Too Close to Home (3 page)

I bent down to clip a reflective neon collar with a dangling bell around his neck, then slipped a reflective orange vest over
his head and secured the belly straps. The lettering and large cross on each side of the vest proclaimed Possum’s status, RESCUE DOG. Then I stood and, with Possum at my heels, joined Chad.

He was concentrating on using a ruler and a narrow-tipped red marker to extend a line on a topographical map. Tomorrow, I knew, the grids that he was drawing would be used for a more comprehensive search. If I failed to locate the child, a full-scale ground search would be organized and mounted at first light.

“Sure hope we won’t be needing this,” I heard him murmur as I stepped in beside him. Briefly, I rested my hand on his shoulder in greeting, then leaned in closer to get a better look at the map.

He finished the line, turned his head, smiled up at me. And I tried not to think about how much I still loved him.

“Hey there, Brooke,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”

Tina Fisher was wearing pink.

Pink cotton slacks. A T-shirt printed with pink bunnies. Pink barrettes in her straight blond hair. Her shoes were pink, too—rubber-soled Stride Rite leather sneakers—and they were gone. Maxi was also missing, and Tina’s mother explained that the bedraggled, one-eyed teddy bear was Tina’s constant companion.

The Fishers stood close to each other as they spoke. Her hand periodically moved to pat the hand that he’d rested on her shoulder. When I asked when they’d last seen Tina, Mrs. Fisher’s composure crumbled. She turned and smothered her sobs against her husband’s chest.

“It’s all my fault,” I heard her say. “I should have watched her more closely….”

Mr. Fisher wrapped his arms around her, then looked over her shoulder at me.

“Can you give us a minute?” he asked.

I nodded.

“No problem,” I said.

And I meant it. As a searcher, I was pressed for time. But as a cop, I welcomed the opportunity to take a long, hard look at the pair. To add my perceptions to what Chad had already seen. To begin building my case should
lost
turn out to be
murdered.
It would be my first murder investigation, and I wanted to do everything by the book. As I’d been taught.

“Your instincts about people are better than mine,” Chad had said before he opened the front door and waved me inside ahead of him. “They claim the little girl wandered away while they were fixing dinner. The more time I spend with them, the more I’m inclined to think they’re telling the truth. But see what you think.”

Just inside the door, I’d spent a moment glancing around the first floor. The interior and its country-chic furnishings confirmed what the exterior had suggested. The house was modern and expensive. Living, dining and food-prep areas blended seamlessly in an open floor plan, and I’d wondered how a small child could have wandered away unnoticed by either parent. Then I’d reminded myself that children were fairly adept at doing just that kind of thing.

Mr. and Mrs. Fisher had risen from a clean-lined, cocoa-colored sofa as Chad and I had entered the living area. Chad had made quick introductions, then he’d gone back outside. A young woman in a uniform that matched Chad’s had been listening from a nearby easy chair. She’d acknowledged me with a quick nod, then excused herself to make coffee, leaving me alone with Tina’s parents.

I’d acted like a volunteer, not a cop, kept my voice sympathetic and my tone unaccusing. But still, my gently asked questions had reduced Tina’s mother to tears.

As his wife buried herself in his arms, Mr. Fisher half turned so that his broad shoulders sheltered most of her upper body from my view. Then he pressed his lips to the top of her head. Which still left me plenty to look at.

They were both lean and blond and had narrow noses, even white teeth and golden tans. Each wore short-sleeved designer-label knit shirts—his white and hers pale pink—over khaki shorts and athletic shoes designed for a fitness-club workout, not trekking through rough terrain. But their appearance made it clear that they had, indeed, been in the woods. Their clothing was grubby and perspiration-stained and their shoes were streaked with grass stains. Socks, which he wore and she didn’t, were hung with burrs and her ankles were raw with mosquito bites.

Tina’s mother and father were also both bloodied by the wild roses and raspberries that invaded sunny boundaries between cultivated yards and the forest. Away from tended trails, their whiplike branches were difficult to avoid, especially if one wasn’t paying attention to them. The couple’s bare arms and legs were crisscrossed with long, thin scratches, and a tear on the back of Mr. Fisher’s shirt still had a few large thorns embedded in the ragged fabric.

