37
Max was waiting to get news on the BOLO for the black Expedition that’d run Ollie and Emma off the road. As he worked through the latest file from NCMEC on Belle at the task force headquarters, he found that sitting still was impossible, and his brain struggled to focus on his work.
It’s only been a few hours since they put out the BOLO.
It felt as if his mind was split between the two cases. Belle’s case was directly in front of him, but Emma kept racing through his thoughts. Two missing blonde girls.
Emma’s an adult.
That fact didn’t make his heart hurt any less.
Noelle had personally spoken with all the deputies and specialists who’d responded to the recovery of the remains found near Emma’s former home.
No one had noticed a black Expedition. One of the deputies had turned away someone he’d believed was a reporter, saying the man had walked from the road to the scene, but now Noelle had told Max that she wondered if that man had been the driver and was trying to get eyes on Emma.
The deputy’s description: forties, tall and large, dark hair in long ponytail, blue cap, jeans.
Tips were starting to come in about Emma as the story spread on social media and news sites.
County and city officers were compiling the tips into a spreadsheet, and Max wished that they could use NCMEC, but Emma’s age disqualified her.
He’d even requested the rule be overridden because the junk and bot tips were flooding in, taking up resources.
He scanned the file, seeing tips added as he read.
Tips to deliberately mislead them, saying she’d been seen in the Bahamas, Spain, and Ecuador.
Emails and calls that pointed at the person’s neighbors or employers.
Others from people who had done a tiny bit of internet research and reported that she’d be found with Gage Chambers or that the police should ask her mother where she was.
Ransom demands, photos of women who didn’t resemble Emma at all, AI images that did.
Determination was apparent in Noelle’s eyes and her voice.
She’d grilled the deputy who’d talked to the possible reporter and compiled a list of every black Expedition in the county.
There were 205. And when she included dark blue and dark gray—just in case—it added another 180 vehicles.
She’d whittled those numbers down to male owners in the right age range. But it still was too many.
It was hard for Max to watch her. She was obviously stressed and upset, but that made her work harder to find her girl. All local media outlets had been given Emma’s photo, and most of them had posted it on their social media immediately.
Something has to break.
Max refocused on the NCMEC leads about Belle and sent out assignments.
Some leads had already been cleared. A woman driver had seen a blonde little girl peek through the window of an RV on Highway 97, and then the girl immediately vanished when the woman waved.
She’d snapped a photo of the license plate and called the sheriff’s office.
Law enforcement pulled the RV over within minutes. It wasn’t Belle.
A grocery clerk had stalled a man with a little blonde girl because the man was clearly too old to be her father and the girl seemed unhappy and hid her face.
Bend police discovered the man was her grandfather—he had dozens of pictures on his phone, going back a few years, of the two of them together.
And the little girl was simply shy in public.
The grandfather was understanding but highly annoyed.
He probably won’t take her out in public for a while.
Max’s phone buzzed with a call from his grandmother.
“Hi, Paulette,” he answered. She didn’t like being called Grandma.
“Max, the news just reported that your Emma is missing!” she said breathlessly.
“I know, but—”
“And first I had to hear about it from Daisy Swanson? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I’ve been rather busy, Paulette.” He rubbed his eyes.
“Well, Noelle took the time to call Daisy.”
“I believe Noelle told her sister Eve. She or Lucia must have called their great-aunt.”
“Is Emma going to be okay?” asked Paulette. “The news didn’t give much information.”
Annoyance rocketed through Max. He loved his grandmother, but she was clearly fishing for something to share with her friends and using Emma to do it.
He bit back an angry answer and instead said, “We don’t have much information, Paulette.
She was in a bad car accident yesterday, and we found the vehicle this morning, but Emma wasn’t there,” he said.
The statement seemed vague and safe enough to share.
“Oh, dear.” Her voice quavered. “That sweet girl.”
I think now she gets it. This is a real person. Not a gossip topic.
“I need to get back to work,” he told her.
“Of course. Love you, Max.” She ended the call.
That was probably one of the shortest phone calls he’d ever had with her.
Evan had stepped into the conference room while Max was on the phone. “Was that a reporter?” asked Evan. “You looked ready to bite their head off.”
“My grandmother.”
“Ohhh,” Evan said understandingly, having heard about Paulette from both Max and Noelle.
“Anything on the remains recovered yesterday?” asked Max, wanting to change the subject.
“That was officially assigned to Detective Shults,” said Evan. “But last I heard, there hasn’t been an ID yet.”
It took Max a second to understand that the body from Emma’s old place hadn’t been assigned to the task force. In his head, it could be connected, but on paper there was nothing connecting those remains to the killer’s graveyard in the forest or the disappearance of Belle Beason.
“What about the facts that Crystal Chambers had lived there at one time and that the gun registered to her was found in one of the graves?” he asked Evan.
“I ran that by the lieutenant. He didn’t like the timeline, considering the gun had to be in that forest grave for a decade and the new remains found on the property are less than a year old.”
“Crystal has been missing for a decade,” Max reminded him.
“Which could make her tie to the remains in the forest even stronger but means nothing for the body found at her old place.” Evan sighed. “I get it, Max, I really do. But other than a gut feeling, it doesn’t fit the parameters of the task force. Although I’m sure Lori is keeping it in mind.”
“Good,” said Max, making a mental note to check in with the detective later. Noelle entered the conference room, strain on her face.
“I asked Merritt Blocker about the photo at the mailboxes store,” she said. “She seemed surprised that I’d thought it could be her. Then she pulled up her credit card statement, which showed she and Shawn Nickerson had been in Seattle at the time.”
“It was a good question to get answered,” said Max. “But we’re back where we started with that photo. It’s got to be whoever was living with Sydney Beason.”
“But why the hat?” asked Noelle. “And why the private mailbox?”
“Could be any number of reasons for the box,” said Evan. “She didn’t plan to stay with Sydney that long or she simply wanted her mail to have some privacy. As for the hat . . .” He shrugged. “She was dressed for exercise.”
“True,” Noelle said. “I’m overanalyzing things.”
“It’s what makes you a good detective,” said Evan. “You look at all the angles and come up with a lot of questions. Have you heard back from Kathy Nunevillier? Will she provide dental records to check against our second set of skeletal remains to see if it’s her daughter, Elise?”
“I haven’t heard from her,” said Noelle. “I really upset her when I asked for the records yesterday. I’ll give her a little more time to wrap her mind around the fact that her daughter might be dead. I’ll call tomorrow if I haven’t heard from her.” She glanced at Max. “Anything on Belle?”
She knows I would have told her if I had something.
“Just eliminating more leads,” he said. “We just need to find the right one.”
Noelle nodded. “I know it feels like busywork, but this is how we get results.”
“Truth,” said Evan. “We’ll find her.”
It sounds like we’re all desperate to make each other feel better.
Max looked back at his laptop screen.
I won’t feel better until Belle is found.