Page 26 of Wilderness Search (Eagle Mountain: Unsolved Mysteries #2)

Saturday morning shortly before noon, Gage, Aaron, Jake and Ryker reported to the main office of Mountain Kingdom Kids Camp with a warrant to search the property. Other deputies waited outside for the order to begin combing through the various buildings on the property.

“Mr. Sprague isn’t here,” Mrs. Mason said. “I can’t allow you to look at the files without his permission.”

“We have a warrant, ma’am,” Gage said. “We don’t need his permission.”

He stepped past and she watched, hands clutching a copy of the warrant, as the deputies filed into the office.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Everything,” Gage said. “It would be best if you waited in your office while we’re here. We don’t take any more of your time than necessary.”

She pulled out a cell phone and punched in the number, listened for a moment, then hung up. “Mr. Sprague isn’t answering his phone.”

“Where is Mr. Sprague?” Ryker asked.

“I imagine he’s where he always is these days,” she said.

“He’s searching for Olivia Pryor. But I need him here.

We’ve already had a set of parents show up and withdraw their child early from camp.

I’m sure it’s because of all the bad publicity about Olivia Pryor.

But it’s not our fault if one headstrong girl decides to run away. ”

Stella and her parents had met with the sheriff this morning at nine o’clock, and Stella’s statement about Olivia seeing something that had frightened her, plus the sheriff’s argument that it was possible Olivia was being held prisoner somewhere on the property, had resulted in a judge granting a warrant to search the camp once more—including the office, all outbuildings and the Sprague residence.

These had been searched before, but with the cooperation of everyone involved.

Camp employees and Scott himself had accompanied deputies as they searched for the missing girl.

This time, they would also be looking for any evidence of a crime that might have involved Olivia, or that she might have witnessed.

They started with staff records. “We’re looking for any kind of disciplinary action for inappropriate behavior with a child,” Gage said. “Also any records of theft or vandalism. Maybe what Olivia saw was someone breaking the law.”

The records search took very little time.

With less than a dozen employees and very few records on them, going through all the files took less than an hour.

“Everyone here is squeaky-clean,” Ryker announced when they were done.

“Either Scott has been very lucky with his hires or the records are lying.”

Interviews with the staff revealed nothing, either. “We’ve got a really great bunch of people here,” Wade Lawson told Aaron and Ryker. “Most of us have been here two or three summers, at least.”

“You’re telling me that all summer, nothing has turned up missing?” Ryker asked. “No one’s gotten into any trouble at all?”

“The only trouble was when my brother died,” Wade said. “I still don’t know what really happened that night, but I can’t believe anyone here had anything to do with it. Everyone really liked Trevor.”

“This is leading nowhere,” Ryker said as he and Aaron walked back toward the lodge.

They detoured when Gage hailed them. The sergeant was coming out of Scott’s house. “Find anything?” Ryker asked.

Gage shook his head. “The man lives like a minimalist. No photos, very few books, one file drawer full of personal papers. Nothing incriminating.”

Aaron looked back at the log home, straight out of the 1970s, or ’50s, or even ’30s. “Didn’t his family own this camp for years? Maybe his grandparents started it?”

“That’s the story,” Gage said. “But there’s not one family heirloom in the place, unless you count a toaster that probably dates from the 1980s.”

“Sarge!”

They turned to see Jake jogging toward them. He held out a small evidence bag. “Found this in Mrs. Mason’s apartment.”

Gage examined the plastic pouch, which contained a prescription bottle. “Seconal. The prescription is made out to Phyllis Mason.”

“She said it was prescribed last year, when she was going through a difficult time. She didn’t elaborate on what was wrong, but said she hadn’t taken the pills in months.”

Gage shook the bottle. “How many are in here?”

“Three. But she can’t remember how many were left when she stopped taking them. She swears no one else has been in her apartment.”

“Where is the apartment?” Gage asked.

“Upstairs, over the dining hall.”

“Anything else of interest in there?” Gage asked.

“Nothing,” Jake said. “I asked her if she knew Trevor Lawson. She said she had met him when he filled out the employee paperwork but she never spoke to him afterward. He had only worked part-time at the camp for about a month when he died.”