I tipped my head, considered the possibilities. Hope and instinct supported Chad’s assessment—ignoring their own welfare, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher had searched frantically through the nearby woods for their missing child. Missing because she’d wandered off, or because some human predator had exploited an unlocked back door or an untended child in the yard.

Bitter experience suggested an alternate scenario. Tina
was murdered in the house and one or both of her parents had been so intent on hiding her body that physical discomfort was irrelevant.

“Please, honey,” the husband was saying, “don’t do this to yourself. I didn’t know she’d figured out how to unlock the back door. Did you?”

“No,” came his wife’s muffled reply. “But she’s smart.”

“Yes, she is. So she probably went outside and saw a butterfly or a bunny and followed it into the woods. Nobody’s fault. So now, what we need to do is help Officer Tyler find her. Okay?”

“Okay,” she sobbed.

A moment later, still remaining within the circle of her husband’s arms, Tina’s mother turned her tearstained face back in my direction.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still sniffling but once again coherent. “What else do you need to know?”

I shook my head.

“Nothing else. But I do need a piece of Tina’s clothing. Something she’s worn recently. That hasn’t been washed. Like socks. Or pajamas. Or underwear.”

“I’ll get it,” she said eagerly.

As she scurried into a nearby room, I opened the small, unused paper sack I’d carried with me into the house. When Mrs. Fisher returned, she had a pair of socks clutched in her hand. They were pink, ruffled at the cuffs and obviously worn.

“Thanks,” I said, dropping the socks into the sack.

With the Fishers in tow, I walked to the front porch where I’d left Possum waiting. With my body propping the door open, I held the open bag at his level. He nosed the fabric, memorizing the scent of this particular human being.

“Possum, find Tina,” I commanded.

As I tucked the sack into one of the exterior pockets of the
search pack, Possum trotted past me to nuzzle each of the Fishers, his tail moving in a rhythm that I recognized as concentration. They stared, unmoving, probably unbelieving, as Possum walked past them and into the house.

“Possum’s comparing your scent to Tina’s, sorting Tina’s smell from yours,” I explained. “Now he’s following Tina’s scent.”

“Why doesn’t he keep his nose on the floor?” Tina’s father asked.

“Sometimes he does, but mostly he picks up scents carried by air currents. When you’re searching for someone who’s lost, it’s more efficient not to have to follow the—”

I caught myself and didn’t say
victim.
But the truth was that Tina was in terrible danger.

“—Tina’s exact route.”

Even without the possibility that her parents were involved in her disappearance, there were plenty of deadly natural hazards in the deep forests, wooded ridgetops, steep rocky slopes and narrow creek bottoms of the ancient Shawnee hills. And there was also the possibility that she’d never entered the woods, that she’d ended up somewhere along the road and a human predator had happened by at just the wrong moment.

I dragged my mind away from that bleak train of thought, concentrated instead on Possum’s progress through the house. He circled the living room, then headed upstairs, with me and the Fishers at his heels.

“But Tina’s outside,” the mother said, her voice traveling in the direction of despair.

“Don’t worry,” I said, knowing that Possum was seeking the place where Tina’s scent was most heavily concentrated. “He knows his job.”

With four rooms to choose from at the top of the landing,
Possum made a beeline into a bedroom where the wallpaper was decorated with intertwined mauve flowers. He went directly to the twin bed, nuzzled the pillow and a wad of soft blankets, then wagged his tail.

Easy enough to guess that the room belonged to a little girl, but I made sure.

“Tina’s?”

The mother nodded and the father didn’t look as panicked as he had just moments earlier.

Possum emerged from the bedroom.

“Good boy,” I said. “Find Tina.”

Possum went back downstairs, pushed his way beneath the dining table and nosed several stuffed toys that were gathered around a plastic tea set, then made his way quickly and very directly to the nearby patio door. He scratched at the glass and whined.

“That’s the door we found open,” the father said, sounding as if he’d just witnessed magic.

I told the parents to wait in the house as I opened the door wide for Possum. With little more signal than a half wag of his tail, he crossed the deck, negotiated a set of shallow steps and then angled across the lawn toward a split-rail fence separating the backyard from the forest. Easy enough for Possum—or a small child—to slide between the rails. I climbed over, staying just behind my dog as we crossed the brushy perimeter separating the yard from the deeper shadows of the woods.

