Murder on the Horizon (3 page)

4

F
ROM
the time Gracie flew out of the back door of the camp kitchen to the time she turned into the parking lot of the Sheriff's Office substation, twenty-three minutes had elapsed.

Standing next to the Ranger in back of Serrano Lodge, she had pulled on her newly washed orange SAR uniform shirt, camo pants, and hiking boots while keeping one eye on the road into camp lest an unexpected visitor be treated to an impromptu peep show. With a quick stop at the office to tape a note and hastily drawn map on the front door to take any inquiries down to Allen in the camp kitchen, she careened out of camp and down steep, winding Cedar Mill Road at a hair-raising speed of fifty-seven miles per hour. Multiple stoplights and slow-moving traffic in town added another nail-chewing eleven minutes.

Gracie swung the truck into a parking space alongside the Sheriff's Office building—long, two story, painted off-white, and trimmed in dark brown. Grabbing up her radio chest pack from the passenger's seat, she walked over to where Warren was climbing down from out of the team's ton-and-a-half
utility truck behind which, hooked up and ready to go, was the mobile Incident Command Post, or ICP—a donated travel trailer refurbished and equipped with everything the team could possibly need to manage a search: maps and whiteboards, Incident Command System forms, laptop, copy machine and printer, office supplies, handheld radios and batteries, water and blankets.

Idling next to the utility truck was the team's Ford F-150 pickup pulling a trailer carrying two ATVs. Both vehicles and the Command Post trailer were white, emblazoned with the Department's signature chevron.

“Hey, Warren,” Gracie said, threading her arms through the straps of her radio pack.

With graying rust-colored hair and a mass of freckles, Warren was a big man of few words and many talents, working behind the scenes, doing whatever needed to be done for the team without thought or need for thanks or acknowledgement.

As Gracie clipped the radio pack on and untwisted the straps, she scanned the other vehicles in the parking lot. Her spirits drooped. Ralph Hunter's bright red F-150 pickup was nowhere in sight.

Ralph was Gracie's rock, the one person to whom she could talk, the one person she could rely on to always be there for her, to always care.

At least he had been in the past.

But several months earlier, Gracie had met Ralph's rare display of emotional vulnerability with not love and compassion, but pity. Ralph's response had been a cold fury and Gracie had been afraid she had lost her best friend forever. But Ralph had forgiven her and all was right with Gracie's world until, unwittingly, she had hurt him again. That time he hadn't forgiven her, freezing her out of his life and leaving her sick at heart.

Normally, Ralph clocked more hours and responded to more calls than any other member on the team except for
Gracie. He had been on the team longer than anyone else. His leadership and experience were the mortar holding together the disparate set of personalities on the team. But, in the past six weeks, he hadn't responded to a single callout, his absence from the last two team business meetings the topic of much speculation.

But Ralph not responding to searches or attending meetings because of a tiff with Gracie was an impossibility. He was too much of a professional to let personal squabbles get in the way of the job.

Something else is going on
, she thought. He hadn't returned any of her calls about SAR business and the five times she had driven past his house, his pickup hadn't been parked at the top of the driveway. Ralph was a building contractor for high-end homes. Maybe his absence was as simple as his business picking up.

Worry and anxiety about Ralph pricked at Gracie. If he didn't show up for this search, she decided, she would drive over to his cabin and camp out in front until she found out what was going on.

Gracie jolted back to the present. If Ralph didn't show up for this search, managing the operation would fall to her. She looked around at the people and vehicles in the parking lot, taking stock of who had responded, thinking ahead to which assignment could be given to whom. Most of the core group—the diehards who showed up for almost every search—were there: Carrie, Jon, Warren, and Lenny.

“Kinkaid!” Jon called as he walked across the parking lot, backpack over one shoulder. “You in the ICP?”

“Unless you want it,” she called back.

“Hell, no!”

Carrie emerged from the employee's entrance of the SO followed by two new team members, a married couple about whom Gracie knew nothing. Carrie conferred with the man and woman for a moment, then walked across the parking lot to hand Gracie a Dispatch printout of the original missing
person call and a heavy Sheriff's Department radio. “Gardner's Watch Commander,” she said. “He basically said, ‘You're on your own.'”

“Of course he did,” Gracie said, snapping the radio into her chest pack, perfectly content to conduct her own briefing, especially if it meant not having to deal with her nemesis on the Sheriff's Department, Sergeant Ron Gardner.

Carrie held up a half-inch-thick sheaf of paper rubber-banded together. “MisPer flyers?”