“We’ll see what we can get from this.” Gage handed back the evidence pouch. “But lots of people have prescriptions for sleeping pills. It doesn’t mean there’s any connection to Trevor.”

“Trevor died the night before Olivia disappeared,” Aaron said. “Stella said Olivia was upset about something that happened the night before she ran away. Could she have seen something to do with Trevor Lawson’s death?”

“Stella also said Olivia had been ‘sad’ for a couple of weeks before that,” Ryker said. “I read that in one of her first interviews. I think that means whatever upset Olivia wasn’t something new.”

“All right, but what if she was sad about something—maybe homesick, something like that?” Aaron asked. “And then the night Trevor died, she saw something. Maybe she saw who killed him. That might have frightened her enough to run away.”

“Trevor Lawson committed suicide,” Gage said. “He drove his car off Dixon Pass.”

“He was legally drunk and had Seconal in his system,” Jake said. “But his brother swears Trevor didn’t drink to excess or do drugs. And there were indications Trevor had been in a fight before he died.”

“Maybe someone made sure Trevor wasn’t in any shape to drive before he got into his car to go home that evening,” Aaron said.

“They couldn’t have been sure he would go off the road,” Ryker said. “I’ve stopped plenty of drivers with blood alcohol levels higher than Trevor Lawson’s who weren’t showing any signs of being drunk.”

“Still, what if Olivia saw something to do with Trevor’s death?” Aaron said.

“You’re going to have a hard time proving it,” Gage said.

“Maybe. But if someone did do something to Trevor and they knew Olivia saw them, it would explain why she was frightened enough to run away.”

“It could also explain the blood and the ripped shirt,” Ryker said. “I can’t help wondering if Olivia ever left this camp. There are a lot of places to hide a body around here.”

“And we’re searching them all,” Gage said. “We’ve got a cadaver dog coming on loan from Mesa County tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s get back to work.”

They trudged after him to take apart the storage shed and the kitchen, while workers huddled in the empty mess hall, casting hostile stares their way and muttering among themselves. No one liked disruptions to their routine, and everyone thought the deputies were wasting their time.

Aaron couldn’t help thinking the same thing.

They were missing something here. He had felt that way with other unsolved cases.

If they could only discover the one missing piece of the puzzle, everything would shift into focus and they would find the guilty party.

But all this searching wasn’t turning up anything, and with a little girl’s life at stake, they were running out of time.

Gary stopped by the medical clinic a little after noon on Saturday. Willa spotted him coming in the door and rushed into the waiting room. “Gary! What are you doing here? Are you all right?” She searched him for any sign of injury or illness.

“I’m fine. The camp sent me home early.”

“Why? What happened?”

He glanced around the empty waiting room.

“The sheriff’s deputies are at camp searching everything,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“From attic to basement. They came this morning with a warrant. Mrs. Mason was in a tizzy and Scott was nowhere in sight. He showed up two hours in and I thought he was going to stroke out, yelling at the cops to stop what they were doing. They went right on emptying drawers and going through files, as if they hadn’t even heard him.

About that time, Scott ordered all the kids confined to quarters and all nonessential personnel—meaning everyone but the counselors—to go home.

He also told us not to talk to anyone, but I figure that’s an order he can’t really enforce. ”

The door buzzer sounded as a woman and a little boy entered.

Willa took Gary’s arm. “Come back here where we can talk.” She led him to the back of the building, and the small break room. “What are the deputies looking for?” she asked.

“They didn’t say.” He helped himself to a doughnut from a box someone had left on the counter. “You should ask Aaron. Maybe he’ll tell you. He was there today. I saw him shifting boxes of canned goods in the storage shed. He didn’t look too happy.”

She turned away, praying she wasn’t blushing. She couldn’t claim she hated Aaron anymore, after the night they had spent together. But she wasn’t ready to declare they were a couple again.

“Anyway, I stopped by to tell you a couple of the kitchen staff and I are going hiking along a stretch of the river near camp to see if we can find any sign of Olivia. We want to find her, but we don’t want to find her, if you get what I mean.”

She nodded. “You want to find her, but you don’t want to find her body.”

“Yeah. Anyway, don’t wait up.”

“You’re a grown man, Gary. You don’t have to check in with me.”

