Chapter Eleven
By midmorning the next day, Roxanne gave up trying to focus on work and drove to the campground where Sarah Michaelson had disappeared the day before.
A plea for searchers had been broadcast on social media, but Roxanne was still stunned by the number of vehicles crowding both sides of the dirt road leading to the campground.
She followed a stream of people to a field where signs directed volunteers to gather.
Dozens of men and women and several dogs milled about while people in orange safety vests tried to direct them to gather in groups.
The throb of a helicopter pulsed overhead and a group of ATVs raced by on the road behind the field.
“Roxanne!” The shout carried above the cacophony.
Before Roxanne could even turn around, Debra had hold of her arm and was pulling her out of line. “I need to talk to you,” Debra said.
“Debra, I don’t want to talk right now.” Roxanne pulled free of the other woman’s hold.
Debra leaned in so close Roxanne could see where her eyeliner had smeared. “Don’t tell me you’re not thinking the same thing I am,” she said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Doesn’t this sound like something Billy Ledger would do?” Debra spoke in a harsh whisper.
“Why do you say that?” Roxanne found herself whispering, too. As if most people overhearing them would even know who Ledger was.
“It’s what he did to you, isn’t it?” Debra asked. “A ten-year-old girl, taken off the streets near her home.”
The words sent a chill through her. “How do you know that?” she asked.
“I read all the newspaper accounts of Ledger’s crimes. I’ve been researching this for years. You don’t think I woke up last week and decided to look you up, do you? It took me years to learn how to dig and search in order to find you.”
“What did the newspapers say?” Roxanne had never read them. At ten, she had been too young to even think of it. Later, she had no desire to relive her ordeal.
“The foster home reported you missing when you didn’t come home from playing in the park. The local police looked for you, but when they couldn’t find you they assumed you had run away.” She looked around them. “Too bad they didn’t do a massive search like this.”
Too bad. Roxanne’s throat tightened. Alice had told her not to count on anyone looking for her. “People don’t miss kids like us,” she had said. “Kids without families. It’s why Billy picked you. You didn’t really have a home, so he could give you one.”
It hadn’t been a home. It had been a prison, even though Alice refused to believe that.
“What makes you think Ledger did this?” she asked Debra again.
“You know he’s out of prison, right?”
“Yes.”
“Has he tried to get in touch with you?”
Roxanne recoiled. “Why do you even ask that?”
“He said all that at his trial about how you were ‘precious’ to him.” She made air quotes around the adjective. “He said he would never forget you. I figured that’s why you changed your name and made yourself so hard to find—because you were afraid of him.”
She hadn’t done those things because she was afraid of Ledger. She was only afraid of having her past publicized, so that people only saw her as a victim. “Do you really think he followed me here?” she asked.
“I found you. He could have, too.” She grabbed Roxanne’s arm again. “You’re ghost white. Has something happened? Have you heard from Ledger?”
“Right after I moved here, someone ran me off the road,” Roxanne said. “I thought it was Ledger.” She wasn’t going to mention the break-in and the doll. Debra knew too much about her already.
“Does the sheriff know this?”
“Yes. He knows everything. Law enforcement is looking for Ledger but they don’t know that he had anything to do with Sarah disappearing.” She pulled away from Debra once more. “If we’re going to help look, we need to join the others.”
She started to walk away and collided with another woman.
“Oh my gosh, Roxanne.” Kara reached out to steady her. “I saw you over here and was coming to talk to you. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. What are you doing here?”
“I came to help search, but I guess I’m too late.” She looked back over her shoulder. “They told us they have too many people. The rest of us are supposed to go home. I guess past a certain point, it’s too hard to coordinate all the searchers.”
Roxanne felt more relief than disappointment. As much as she wanted to help, she had dreaded coming upon something—or someone—horrible. “Thanks for letting me know,” she said. “That poor kid. I hope they find her.”
“Me, too,” Kara said. “It’s just wild that a kid could disappear like that.” She patted Roxanne’s shoulder. “How are you doing? Any news on your housebreaker?”
Roxanne glanced around, looking for Debra. She didn’t want to have to explain the whole housebreaking thing with her listening in. But Debra was nowhere in sight. Roxanne turned back to Kara. “I haven’t heard anything. I think the sheriff’s department is probably focused on Sarah right now.”