“Hang on to 'em until we get on-scene, will you?” Then she looked up and yelled, “Okay, everybody, circle up for a briefing.”

When everyone had gathered around and the small talk had dribbled away to silence, Gracie said, “To those of you for whom this is your first search, welcome and thanks.” She looked down at the Dispatch report in her hands. “Our MisPer is a missing juvenile. Baxter Edwards. Eleven years old. Blond over—”

“Hey, that's—” Lenny interrupted.

“—the same kid,” Jon finished.

“That's two times in two months.”

“Three.”

“Months?”

“Times.”

“Kid's a runaway,” Warren offered.

“I thought we weren't supposed to be called out for runaways,” Lenny said.

Gracie frowned. “I'm not familiar with him because I was—”

“Sitting at home eating bonbons,” Jon interjected.

“Loafing,” Warren added.

“Um, recuperating from a broken ankle?” Gracie said.

“Wimp.”

“Slacker.”

Gracie acknowledged the good-natured ribbing with a smile, and continued. “We're not usually called in for runaways, especially chronic ones. My guess is it's because of
the boy's age and the fact that he's been missing for over twenty-four hours.” Her eyes moved over the printout. “Anyway . . . physical description. Blond over brown. Four foot seven. Sixty-six pounds. Black glasses.”

“He looks like Mr. Peabody,” Lenny said.

“Mr. Peabody's the dog,” Carrie said. “The kid's Sherman.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Okay,” Gracie said, forging ahead. “Last seen wearing woodland camouflage pants and jacket. Carrying a black backpack. Went missing from his home in Pine Knot sometime yesterday afternoon. Family's been out searching for him.”

“Ain't that just peachy,” Warren said.

“They'll have trampled all over any tracks,” Lenny said.

“Grandmother finally called the SO this morning,” Gracie continued.

“Why would they wait over a day to call it in?” Carrie asked.

“Let's just say the family doesn't like law enforcement,” Jon answered.

“That's putting it mildly,” Warren added in a low voice.

“They all live in a big, like, fortress in the woods,” Lenny said, his blue eyes shining.

“Compound,” Jon amended.

“Yeah. I heard they have an underground bunker and everything. Like on TV. They're . . . what do you call 'em?”

“Doomsday preppers.”

“Yeah! Doomsday preppers!”

“Friggin' wing nuts.”

“Hey, I watch that show.”

“Let's stay on task here,” Gracie said, shifting her weight to the other leg to ease her aching ankle. “A missing eleven-year-old is an emergency, regardless of whether he's a runaway or not. What happened with this kid the last two . . . three times?” She looked up. “Anybody know?”

“First time,” Jon said, “Baxter showed up over the river and through the woods at Grandma's house a half mile or
so away from home. They don't all just get along. Kid told the debriefing SAR member—that would be
moi
—he was holed up at his fort the entire day. Close mouthed about where said fort was. Second time, he was spotted walking along the Boulevard by Maple. He was picked up by a deputy. Third time, who knows?”

“Third time,” Carrie said, “janitor at the high school found him scrounging in one of the Dumpsters for food.”

“Okay then,” Gracie said. “Warren'll drive the ICP up. Set it up in the parking lot of the park next to the fire station. Corner of Spruce and Clampett.” She looked up. “Who's driving the ATVs up?”

Lenny raised his hand.

“Good. You and Warren on ATVs. You both okay with that?”

Lenny pumped the air with his fist. “Sweet.”

“Okay, boss,” Warren affirmed.

“Jon and Carrie. Since the family's uncooperative, we won't be able to interview the parents. Grab an MPQ and go talk to the RP, the grandmother.” She looked down at the briefing sheet. “Sharon Edwards. 1058 Oak Street.”

Jon and Carrie scribbled down the information in pocket-sized notebooks.

“At least until things get set up in the ICP, Warren is Comms. Mr. Towne?”

Warren cleared his throat. “MAC10 talk group. I'll distribute radios to teams when we get on-scene. Those of you who are new on the team and haven't had the radio training yet, get with a more-experienced member who can show you how to find the right channel.”

“Standard safety message,” Gracie said. “Wear hats and sunscreen.”

“I've got mine!” Lenny announced, holding up an enormous economy-sized bottle of generic-brand SPF 110.

Gracie laughed. “Drink lots of water. Even though it's an urban environment, keep an eye out for snakes. Don't
forget to sign in. And out. Sheet's on the table in the squad room. See you all up there.”

