Cold Fear

by Rick Mofina

  It was all beginning to fit.

  Her behavior.

  Their first night in Great Falls at the Holiday Inn. He saw her slip out of bed, the room’s digital clock displaying 3:04 A.M. Saw her switch on the TV, mute it, and surf, stopping at local-community cable channel that showed the teletype-style text of local and state news briefs. Saw her absorb the item about the execution of Isaiah Hood. Watched her shroud herself in an extra blanket from the closet, pull her chair to the window, stare at the twinkling lights of the city and weep.

  Doug had paid scant attention to Isaiah Hood. Now he remembered how Emily reacted in the Holiday Inn restaurant, seeing him reading the article in the Tribune on their way to Glacier.

  “Do not read that. We’re on vacation.”

  Rachel Ross was Emily’s sister. She was Natalie Ross, the witness who testified against Hood. Emily’s aunt knew. Damn. Willa knew. She had invited them to join them on the RV trip, to get away during the time the execution was carried out. It all fit now--Willa wanting to get them far away, cutting off his attempts to learn more of Emily’s past.

  “Whatever it is she’s sorting out, Doug, she has to tell you. Only she can tell you.”

  A dark realization was dawning on him. His heart was racing.

  In the last article about Hood, he was claiming innocence. Paige was practically the same age as Emily’s sister. It was Emily who had insisted they hike to the same region. In his anger, Doug sent Paige running to Emily. Was Emily the last person to see Paige?

  Why had the searchers failed to find any trace of Paige?

  Of Kobee?

  Nothing.

  Hood was claiming innocence.

  “Will you love me no matter what the worst may be?”

  Doug’s heart was pounding in time with an approaching helicopter.

  He buried his face in his hands.

  “Doug,” Crow said. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  He looked at her. Lost.

  “… and the student of yours, Cammi Walton? Why would they ask you if you struck her? Does that line of questioning make sense to you? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  He’d forgotten all about the accusation from Cammi.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  From the edge of the command post, Brady Brook scanned the ridges and ledges through his high-powered binoculars.

  Against the mountains, the on-site commander of the search embodied the calm, consummate professional, confidently sorting out strategies to locate Paige Baker.

  But in Brook’s gut, fear and fury churned.

  He pulled his face from the binoculars, rubbed his tired eyes, then replaced his frameless glasses. Never in all his experience as Incident Commander had he faced a case like this.

  Paige was well into her fourth day of being lost in the wilderness, well over seventy-two hours. In that time, there had been rain, fog and near-freezing temperatures. The overnight forecast called for snow. The region had some of the most dangerous terrain, the most dramatic climbs. Taking all factors into consideration, she was in the death zone now.

  Had they lost her?

  As far as he knew, nothing had surfaced. Nothing. Not a candy wrapper, an item of clothing, equipment, trace of feces, a scent or trail. Nothing of her dog, either. Brook had always held that his people could find something. If she was mobile, she was defeating the searchers. Was she lost to a river, lake, fall, bear? What?

  The chief factor now was the FBI.

  One of the rangers, who handled the computer work for the search, had used a sat phone to get on to the Internet this morning. They captured the news reports that the FBI suspected criminal intent and had not ruled out Doug and Emily Baker as suspects. Whenever Brook tried to find out anything, no one would confirm a syllable to him.

  Keep searching. That’s the priority. That’s the order.

  But it was also getting around that the FBI was finding some sort of evidence within the search perimeter and struggling to keep a lid on their nature of their discoveries, threatening anyone who leaked with “obstruction of justice” charges.

  The FBI would simply take control of a sector, turn search crews away with no explanation, making a lot of people unhappy. Brook understood emotions were taut, but urged his people to maintain a professional attitude and perform their duty. Yet in his gut, it really pissed him off when the guys like Holloway and Taylor were simply pulled from his roster.

  Given that the official search had so far found nothing, Brook was growing angry his people were being left in the dark. Were they a futile diversion for what was ostensibly a homicide investigation? The news report fit with Doug Baker’s absence. And the way the FBI watched Emily.

