“I got it,” she says. “Go.”
I run over to the dock and rush down the gangplank, pulling my wallet, keys, and phone out as I do.
Reaching the bottom floating platform, I kick off my shoes and begin to place the items from my pockets in them, but before I finish, Tommy pops up out of the water, gasping for air.
I move over to where he is.
“I was just about to come in after you,” I say.
“I can’t see anything down there,” he says. “I’m just feeling around.”
“Come on, let me help you out,” I say, reaching down and extending him a hand.
He shakes his head, wiping water from his eyes and pushing the matted wet hair from his forehead.
“I can’t stop,” he says. “Not until I find him.”
Soon, he’ll be in the way of search and rescue and we’ll have to force him out of the water, but for now, I understand what he’s doing and why and why he can’t stop, why he won’t until we force him to.
“Okay,” I say, “but come back up more often. Won’t help anyone if you drown.”
6
Y’all know I’m new, right?” Reggie says to the group of kids. “My name is Reggie. And not only am I a girl—the first ever to be sheriff in Gulf County—but I wasn’t even elected. The governor appointed me. I’m doing my best to do a good job, but it’s not easy. I don’t really have a lot of experience and everybody’s watching me. Everybody wants me to fail.”
The three young men nod, and seem somewhat sympathetic.
Megan continues to shake and stare off into the distance.
“So I could really use y’alls help. And I’d really appreciate it. I just need to do everything by the book, follow proper procedures and prove to everyone that a girl can do this job, you know?”
More nods.
“But I also want y’all to be comfortable and get this over with as quick as possible. I know y’all are worried about your friend. So let’s do this, can we? Let’s go uptown to the substation and let’s get your statements and let you go, okay?”
They nod again.
“It’s just standard procedure, but we need to do a quick search of your vehicles . . . And I certainly don’t want y’all to have to ride to town in the back of a patrol car. Tell you what, why don’t we take a quick look in your cars and then y’all just drive up to the substation and I’ll meet you there?”
“Sounds good to us,” Cody says.
Matt nods.
She looks over at Swolle.
“Fine with me.”
“Just help me remember to get y’all to sign a consent form and a Miranda warning form, will you? Last one of these I did, I forgot to get one. Felt like such a fool. So embarrassing.”
“No problem,” Matt says. “We’ll remind you.”
“Thanks. And as soon as I hear anything about Shane, I’ll let y’all know.”
“Cool,” Cody says.
“Sweetheart, are you all right?” Reggie asks Megan.
Megan doesn’t respond.
“Come on,” Reggie says. “She can ride with me. Let’s get up there and get her dry and warm and make sure she’s okay.”
“Shit, don’t treat her too good,” Matt says. “She probably killed Shane.”
Other search and rescue boats arrive and are launched.
The original deputy securing the scene is replaced by another.
Gawkers, onlookers, and just the mildly curious begin to show up, all of them turned away by the deputy before they can even enter the landing.
A mobile command center unit is brought in and set up, and one of the members of search and rescue pulls up in his enormous RV and proceeds to set up a camp of sorts. Soon, beneath its awning and in an E-Z-Go popup tent beside it, there are chairs and tables, carafes of coffee, bottles of water, and an assortment of snacks.
Eventually another member arrives with a large cooker and begins to grill hamburgers, hotdogs, and chicken patties.
And the late-afternoon sun continues to get lower and lower in the clear May sky.
As I stand on the dock, keeping an eye on Tommy, I look out over the wide, winding river. Search and rescue boats move about, mostly along the banks, ripples from their wakes rocking the dock back and forth and up and down. Across the green-tinged waters, a small houseboat is moored to a tree on the other side. Beyond it, a thick, verdant river swamp of cypress and pine and oak ascends the hill, appearing impenetrable. Overhead a couple of swallow-tailed kites glide by, and down the way near the bank on this side, a great blue heron stalks its prey in the reedy shallows.
This time when Tommy breaks the surface of the water and grabs onto the dock, he lingers a little.
“I know what I’m doing is useless and futile at this point,” he says. “I know I look like a ridiculous fool, but I’ve got to do something. I can’t just . . .”
“I understand,” I say. “I do. I’d be doing the same thing, but . . . it’s time to let search and rescue take over now. They know what they’re doing. They’ll find him.”
“I know how absurd it is, but I feel like if I get out of the water, I’m giving up on him being alive. Like I’m admitting that he’s gone. Really gone. I know he is. I know it’s been too long for there to be any chance, but . . . I keep hoping I can find him and bring him up and give him CPR and he’ll be fine. Or that he’s trapped in an air bubble or something equally ludicrous, but . . .”
My heart breaks for him, and I blink back tears as I empty my pockets and take off my shirt and shoes so I can join him in his futile search for his brother who is more like a son.
7
Evening.
The setting sun behind us bathes the river before us and the treetops along the banks on the other side with a translucent golden glow so soft, so subtle, it’s sublime.
The water is wide. The river is relentless.
