Too Close To Home

“I need half an hour,” I said, then asked him for details.

With the receiver held between my ear and shoulder, I listened to him talk as I walked halfway down the hall to my bedroom. There, I snatched a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt from the closet. Though the T-shirt and cutoffs I’d changed into when I’d gone off duty were more appropriate to June’s hot and humid weather, they were poor protection against branches and thorns. I wasn’t even tempted to change back into my uniform. Maryville’s budget paid for one replacement uniform annually. Not quite a year as a rookie cop in the town’s newly created one-person department, and I was already out-of-pocket for two uniforms.

But uniform or not, and although Chad was the responding officer, the location of the house meant that I was not just a searcher, I was also the police officer in charge. So I began gathering the information I needed for both those roles as I exchanged shorts for jeans and slipped the long-sleeved shirt over my T-shirt. I clipped my shiny Maryville PD badge onto the shirt’s breast pocket.

“When the call came in, I had dispatch contact the forest service and pull some rangers from the Elizabethtown district office,” Chad said. “They’re searching the immediate area.”

“You’ve already searched the house?”

“Yep. First thing,” Chad said matter-of-factly. “Every room, every closet, behind the furniture and under all the beds. I checked the garden shed and the garage, too.”

I nodded, pleased by the information. All too often, cops and inexperienced searchers focused their attention on searching areas beyond the house right away, only later discovering a lost child fast asleep in a closet or in the backseat of the family car. Or, more tragically, overcome by heat in an attic crawl space.

“The parents are sure Tina’s wandered off,” Chad continued. “That’s her name. Tina Fisher. Did I tell you she’s four years old? The parents have been searching for her since sunset. Sure wish they’d of called us right away.”

But they hadn’t, which was typical.

Chad provided me with a few more sketchy details as I re-crossed the kitchen, snatched two bottles of lime-flavored Gatorade and a handful of granola bars—tonight’s dinner—from refrigerator and pantry. Then I moved my shoulder to hold the phone more securely against my cheek as I sat down on a wooden bench by the back door and laced on a pair of oiled-leather hiking boots.

From his nearby cushion, my old German shepherd, Highball, wagged his tail and woofed twice, ever hopeful that when I put on boots it meant playtime for him. But Highball was too old for this kind of search. Too old, really, for any kind of search.

“Brooke? You still there?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Give me a minute….”

I spent that minute trying to figure out if I was seeking feedback from a cop far more experienced than I, one who’d been on the force for three years and in the military police before that. Or if I was simply looking for the kind of reassurance that only an old friend or an ex-lover can provide. In the end, I gave up on sorting it out and simply blurted out what was on my mind.

“What’s your feeling on this one, Chad? Do you think she’s really lost?”

It was his turn to hesitate. And I suspected that he, too, was recalling a cool day in early spring more than a year earlier. Back when I was still a civilian, when the county police force knew me as that gal who helped out when folks got lost. Or maybe as the gal that Officer Robinson intended to marry, if only she’d get around to saying yes. Back then, I already suspected that the only possible answer I could give Chad was no. But I still hoped that when folks said that love conquered all, those conquests might include guilt and deception. The reality was, love couldn’t stand up to either.

Anyway, on that particular spring day, Highball and I had been called in to look for another missing child. Possum was still more puppy than adult, and the older dog had always been a marvel at in-town searches, capable of ignoring the distractions of traffic and onlookers and the confusion of scents.

We found the body near a sagging post-and-wire fence that did a poor job of separating a run-down trailer court from a field that was shaggy with the remains of last year’s corn crop. The two-year-old boy was wrapped in his favorite blanket and buried beneath a pile of damp, winter-rotted leaves nearly the same color as the blood that crusted his hair.

I helped Chad stretch yards of yellow plastic tape from one tree to the next. CRIME SCENE. DO NOT ENTER. Then I walked slowly back to the street where the little boy lived and stood on the curb, just watching, as the ambulance arrived.

Usually, when I found a missing person—living or dead—there was a moment of primitive glee, a flash of adrenaline-spurred triumph. But this time, as the paramedics loaded the tiny body into the ambulance, I could think only of the terrible loss. Then the rear doors were slammed shut and the ambulance pulled away without screaming sirens. Without haste.

The media was at the scene to cover the story of the missing toddler. Reporters and camera crews from papers and TV stations as far away as Evansville and Paducah trolled the crowd, hungry for one more detail, a unique angle, an award-winning photo, a bit of footage dramatic enough to make the national news. Desperate to avoid their prying eyes, I tugged Highball’s leash and quickly walked away. When the tattered gray trunk of a century-old sycamore was between me and the media, I stopped, dropped to my knees and buried my face in the thick fur of my dog’s ruff.

I thought I was safe, so I wept. But within moments, voices—urgent and demanding—surrounded me, and I feared that my private tears for a dead child would make someone’s news story complete. Then, unexpectedly, Chad was there. He hunkered down beside Highball and me and wrapped his arms around both of us. His snarled commands had kept the reporters at bay.

Now, another young child was missing.

