Chapter Nine
“I guess they checked the neighbors’ house, where they found her last time they called us?” Tony asked.
“They did,” Danny said. “No one has seen her. The sheriff’s department is doing a house-to-house search in the neighborhood. They need us to concentrate on the undeveloped areas—vacant lots, mountain slopes and ravines.”
They had searched the same areas before, only this time it was after dark, in an area with little residual illumination from streetlamps or even house lights.
The neighborhood they were in had been built according to dark sky principles, which meant light was confined to a very narrow space.
This made for great stargazing, but difficulties maneuvering rocky, uneven terrain.
As Carter joined Vince and Bethany in searching their assigned area, he thought of the hundred ways there were to get hurt out here, from tripping over a tree root to tumbling down a ravine, to being attacked by a mountain lion.
Someone who loved Helen Wakefield was probably thinking of all of that right now, too, and depending on this group of strangers to save her.
“Do you remember Grandma Russo?” Bethany asked as he followed her up a set of half-buried logs someone had long ago set as steps up a slope behind the Wakefield house.
At every step twigs or dried pine cones crunched under their feet.
He tried not to think about falling and to search on either side for Helen.
They might pass right by her without seeing her in this darkness.
Carter had a vague memory of a tiny, white-haired woman confined to a bed in a nursing home. “Not really,” he said.
“She babysat us a few times before she had to go in the care home,” Bethany said.
“You and Dalton were still tiny. Just crawling. I thought she was so funny because she’d give us ice cream for lunch or put your diapers on backward.
And she’d call us by the wrong names. I was always Diane and Aaron was Don. ”
“Diane is Mom’s name,” he said.
“Right. And Don is her older brother, Uncle Don. Grandma thought that’s who we were. Not too long after that she had to go into memory care. It was so sad.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have a sad ending for this family,” Vince said. “Or not any sadder than it already is.”
At the top of the slope they were on a high ridge. They stopped and looked back the way they had come. Carter could make out the roof of the house where Helen lived. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Helen!” he shouted. “Helen, are you okay?”
They walked east along the ridge, alternately calling and sweeping the beams of powerful flashlights across the landscape, looking for a flash of Helen’s white hair or the pink sweat suit her daughter had told them she was wearing.
They could hear other groups of searchers around them doing the same.
The ridge began to climb higher, merging with an even steeper slope. At the base of this slope they met with half a dozen other searchers. “We’ve found her,” Tony said. “She’s standing on a rock at the edge of a ravine. When we tried to get closer, she started throwing rocks at us.”
“She hit me.” Ryan wiped at a muddy smudge on his cheek. “For a woman that age, she’s got a pretty good aim.”
“We had to back off way over here before she calmed down,” Carrie said.
“What do we do now?” Bethany asked.
“We’re waiting for her daughter and son-in-law to see if they can talk her down,” Tony said.
Crunching leaves and snapping twigs announced the arrival of the family members, bent practically doubled as they scrambled up the slope, flanked by two sheriff’s deputies.
“Where is she?” Helen’s daughter asked. She was a fiftysomething woman with long dark hair streaked with gray and a round face.
“She’s on a ledge above a ravine,” Tony said.
“Let’s move a little closer so you can talk to her,” Deputy Jake Gwynn suggested. Jake was also a SAR volunteer.
He and Shane escorted the couple to within a few yards of Helen, who stood leaning back against the rocks. A flashlight beam held by one of the deputies illuminated the new arrivals. Helen turned to face them. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Mom, please come down and come to bed,” the woman called.
“Go home and mind your own business.” This was followed by a rock, which whizzed close by the daughter’s right ear.
“Mom, stop that nonsense!” the son-in-law shouted.
Her response was another rock. This one hit the son-in-law in the chest.
“Mom!” the daughter shrieked.
Helen laughed, an eerie, hoarse sound. She held up both arms and executed what Carter thought must be a victory dance, but stumbled and slid perilously close to the edge.
“Be careful!” someone shouted—perhaps one of the other volunteers, or one of the neighbors who had gathered below to witness the scene.
“Look what you made me do!” Helen shouted. “Are you trying to kill me? Go away!”
