mention of San Francisco or suspicions. Maybe he had a bit of a scoop. The story moved minutes ago. She’d been lost for at least twenty-four hours, which meant she’d spent a night in the high country. Reed thought of Zach, nearly the same age. Not much time before it got critical for her. Reed grew up in Great Falls. He was no backcountry hiker but he’d visited the Rockies enough to know that getting lost up there could be fatal.
Reed rubbed his chin. Aside from the elements, police had suspicions. Routine police procedure to check out the nearest and dearest in such cases. But all this other stuff about going full. Flying San Francisco cops to the mountains? Was that all just Inspector Harry Lance, or was there something to this? Why should Reed care? His vacation started in a few hours.
What if she was already dead?
Reed remembered one late night long ago sitting with some of the old Homicide bulls in Room 450 at the Hall of Justice. They were in an unusually friendly mood giving him their thoughts on the perfect murder. Some suggested “a wilderness accident”. You push them off a cliff, and whoops! A fall. No witnesses. Not likely any physical or trace evidence. Just the killer’s conscience. Maybe motive, but you cannot be convicted on that. And we don’t have a body for a while. Decomposition and animals make an autopsy useless. Killer wins; justice loses. The deceased is not avenged.
A wilderness accident. Reed chewed on that.
“Tom, you’ve got that look in your eye,” Molly Wilson, the reporter who sat next to him, returned from interviewing a fingerprint expert for a feature. Her bracelets clinking as she typed. “What gives?”
Wilson was Reed’s partner at the paper. Surviving the Keller case together and Reed’s marital strain had strengthened their relationship. They had become better friends. She was an astounding writer, a superb reporter. With a brilliant sunrise smile and auburn hair, she boasted a figure that turned heads, especially in Copland.
“Pal, she is so easy on the eyes,” a recently-divorced FBI agent told Reed. The reporter had to burst his bubble, telling him Molly was sorta-kinda dating Manny Lewis, a heavy-hitter with GQ looks at the D.A.’s office.
“You home? Care to tell me what’s on your mind, usher boy?”
Reed told her everything and Wilson immediately logged in to the Star’s computerized data files. “Suspicious wilderness accident. That sort of thing has happened. There was that case not long ago in Wyoming.” Molly’s keyboard was clicking.
“Here it is, a story we ran from from the Casper Star-Tribune--a dad was hiking with his five-year-old daughter. He reports she fell or was lost near a gorge in Yellowstone. Rangers search for days. Dad slips away. When they find her body, an autopsy shows she had been stabbed. There was trouble in the family, a vendetta between the parents over custody of the girl. Meanwhile, Dad’s fled to Brazil or Bolivia.
“Well,” Reed sighed. “We know zip on this one. In a short time, I am outta here. Maybe you should brace yourself for a trip to Montana, kid.”
Reed’s line rang. It was Zeke Canter, the new metro editor. “Tom, come to my office, please.”
Reed got along with Canter. In his mid-forties, dressed in L.L. Bean shirts and Dockers, Canter was trim and fit, about an inch under six feet. Kind, thoughtful, razor-sharp and quick, stemming from fifteen years in New York with the Daily News and Newsday. National Editor Violet Stewart was on the phone in Canter’s office and making notes.
“So the next one to Salt Lake leaves in ninety minutes, just in time to connect to Kalispell.”
That was all Reed needed to hear.
“
No. I am on vacation in--like almost now.”
Stewart hung up, removed her bifocals, letting them hang from her chain necklace. “Tom, we really would like to you to get there tonight.”
“No.”
“This is shaping into something. She’s from San Francisco. Ten years old,” Canter said, dropping a printout of an updated wire story.
“Look,” Stewart had a color photo of Paige Baker. “This just moved.”
A beautiful child whose face could melt your heart. Reed’s stomach tensed. This was moving fast in the direction of a potentially huge story. “What about Molly?” he said.
“You will be a team. She’ll work every angle from here, but we want you there. Tom, you are from Montana. It’s tailor made for you,” Canter said.
“We guarantee you will not miss the Chicago wedding,” Violet said.