“I don’t have to, but if I don’t, you’ll worry.”

“I can’t help that.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “I know. I hated it when I was a teenager and I’d come home and you’d be sitting there, waiting. But later on, I could admit it felt good, after Dad died, knowing I had someone looking out for me.”

“We looked out after each other,” she said.

“I was fifteen when Dad died. I could hardly look after myself, much less you. And I barely remember Mom. You were the one who washed my clothes and nagged me to clean my room and did all the mom stuff.” He shook his head.

“It’s wild, when you think about it. You were only, what, nine or ten when she died?

And I remember Dad was a mess for a while after that. You were the one who kept us together.”

“Dad looked after us. I just did what I could to help.” She still remembered the panicky feeling of coming home to an empty house, dust on the furniture and nothing waiting for dinner—as if her parents had simply walked out the door and forgotten to return.

Forgotten they had two children to care for.

She had done what she could to make sure Gary never had that feeling.

And when their father had died when she was twenty, she had carried on looking after Gary. He was the only family she had left.

“Be careful,” she said. “It’s rough country out there.”

“If it’s rough for us, imagine what it’s like for a little girl. Let’s hope she’s a tough kid, like you were.” He patted her back and left.

I wasn’t tough , she wanted to tell him. I just didn’t know what else to do.

Maybe it was the same with Olivia. She had been frightened and had run. Now she was just hanging on—for what, Willa didn’t know. She sent a silent message to the girl: Keep fighting .

Aaron was waiting by Willa’s car when she emerged from the clinic that evening.

He was exhausted from searching through the Mountain Kingdom camp all day, his uniform dirty from crawling through attics and moving aside boxes in storerooms. He probably had spiderwebs in his hair.

It wasn’t the most attractive picture to present a woman, but if he had taken time to shower and change he would have missed Willa.

He wanted to see her, to reassure himself she hadn’t changed her mind about him after last night.

He didn’t want to pressure her to spend more time with him or to sleep with him again—though he would have welcomed both of those things.

He just wanted to see her. To know things were good between them again and that was one less weight to carry.

“Aaron, you look awful,” she said as she approached. “Are you okay?”

“Just tired. I’ll go home in a few minutes and take a shower, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I was worried you were regretting last night.” He searched her face, trying to read her emotions. “I’m not,” he added.

“No, I’m not regretting that.” She moved closer, and touched his shoulder. “You look exhausted. Gary told me you were helping to search the camp. Did you find anything?”

“We didn’t find Olivia, or any sign of her. I don’t think we found anything else, either.”

“I guess it’s good that you didn’t find her body, but how could she have simply disappeared?”

“It’s easier than you might think, out here. Every few years a hiker goes missing. Some are never found.”

“I’ve been learning about that in my search and rescue training. It’s still hard to imagine.” She took a step back. “Go home and rest. Maybe there will be better news tomorrow.”

“I have to be back at the camp tonight. I was hoping you’d come with me.”

“Why?”

“It’s bonfire night. A camp tradition, every Saturday night.”

“Is the public invited?”

“Not usually. But the sheriff told Scott he wanted to put some officers there to see if they could spot anything suspicious. Last Saturday was the night before Olivia went missing—the night when, according to Stella, she saw something that upset her. We’re hoping we’ll spot something to give us a clue what that something might have been. ”

“It was also the night Trevor Lawson died, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“You made that connection, too?” He nodded. “Trevor was at the bonfire. He was supposedly fine then, but now I’m really curious to see what goes on at this thing, if it managed to upset two different people. Will you come with me to the bonfire?”

“Are you really supposed to take a date if you’re working?”

“You’ll be another set of eyes. And the kids like you.”

“Did Scott agree to have a civilian there?”

“You’ll be part of my cover. We agreed to come in plainclothes so we don’t upset the kids. The story is, Scott has invited some guests from town. He’s done it before—usually parents or big donors.”

“The campers have seen deputies at the camp all week,” she said. “They’re bound to recognize some of you.”

“Probably. We’ll do our best not to alarm them.”

“All right. I’ll come with you.” She linked her arm with his. “I won’t think of it as a date. I’ll think of it as helping the police with their inquiries.”