No Time To Wave Goodbye Part 13

Switch stubbed at the floor with her boot and admitted, "That's true."

Straining to hear the words from inside the huddle, Candy realized she was hungry to the point of nausea. That morning, realizing she hadn't eaten anything but coffee for more than forty-eight hours, Candy had gone to breakfast with Beth and the others. She had tried to eat. She had made a concentrated effort to break her toast up into bites she could chew and she chewed them as her mother had told her and Belle to do when they were children, twenty times each bite. And yet the sight of her key chain-with a picture of Stella's first smile, given to her and Beth by Eliza just a few months after Stella was born-closed her throat so that no matter how much juice she chugged, the bread was like a wad of wet paper jammed in her gullet. Finally, Candy had to slip into the bathroom and throw it up. A fifty-one-year-old bulimic. She drank the rest of the juice. People could live for weeks without food.

On the other hand, Beth hadn't even tried to eat, beyond a cup of tea.

Candy felt lucky that they had let her come along, on her solemn promise not to abruptly act like a police officer. But she couldn't help asking, "Bill, so who was the woman who mailed the package from Canada? Was it someone else that Whittier found?"

"I'm guessing it was the same woman who actually took Stella, but dressed to look older," Humbly said. "But with no priors, nothing, I'm guessing we'll never know who she really is or the connection to Whittier." He tightened his lips.

Beth sat quietly, watching the men and wishing she could cry. She craved the relief of the scooped-out, limb-heavy exhaustion and deep-nasal-pool feeling that tears would bring. Instead she was hollow, light, and dry as a seedpod. Tears would not come. Losing Stella was outside the fence of sad. There was nothing animated within Beth except a hot, pale column of rage, like a third rail threaded through her torso.

Still, she tried everything to make herself cry. As she lay cradling Eliza earlier that day, while Vincent and Humbly conferred about the trip up, Beth tried to prompt her own tears. She thought of the moment she had first seen Ben, after nine years, when he came to her door to drop off a handmade flyer offering Lawns MoWeD $5! She thought of Ben proudly cradling Stella in the newborn nursery at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Hospital, or talking to Vincent through the Plexiglas when the theft of the coach's car landed him in juvenile hall.

But Beth's eyes remained so dry it was as though they were coated with a film of plastic wrap. She saw through them as through a cataract and realized later that this was because she had barely slept and hardly blinked.

Finally, Bill Humbly turned to the rest of the group. "Well, you heard her. We won and we lost. The sheriff is going to organize a hasty search, a perimeter search around the trailhead where the road goes up that leads to the Whittiers' house. It's an established road. Hikers and campers and people drive up it all the time in most kinds of weather." Except this kind. "They'll see if there's any sign of anyone having gone in there with a vehicle, which she says there will be, even with the snow. And if there's no sign, she's agreed to let Berriman pull strings to get some military guys to take a helicopter up there for a look-see. Which," Humbly said, "is a risk considering what we know about Bryant Whittier's mental state. But I don't think we have a choice."

"G.o.d, I'm so sorry!" Blaine cried. "This is all our fault!"

"No," Kerry said. "It's because you were brave enough to tell us the truth, you and your mother, that we have a chance to bring Stella home."

"I can't believe you don't want to kill us," Blaine said.

"It must be terrible to know something like this about your own father," said Kerry.

"It makes me wonder why he was so sure that Jackie wanted to kill herself," Blaine said softly. "And even worse, it makes me wonder why he thought she did."

"I want someone, somehow, to go look for my daughter. Time is pa.s.sing fast," Ben said. "She can't last ... like this. If you won't go, I will."

"We will," Vincent said.

"Give her a chance," said Humbly. "She seems like a good woman and a good cop."

"And she's all we have," said Candy. "No hospital or church has reported finding a baby."

Humbly said slowly, "That, too."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

At dawn, Sheriff Switch's "hasty search" was called off when the snow, which had stopped briefly, began again. She brought the few volunteers back off the road leading to the Whittiers' summer home.

They came back in, slipping their cell phones back into their pockets, turning off their radios, avoiding Vincent's eyes, making a wide path around Pat and Beth and Candy. Ben took one of the rental cars and drove back down to Durand to be with Eliza at the Lone Star Inn, all six rooms now entirely filled with the Cappadora family. Vincent sent his parents after Ben. Sheriff Switch had shown them a detour around the reporters blockaded two miles from the original trailhead.

Before he left, Pat got hold of as many of the volunteers' hands as he could and shook them.

