Too Close To Home

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.