Before we plunged into the undergrowth, I switched off my flashlight, giving my eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness that confronted us. Then I breathed a quick prayer asking for guidance for my feet and Possum’s nose. And protection for the child.

M
osquitoes.

I
couldn’t see them, but their high-pitched whine was constantly in my ears. They swarmed around me, a malevolent, hunger-driven cloud on the humid night air. Time was on their side. Trickles of salty perspiration would soon dilute the repellent I wore. Then they would feed.

I was used to itching.

Ticks.

The forest was infested with them. Sometimes, they were a sprinkling of sand-sized black dots clinging to my ankles. Often, they were larger. I carefully checked for them after every foray into tall grass or forest, pried their blood-bloated bodies from my skin with tweezers, and watched for symptoms of Lyme disease.

Ticks, too, were routine.

Spiders.

Their webs were spun across every path, every clearing, every space between branch and bush and tree. A full moon would have revealed a forest decked with glistening strands—summer’s answer to the sparkle of winter ice. But the moon was a distant sliver, weak and red in a hazy sky, and I found the webs by running into them. The long, sticky wisps clung to my face, draped themselves around my neck, tickled my wrists and the backs of my hands.

I’d feared spiders since childhood, remembered huddling beside Katie as a spindly-legged spider lowered itself slowly from a cracked and stained ceiling. Back then, I’d pounded on that locked closet door, screaming for my mother to please, please let us out. Maybe she hadn’t heard me or maybe she simply hadn’t cared. But now, with each clinging strand I brushed away, I imagined the web’s caretaker crawling on me, just as the spider in the closet had. I wanted to run from the forest, strip off my clothes, scrub myself with hot water and lye soap.

Of course, I didn’t.

I ignored the silly voice that gibbered fearfully at the back of my mind and concentrated on following Possum, guided mostly by the reflective strip on his collar. Periodically, I paused long enough to take a compass reading or tie a neon-yellow plastic ribbon around a branch or tree trunk at eye level. The markers would enable me to find my way out. Or help Chad and his people find their way in. Sometimes I spent a minute calling out to Tina and listening carefully, praying for a reply.

She didn’t answer.

When I wasn’t shouting Tina’s name, the only sounds besides my breathing and the crunch of my footsteps were Possum’s panting, the tinkle of the bell on his collar and his steady movement through the brush. Overhead, the canopy of
trees thickened, almost blocking the sky. Night wrapped itself around us like an isolating cocoon, heightening awareness and honing instincts. Ahead, the inky blackness was broken only by the erratic flash of fireflies that exploded, rather than flickered, with brightness. Behind us, humans waiting beneath electric lights became distant and unreal, irrelevant to the search.

Possum picked up the pace, moving steadily forward, detouring only for tree trunks and the thickest, most tangled patches of roses and raspberries. I struggled to keep up with him, knowing that calling him back or slowing him down risked breaking his concentration.

I ignored the thorns I couldn’t avoid, dodged low-hanging branches, skirted tree trunks and stepped over deeper shadows that marked narrow streams, twisted roots and fallen trees. Sometimes I used my flashlight, running it over the ground to judge the terrain ahead. Always, I paid for that indulgence with several minutes of night blindness, and I didn’t turn the light on often.

As I made my way through the forest, fragmented thoughts of Tina—fragmented bits of hope—floated to mind. Maybe we’ll find her easily. She’ll be tired and cranky and mosquito-bitten, but okay. She’ll be okay. Possum and I will take her back to her parents. To the parents who love her. Who would never harm her. She’ll be okay. We’ll find her, and we’ll go home. I’ll take a hot shower and have a cold beer. Possum can have a dog biscuit. Maybe two. If we find Tina. Alive.

Ten minutes later, Possum’s pace slowed.

He wavered, whined and stopped. He had lost the scent. A more experienced search dog, like Highball, would have known what to do next and done it. But Possum was still young and not always confident.

I hurried to his side and gave him a brief, encouraging pat,
then checked him for signs of heat stress. Youth had its advantages—he was doing fine. Then I pulled Tina’s socks from my pocket. When I held the bag open for Possum, he sniffed the fabric again, lifted his head, put his nose in the air, and wandered in an erratic little circle. He whined again, definitely frustrated.