"I want you to know how much this means to my family," Pat said. "We all know you gave it your all."

No one could fault such earnest, decent people.

The weather had made for a few near misses with the Eagle Scouts, who fell on slippery places under the snow. The only grace was that they had young, elastic bodies that could bend the wrong way and leave nothing but a bruise in the morning, a bruise that would vanish in days-unlike the memory of having failed, which would last. But those falls were enough for the sheriff. Under the new frosting, older snow had melted and frozen again, slickening the rocks and even the paths. And then, for some reason, in the wishbone between the two nearest peaks, Blind Bear and Parker Rock, a slight fog settled like a perfect wedge. The place was called Clear Canyon; it was now a perfect irony.

Before noon, Berriman had called in the troops, literally.

A helicopter from Moffett Field had used the coordinates Sheriff Switch provided to find the Whittiers' big mountain house and land in a clearing in front of it. Except for Claire and Blaine, Sarah Switch was the only person to have actually seen the Whittiers' summer home, and that had been years before. She'd been after someone her former boss believed was an arsonist threatening to start a fire in the area one dry August day-it had turned out to be an eighth grader mad at his father. Sarah Switch remembered accepting a cool drink from the Whittiers and meeting both daughters, then gangly young girls. And she recalled thinking that this was a magnificent post-and-beam house to be seen by only four people-and the occasional friend or family member.

Bryant Whittier had said something about the house being nothing and the view from it being everything. That, and the fund-raising dance she had mentioned to Mrs. Whittier, were the only times Sheriff Switch had ever spoken to Bryant Whittier, though he was a familiar figure in Durand, striding down from Paramount Street in rain or sun to his office above the Peak State Bank.

Within an hour, the helicopters were back emptyhanded.

The officer in charge said that his squad initially drew their guns. As they approached the house, a light went on. But after they circled to the back, they realized it was only a motion sensor. The officer had made the decision to break a front window and then he swore that people in Utah could hear the alarm until one of them figured out how to pull the wires.

"But there was n.o.body in that house," said the pilot. "Judging by the dust inside and the snow outside, there hadn't been anyone there for a long, long time. Not a trace." He added, "We jogged up the road. Those other places were boarded up. Summer people, I guess. This was clearly the biggest house and there was heat on, enough to keep the pipes free and such."

Vincent rode back to Durand with the sheriff in her truck. Sarah Switch was so pretty and sad that at any other time he would have made some kind of move on her. The thought might have belonged to another man, in another lifetime.

To his shock, Sheriff Switch stopped in front of the Whittiers' house.

"You can stay in the car," she told Vincent.

"Could I come in?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "You can imagine what I'm going to say to them."

But Vincent could not have imagined what Claire and Blaine would say in return. So he winced when Switch told them that the search was skunked and that there was no one up at their summer home. But Blaine Whittier's eyes flared to life.

"The bill in Dad's office for Small Shelters, Mom," she said. "Did you tell them about that?"

"No, I a.s.sumed they would search your father's office," Claire said, and Vincent had a strong, transitory urge to clip this slight, vague, older woman on the jaw.

"Well, I looked up Small Shelters to find out what it was," Blaine said.

"I'll bite," said Switch.

"My father spent ... come and look," Blaine said, leading the way to her father's office-which she had torn apart, over her mother's protests. "He spent almost ten thousand dollars on one of these mini prefab cabins. My mom didn't know what it was. She doesn't use a computer that much and when she does, it's my father's laptop. Look at the website."

There were a dozen models-a baby Cape Cod, a tiny ten-by-twelve two-story A-frame ski lodge, a wee Victorian that could have accommodated the three bears without Goldilocks. Inside, these places featured fold-down tables and fold-up beds and were generally a triumphant exemplar of the efficient use of s.p.a.ce. Some people, people Vincent a.s.sumed were deeply eccentric, actually lived full-time in these houses, which could have had, at most, two hundred square feet of floor s.p.a.ce. Others used them as hunting or fishing getaways or even guest cottages.

"If my dad bought one of these, and it is not here in the yard or up at our summer house, it has to be someplace," Blaine said. "He wouldn't buy it and not use it. He's too compulsive for that." Blaine tore through a ma.s.s of papers on the huge, varnished desk. "See? He was going to donate his other land to some nature group if he and my mother took off on me and moved to some island ..."

"His other land?" Switch asked. "What other land?"