The Apalachicola River runs over a hundred miles from the Georgia-Florida line to empty into the Apalachicola Bay. Along the way it feeds an enormous floodplain, gives life to verdant river swamp. The Chipola River, its main tributary and the sacred source of the Dead Lakes, flows into and out of and beside it for a not insignificant part of the way.
The stunning natural beauty of our surroundings and the quality of light illuminating and emphasizing its breathtaking brilliance causes a severe disconnect and cognitive dissonance that contrasts the real reason and grim realities of why we are here and what we’re doing.
No one has verbalized it yet, but everyone knows it—even those who refuse to admit it to themselves. We are now looking for the drowned and lifeless body of Shane McMillan.
Four Wewa Search and Rescue boats are now in the water. One is anchored in the middle of the river about three miles downstream. Two search the banks—one on each side. The last, equipped with a side-scan sonar, is thirty feet off the right side bank, working his way downriver, taking scans every fifteen feet or so.
Merrick, who lives less than a mile away on Byrd Parker Drive, has just taken Tommy to his house to get cleaned up and borrow a dry set of clothes.
I am standing on the dock with Reggie and Ralph Raffield. Ralph is the head of search and rescue and the older brother of Ronald Raffield, the still-missing boy whose disappearance led to the formation of Wewa Search and Rescue.
Ralph is dropping flotation devices with weights that hang down about eighteen inches on them into the water.
“This’ll give us some indication of the surface flow,” he says, “and show us where something might get hung up.”
The something he’s talking about is Shane’s body, and we all know it, but I’m glad he uses something.
Reggie looks on with what she refers to as her “resting bitch face”—the default state of her face when she has no expression.
“It helps that we know approximately where he was when he went under,” he adds.
His team, a group of well-trained and dedicated volunteers, had already spoken to the witnesses about
Shane’s general whereabouts, what he was wearing, and his description, including height and weight and hair color. They had also taken water temps and measured the current.
“We get all the information we can, but then it just comes down to a SWAG,” he says.
I wait for Reggie to ask, but she doesn’t have to.
“A scientific wild ass guess,” he adds.
Now a small man in his midforties with red-tinged hair going gray, he had been twenty-five when his fifteen-year-old brother vanished beneath the surface of the Apalachicola never to resurface again. It’s hard to fathom that Red Face Raffield, the pudgy, freckle-faced boy the river took and never returned, would be in his midthirties now.
“Since you two are new,” Ralph says, “I’d like to go over a few things up front. Share my philosophy.”
“Sure,” Reggie says, nodding enthusiastically and giving him a small smile.
She is tired and tense with the pressure and responsibility and weight of this, but it doesn’t take away from her rough natural beauty, her stunning—though at the moment squinting—eyes, and her skin that resembles riverbed clay in the evening sunlight.
“You’re the boss and we work for you—under your authority, but we know what we’re doing,” he says. “I strongly suggest you take our recommendations.”
“I know you do,” she says. “And I will. You won’t get any interference from me. I’m here to support your operation and give you anything you need.”
“We work all over,” he continues, as if he has a planned script he intends to finish, “have more equipment and experience and resources than all but the largest counties in the tristate region. We roll up on a place and get the job done. No matter what it takes. All over, people who’ve worked with us before call us ‘high-tech rednecks,’ and we wear it like a badge of honor.”
“Which you should,” Reggie says.
“Everything we do, we do for the families of the victims,” he says. “That’s important. I’ve been there. I know how important that is. Firsthand. You know how long we’ll stay at this? How long we’ll keep searching? I’ll tell you. Our philosophy is simple. We go home when the family does.”
Reggie and I nod.
“Speaking of family,” he says. “They’re gonna want to be involved. I know Tommy has already been in the water. Well, I let them be. I’ve been right where Tommy is now. So I get it. You want to help. You want to do something—anything—to keep from going crazy. So I let them be involved. But . . . I don’t think it’s in their best interest to find the body, so . . . I usually let them do other things—out of the water. Like search the hill. Stuff like that.”
The hill is what we in North Florida call the river banks, the swamps, and any land around the river.
Reggie nods. “I like that approach,” she says.
“Cadaver dogs will be here a little later,” he says. “Coming from Montgomery. We may find him before then, but if not, between the sonar scans and the dogs, we should locate him soon. If we don’t, then we’ll start dragging the bottom. The current is flowing pretty fast right now so . . . Think about it. How long has it been since he went under? An hour? More? If the river is only flowing a mile an hour, he could be a mile downstream by now. That’s why we have the observation boat three miles down. If we don’t find him soon, I’ll move it even farther down. ’Course the river has so much stuff in it and there’s so many exposed cypress root systems along the banks, a body usually gets hung up on something rather than just free flowing downstream. I’ve seen it both ways, though.”
His radio sounds. It’s Fred Hall, the man doing the sonar scans. The first scans are complete and ready to be looked at.
Who helps the helper, Merrick thinks as he drives Tommy the short distance down Byrd Parker Drive to his house.
