Bury the Lead

by Mischa Thrace

  “Okay, I gotta ask.” Ravi shakes the excess glaze off a chocolate-covered donut with a purple-gloved hand. “Are we thinking curse?” He whispers the last word like it has actual power.

  “No,” I say. “This is different. Definitely. From what I’ve heard, the curse kids always disappear at the end of the year, right before graduation, and there’s never been a response like this. Ever. We would’ve remembered something like this, even if it happened when we were in elementary school. No, this is something new.”

  Ravi raises an eyebrow—an expression I can never quite master. “You know, when we actually go join the search, you might not want to look quite so pleased that you have a story.”

  “But I am pleased.” He gives me another significant eyebrow lift. “What, too honest?”

  “Bit too honest, yeah.”

  “Tact is just not saying true stuff,” I say. “Your eyebrow is going to stay that way if you keep looking at me like that.”

  “You’re incorrigible,” he says. “So, not the curse, then. What are your theories?”

  “Not sure yet. The stories that are already up don’t have a lot of details. We should learn more at the briefing. On social media, it seems like everyone is genuinely shocked, so I don’t think she lit out into the night on some grand adventure.”

  “Maybe she fell down a well? Or is in a ditch somewhere. Mom always thinks I’m going to drive into a ditch. It’s like she thinks ditches have some kind of dark mystical mojo that lures unsuspecting drivers into their abyss.”

  “Wait, I wonder if her car is missing. I don’t remember any of the reports mentioning it either way, but they would’ve included a description of the Mazda if they thought she took off in it, right?”

  “You think kidnapping?”

  “Abduction more likely. Kidnapping usually indicates there’s a ransom request, and while the Morgans obviously aren’t broke, I don’t think they have ransom amounts of money.”

  “Never know,” Ravi says, which is true. You never really did know what went on in other people’s houses.

  We finish three trays of donuts before Ravi ducks out front to make a large iced coffee and tell his dad we have to go.

  “You’re joining the search?” he asks.

  Ravi nods.

  “You two be careful. I know how you can get.”

  “Cross our hearts,” I say and snag a white chocolate raspberry donut from the tray.

  Ravi fetches his camera from the trunk of his car, and we go around to the front of the shop and cross the street. People are already gathering on the common. Two police officers arrange a podium in front of the gazebo steps, and a younger guy wearing too-short khakis makes sure the microphone is working. The press are assembled to one side, flocked together like birds of the same species.

  We stop short of the crowd, and I turn my back on it, handing my phone to Ravi. He steps back, raises the phone, and gives a three-finger countdown.

  When he gives the final nod, I square my shoulders and say, “This is Kennedy Carter, live from the Maplefield Common, where police and citizens are gathering for a press conference regarding the disappearance of Emma Morgan, senior at Maplefield High. As always, the Monitor will be bringing you the news as it happens, so stay tuned as we find out more.”

  I upload the video through the Monitor’s app and send a Breaking News notification. I’m not going to scoop the professional news outlets, but I can at least keep up.

  Instead of joining the press, I lead Ravi to the side opposite, knowing that every photo taken from the press pool will capture the same scene. It’s a good call, because what we get is visceral enough to make my objectivity waver just a fraction. From where we stand, we have a clear view into the shadowed recesses of the gazebo, where the Morgans sit huddled together with their backs to the cluster of press. They look utterly broken.

  I nudge Ravi and nod at the scene. He raises the camera without hesitation and captures them sitting there, waiting to tell the world their worst story. He might give me shit about my acknowledge-and-set-aside mantra, but he knows about objectivity too, and really, this is nothing. Not really. This isn’t squatting down to take a photo of an orphaned girl covered in napalm, the smell of burning flesh hot in the air as she flees her burning village. This isn’t documenting someone as they burn alive.

  We’ve talked about what it would mean to be the one to take those pictures, to record the atrocities of humankind without interfering, and Ravi agrees that telling the hard stories is important, that seeing that girl in real life might be heartbreaking, but to not immortalize her agony, to not share it with the world, would be tantamount to pretending it didn’t exist. That is a far worse crime than taking the picture. The suffering deserve to have their stories shared so that maybe such horrors won’t happen again.

  To us, taking a photo of a scared and broken family isn’t sacrilege. It’s documentation of a horror that no family should have to experience. It’s something the world should see.

  It’s also something only we have.

  Chief of Police Angus Liddell is a middle-aged white guy with a paunch that indicates he spends more time in his office than on the streets. While I don’t fault him for this, it’s a reminder of why I never want to be a managing editor somewhere, chained to a desk and supervising the people who are actually out there getting their hands dirty.

  He taps the microphone to check that it’s on and waits for the murmuring crowd to quiet.

  I pop the last bite of pink-frosted donut in my mouth, lick the sugar from my fingers, and take a pull from my nearly empty coffee.

  Showtime.

  I set my phone to record audio as Ravi raises his camera to get the requisite still images as the Morgans emerge from the back of the gazebo to join Chief Liddell on the steps.

