She was seventeen the first time she’d hunted alone. She’d headed out from her grandfather’s farm to a blind he’d built especially for her. She’d spotted a small buck, held him in her cross hair, before passing up the shot. But now, what she remembered most was the time she spent blending into the trees and foliage, and the calm that came over her. She’d been shy as a child. When she was alone in the woods, she felt safe. Even after hunting season was over and the guns were cleaned and put away, she would walk to the blind and sit for hours. No one would come looking for her. And after a while, she’d walk back to the house in time to help her grandmother with supper. Her grandfather would be sitting in his recliner reading the newspaper. He’d lower the paper just enough to see Amy Raye, and she’d know he was smiling, could see it in the way the skin around his eyes creased slightly upward. He wouldn’t say anything. He would just look at her, and then raise the paper and resume reading, and she’d know that he understood where she’d been, as if he recognized the light on her face, could smell the air on her skin.
Before she left Tennessee for the last time, she drove by her grandparents’ farm. Their truck was gone, so she assumed they weren’t home. She hiked through the meadow and into the woods. It was a spring day, and the hawthorns and wild chokecherries were in bloom. She decided to check on the pond. She’d helped her grandfather stock the pond just the month before. She walked quietly, her boots landing as gently as moccasins, and all around her were the trills of the Tennessee warbler, the high whistles of the tree frogs, and the calling of the cricket frogs, like two small pebbles being tapped together.
A little deeper into the woods she saw him sitting in an ordinary lawn chair. Her grandfather’s hands, like two enormous bear paws, cupped his knees. His feet were planted out in front of him. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. She placed her palm flat against the rough bark of an oak tree, stood still, and watched him. She wondered what it was that, like her, called him to this place. And after a while, as quietly as she’d approached, she left the woods that day. She walked past the fields and the pasture, and back down to the barn where she had parked her truck. She climbed in and drove away.
PRU
By the time I made it down the mountain to the command station, the sky had turned a deep navy. Searching in the dark wasn’t new to me, or to any of the search team members, for that matter. Rescue missions could operate all through the night if the weather cooperated. But the winds and the weather in these parts could turn as quickly as a car on slick pavement. Colm would be keeping a direct channel open with Weather Control out of both the Rangely airport and Grand Junction Regional Airport, the larger commercial airport in Grand Junction. If he got word that the wind or snow would be picking up, he’d radio in his teams and call it a night. Colm’s first priority always was to protect his crew.
As I pulled up to the metal building, I counted three deputy vehicles and recognized the other four trucks as belonging to longtime search-and-rescue volunteers. Across the road from the warehouse was the helipad, a flat clearing with a radius of about forty feet.
I left Kona in the Tahoe and entered the command station.
“I told you he wouldn’t be happy,” Dean said when he saw me.
“He’ll get over it.”
“How did Kona make out?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Jeff approached me. “Good to see you, Pru.”
“Not the best of circumstances,” I said.
Jeff’s head tilted forward in an affirming nod. He wore a cowboy hat. He’d worn a cowboy hat on the last search, and I wondered why his ears never got too cold.
Two thirds of the space inside the command station was devoted to search equipment including the dispatcher radio, maps, a couple of computers, and a large GPS unit—all of which were lined up on three long folding tables. Colm was standing behind one of the tables, his hands on its edge, his body leaning over a large map. “We’re going to work a two-mile radius tonight,” he was telling one of the teams. “We’ll be lucky if we can even cover that much in this vertical country. We’ve got six hours at best before another storm is supposed to blow in.”
I walked over to the table where Colm was giving a briefing to the volunteers. He’d divided the search area into quadrants that branched out from the site of the black Ford, determined as the point last seen. When Colm saw me, he pointed on the map to the quadrant in the northeast corner. “You and Jeff will cover this area,” he said. “Go in as deep as you can, but be careful. And listen closely to your radio. The weather might turn. How did your Tahoe make it back in there?” Colm asked.
“No trouble,” I said. My vehicle had been adjusted with a four-inch suspension lift, allowing me to get around as well as any of the pickup trucks, and sometimes better with the extra weight.
“The other teams are taking ATVs in. Dean’s going to load you up with the stretcher and first-aid gear. Go ahead and drive your Tahoe in, but if the trails start freezing over, use your judgment.”
“How many other teams are you sending out tonight?”
“I’ve got three out already. The chopper should be here soon. Dean and one of the volunteers will be heading out with the pilot, a guy by the name of Franklin. The other volunteers will be maintaining the containment search.”
A containment search consisted of sirens and flashing lights from trucks driven up and down the pipeline roads, hoping to attract the subject’s attention.
“It may be against protocol, but I wish we’d started searching last night,” I said.