“I’ll be in the field tomorrow,” he said. “You said you wanted to discuss the Scott Sheldon disappearance.” He looked her in the eye. “I hope you’re not here to give his mother false hope that he might be alive. It’s been nearly six months, much of it in subzero overnight temperatures.”
“I suspect, as you do, that he’s dead. And has been since the weekend he disappeared. But I read the police reports and today spoke to some of the people involved, plus a girl who knew him and the three boys he went camping with. Something is off about their story, and I want the truth. Scott’s mother deserves to know what really happened.”
Chuck didn’t say anything as the hostess delivered their beverages. Max sipped her wine. She was in no rush.
“What makes you think that anything other than what’s been said happened?”
He didn’t have an accusatory or suspicious tone. Matter-of-fact with a hint of curiosity.
“I can’t point to one specific reason why I think that the boys are lying. It’s more a big picture feeling I get.” She paused, not for the first time wondering if her past and everything that had happened with Karen were clouding her judgment. And, not for the first time, she dismissed her worries.
I need to know what happened to my son. I need the truth.
“Adele Sheldon wrote to me after your office started looking again for Scott’s body. She convinced me that Scott wasn’t the type of person to put himself in danger. She has questions that haven’t been answered. He didn’t hike or camp, and—”
“And that makes him that much more likely not to understand the dangers of wandering off.”
Max gave Chuck a nod. “It also makes me wonder why he agreed to go camping that weekend with three boys he barely knew. He had no relationship with the kids before college. None of the kids was his roommate. They had some equipment, but not the type of gear seasoned campers would take in this climate.”
“I agree with you on the latter point, but I’ve been doing this for years. If I had a nickel for every camper who went up unprepared…” His voice trailed off. “What else? They were college students, irresponsible. Frankly, I’d call them stupid, and their stupidity got one of their friends killed.”
“That’s the thing—I don’t think they were friends.”
Max continued. “Jess Sanchez, who works in the bookstore, was a friend of Scott’s. She let me access her social media pages. She’s Facebook friends with all three boys. I looked through each photo archive, and there were no photos of Scott with any of them except for one.” She knew she was about to tread on dangerous ground here—but since there was no criminal investigation into Scott’s disappearance, and the picture had been posted publicly, she figured she was warranted. “I downloaded a photo taken at the campsite. However, it was uploaded the morning after it was taken. I sent it to a friend of mine in New York who can get the GPS data off the photo, when and where it was uploaded.”
“What is that going to tell you?”
“I don’t know yet, but in the police reports, the boys claimed they had no cellular reception at the campground, yet they also claim they didn’t leave until noon on Saturday. They must have uploaded it elsewhere. Then, on Twitter I found tweets from Tom Keller—who can’t seem to go ten minutes without telling the world something trivial about himself—sent Saturday. Mostly innocuous stuff, but again, no cell coverage, so where was he when he was tweeting?”
Chuck said, “I have a daughter in college. I’m moderately tech savvy, and if I understand my social media, there’s the option of setting tweets and posts in the future, and it’s automatic, correct?”
“Yes. But the content didn’t appear to be preplanned, they were responses to other tweets. So my conclusion was that either they weren’t at the campground they said they were at, or they weren’t at the campground at all.”
Max let that information sink in. She drained her wine and put the glass aside.
Then she added, “Jess tried to talk Scott out of going. I learned after I talked to her that she had been in a relationship with Arthur Cowan last year, but hasn’t spoken to him—at least publicly or through social media—since Scott disappeared. I plan to talk to her soon, but campus police ran me off this afternoon.”
“Some cops don’t like reporters,” he said.
“That wasn’t it—trust me, I know when a cop doesn’t like me because of my job.” She smiled. Sometimes, it was fun playing with law enforcement, getting them riled up. But usually, she tried to be professional. “I cornered the boys in their dorm room, and they called security because I asked hard questions they refused to answer. They’re lying,” she said, not for the first time. “I’m going to prove it.”
“Your observations are interesting, but I still don’t understand what you’re getting at. Unless you’re saying that my team is looking in the wrong place.”