“Let me make one call. Excuse me.”
Back at his desk, Reed punched his wife’s cell phone number. He never knew which store Ann was at. This was going to be sweet. Wilson blinked up at him with a grand smile. “Who’s going to Montana, cowboy?”
Reed scratched his nose with his middle finger for Wilson as Ann answered her phone. Reed explained. She was not pleased.
“Tom, you’re on vacation! We’re visiting family and we have a wedding. We’re both in the wedding party. Usher. Bridesmaid. Remember! And there’s something else. Or did you forget?”
He had forgotten until that very moment, suddenly recalling how Ann had talked about privately requesting the minister to renew their vows because of all they had been through.
“You want to risk missing this?”
“No. Absolutely not,” Reed said. “You go on ahead with Zach and I’ll fly out from Montana, take all my stuff. The Star will have to swallow any costs. They have guaranteed that I’ll be in Chicago for the wedding.”
“Tom, you better not be falling into your old habits.”
Reed sat down, explaining more to Ann about the story of Paige Baker, the girl lost in the wilderness, while simultaneously glancing at the newsroom clock, estimating flight time, driving to Glacier, time zone difference. Filing a story. Finally, Ann said, “I did not sign on to be a single parent, mister.”
“Mister,” that was the word. Anne’s code for I’m pissed off but here’s my loving approval, you jerk.
“Ann, I love you.”
Reed was bent over, struggling to retrieve his emergency travel bag from under his desk. “I am nothing without you, Ann. Hug Zach for me.”
Wilson rolled her eyes.
Reed returned to Canter’s office where the editors discussed what the Star wanted from Reed in Montana and Wilson in San Francisco.
“If the little Baker girl story fizzles,” Violet said “would you consider, stress consider, a full-page feature on the case of Isaiah Hood, the guy scheduled for execution in a few days? He is expected to lose his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. You will be there, after all.”
“Violet, please. Just staple the name of a divorce lawyer to that request.”
“Tom, you’re going to be right there, and again, we are going to have you in Chicago in time for the wedding. Promise. And we’re going to make it up to you.”
“But why the Hood case? It’s nothing. No San Francisco connection. Nobody knows or cares about that thing. It barely makes the Montana papers. I don’t even follow it. I think he killed somebody like fifteen, twenty years ago. Bump on the head or something, I don’t know. He’s a small-town loser. Nothing remarkable. He’s sentenced to die. End of story. Why waste the ink? We all know not every execution is covered in this country.”
“Tom”--Violet was legendary for her coverage of executions-- “there is something in every tragedy that we can learn from. It’s the human condition. And given this case is so old and forgotten means the story’s value has just been fermenting. A man is going to be put to death. Tell me why; tell me what happened; tell me a story.”
During his cab ride to San Francisco International, Reed checked his two phones. One was a new compact sat phone; because of the expense, it should only be used if the cell did not work. He reviewed hard copy of the updated wire stories on the lost girl. Not much new. Ten minutes after leaving the Star building, he called Molly on his cell.
“You in Montana, cowboy?” she joked.
“You got anything for me?”
“No. Call me from Salt Lake.”
“Don’t tell anybody what we know about police suspicions just yet. I’m going to try to hook up with Sydowski if I can find him.”
“OK. Watch out for bears.”
When the jet leveled off, Reed opened up his laptop computer and went to all the background stories about Isaiah Hood he’d requested from the news librarian. Reed’s jaw dropped. Expecting at least two dozen, he found three with apologies from the library. “We have little on this case, Tom.”
Hood had killed a kid some twenty years ago. Convicted after a two-day trial. Sentenced to death. Usual years of appeals. Unremarkable for a murder, except for the last sentence in the most recent story. Hood’s last appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was made on a claim that Hood was not guilty.
SEVEN
Emily could not stop shivering.
Night had come. The second without Paige.
Since Paige’s disappearance, Emily had not slept or eaten.
“You must be freezing, ma’am.” A young ranger tried to drape a sleeping bag on Emily. She shrugged it off.