*   *   *

USING HER MOSTLY
full water bottle and the heavy HT radio, Gracie anchored opposing corners of a large laminated street map of the mountain community of Pine Knot, then carefully sat down on the teetery secretarial chair, knowing from past experience it was prone to easily tipping backward. The last thing she needed was for someone—her favorite sergeant, for instance—to walk into the trailer and find her lying on her back on the floor with her legs waving in the air with girlish glee.

With colored sticky arrows, she indicated on the map the location of the Command Post, then the Last Known Point and Point Last Seen—both the Edwards family compound. “On Gorgonzola?” Gracie said aloud. “Who thinks up these street names?” Using a dry-erase marker and working her way out from the compound, she drew out search segments to which teams would be assigned, numbering them in order of priority.

She was aware of her heart pounding, feeling the pressure of multiple people standing around chomping at the bit, waiting for assignments, eager to be out in the field. The responsibility for the life of a child weighed heavily on her. A miscalculation in search segments or any other mistake might affect the outcome of the search—whether or not they found the boy alive.

Once everyone was in the field, then, maybe, she could catch up on filling out the myriad Incident Command System forms.

The trailer door opened and Warren stuck his head inside. “What do you need, Gracie?”

“A list of who's already here with what vehicles and what equipment and ETA of who's still on their way.”

“On it.” He ducked back out of the trailer.

“And ICP coordinates,” she yelled after him.

“On it,” Warren yelled back from outside.

Gracie dug into her black plastic file box, pulled out a stack of 204 forms, and began filling in the boxes with Case Number, Incident Name, Date, Time, Operational Period. Then following the search segments she had drawn, she began making search assignments.

The door flew open again and Warren climbed inside, tipping the little trailer with his weight. “On-scene personnel,” he said, laying a list on the table next to Gracie. He pressed a yellow sticky note on top. “And coordinates.”

“Thank you!”

Using the information Warren had just provided and the search segments she had drawn on the map, Gracie began making team assignments.

Four hours later, there was still no sign of the missing boy.

5

A
NXIETY
had tightened the knot in Gracie's stomach. In another couple of hours, Baxter Edwards would have been missing for thirty-six hours. She would give it until then to call in help from neighboring teams—more ground pounders, a dog team or two, aviation.

Two hours into the search, Carrie and Jon had returned from interviewing the boy's grandmother, Sharon Edwards, and turned in a completed Missing Person Questionnaire, or MPQ. Immediately they had received another assignment, joining another team of ground pounders going door-to-door, street-to-street.

The MPQ had both brought new information and confirmed information already known. For only eleven years old, Baxter Edwards was impressively self-sufficient, never going anywhere without a backpack containing homemade snacks and water, but, it had been noted with a circled star, only water from the family compound, all other water believed to be tainted or poisoned by “the government.” The boy was homeschooled, well-trained in survival, and very familiar with the
area. Fights with the father were frequent, often physical, according to the grandmother, mostly because the father hated his son's preference of books to guns. The family was reclusive and, as had been already discussed, demonstrably hostile to law enforcement with prior run-ins with County Code Enforcement officials and inspectors. “Terrific,” Gracie muttered.

Setting the MPQ aside, Gracie leaned over the map again, second-guessing the segments she had drawn, the assignments she had made, wondering whether she had missed anything, what she wasn't seeing.

The Command Post door was yanked open and Ralph climbed up the metal steps and inside.

Gracie straightened. “Ralphie!”

Ralph set the HT in his hand and two file boxes he was carrying on the table. He slid his black backpack off one shoulder onto the floor next to the chair.

When he straightened, Gracie's flooding sense of relief was replaced by alarm.

Ralph looked ten years older since the last time she had seen him. His face was gaunt, the color of dried clay. The blue-gray eyes were cold steel. And he had dropped five pounds, maybe more.

“I'm so glad you're here,” Gracie croaked. She cleared her throat. “What happened? Where have you been? I've . . . I've—”

“What do we have?” Ralph asked, bending over the map. No “Gracie girl.” No small talk. No gentle blue-gray eyes. No nothing, except detached professionalism.

Gracie stared at him for a moment, then, hyperaware of his presence, gave him an overview of what teams were in the field and what their current assignments were, which assignments had already been completed, which segments had been searched.

Ralph studied the map. “Everyone has an assignment?”

“Everyone except a new team member. Whitney. She got here about fifteen minutes ago. Can you believe it? She's wearing a—”

“Anyone else?”

Gracie stared at him again, but he didn't look up. “Me, I guess,” she said. “Now that you're here.”