I stood by the back door, looking out its window, waiting for Chad’s reply.

“I don’t know, Brooke. I really don’t. The parents seem real upset, but…”

His words trailed off as he left unspoken the reality we both understood. Upset parents didn’t mean that one of them hadn’t murdered their child.

I sighed, fingered my badge for a moment. My job no longer ended with the rescue or recovery of a victim. If Tina was dead, my responsibility was to find out how and who and maybe why. Any tears would have to wait.

“Finding Tina is a priority,” I said. “But if you haven’t already told them, would you please remind the rangers that we could be dealing with a crime? If they find the child dead, tell them not to move her body. I know they’ll have to check for vitals. But after that, they need to back off and leave the scene as undisturbed as possible. And Chad, maybe assign one of the rangers to sit with the Fishers. Call it moral support, but don’t let them do any cleaning up that might impede a murder investigation, okay?”

In all likelihood, Chad didn’t need me to tell him any of that, either. And I understood that, whether they knew what to do or not, a lot of seasoned male cops would have resented taking direction from a female and a small town’s rookie police officer. But Chad and I had never had a problem where our professional lives were concerned. When I’d first pinned on a badge, we’d worked out the ground rules. Almost a year later and, despite the recent upheaval in our personal relationship, those rules and our friendship still worked.

In this situation, the rule was simple. My jurisdiction. My responsibility. Chad apparently also remembered the rule and responded accordingly.

“Will do,” he said. “Another county cop is on the way to back me up, so I’ll have her keep an eye on the parents. Anything else?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, my tone inviting feedback.

Apparently, Chad had no advice to give.

“Then see you soon,” he said and disconnected.

Out in the kennel area and seemingly oblivious to the heat, Highball’s replacement was bouncing around on the other side of a six-foot-tall chain-link fence and barking up a storm. The young dog’s excitement was most likely prompted by one of his namesakes searching for grubs in the woodpile.

“He walks like an old fat possum,” Gran had observed as my new German shepherd puppy waddled his way across the room to greet her. And though he’d grown up to be a graceful and athletic dog, the undignified nickname stuck. Possum.

I turned away from the window to pick up a powerful compact flashlight from the far corner of the kitchen counter. Everything else I needed, including my webbing belt and its assortment of small packs, was already in the white SUV that doubled as Maryville’s only squad car and my personal vehicle. That was a fairly standard arrangement for small-town police departments.

Customizing the SUV to accommodate a dog wasn’t. But the city council members had observed that my volunteer work to locate the lost, complete with search-and-rescue dogs, was just as important to the citizens of Maryville as the job they’d now be paying me for. So the modifications to the SUV had been made, and I’d been grateful.

“Come on. Kennel time,” I murmured to Highball.

His kennel area was outside, adjacent to Possum’s, and going there always meant a meal. Or a treat. And a tennis ball to chew on. Highball raised his graying head, rose slowly to his feet and wagged his tail as he joined me at the back door.

I pulled a ball cap over my cropped brown curls, then reached into the stoneware bowl on the kitchen counter and snatched up the keys to my squad car.

I was ready to go.

The Fishers lived on top of a rise in a modern, two-story log home, deliberately rustic and heavy on the windows. Out front, a low fence of flat river rock enclosed the yard and lined the approach to the house.

When I pulled into the drive, I saw Chad on the front porch, uncomfortably perched on the front edge of an Adirondack chair and leaning over a low wooden table. He was in uniform, which was short-sleeved and dark blue, but had set his billed cap aside, exposing crew-cut coppery-red hair. Thousands of insects swarmed around him, attracted by the yellow glow of the light mounted above the door. His attention was so completely absorbed by whatever was on the table that he seemed oblivious to them.

I turned off my headlights, cut the engine and sat for just a moment.

In my rearview mirror, I could see flashlights bobbing—rangers searching through the cattails and tall rushes growing in the swampy ditch that paralleled the road at the front of the property. The only other illumination in the area shone from the windows of the Fisher family’s home, where all of the interior lights seemed to be on.

I climbed down from my SUV and walked around to the back to lift the door of the topper and drop the tailgate. From inside his crate, Possum whined excitedly, eager for the search.

“In a minute,” I said, and he settled back down.

I pulled the items I needed from the bed of the truck and sprayed myself with insect repellent. My utility pack was on a webbing belt. I slung it around my waist, tied my two bottles of sports drink into the pack’s side pockets, and slipped my flashlight through one of the belt loops. A canteen of water for Possum was added to my load, along with a small, folded square of waterproof fabric that cleverly opened into a water dish. I took a pair of two-way radios from the locked box near the tire well. One, I’d leave with Chad. The other, I clipped to my belt.

Then I released Possum from his crate.

He jumped down from the bed, mouthed my hand briefly in an affectionate but sloppy greeting, then stood with his tail wagging and his body wiggling. For him, searching for a missing person was the ultimate game of hide-and-seek, its successful conclusion rewarded by the praise he craved.

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.

Chapter 2

Mosquitoes.

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.