Page 34 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

34.

His name was John Millwood and he explained that he and his fiancée, Fiona Lavelle, lived in Reno. He worked for an investment firm and she had recently left her teaching job to take creative writing classes and work on a novel.

“I told her not to come this way. To stick to the interstate, but she wanted scenery.”

Tolifson pointed to Louis Bell’s pickup truck, of which only the top of the bed and half the cab were visible. It was sinking into the levee as the mud softened further. “Fellow in that F-150 was right behind her. She gunned the engine and made it onto the highway before it collapsed.”

His voice rose, almost angrily. “Then what happened? Something must have happened! She’s disappeared.”

Shaw had done this business for long enough to know that courtesy went out the window when a loved one was missing. The tragedy was everyone’s fault, from God down to the man delivering coffee to a search-and-rescue task force. He’d learned not to take it personally.

Millwood added, “She never even got to Fort Pleasant.”

“You know that?” Starr asked.

The businessman nodded fervently. “Yes, ma’am. Officer. When I didn’t hear, I looked over this map. You know, Google Earth…And I found the first gas station you come to going south from Hinowah. At Hadleyville Road. I called the manager. I asked if they had video and if it showed the highway. There was one. I begged him to scan through it to see if she passed by this morning. She didn’t.”

Exactly Colter Shaw’s idea.

Millwood continued, “Sure, another car might’ve blocked the camera or she turned into another entrance to stop for coffee or food. And maybe he didn’t even look, just said he did. But then there’s her phone…And you know, I have a sixth sense she’s in trouble.”

With a nod toward Shaw, Starr added, “This man here’s a tracker.”

Tolifson filled in, “Like with bloodhounds. Only he didn’t bring any.”

Shaw would have to correct his job description at some point.

Shaw asked, “Is Fiona a good driver?”

“Good enough. Careless sometimes.” Millwood sized Shaw up. “What kind of tracker are you, police?”

“No, I go after rewards offered to find suspects and missing family members, friends.”

“Hm. Never heard of that. But I’ll pay you five thousand to find her.”

“I—”

“Seven five.”

Shaw was thinking about the situation. There were other tasks that needed attending to. The evacuation, helping Eduardo Gutiérrez dig the kids out of the caverns in the hills above town, and following up on the criminal investigation to determine if the miner Gerard Redding and Bear were behind the sabotage.

But he simply could not turn away from Millwood.

Finding people who had disappeared and were possibly in danger was Colter Shaw’s essence.

Now that he’d made the decision to look into her vanishing, he moved into a different place. Mentally, emotionally. Time became the enemy. And the possibilities of a dire fate expanded exponentially. Car crash, snakebite, a spill into the Never Summer for whatever reason…

There were human threats too.

Bear, for instance.

If Fiona had skidded off the road, and he came up to “help”?

Shaw could easily imagine what might be on the man’s agenda.

“I’m not here professionally. I’ll help you out if I can. No reward necessary. But I can’t do it full-time. I’m helping Mayor Tolifson and Ms. Shaw. Disaster response…Let me look into a few things.”

“Oh, sir, I can’t thank you enough! Anything you can do! Anything!” His eyes were wide. Anger morphed into pure, powerful gratitude.

Shaw withdrew his notebook and unscrewed his expensive Italian fountain pen. Everyone except Dorion looked at it with varying degrees of curiosity. She was familiar with the tool. For one thing, Ashton had used one in his correspondence, when the children were growing up. For another, it was his sister who’d given him this particular model; it was to replace one that got incinerated in the same inferno that destroyed his most recent Winnebago.

The pen was not an ego thing, as it was for some. For every job Colter took voluminous notes—supplemented with maps and, occasionally, sketches, and a fountain pen was much easier on the hand than ballpoints.

He opened a notebook, but before jotting any notes, he pulled out a chair beside Millwood’s and swung around the laptop on which the map of the area was displayed. Together they looked at the highway from Hinowah to Hadleyville Road, assuming that Fiona had not slipped past the gas station and was lost somewhere beyond that point. The stretch of highway was about fifteen miles long. To the east of Route 13 and running roughly parallel to it was the Never Summer. To the west of the highway were forest and rocky hills and towering Copper Peak, which rose about five or six hundred feet above the landscape.

Shaw eyed the dark brown line of 13 south, noting a half dozen side roads.

He asked Tolifson, “Mining trails?” Tapping them on the monitor.

“Yessir. And lumber.”

“Do they lead anywhere but back to Thirteen?”