“Mom, come down from there!” the daughter tried again. “You’re going to get hurt.”
“I was fine until you showed up.”
Jake moved in and said something to the daughter. Her husband put his arm around her and the two, along with Jake and Shane, made their way back down the slope. “Let’s give her a chance to calm down,” Jake told Tony when they were even with him.
“It’s past her bedtime,” the daughter said. “If we leave her in peace, maybe she’ll lie down and go to sleep and you can slip up there and grab her.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Tony said. “She might startle or wake up suddenly and fall. It would be better if we could talk her into coming down on her own.”
“She won’t come to me,” the daughter said. “She’s too angry.”
“What is she angry about?” Jake asked.
“I told her I wanted to visit a new senior living facility in Junction. I told her they were having an open house and I had heard it was very nice. I was hoping that would start a conversation, or that Mom would even like the place enough to consider moving there. But she read it as we want to put her away in a home tomorrow. She’s got it into her head that I’m going to take her up there and leave her and she’s not having it.
” She sighed. “I remind myself that she’s just speaking out of fear, but it’s hard sometimes, when she says mean things to me. ”
She started to cry and her husband put his arm around her. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get where she can’t see us and let her calm down.” He led her away.
Tony was on the radio with Danny. He ended the transmission and turned to the volunteers. “We need to get most of the volunteers down and out of sight,” he said. “We’ll keep a couple of people up here to watch her, maybe try to have another conversation in a bit.”
Carter approached Tony. “Could I try talking to her?” he asked.
Tony didn’t answer right away. “You really think she’d listen to you?”
“I have an idea. I won’t get too close to her, I promise. And if she gets upset or throws rocks, I’ll retreat right away.”
Tony looked over his shoulder at Helen, who was still on the ledge, a slim silhouette that appeared to be watching them. “Let me check with Danny and the sheriff,” he said, and moved a few feet away to make the call.
Carter moved into the shadow of a boulder, his eyes still on Helen. He tried to put himself in her shoes—confused, afraid of being forced from her home. Terrified of losing herself.
Tony returned. “You can give it a try. But don’t try to approach her. See if you can get her to come to you.”
He nodded. “Somebody put a light on me so she can see me,” he said.
Someone switched on a portable spotlight that illuminated a somewhat flat stretch of ground halfway up the slope, about the size of an apartment patio.
Hands in his pockets, Carter strolled into this light.
He had performed in some drama class productions in high school.
This felt somewhat the same, like being on a stage, the lights making it impossible to see the audience.
But so much more depended this time on him making a good performance.
He studied the ground and kicked at a rock, pretending to look for something.
“Who are you?” Helen called after a few seconds.
“I’m Carter.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for something.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I think I dropped some money out here.”
“That was careless of you.”
“Yeah. I’m like that sometimes.” He leaned down and pretended to pick something off the ground.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“A quarter. Do you want to see?” He held up a quarter he had palmed from his pocket.
“Don’t come any closer,” she shouted. “You can’t trick me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He crouched and continued to study the ground.
“How much money did you lose?” Helen asked.
“Around fifteen dollars.” He tried for a sum that might be enticing, but not too large. “Lots of change and some loose bills.”
“You shouldn’t be so careless,” she said.
“I know. My mother tells me the same thing all the time.” True. He reached forward and pretended to pick up something. “I found a dollar bill.” He hoped the combination of dim light and aging eyesight would keep her from seeing he had lied.
She moved to the edge of the ledge and leaned over for a look. He rose. “Be careful,” he said. “It’s a long way down if you fall.”
She looked alarmed and stepped back.
“Do you want to help me look?” he asked. “I’ll give you part of the money.”
“How much?”
“How about whatever you find, up to five dollars.”
“If it’s lying on the ground, you can’t prove the money is yours,” she said. “Finders keepers.”
“Then you might as well come look for it and not let someone else claim it,” he said.
In answer, she moved carefully off the ledge. She stepped onto a faintly discernable trail and walked toward him, watching the ground and moving carefully. When she was still six feet away, she stopped. “You don’t try anything,” she said.