"It's a parcel of some acreage Bryant owns," Claire Whittier said, obviously deeply troubled by Blaine's a.s.sertion that Bryant's madness would have made her abandon her only living child. "Here is the map of the ... and the deed if you need it. It's farther up than the resort area where our summer house is. His grandfather cleared lumber up there a hundred years ago. Bryant and his two brothers owned it, but Bryant bought the rights from Cooper and Ames a few years ago."

"Can you take us there?" Switch asked.

"I've never been there," said Claire Whittier.

Blaine added, "Neither have I. He and Jackie went camping up there a few times. They skied in and out. There's only a fire road that goes up there. You know, what the lumber guys used.... He always said he'd build a place, for Jackie of course, up there. I loved my sister but she was in over her head with my dad's ideas for her future and what she'd want. He was, like, possessed by Jackie."

"Well," Switch said. "I know where that road is. It's a track, not much of a road. Still, we could ask the helicopter folk again ..."

"I know you could never set a helicopter down there," Blaine said. "Look. This is a picture of Jackie up there." She held out a photo of her sister, taken two years before, an elfin figure mugging on her skis with her hat pulled down over her eyes. "It's all treed up. See? They camped in a little clearing that was ... well, clear. I guess my great-grandfather died or something before he could log it out. It's just there."

Vincent and the sheriff exchanged wide-eyed glances. Neither of them could believe what they were hearing or that they hadn't heard it before.

"I'll take this property description," the sheriff said. "I don't know that there's anything we can do with it. But thank you. And we will, of course, be needing access to this office. So, Blaine, if you would, don't keep digging. I'm glad you did ..."

"It's like I think he's here," Blaine said, tears springing to her eyes, her long pale fingers clenched. "It's like if I keep searching, I'll find him. I'll find whatever made him this way in here." Sheriff Switch reached out and quickly hugged the younger woman. Vincent could feel the force of her pity.

"You did the right thing, Blaine," said the sheriff.

Back in the vehicle, she shook her head and set the map on the seat between them as she drove. "Twenty miles of rough country between the beginning of that fire road and what ... some itty-bitty cabin that maybe isn't even there? And this weather? It's twisted. Seems like it wants to warm up but the cloud cover means the sun can't get down here. Up there, back on the ridges behind those hills, it's probably clearer. But I can't send my paid deputies, much less other people's, much less the SAR volunteers out looking for ... what? Maybe a piece of land that looks like a hundred other clearings? Maybe a guy who could be in Thailand or wherever that was she said by now?"

"Malaysia," Vincent replied. "But he wouldn't take the baby away, far away. Sheriff ..."

"Sarah," she said.

"Okay, Sarah, he said she would be returned. Berriman says that means he'd drop her off at a hospital or a church someplace."

"Vincent, we don't know that. His word isn't exactly his bond, is it? He told his wife of twenty years that he was going to a conference ..."

"I know. I know. But my niece is just a baby. I'm responsible."

"I know you feel that way, but you're not. And believe it or not, I feel responsible too, in some way that's probably also twisted. I feel like h.e.l.l about this. People from all over the place, from as far away as New Mexico and Oregon and Chicago, for Pete's sake, want to come and help."

"Don't you want to accept their help?" Vincent asked.

"It makes me look as effective as a cartoon character," said Switch. "I don't care, but the sheer traffic defeats the thing, you know? There are reporters out there from places I've never been. Baltimore. New York. Pittsburgh. The dispatcher is losing her mind. She's getting calls at home from the BBC. I've had deputies from other counties come up here and look for people in dozens of households anywhere near this place and either there's no one around until summer or no one saw anything. I've had the public roads blocked off now for two days and there are people who need those roads to do their jobs."

Vincent said, "I know. It's a mess."

"Do I let the press in? If I do, I mess up anything there might be here. But I have to tell you, I don't think there is anything here. If a guy built some kind of shelter up there, like one of those little houses on that website, either he did it with a ghost crew or someone would have seen or heard something in the way of materials going in."

Vincent said, "About the press. I'm sorry. If this had happened a week ago, I would've just been some moke. Another guy."

"Apology accepted. If you had been another guy, there wouldn't be so much press here," she said. "This is the biggest boom in Durand since Miss California came from here thirteen years ago."

"I'm sorry," Vincent said.