I oriented my body slightly to the left and pointed.

“Go on,” I said. “Find Tina.”

Possum followed my direction. I counted ten, slowly. When nothing about the dog’s movement hinted that he’d rediscovered Tina’s trail, I called him back. Then I turned to the right and sent him off that way.

Still nothing.

I moved forward several yards and we repeated the process. Left, then right. On each sweep, I sent Possum farther away from me. After that, he needed no direction and followed the ever-expanding pattern on his own. The night was still and humid—bad search conditions for any air-scenting dog. And although he was fit, Possum’s heavy coat made him susceptible to the heat. If he didn’t pick up the trail soon…

Patience, I told myself. Patience.

Minutes later, Possum rediscovered a wisp of Tina’s scent. His ears pricked, his tail wagged and his pace suddenly became faster and more deliberate. He continued through the woods with me at his heels.

Between the darkness and the terrain, it was difficult to know how far we had gone. I knew where I was, generally. Knew that I could turn around and find my way back to the Fishers’ house. But, at the moment, the physical landmarks that were so clearly marked on Chad’s map had little to do with the reality of the forest.

Possum’s collar disappeared. And didn’t reappear.

I could still hear his bell, so I assumed he was simply blocked from my view. I hurried forward, not considering what I wasn’t hearing—the sounds of his movement through the brush.

A spider’s web, strung between two trees at shoulder level, probably saved my life. I walked into it. And somehow noticed that, rather than trailing back over my neck and chin, the strands tickled my cheeks and nose, driven by the slightest stirring of upward-moving air. I stopped in my tracks, heart pounding from a sudden rush of adrenaline, my body sensing danger before my conscious mind registered it.

I switched on my flashlight and, with hands trembling from reaction, aimed it two strides forward. And down. A long way down. Maybe forty or fifty feet. I’d nearly stepped off a soil-covered outcrop of crumbling limestone, nearly tumbled to the stream bed below. Now that I was standing still, I could hear moving water.

The seeping groundwater that fed the stream had carved deep scars into the ravine’s limestone walls. Horizontal fissures marked places where softer rock had been washed away between layers of less porous stone. Soil had collected on the exposed ledges, creating islands of ferns and a network of slippery, narrow paths. In some places, water-weakened towers of limestone had sheered away from the walls, taking mature trees down with them. Everywhere, shattered trunks and branches were wedged across the ravine, creating a crisscross pattern of rotting and overgrown bridges.

I told myself that Tina had not fallen into the ravine. I told myself that Chad was right—that my instincts
were
good—and that no human monster had abused and then discarded her over the edge.

Possum’s bell jingled in the distance, and my flashlight beam made his collar glow. He had entered the ravine south of where I stood and was moving back in my direction, moving steadily along a ledge that would eventually put him six feet below me.

Just a few steps away from me was a tree that leaned precariously over the ravine. An old cottonwood whose trunk was probably seven feet around. There was a ragged hole in the trunk, partially obscured by vines, that narrowed to a point at the height of an adult’s waist. The wider opening at the base was just large enough that it might look inviting to a child seeking shelter. I got down on all fours and bent my elbows to peer inside the dark scar, hoping to find Tina curled up asleep. Safe. And discovered that eroding soil, crumbling limestone and twisted roots had created a natural chute inside the rotting trunk. A chute that would send a body downward…

I wrenched my light away from the interior, aimed it over the nearby precipice. A tapering curtain of long, thick tendrils hung directly beneath the old tree, the longest of them trailing down to the narrow ledge below.

Impossible to see what those roots might be hiding.

“Tina!” I called urgently.

The slightest echo of my own voice answered me.

She might be lying there unconscious. Or sleeping. She might not be there at all.

The slope beside the tree was steep but not absolutely vertical.

I checked the ledge carefully for signs of her as I considered my strategy. I could walk along the ravine’s edge until I found a place where I could climb down more easily. That would take time and I risked losing sight of Possum, but I’d probably not fall and break my bones. Or I could climb down right here, using the strongest of the tree roots to slow my descent.

I put one hand on the cottonwood for balance and leaned way out into the darkness. Four feet below the first ledge was another jutting outcropping that was at least double the width of the one immediately beneath me. If I could make it down to the first ledge, it was an easy jump to the next one. If I slipped and tumbled past the first ledge, the second one would be my safety net, though reaching it that abruptly was not part of my plan.