  Damnit. Shouldn’t they give him some sort of indication how to deploy his people? Searchers sometimes died or got hurt during operations. Tell him to call it off, if that was the case.

  Brook pulled his binoculars to his eyes again, trying to determine what was happening near that ridge. It was out of sight, but there seemed to be some FBI activity there. A steady flow of helicopter traffic to the region. It was a heavily fissured, treacherous area.

  Nobody told him anything.

  Shaking his head, Brook glanced at Emily Baker.

  Will we ever know what the hell happened to your daughter?

  Brook then looked across the campsite toward the paramedics, playing checkers as they waited. Folded precisely among their gear, and kept respectfully out of sight, was a body bag.

  FORTY-NINE

  It was late afternoon and overcast when Tom Reed returned to the news media camp at Glacier National Park.

  The area was congested. Motor homes, SUVs, news trucks. Reed was stuck behind a FOX affiliate from Minneapolis. A Montana Highway Patrol officer flagged him over at one of the checkpoints.

  “You’ve got to park down there, sir.” He pointed to an area a hundred yards from where Reed had parked before, almost out of sight.

  “Way down there?”

  “Sorry, the press people just keep coming.”

  “Why, what’s going on? Something break in the case?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.” The officer touched his brim and tapped Reed’s car. “Move it along, please.”

  After parking, Reed worked his way through the chaos. He had to get to the FBI for reaction to his information on Emily Baker. He still had a few hours before he had to start writing. It was a wild scene. Helicopters overhead; networks and big-city TV crews had setup colorful canopies flying their logos and station letters. Reed overheard a reporter speaking Japanese into a phone. Next to him, another reporter, on her cell phone, trying to get information from Doug Baker’s high school, had identified herself a reporter with the Toronto Star. Then Reed passed two TV technicians speaking German while nearby a woman with a British accent gripped a microphone. Holding an earplug in her ear, she talked to a camera. It was an electronic village of satellite dishes, laptops, cell phones and scores of conversations.

  A podium had been erected, suggesting news conferences. That was new. What was going on? Had he been scooped? No way. Nobody could have his angle on Emily, Reed assured himself, catching a glimpse of her file photo as he passed a network TV monitor. The case was going to explode when the San Francisco Star rolled out his story. He needed to find the FBI Agent heading the investigation. He was nearing the tape restricting press access to the command center when he heard a familiar clinking sound, then: “Tom!”

  It was Molly Wilson.

  Hurrying to him. Brilliant smile under her Oakleys. Auburn hair pulled into a tight, feathery tail. Navy T-shirt. Cargo pants. Bracelets. Looking very fine.

  Next to her, his tanned face showing a fashionable three day’s growth, was Levi Kayle. Eyes hidden behind his Romeos, he towered over six feet in his hiking boots, faded, torn jeans, a Springsteen T-shirt from an LA concert and a news photographer’s vest. A $30,000 state-of-the-art Nikon digital camera hung from his neck. Kayle rested his forearms on it
. He was one of the best shooters in the country.

  Wilson took Reed’s arm, pulling him aside urgently.

  “We have to talk. Zeke called me and told me what you’ve got. It sounds like dynamite, Tom.” Wilson looked in all directions, finding some measure of privacy for them between two parked Cherokees. “Let me see it.”

  Wilson began reading the county attorney’s old report on the letters Emily had written as a child shortly after her sister’s murder.

  “I am guilty of her death….”

  Wilson put a hand to her mouth. “This is good. Kayle, Kayle. Copy these. Can you shoot them and send them to San Francisco?”

  “Hey, ask nice, Wilson. I don’t work for you.”

  “Please, Levi. Pretty please, you big sweet lug.”

  “Sure.” Kayle grinned as he took the pages, stepped into better light, adjusted his lenses, then set pebbles on the page corners to hold them down as Wilson checked her watch and began updating Reed.

  “This is compelling. Do you think they’ll go ahead and execute Hood after we come out with this?”