  “I would like to thank you all for coming here today,” the chief says. “This is going to be brief, as we are still in the earliest stages of the investigation and have a search to get started. I ask that you hold all questions until the end. At approximately 10:00 p.m. last night, police were summoned to the home of John and Melissa Morgan, who reported that their daughter Emma, seventeen, failed to return home from her shift at Uno. The Morgans had not seen their daughter since Friday evening, when the girl left to spend the night at a friend’s following a soccer game. Melissa Morgan received a text Saturday morning that Emma would be working a double shift at Uno and would return home that night. It has since been confirmed that Emma did not make it into work and hasn’t been seen since early yesterday morning. We are working on tracing the location of her cell phone and obtaining phone records as we speak. According to friends and family, Emma routinely goes trail running on Saturday mornings, and we will be concentrating a physical search on the areas she is known to frequent. It’s possible that she has fallen and is injured or unconscious somewhere. There has been no evidence of foul play, but we are also not ruling anything out at this point. If anyone has any information, anything at all that might help us find Emma, we ask that you come forward at once. For those of you planning to participate in the search, I would like to thank you in advance for your help. Everyone who is participating will need to register at the green tent behind the gazebo, and your locations and search leaders will be assigned from there. Now, let’s get out there and find Emma.”

  The press erupts in a volley of questions, and someone shouts, “Can we get a statement from the family?”

  Mrs. Morgan turns toward her husband, who wraps an arm around her. On her other side, Michael Morgan, Emma’s brother, stands pale and rigid.

  “At this time, the family would like to thank the community for their help and support in bringing their daughter home,” Chief Liddell says.

  “Could this be the work of a kidnapper?” someone else from the crowd calls.

  “As I said, at this time, there is no evidence of foul play, but we have not ruled anything out and again ask the public to come forward with any information they may have.”


  A redheaded reporter pushes her way to the front to ask, “Has Peter Vernon been questioned?”

  “We’re doing a thorough canvas, but no one has been implicated in the disappearance yet.”

  I shoot a look at Ravi. Peter Vernon is a registered sex offender who moved to town to escape a scandal in Maine, where he was caught sending and soliciting naked pictures from underage girls. He’d tried to argue that he was only nineteen at the time and that made it okay, but it didn’t. He’d been prosecuted and forced to register as a sex offender—a fact the local paper had announced upon his arrival a year ago. The tiny article contained hardly any information beyond that, so I’d taken it upon myself to dig up the details. I’d even talked to one of the girls whose pictures he had. She was a multi-sport athlete, petite and blond and full of confidence.

  Just like Emma.

  As Liddell fields the final questions, people make their way to the green tent set up on the far side of the common. Ravi and I join the lines, listening as people speculate about what could’ve happened.

  “Well, that was not terribly informative,” Ravi says. He steps away to take a few photos of the crowd, which has swelled beyond the number at the press conference with people who are more eager to join the search than listen to speeches. It looks like half the school has shown up.

  “We know they don’t know much,” I say, “so we need to find our own answers—like who the friend is that she stayed with Friday night. It sounds like that was the last person to see her.”

  When we reach the front of the line, we add our names, birthdays, and contact information to the tablets that are set up to register searchers. The lady behind the table asks if we have a car or need a ride. Ravi tells her we have wheels. She hands us each a map printed on flimsy copy paper and circles an address.

  “You can join the group at the reservoir. That’s going to be the biggest group since that’s where most of Emma’s run went. Meet at the parking lot and check in with the bearded guy in the fluorescent green jacket. He’s the leader. He’ll have an email with your names on it.”

  We thank her, retrieve the car from behind The Donut Hole, and join the parade of cars heading for the reservoir.

  On the way, I check my phone and find social media flooded with pictures from the common, more than half of them selfies with dramatic captions and a #FindEmma hashtag. The bigger news sites are already posting coverage of the press conference, and the usual tide of thoughts-and-prayers comments are rolling in.

  We pass Peter Vernon’s house before turning onto the reservoir road, and I slap Ravi’s arm, cursing myself for not making the reservoir connection earlier.

  “Hey, driving the car here.” He shakes me off. “Gonna make me crash and kill us all.”

  “Ravi, what about Peter? Do you think it’s a coincidence that we’re on our way to search the reservoir, which is right in his backyard? Which puts his house right on Emma’s jogging route? When we already know he has a thing for tiny blond girls?”

  “I think…it might be?” He glances over. “Why? You really think he graduated from dick pics to chasing girls in the woods?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “We still don’t know there’s been foul play. You know better than to write the story before the facts.”

  I hate when he’s the reasonable one. We park and join the crowd gathering at the edge of the parking lot. Their division of the search party assembles quickly, organized as promised by a mountain of a man in a highlighter-bright windbreaker.

  “Okay, people. Listen up.” The man’s voice booms, and everyone shuts up instantly, though Ravi manages to take a quick photo before turning his attention over. “We’re going to be doing a grid search, which means everyone needs to get in lines and stay in lines. Do not wander into your neighbor’s section and do not fall behind. We don’t want this to turn into a search for you too. If you find anything of interest, do not touch it. Stop, alert your line-mates, and wait for me to come to you. Do not move whatever you find. We hope this is a rescue mission, but if it turns out that it’s not, we need everything documented in situ, as it’s found. Disturbing the evidence could delay the search and put Emma in danger. Anyone caught doing that answers to me directly, got it?”