And from there? I asked myself. Too easy to imagine me sitting, stranded and broken-limbed, suddenly needing rescue myself. Embarrassing and certainly not helpful to Tina. Especially if she wasn’t even down there.

Air currents in and around ravines are complex, I reminded myself. It was impossible to know if the scent Possum was following was actually directly below me. Or upwind. Or maybe, though unlikely, drifting from the opposite side of the ravine. Common sense overcame urgency, and I decided to spend a few extra minutes searching for a safer way down. I played the light around my feet, taking one last, close look at the terrain before turning off my flashlight.

That’s when I saw the shoe print.

It was tiny, rounded at the toe and angled into the soft earth between two thick roots. The words
Stride Rite
were lightly embossed into the soil.

That changed everything. Now I knew, without doubt, that Tina had been here. Standing. Walking. Impossible to know if she’d been accompanied or alone, but at the moment she’d stepped next to the tree, Tina had been alive.

And in the next moment? I asked myself. I grasped for hope, for some thought that didn’t involve Tina climbing inside the tree and then tumbling down into the darkness. Or being pushed…

But Possum was intent on working his way down into the ravine.

Trust your dog. That was a fundamental rule of canine search-and-rescue work.

I radioed Chad, told him what I’d found and where I was going, and asked him to head my way. Now.

I spent another minute calling out for Tina and listening. Cicadas shrilled. Mosquitoes buzzed. Frogs trilled. But besides the sound of my own breathing, I heard nothing human. So I climbed down into the ravine. With my belly pressed against the crumbling edge, I controlled my descent by wrapping one hand around one of the thicker exposed roots, then digging the fingers of my free hand and the toes of my boots into the limestone wall. My passage triggered a miniature avalanche of pebbles and soil that poured down on my feet when I landed on the narrow ledge.

It was a sloppy descent—unsafe, poorly planned and scary. But it got me where I needed to be. I shook the loose soil away from my boots, brushed the worst of it from my face and the front of my shirt, and retrieved my flashlight. Then, turning my back on the twisted mass of tree roots, I looked toward Possum.

Instead of rushing to greet me as I expected, he stopped just out of reach. He cowered, tucked his tail between his legs, turned his head and one shoulder away from me and whined.

He wasn’t reacting to me.

Only one thing triggered that posture in a search dog. Possum hadn’t been trained as a cadaver dog, but if death had laid its distinctive scent nearby, he would pick up that less familiar but still human smell and understand at some level what it meant.

I understood exactly what it meant.

My first thought was: Oh, dear Lord! The child is dead.

Then I caught myself. This was no time for the handler to
fall apart. I pushed aside my feelings, ignored the painful tightening in my gut. I pressed my eyes shut as I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When I opened my eyes again, my emotions were back under control. I could do what needed to be done.

Certainly, recovering Tina’s body was urgent. But now, comforting my dog was more important than that. It was up to me to make sure that he was rewarded for finding a victim, living or dead. So I went down on one knee and called Possum closer. I took his big head in my hands, put my cheek against his soft, warm muzzle and ruffled his shaggy fur.

“You’re a good boy,” I murmured. “A very good dog. You found her.”

Then I lifted my head and dug in my pouch for Possum’s favorite treat—bits of crisp, thick-sliced bacon. Almost absentmindedly, I fed him tiny pieces as I considered how air currents might move in and along a ravine. Upward, certainly. But eddies of air would form on each ledge, creating pools of scent that might not have originated there. When Possum reacted, there’d been nothing visible between him and me but bare soil and a few maidenhead ferns growing from tiny cracks in the limestone wall. So unless he had sensed particles of flesh or bone or drops of blood that were invisible to me—something that was possible but unlikely in this circumstance—the body was probably below us.

Before moving again, I took careful note of exactly where Possum and I stood and what we were disturbing. If this was a crime scene, our very presence was destroying forensic evidence, our every movement overlaying traces left by a killer with traces of our own. My priority was to find Tina, to recover her body. But after that, I wanted justice. More, I
wanted the child’s death avenged. Which meant that I needed a crime scene that was as intact as I could leave it.