“Okay.” He straightened to scan the 204s Gracie had push-pinned onto the corkboard above the table. He unpinned one and scribbled Gracie's name on it. “You're Ground Three.” He scanned the map. “Search Segment Seven. Piñon to Juniper to—”

“I know what streets,” Gracie snapped, annoyed with his attitude, his unwillingness to forgive her, her own inability to know what to do about it. “I created the damned segments.” She blew out a breath. “Sorry. Ralphie . . .”

“Take Whitney.” He added the other woman's name beneath Gracie's on the form.

Gracie inhaled to protest, thought better of it, and said, “On it, boss.”

“Map?”

“Yes.”

“MisPer flyers?”

Gracie inserted the HT into the pouch on her chest pack and snapped it in place. “Yes.” Then without another word, she gathered up her personal ICS forms, pens, and pencils, stowed them back in her file box, and used her foot to shove it out of the way beneath the table. Slinging her pack over her shoulder, she stepped out of the trailer, taking extra care to close the door quietly behind her.

She stood outside the Command Post, taking in a deep breath through her nose, and blowing it out through her mouth, resolving to wait until she got home to ruminate further about her estrangement from Ralph over a glass or two of Alice White Chardonnay.

Where the hell is Whitney?
She scanned the parking lot and community park, finally spotting the woman standing in the open bay of the fire station next door, one tanned leg cocked off to the side, talking and laughing with a couple of young and healthy firefighters.

Gracie suppressed another surge of annoyance. In spite of being given the team's Policies and Procedures, which explicitly spelled out the code for both dress and field uniforms, Whitney had shown up for the search wearing her long, dark brown hair loose around her shoulders, multiple silver bracelets and necklaces and dangly earrings, a tight-fitting pair of white capri pants, and open-toed wedge sandals. To her credit, she was wearing the orange uniform shirt, but the top buttons had been left unbuttoned, revealing a dangerous décolletage.

Gracie pulled open the driver's door of the Ranger, leaned in to place the stack of flyers and the map on the console inside, and wondered why she was letting the woman bother her so much. Because there were standards and protocol to be adhered to and so far Whitney had ignored almost all of them? Because the valley had a small population base from which to draw its members and the team had to accept practically anyone it could get? Because Gracie felt proprietary about the team and Whitney was treating it as a social club? Or was it because the focus of this search had suddenly shifted to being a contest for who could garner the most male attention by dressing the sexiest and Gracie knew she was on the losing end? The sneaking suspicion that it was a little of all of the above added more prickles to her cactus mood. “Whitney,” she called a little too sharply.

The woman looked over.

“You're with me. We have an assignment.”

Whitney lifted a single finger in acknowledgement, tittered with the two men for a couple of seconds, then sashayed across the parking lot to the appreciation of her grinning male audience.

As Whitney walked up, Gracie said, “We're Ground Team Number Three. We'll take my truck. Throw your pack in the back.”

“Oh, I don't have one yet. I got some of the things on the list though. They're in my car.”

“Never mind for now,” Gracie said. “I have enough in my truck for both of us.”

Gracie climbed into the Ranger and started the engine, then watched as Whitney stood on her tiptoes to place her rear end on the passenger's seat, then drew her legs in behind. Gracie had seen another woman climb into the truck in exactly the same beauty queen way only a few months before.
What is up with that?

The Ranger turned out of the parking lot. “Let's drive the perimeter of our search area,” Gracie said. “Then we'll figure out the most efficient route to cover all the houses in our segment. Can you read a map?”

“Of course.”

Gracie handed Whitney the map on which the outer perimeter of their search area had been marked with yellow highlighter.

Whitney tapped a long, elaborately painted fingernail on a front tooth. “Let's see.” She turned the map one way. Then the other. “Hmmm. I think . . . Turn! Turn right here!”

Gracie turned the wheel right.

“No, left!” Whitney said with a giggle. “Left!”

Gracie hauled the wheel in the other direction.
They're gonna think we're schnockered.

“I meant turn left right here!”

“It's all good,” Gracie said, lifting her foot from the accelerator and inching the Ranger down the street. “Just tell me what's coming up.”

“Uh, I don't know. I can't . . .”

“Have you located where we are on the map?”

“No.”

“How about the park? The fire station?”

Silence.

Gracie steered the Ranger over to the side of the road and braked to a stop. “Let me show you. May I have the map?”

Whitney handed it over.

Gracie pointed. “Here's the park where the Command Post is. Here's where we are. On Spruce.”

The woman flipped her hair back away from her face, crossed her arms, looked out the side window, and tapped the floor with the toe of her sandal.

“Okay, our boundaries are Piñon, Juniper . . .” She waited until Whitney looked to where she was indicating. “Shakespeare and Browning.” She pointed. “We'll park the truck here and walk Juniper to Blue Jay. Then . . .”