  “Impossible to know. It’s cutting things close. I just know it’s a fantastic story. What did the desk say?”

  “They want one big take ASAP putting our stuff together. They’re going to publish your document as part of a package. You know, big exclusive, execution cliff-hanger, missing child, murder mystery.”

  Reed nodded. Sounded like a novel. But it was true.

  “A newser starts”--Wilson checked her watch--“in a few minutes. We figure it’s reaction to the AP story that they’re questioning the dad.”

  “Pick up anything else?”

  “Yes. When we got here this morning, we got lucky. I bumped into a guy one of my girlfriends used to date, Vince Delona with the New York Daily News. We’re talking and this strange-looking little man in a suit walks by us and says, ‘Hi Vince’.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Reese Larson, the FBI’s top polygraph examiner. He’s based in New York. Vince profiled him a few years back after the World Trade Center bombing. Kayle got pictures. Nobody but Vince and I know he went in to conduct polygraph tests.”

  “That means they’re building a case against the dad and likely the mother. Or possibly clearing the dad to focus on the mother.”

  Wilson nodded. “And I talked some guys with the search. They’re pissed because the FBI is telling them squat. There’s supposedly no trace of the kid, and if she were out there, she’s either dead now, or will be by morning. It’s going to snow out there tonight.”

  Kayle was finished with Reed’s documents. “Pretty damning stuff there, Reed. You going to the news conference?”

  “I am,” Wilson said. “After it’s over, we’ll meet here, sort out how we’ll put our story together. Okay, Tom?’

  While the press pack went to the conference, Reed went down the road to the police tape near the command center. He needed the FBI Agent in charge of the investigation to react to what he had.

  A young agent, his ID hanging on a chain around his neck, came to life to meet Reed, eyeing his plastic press credentials clipped to his waist. His face was not friendly.

  “Press conference is that way.”

  “I know that,” Reed smiled. Agent Evan Crossfield. That’s all he needed. “Tom Reed with the San Francisco Star. I am making a formal request to speak with the agent heading the investigation. The Star is going to publish some critical information we’ve obtained. The FBI might want to know about it before we publish.”

  The agent was unfazed, scowling at Reed.

  “Our press people are over there at the conference. Run along.”

  Run along?

  “Listen, your press people are not investigating the case. If you could please alert the agent in charge that I have very critical information.”

  “Sorry, just go over there with the rest of them.”

  “Don’t be sorry”--Reed handed the agent his card--“because when our story comes out tomorrow, it will contain the line that ‘the FBI refused to comment’ on our information. The people above you will search for the agent who took it upon himself to make the decision not to alert the investigators. This information could seriously embarrass the Bureau. When they call me, and they will, asking who the heck was it ‘that refused,’ I’ll have to tell them it was you, Agent Evan Crossfield, who never even bothered to look at what I had to show the FBI. So I would not be sorry now, if I were you, Agent Evan Crossfield. Save it for tomorrow when our story hits the wires and certain people in the Hoover Building start speaking your name. You’ll be very sorry then.”

  Reed smiled, turned, walked off. Five yards. Ten yards. He could hear Agent Evan Crossfield thinking. Fifteen--

  “Hey, just a minute, wiseass!”

  Within three minutes, Special Agent Frank Zander emerged from the command center, looking very irritated, holding Reed’s card in his hand. Zander went to the tape, lifted it, took Reed out of view to the shade of a tall spruce.

  “You Reed?’

  “That’s me.”

  “Sydowski says you are an asshole who stumbles on to things.”

  “Is that on my card?” Reed answered with a shrug. “Who might you be?”

  “Frank Zander, on the investigative side of the search for Paige Baker.”

  “So you going to charge the parents?”

  “Don’t waste my time. What do you have that’s so important?”

  Reed gave Zander the old report. He read it. Reed could not tell from his poker face if it was news to him. Zander passed it back.

  “That it, Reed?”

  “Does this change the direction of your investigation?”

  “No comment.”

  “Do you suspect anything beyond the report of a lost girl?”

  “No comment.”

