I photographed the prints as well as the surrounding area and moved on.
“Amy Raye!” Jeff yelled, his hands cupped around his mouth. He kept yelling out Amy Raye’s name as he and I followed Kona. I continued to identify the boot prints that had been mostly protected by tree growth, the toe of the prints pointing in the direction Kona was moving.
Kona left the edge of the timber and began trotting southward through an open meadow or gulch, with his snout still to the ground. Jeff and I were about fifty feet behind him, searching the area for more prints, but we didn’t find any. The snow was too thick. Kona began barking and wagging his tail. He was just on the other side of a large boulder. He’d been trained to sit when he came upon a search object. He didn’t always mind. This time his front paws were prancing in place.
Jeff and I ran toward him. The weight of our gear pounded heavily on our backs.
A brown patch of fabric lay partially exposed. Kona pawed at the fabric again. “Kona, no,” I said.
I crouched in the snow and brushed away the accumulation. Kona had discovered a brown fleece hat. When I picked up the hat, I saw the bloodstains and the tear down the back.
“Dear, Lord,” Jeff said.
I reached for my radio and took a deep breath. “Command, Alpha One.” I went on to report what we had found.
“How much blood?” Colm asked.
“A couple of inches in diameter,” I said.
“Give me the points of your location. I’ll have another team move in to assist. I want you and Jeff to keep working the area.”
Kona began to whine. He was now about six feet from us and had picked up another scent.
“Hold on,” I said to Colm.
I stood and stepped toward Kona. Then Jeff uncovered something with the toe of his boot. He bent down and brushed the rest of the snow off with his gloved hands.
“Command, we just uncovered another item,” I said. “Looks like a .357 revolver. And, Colm, it’s hers. It’s got scent all over it.”
I picked up the gun and opened its chamber.
Jeff and I made eye contact and looked at each other for a couple of seconds without saying anything.
Static broke over the radio. “Alpha One, Command, come back.”
“Command, Alpha One, there’s a missing round in the chamber,” I said. I reported the coordinates for the items.
“Keep working the area. See what else you can find,” Colm said.
I bagged the items and placed them in my pack. The hat could have been torn when she fell, I tried to tell myself, or the tear might have been made by a predator after she’d fallen. Forensics would have a better idea. I thought of Amy Raye’s children. I thought of Joseph. The implications were all around us, and yet I just couldn’t imagine a mother taking her life.
“It doesn’t look good, Jeff,” I said.
“No, ma’am, it doesn’t look good at all.”
We moved out twenty feet, and then fifty feet, searching for prints and seeing if Kona might pick up anything else, but the only tracks we were able to identify were those made by coyote or deer. I also continued to take photographs of the terrain to record the area we had covered.
“Let’s check out the other side of the gulch,” I said. If Amy Raye had indeed taken her life, her body would have been dragged off or scattered by coyotes or lion. We crossed a shallow and rocky creek bed. On the other side the snow deepened, maybe by three or four inches. We were heading into a basin.
“We should have brought snowshoes,” I said.
“If we get any more snowfall, we’re going to have to.”
Kona wasn’t walking in any particular direction. He hadn’t picked up a scent. “We’ve been heading downwind,” I said. “That’s why Kona’s been able to pick up a trail. Before we found the hat, I was thinking maybe the tracks were fresh, but I don’t think that’s the case. If we’re in a drainage area, the scent will stay,” I said.
I radioed back to Colm. “We’re not picking up anything,” I said.
“Team Three is approaching the new PLS. We’ll get all efforts in the area and see what we can find. Go ahead and continue to work Kona.”
The new PLS was now Amy Raye’s hat and the gun, even though no one had officially identified the items as hers yet.
Between the breaking sounds of the radio, I began to make out the faint chug, chug, chug of the chopper.
“According to the coordinates, how far are we from the subject’s truck?” I asked Colm.
“Looks like about three miles. Maybe a little more.”
“Damn,” I said, my voice as quiet as the wind that had stalled out on us sometime earlier in the morning. I held the radio down to my side. Colm had been right to extend the search area.
“Long way for a woman alone,” Jeff said. “You got your cell phone with you?” he asked. “Want to see if you’re picking up a signal?”