“No. And those that don’t, they just end at abandoned mines. Or lumber mills. Old ones. All closed up decades ago. Some a hundred years or more.”

He began to ask Millwood questions, as if this were any other reward job, and recorded the results in his small handwriting, perfectly straight, though the paper was not ruled.

Could she swim? Yes.

Were there any flotation devices in the car? No.

Was the Camaro mounted with slicks or regular tires? Regular.

Miles on them? I don’t know.

Was there a two-way radio in the car? No.

How many phones did she have with her? Why, one. She only had one phone.

Weapons in the car? No.

Food and water? Snacks and beverages. I don’t know what kind or how much.

Medical supplies in the car? No.

Was the car in good shape? Brakes and engine? Yes.

How much horsepower? It was the six, not the eight, but big enough—330 or something.

She in good shape? Well, pretty good. She was going to a spa to work on that, lose a few pounds. Not that she had to, of course.

Tools in the car? Just tire changing.

You said she was a moderately good driver; had she ever had accidents? Yes, fender benders and they were her fault. Not paying attention.

Was the tank full? I don’t know.

Did she have warm clothing? Whatever you’d normally take on a visit to a spa.

Matches or cigarette lighter? No. She didn’t smoke.

Liquor? Definitely not.

Did she get scared easily? Like snakes?

Anything. Do snakes scare her? I don’t know. I guess no phobias.

Medications? No.

Any enemies? Ex-boyfriends or stalkers who were problems? Why would you ask that?

These are relevant questions. Please answer. No.

A find-my-phone or computer location app? Yes, but none of them worked.

Any emotional or mental issues that might affect her ability to cope? What are you saying?…No. Of course not.

Answering these questions and a few others took only minutes. It was a short list, but it didn’t need to be as comprehensive as on some jobs. If a missing person had vanished somewhere in the state of Maine, say, well that reward job would have required considerable research.

But Fiona Lavelle had disappeared somewhere on a fifteen-mile stretch of highway. Shaw needed only a minimal amount of data to begin his investigation. He looked over the notes, assessing the situation, calculating the likelihood of possible occurrences:

She had in fact driven past the gas station at Hadleyville Road and the manager had not seen her because the view was blocked. Or because he simply hadn’t bothered with the request. She hadn’t picked up when Millwood called because her battery was dead or the phone was silenced.

—Eight percent.

Gone into the New Summer from the levee?

—Zero percent.

Gone into the retaining pond with the Suburban?

—Zero percent.

Gone into the river someplace else? He’d driven Route 13 earlier and the surface was slick. Braking fast to avoid a deer, even with ABS, she might’ve skidded off the road and into the Never Summer. Or ended up there because she tapped the accelerator too hard. But in that case the drone would probably have picked up the wreck. And there were very few places where the river came close to the highway.

—Five percent.

Skidding off the road in the other direction, into the forest? Route 13 was largely straight but had some serious drop-offs from the right lane. She might have flown off the asphalt for the same reasons as the above likelihood.

—Twenty-five percent.

Sleeping off the fright? On reflection, napping wasn’t as likely as he’d first thought.

—Five percent.

Pulling onto one of the trails to wait out the storm, her phone battery dead and no charger cord with her?

—North of 50 percent.

And the Bear risk, capital B ?

Had he noticed the bright blue car and flagged her down?

The odds?

—Unknowable.

Consequences if he did?

Not good.

They returned to the main tent. He asked Starr, “TC have eyes on Bear?”

She called and Shaw could tell from the conversation that he was at the mine but could not locate the man.

The officer said, “You want me to tell him anything?”

“If he does spot him and he leaves, text me right away. I need to know where he is.”

She relayed the information.

Shaw told Dorion, Tolifson and Starr he was going to look for the woman.

No one objected, which he’d half expected. Then again he was here, risking his life, as a volunteer—and he had saved the Garveys. There could be no problem with him saving someone else.

If he could.

He told Millwood, “I’m going to start where she was last seen, after she got off the levee.” He nodded to the pile of sand and the burlap bags on the far edge of the levee. “I’ll go south from there.”

“I’m coming with you,” the man said firmly.

Shaw said that wasn’t necessary. He would do the initial search and then decide if Millwood and a search party would be of any help.

“It’s my fiancée. I’m going with you. I’ll just follow you if you don’t agree.”

Shaw had a rule that offerors never accompany him.

It added unnecessary complications to the search.

Shaw looked into the man’s eyes. The word desperation didn’t come close to describing what he saw.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go find her.”