  We got it.

  The reservoir is surrounded by acres of wooded trails, conservation land, and an observatory atop a hill so steep it has delusions of mountainhood. People are guaranteed to be stationed up there already, using the mounted binoculars to search the trees for signs of life.

  We take the main trail into the forest, though the path is only wide enough to accommodate three people walking abreast, and even those ones end up bushwhacking before long. The trees blaze with autumn colors, and the air is brisk enough to make the hike comfortable. A task as grim as ours seems better suited for a gray day, but Mother Nature has her own agenda.

  Every few minutes, someone bellows Emma’s name, and everyone tries to step a little softer in hopes of hearing a reply, but none ever comes.

  Ravi shoots several photos of the line of searchers but mostly keeps his attention on the ground before his feet.

  After maybe a half an hour of walking, a cry goes up from down the line. “Think I got something!”

  Everyone turns to the kid who’s spoken—a junior I recognize but can’t name—and crowds in to see what he found.

  “No one move,” the leader barks, and people freeze mid-step like a game of Red Light Green Light.

  “Piece of fabric,” the boy announces, pointing at a broken branch. “It’s purple.”

  “Is it hers?” someone asks.

  “Is it bloody?”

  The search leader doesn’t answer, just uses a small digital camera to take photos of the tree branch where the fabric hangs and the ground beneath it. He removes a paper bag from one of his jacket pockets and uses a twig to nudge the shiny scrap of fabric into the sack. He folds the top down twice, writes something on it, and zips it into his breast pocket. He extracts a plastic flag from a different pocket and sinks it into the dirt before unclipping the black walkie-takie from his belt to radio in the report.

  Ravi documents him documenting the find.

  We continue on, and any thought of this being just a sunny Sunday walk vanishes. That scrap of fabric might be completely unrelated to the search, or it could be concrete proof that Emma was here, but the fact that no one knows one way or the other casts a pall over the entire group. It feels like everyone is looking a little harder now, and shouts of Emma’s name ring loud and often. In the quiet between calls, we hear the crashing of other waves of searchers elsewhere in the woods. I wonder if they’re having any luck and then have to wonder what actually counts as luck in this situation.

  As I scan the land in front of me, part of my brain spins the sentences that will become the story. This isn’t a story I can sit on, and doing the rough draft in my head like this makes the actual writing of it so much faster. The big sites already have their versions published, but I know the Maplefield community will turn to the Monitor for my account because I can give them something the big channels can’t: a Maplefield perspective. No matter how this turns out, I’m positive that the news hitting mainstream media is going to be vastly different than the news we’ll hear in the halls, and neither are likely to have the whole story. I need to be the link between the two versions.

  “Everybody stop!” a woman at the end of the row shrieks.

  “Sounds like she tripped over a severed arm or something,” Ravi mutters.

  “No shit.”

  This time, everyone knows not to move, but necks crane to get a glimpse of what halted our procession. The news of what’s been found travels through the search group like a lit fuse: a tangle of what looks like human hair, long and blond, is snared on a branch.

  Speculation bubbles up and down the line, and I curse my poor positioning. I need to see it—or at least hear what the leader radios in.

  “It could be horsehair,”
I say to Ravi. “Riders use these trails too. Cass’s old barn has direct access to a ton of entry points.”

  “Could also be Emma’s hair.”

  “We need to find out.”

  “They won’t know until they DNA test it, and you know that’s not as fast as CSI makes it look.”

  “I’m going to see if I can get closer.”

  “You’re gonna get caught.”

  “So what? What’s he gonna do, send me back alone? I don’t think so.” I drop behind the row of searchers and ease my way up the line. The leader is busy photographing the hair and doesn’t see me slip in between two older women. He tugs on a pair of the same purple gloves Mr. B keeps at the bakery and cracks the branch far enough back to remove the entire tangle, as he put it, in situ. He bags it, branch and all, sticks a flag in the ground, and radios in a report of “hair, possibly human” and our GPS coordinates before asking, “Should we proceed or hold?”

  “Proceed,” the staticky voice on the radio says.

  I jog back to my place by Ravi as the leader gives the order to move out. “Definitely blond,” I tell him as we march forward. “But still can’t rule out horse. Horses can be blond too. Looked like it could’ve been tail height.”

  “Listen up, people,” the leader bellows. “Up ahead, the terrain is going to drop off steeply on one side, and we’re going to collectively shift left to follow the trail. We’ll spread back out once it widens. Everyone needs to pay attention to where their feet are, because I don’t have time to chase you down a cliff.”

  He isn’t lying about the drop-off. It’s like the entire right side of the woods disappeared. The right-hand side of the line falls in behind the others, and no one loses their footing. One look down the cliff makes me glad we’re not the group searching that ravine.

  Everyone squishes together to get past the drop-off, and we bottleneck, slowing almost to a halt. I consider the likelihood of Emma falling into the ravine during her run and almost crash into Ravi when we do stop completely, although there is no shout of evidence this time.