“My daughter has no blanket. I will go through this with her.”
Doug was working with the searchers at the map table lit by lanterns. Their radios muted. Emily stood alone in the darkness at the edge of the camp, the distant lights of the searchers’ campsites dotting the black valleys and mountainsides, blinking eerily as if a starlit sky had fallen to earth.
Paige.
Her child was out there; the clock was ticking away on her life. Every second, every minute, every hour, buying another piece of it. Oh, Paige, forgive me. It was all her fault. Her fault. Like before.
“Guess what I’m going to do.”
Emily’s monster was brushing against her, reaching for her, trying to pull her into the darkness. No. Please. No. It had taken hold. She struggled, hearing her counselor’s voice. When you feel it coming up on you, reach for the good things, Emily. The good things are your lifelines. They are real. They are unconditional. The good things will save you. Reach for them and hold on. She reached into a good memory….
Push, Emily! The hospital. The nurses. Doug squeezing her hand. The doctor urging her. A couple of deep breaths, Emily. Push for me. This is so hard. Here we go. Almost there. The sounds of the baby’s first cry. Emily’s heart swelling with joy. Congratulations, Mom and Dad, you have a daughter. Her scrimped little face, her bright eyes. The love washing over her. Doug kissing her. I love you. Holding their new baby. Tender, warm heart. Love. The pain subsiding. Have you chosen a name? Paige. We’ll call her Paige. Emily would never let go. Paige was her new life. Doug was her new life. Her new life was complete now.
Emily’s chain to the monster of her past was broken with Paige’s birth. Or so Emily thought. But as the years rolled by and Paige got older, the monster beckoned her to return to Montana for a final confrontation. It must be done, her counselor said, or you will never find peace, never resolve your conscience. Go to Montana. Put things to rest.
Emily had forgotten how much she loved it here. How her girlhood on her family’s small ranch near the slopes of the Rockies had been like a storybook. Her great-grandfather had built the house with its classic rafter roof in the 1930s. Her mother taught her to cook and sew. She took her to church in town on Sundays: “Emily, you must never forget that believing in yourself is as important as believing in God. Above all, never underestimate the healing qualities of forgiveness.”
Her dad taught her how to camp in the backcountry and how to drive a stick-shift pickup. He conveyed the value of honesty and the wisdom of
never approaching a high-spirited horse when you’re in a bad mood, “’cause they can smell it on you.” Emily remembered how the pine and cedar filled the house when he sat by the fire on winter nights looking at his dog-eared collection of Life magazines. How excited he was helping her learn to use her first camera, telling her that history was something to cherish, especially with a camera. “It’s the only way you can hang on to the people in your life.”
That’s how it was for her, near Buckhorn Creek, where stars were near enough to be jewelry, where the mountains were so close she swore she could hear music as the wind danced through them. Emily embraced the belief that a place can be as important to a person’s life as the people in it.
Emily studied the purple sky over the mountains, longing to hear their music again. She was struggling to tell Doug what had happened here. She needed him to know. He was her Sergeant Rock, her Gibraltar, trying so hard to be patient with her.
His life had been a lonely one and he didn’t mind talking about it.
“What’s to tell, Em? Grew up an only child in Houston. Dad was better at gambling and drinking than he was as a father and mechanic. Walked out when I was thirteen. Left Mom with a kid, a mortgage and a shattered heart. She got over it by marrying a truck driver. We moved to Buffalo. I hated the snow. Left home before my seventeenth birthday, wandered the world alone, searching for someone like you.”
Doug could always make her smile. Like when they first met and she told him her name. “Emily. Now that makes me think of a bouquet of mountain flowers.” And here he was, this gorgeous hunk of manhood with his firm, lean body, broad shoulders, his chiseled rugged smile, the USMC warrior who was privately reading Paddle-to-the-Sea. How could she not love this man? When she showed him her favorite photos--not the weddings, portraits, freelance news, postcards and calendar work, which paid the bills, but her artsy slice-of-life pictures--Doug actually got it. Understood the story she was trying to tell in a single moment stolen from time. They connected….