“Of course.” Kara smiled. “At least you’re safe there with the Ameses. They seem like really nice people.”
“They are.”
“I guess I’d better get going,” Kara said. “Take care.”
Kara moved off and Roxanne did the same. She wasn’t doing anyone good here.
She was almost to the road when a man in uniform flagged her down. Aaron Ames waved her over and she joined him beside a sheriff’s department vehicle. “Roxanne, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I wanted to help,” she said. “But I guess they don’t need any more volunteers.”
He looked out over the field, still crowded with people. “This is chaos,” he said. “You’re better off back at Mom and Dad’s.” He looked at her intently. “You should stay there and not wander around by yourself.”
“Is that because you think Ledger is nearby? Have you heard something?”
He shook his head. “No. But you’ve had two close calls already. Better to be safe until we figure out who’s behind this harassment.”
“Dalton asked me if I thought William Ledger kidnapped Sarah. Is that what the sheriff thinks?”
“Ledger is a known child predator and he might be in the area. It’s something we have to consider.”
“But you’re out here searching the woods.”
“Because we don’t know she was kidnapped. Maybe she wandered off and got lost. If that’s the case, every minute counts.”
Roxanne nodded. “I hope you find her.”
“You’ll go back to the house?”
“Yes.” She didn’t want another encounter with Ledger. But even more, she wanted to never have to think about him again. That was the only way she would ever feel truly free.
After five days, they called off the physical search for Sarah Michaelson.
“We ask the public to continue to keep a lookout for any sign of Sarah,” the sheriff said in a statement to the media.
“We have conducted an exhaustive search of the area surrounding the campground, utilizing dozens of volunteers, hundreds of man-hours, tracking dogs and both aerial and ground searches. Though we are no longer actively searching, we do ask that anyone who might have seen anything that might pertain to Sarah’s disappearance from the Bryson Creek campground around noon on September 17, please contact our office. ”
Volunteers continued to roam the woods, and the girl’s picture was on posters all over town.
To Dalton it felt as if searchers had tramped through every inch of the woods and mountainside.
The knowledge that no one had found Sarah hung over the search and rescue volunteers.
They didn’t like to fail in the mission they had trained for.
When Dalton wasn’t working, training for SAR or with Roxanne and his parents, he tried to find out more about William Ledger.
He didn’t tell Roxanne what he was doing because talking about Ledger clearly upset her.
But what he found while reading through old newspaper accounts and what trial documents had been released to the public haunted him.
Roxanne had been all but abandoned by those who were supposed to protect her.
Anger burned in him on her behalf. So much of a normal childhood had been stolen from her.
And the man who did this was walking free.
Despite his previous luck in finding people online who didn’t want to be found, he had no luck determining what had happened to Ledger after he was released from prison.
One newspaper account mentioned that he was going to live with a “friend” but Dalton could find no further details.
He asked Aaron to tell him what the sheriff’s department knew, but his brother swore they hadn’t discovered anything new, either.
He tried to see Roxanne every day, casually dropping by his parents’ house to borrow something or accept an invitation to dinner.
Roxanne laughed at his mother’s comment that they hadn’t seen this much of him since before he moved into his own place, and she always seemed glad to see him, but he didn’t think sitting in the living room or on the front porch talking qualified as a real date.
He was trying to be Roxanne’s friend, waiting for her to see him as more.
“Let’s get out of the house and do something fun,” he told her a week after she had moved in—the day after the sheriff called off the search for Sarah.
“What do you have in mind?” she asked.
“We could take a hike or something, in the mountains. There are a lot of great trails.”
“I’d love that, but Aaron told me I needed to stay close to home until they figure out who’s behind my wreck and the break-in. He was so insistent, he kind of scared me.”
“Aaron can be that way—a little intense.” He thought for a moment. “How about we get you out of the house, but we don’t go far. And you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you.” He flexed his muscles in a mock he-man pose and she laughed—the reaction he had been hoping for.
“So what do you have in mind?” she asked.
“What about a picnic at the lake? Or if you’d rather go to a movie or out to eat . . .”