She sighed. "No, that's not fair. I guess with the resident genius, because that's what Bryant Whittier was, and his daughter being lost, and then you and your poor little baby niece and your Oscar, and the goofy letter, there still would have been everybody from Katie Couric to Katie Mulhone from the Cisco County Register, who went to high school with me. Maybe that's who'll help you. Maybe those pictures will be what will find her. Maybe Whittier gave up when he saw the snow and changed plans. Maybe someone will see her in ... Chicago. Someplace. Maybe he really will leave her in a hospital, still."

Switch unlocked the door to her office, sat down, and poured herself a cup of coffee, the number of cups of which Vincent had lost count of hours before. He'd seen people drink coffee-his family was renowned for it-but n.o.body drank coffee like Switch, who also seemed to have the bladder of a camel. Her deputy, a guy called Jackson, didn't even bother with the pot. He put his mug right under the percolator spout. Detective Humbly was in the second, smaller room of the office, using Jackson's desk for some paperwork.

"Where're your folks?" she asked Vincent.

"At the little inn, in town. My sister-in-law, Eliza ... needs a doctor. She can't really sleep or eat. They all wanted to get her settled." He paused. "It's my job anyhow. It's my doing."

"You did this?" Switch said. "Pretty bad guy, I'd say."

"You know what I mean," Vincent said.

Switch motioned to Vincent to take a coffee cup. He refused, smiling, having drunk so much Cisco County coffee that he feared he'd have to have part of his stomach removed surgically. The way the sheriff drank it down, without even blowing on it, like a kid drinking lemonade, made him think that people up here had different DNA. Nothing, he noticed, however, erased the gray fingerprints at the inner corners of her eyes. A sudden gust of grat.i.tude shook him, making his fingers tremble even more than the Cisco County coffee had. She had done all she could and more. Detective Humbly called out, "I heard the helicopter."

"Yeah," said the sheriff. "But you didn't know about the secret property." Humbly was at her side within seconds, as she explained the visit to the Whittiers.

"Maybe Whittier went from the other side. There is another side?" Bill Humbly asked.

"There's always another side," said the sheriff. "But it's probably ... wow, it's probably almost in another state."

"Still, Sarah, it could have happened that way," said Vincent. "He would be smart enough to know that his wife would tell people to look for him here if his plans went off the track."

"Mr. Cappadora ..." the sheriff began, weariness in every syllable, as if she were saying his name on a slowed-down recording.

It was his turn to say, "Vincent."

"Vincent, you LaLas ..."

"I'm from Chicago," Vincent said. "I've only lived in California for three years."

"Then I'm sorry. People from SoCal come up here and think it's just like where they live only with trees and big pretty hills. But this is dangerous country. There are bears up there and a lot worse, creva.s.ses you fall into and you don't get found until you're archaeology. I grew up here. My father was sheriff here. The other side is up near redwood country. It would be another hundred miles at least to get to this place ..."

"Could the roads be better on the other side?"

"Not as steep maybe but ... Vincent, if you go to another part of the state, it starts all over again. New sheriff. New case number. Even the FBI guy, if he wants to get more people up here, he has to get clearance and that takes time. Frankly, and this kills me to say, much longer and we're looking at a recovery.... And we might be already."

"You mean you think they're dead," Vincent said. He felt, rather than saw, Humbly brace himself for some kind of explosion.

Switch said, "I don't know. If Whittier provisioned himself for three days, even four days, and the fuel is gone, and he's melting snow for water ... If this were TV, you'd be asking me now, who's the fastest gun in Dodge? But this isn't TV."

"Who is the fastest gun in Dodge?" Vincent asked.

The sheriff paused. She had removed her hat and sungla.s.ses and shaken her hair loose from its customary tight braid and was now using her finger to do it up again: Vincent had noticed this before. She braided when she was nervous, when she failed to find precise or commanding words. She looked from the Los Angeles detective to Vincent and then back again. Finally she asked, "What do you mean?"

"A rescue tracker who's extraordinary. The best. In any state, anywhere."

Switch didn't hesitate.

"She's here. Lorrie Hanna Sabo. The tracker who led the search for the family that got stranded camping. The one I said was in the hospital for a day. Her dog Roman has done some amazing stuff. Spooky stuff. He found a little girl last summer who hid herself in a cave and put rocks in front of her and stayed in there two nights. She was four miles from where her parents camped and had climbed up over terrain that would give me pause. But Lorrie just got out of the hospital a few days ago after that camper rescue and, uh, recovery. She's on leave. She's a volunteer but I rely on her. She teaches SAR at Snowy Mountain Community College, for people who are doing Outward Bound training."

"Can I hire her?"