“We're walking?”

“We're going door-to-door.”

“Why can't we drive?”

“We're knocking on doors. Passing out flyers—”

“I can't walk in these shoes.”

Gracie sank back in the seat and pinched the bridge of her nose against the headache looming there. “When we're done here, why don't you and I go out for coffee or something? Just to . . . you know . . . chat.”

“About what?”

“The team. Dress code. What's required.”

“What do you mean—‘dress code'?”

Gracie stopped, unsure of how frank to be. She didn't want to piss Whitney off enough so she would quit the team. In as mild a voice as she could muster, she said, “Well, like what you should wear on your feet. Something more practical. Did you get a chance to read the Policies and Procedures?”

Whitney said something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like
boooring
.

“Hiking boots,” Gracie said. “Tennis shoes at least, but, eventually, something sturdier. Sometimes we search in some pretty rough terrain.” Whitney had heard this all before. “You need to wear long pants, heavy material, to protect your legs. Your hair needs to out of the way. I wear mine in a ponytail.”

Whitney's eyes traveled over Gracie's thick auburn hair
pulled through the hole in the back of her black Sheriff's Department ball cap. Her pink lips pursed.

“Or a braid,” Gracie continued. “You need to sew the patches on your shirt so people can identify you as belonging to the Sheriff's Department.”

“Those uniforms are so masculine.” Whitney flexed her feet and admired her shimmering turquoise toenails. “I'm not afraid to show that I'm all woman.”

“It's not a matter of—”

“
I'm
proud of being feminine,” Whitney said, looking Gracie up and down, one beautifully drawn eyebrow arched.

She's pressing on my last nerve
, Gracie thought, and counted to five before saying, “This isn't a fashion show, Whitney. This is serious work. We're here to save people's lives. Not pick up guys.”

Whitney's eyes narrowed into a glare. “I want to go.”

“Go . . .”

“Home. I want to go home.”

“Uhhh . . .” Gracie was flummoxed. “You can't. We're on a search.”

“I'm not going.”

“You're not—”

Whitney pushed her door open and slid off the seat to the ground. “I'm not going to walk around this neighborhood,” she said through the open doorway. “It isn't safe. We could be attacked. And I told you I can't walk in these shoes.” She slammed the door closed.

In the rearview mirror, Gracie watched her walk, hips swinging, down the middle of the street in the direction of the Command Post. “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “So be it.”

Now what?
If she notified Ralph by radio that Whitney was on her way back to the Command Post, she would no doubt be summoned back there as well. The team protocol of not searching alone would dictate she either work in the ICP alongside Ralph, or be assigned to another team, which meant more delay, less ground covered, less efficiency.

Gracie pulled the Ranger away from the curb, drove to the corner of Piñon and Juniper, and parked.

Talking to strangers was one of Gracie's least favorite things to do on Search and Rescue, or anytime. But today a child was missing and knocking on doors was what needed to be done.

With flyers in hand, her day pack on her back, and a renewed sense of urgency, Gracie strode up to the first house on the block, a cottage painted green with white trim. In front were two yard butts—a man in overalls and a woman in a red and white polka-dot dress—surrounded by every imaginable yard knickknack—birds, mushrooms, rabbits. The wings of a Canada goose turned slowly with a lift of air.

Gracie hurried up the flagstone walkway and pressed the doorbell. “Sheriff's Department. Search and Rescue,” she called in a loud voice.

The front door—flamingo orange—was pulled open by a woman with silver hair floating around her head like a sea anemone and pink glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. Wearing blue jeans and a purple plaid shirt, she smiled up at Gracie through the screen door. “Yes?”

“Good afternoon,” Gracie said. “I'm with Search and Rescue. There's a boy missing in the area and we wondered if you had seen him. I have a flyer with his picture. Would you be willing to look at it?”

“Oh, my. That's tragic, isn't it? I'll be happy to take a look at it.” The woman unlocked the screen door and pushed it open. “Would you like to come inside? I have pink lemonade.”

Gracie smiled. “That's very nice, but no, thank you.” She held out the flyer.

The woman put on her glasses and took the paper.

Only barely resisting the temptation to tap her foot, Gracie waited as the woman studied the picture, read the description below, then looked at the picture again. Finally, she shook her head. “I believe I've seen this young man around here
from time to time, but not in the past week.” She looked up at Gracie over the glasses. “Do you want this back?”

“No. You keep it. If you see him or hear anything you think might help us locate him, will you give us a call? The number's at the bottom there.”