  “Do you deny polygraphing Doug Baker?”

  “This is not twenty questions, Reed. You are wasting my time.”

  Zander escorted him outside the perimeter.

  “Zander, that’s Z-A-N-D-E-R?”

  Zander walked off, leaving Reed at the tape.

  “Happy now?” Agent Crossfield grinned. “Asshole.”

  Zander was good. Reed got nothing from him. Zip. Not even a “where did you get this?”

  The press conference offered little new information to a nation gripped by the drama of ten-year-old Paige Baker facing her fourth night lost in the rugged Rocky Mountains near the Canadian border.

  As night descended on the press village, the TV lights created intense halos. The temperature dropped, snowflakes swirled as TV reporters in hooded jackets talked solemnly about the ratio of survivability, quoting experts about ‘the death zone’ and reports that the FBI had not ruled out anything. This included a possible criminal act, such as abduction, an Internet connection or accidental death.

  Inside Reed’s rented car, the only sound above the idling motor and the heater’s humming fan was the clicking of laptop keyboards as Reed and Wilson worked against the Star’s early deadline. Their story was going to push the case to an unbearable level. Wilson glanced over Reed’s shoulder at the article he was drafting:

  THE SAN FRANCISCO STAR

  WEST GLACIER, Mont.--Tonight the state of Montana will execute Isaiah Hood, who claims to be innocent of murdering the five-year-old sister of Emily Baker 22 years ago in Glacier National Park.

  Hood’s attorney revealed what he said is proof Baker played a role in her sister’s death.

  It comes amid a massive search by park rangers, FBI agents, and volunteers for Baker’s 10-year-old daughter, Paige, who vanished with her beagle, Kobee, five days ago in a remote region known as the Devil’s Grasp.

  It is the same elevated corner of the park where Emily Baker’s little sister, Rachel Ross, was thrown to her death by Hood while on an outing with a local youth club two decades ago.

  Baker witnessed the tragedy and revealed aspects of it in private letters to a childhood friend shortly after gi
ving testimony that led to Hood’s death sentence….

  The FBI conducted a polygraph test on the missing girl’s father, Doug Baker, a popular San Francisco high school football coach and English teacher, and are expected to subject Emily Baker to one...

  FIFTY

  The sky darkened outside the command center.

  The members of the task force had watched the national newscasts, jaws tightening as each report suggested the rangers and FBI were not revealing everything they knew, citing “sources” who indicated Doug Baker was under suspicion.

  “That kind of crap does not help. We’ve got to plug these leaks.” Zander finally snapped off the room’s large set.

  Empty coffee cups, crumpled notepaper, creaking chairs, buffeting winds rattling a loose window, contributed to the tension in the cramped room.

  “Frank, by our last count, there are three hundred newspeople out there. It’s not an excuse, but rumors are going to fly,” said a sergeant with the Montana Highway Patrol.

  Zander conceded his point.

  It was late. Everyone was irritable. On edge. Zander wanted to move things along.

  The San Francisco ERT was en route with special gear to confirm Paige’s corpse was somewhere deep in the crevasse. The equipment could not be put to use until morning. Zander’s gut told him the crevasse was the case clincher. Once that was solid, everything thing else would fall into place. Until then, they had plenty of loose ends.

  “I’d like to know how the hell Tom Reed got the jump on Emily Baker’s connection to Isaiah Hood. How could he obtain that old document from the county attorney he waved in my face?”

  “I think I know.” Bowman was going over the FBI’s copy of the county attorney’s report on Emily’s letters. She explained how after she had reported to Zander on what Emily had revealed to her about her sister’s death and her connection to Hood, the FBI immediately ordered an urgent search of all Bureau and state files on Hood’s case. The pertinent records that Helena managed to retrieve were faxed to the FBI at the command center, and the discovered pieces of the old file confirmed what Emily had revealed to Bowman: her mother had moved frequently, changing their names so that the state lost track of them. She had essentially disappeared. It explained why the FBI did not make the connection between Emily and Hood when Paige’s case broke.