Byrd Parker Dive is a half-circle road winding around next to the Chipola River, beginning and ending in two different places on Lake Grove Road—one at the landing, one about a mile before it. It is lined on both sides with houses, river camps, rentals, and lots where houseboats are tied up.
In the seat beside him, Tommy is shaking, his long hair dripping down on his soaked shirt. He seems to notice neither.
“I wish I knew what to say,” he says.
Tommy shakes his head. “Nothing to say.”
“I was just thinking . . . you’ve helped so many people. You help so many people all the time. You’re who they’d call in for something like this. I’m sure you know just what to say, but me . . . I’m at a loss. Sorry.”
“You’re doing all that can be done,” Tommy says. “You’re showing me kindness and concern. You’re taking care of my immediate needs. You’re here. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”
He’s right, Merrick thinks. When I lost Monica and Ty, my mom, my dad, nothing anyone said mattered. Nothing helped.
His mind goes back to the night of the accident. Monica bringing Ty back from a doctor’s appointment. The rain. The hard, relentless rain. The wet roads. Low-lying area. Flooded. Hitting the water. Hydroplaning. Losing control. Flipping. Rolling. Crashing. Through the guardrail. Sinking into the Dead Lakes. Her dead from the impact but Ty . . . Ty . . .
“You just lost your dad,” Tommy says. “I should be asking after you.”
Merrick shakes his head. “No. Not at all.”
He and his dad had been close—more at certain times in his life than others—but losing a parent, as difficult as it is . . . is natural, is . . . What was it Claudius said to Hamlet? He’d done his best to memorize it when he’d read it recently.
’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father.
But you must know your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief.
The father Merrick lost had himself lost a father, but a child, a child is another matter, another matter entirely.
His mind goes to the dark place again.
Monica unconscious, dead behind the wheel. Ty trapped in his car seat. The dark waters of the Dead Lakes rising around him.
When Merrick reaches his little clapboard house, he pulls into the yard, cuts the lights, kills the engine, but makes no move to get out.
Both our sons drowned, he thinks, killed by the same body of water.
Technically, Shane was Tommy’s brother, but only technically. He was a son to him.
In the same way Casey and Kevin are my children, he thinks. The exact same way. They couldn’t be any more my children if I were their biological father.
As if he has access to his thoughts, Tommy says, “You . . . you lost a son, didn’t you?”
Merrick nods. Unable to speak.
Perhaps excessive mourning for a father is an unmanly grief, but there is no grief too extreme, too excessive, to expressive for the loss of a child. There is no loss like the loss of a child.
“Sorry,” Tommy says. “I just . . . I’m just . . . grasping for . . .”
Overwhelmed. Overcome. Merrick breaks down and begins to sob.
Leaning over in the seat, Tommy breaks down too as he hugs him.
For a long moment, the two men, mere acquaintances, connected like few humans will ever be, sob uncontrollably, clinging to one another as they do.
8
The search and rescue command center is a mobile unit brought in by EOS.
Reggie and I are inside it with Ralph and Kate, a young woman with light brown hair in a ponytail above a search and rescue windbreaker and shorts, looking at the images from the sonar scans on a fifty-inch monitor.
“The moment PIW ingests water and goes down—”
“PIW?” Reggie asks.
“Person in water,” he says. “When they sink—usually at a
forty-five-degree angle—they go down and stay down until the gas in their body begins to be released and expands and they begin to float.”
She nods.
“When the body first starts floating a bit it may bounce along the bottom,” he says. “It takes a while for the body to rise all the way up and float—and sometimes they never do. Can get hung up on something on the bottom or along the bank. Sonar scans can show us what’s down there.”
“How good an image can you get?” Reggie asks.
“You’re about to see,” he says. “Real good—though not in dark river water. In a clear lake or spring or even a bay we’ve been able to see facial features, scars, things like that. In water like this it may just look like a shadow or dark spot. As soon as Fred fills up an SD card or finishes a section, he sends it in so Kate here can look at the images while he continues to take them of other sections. Each image has GPS coordinates on it so if we get something we know where it is—or was at the time the image was taken. We’ll send a cadaver dog into the area without telling its handler anything and see what he gets. The moment a person drowns, microscopic bubbles begin to rise from their body. You and I can’t see them, but a well-trained dog can smell them. Once we get double confirmation like that, we’ll send divers down.”
As he is talking, we watch the screen as Kate carefully examines each image before going on to the next one.
“Wait,” Reggie says, as Kate changes the image on the screen. “Go back. What is that?”
She points to a dark area near the bottom right side of the screen.
“Part of an old boat hull,” she says. “Been there for as long as I can remember.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Kate says. “I can miss stuff. And I have a tendency to go too fast, so always speak up if you think you see something.”
“The river is full of stuff,” Ralph says. “All kinds of old objects and debris. Even bodies the dogs will sometimes alert on.”
Reggie and I both shoot him looks.
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