Stories: All-New Tales

Searching on foot took longer than she thought. They came across nothing more sinister than a rotting seagull, but she wasn’t disappointed. Bushwhacking through the overgrown no-man’s-land behind the commercial strip on Route 302 was an adventure, and looking gave her a sense of accomplishment. They could cross this location off and move on to the next one.

Later she added more serious gear like bolt cutters and a lightweight graphite walking stick recommended by professionals, whose Web sites she treated like the Bible. She religiously documented everything, taking videos of any ground they disturbed, writing up her field notes as soon as they got home.

As fall came on she rearranged her shifts, working nights so she could take advantage of the daylight. In a couple of weeks the ground would be frozen and she’d have to shut down until spring. It was then, when she was feeling rushed, that she discovered a U-Store-It outside Mentor with a stockade fence and a dirt road running through the pines behind it. Across the raw lumber, kids had sprayed their illegible fluorescent-red names.

She walked Ollie along the fence until he stopped, sniffing at a weedy mound. She pulled him away twice, and both times he came back to the same spot. “Good boy,” she said, giving him a treat, and looped his leash around a tree.

She prodded the mound with her walking stick. The dirt was sandy and loose, and she went back to her car for the shovel.

She dug her first hole deep, then shallow ones every three feet. She was out of shape, and had to dip her head and wipe her face on her shoulder. It was cool out, and when she stopped for a drink of water the sweat on her neck made her shiver. By the time she reached the middle of the fence, the sky was starting to get dark. At the four corners of the self-storage, high floodlights popped on, buzzing and drawing bugs, throwing weird shadows. She checked her cell phone—it was almost five. She needed to go home and get ready for work. Rather than leave the site unguarded overnight she decided to call the FBI.

They told her it was too late in the day. They’d send someone out to talk to her tomorrow.

When she complained to her older son, he asked how long she’d been doing this.

The agent they sent asked the same question. He looked over her binders and the picture of the girl on the mantel and the big map tacked up in the kitchen.

“I’m just trying to help,” she said. “If it was one of my kids, I’d want everybody to pitch in.”

“I would too,” the agent said soothingly, as if it was common sense.

The next day they took her out to the site in an unmarked Suburban to watch a backhoe dig a trench along the fence line. Agents in windbreakers and latex gloves sifted the dirt through metal screens, then spread it on tarps for the dogs. A project like this would have taken her weeks, and she was glad she’d called. She imagined the girl’s mother hearing the news. She didn’t care about getting the credit. It was enough to know the girl was finally home.

They found nothing. Just dirt. Worms. It had all been a coincidence. As the agent said, there was graffiti on everything these days.

Meaning she was crazy.

Dropping her off, he thanked her. “I know your heart was in the right place.”

Was it? She could admit that at least part of the reason she was searching for a stranger’s daughter was that no one else needed her. Just Ollie.

She promised her sons to take a break after that. She took down the map and stored the picture in a drawer and watched the last weeks of fall pass.

Honoring her pledge was easier in the winter. She used the time to rethink her strategy and stockpile supplies. Some sites recommended a pitchfork to turn the soil, others a pickax. On paper, again and again, she rearranged her trunk, as if she were traveling cross-country. She enrolled Ollie in an online course for sniffer dogs, practicing with scented rags in the backyard. He didn’t always get them right away, and stood looking at her as if she might give him a hint.

“Do you want to pass or not?” she asked. “Or am I just wasting my time?”

She kept an eye on the Web site, and cruised the chat groups for news. She was afraid one day the page would come up and say she’d been found, but month after month, nothing changed. It had been two and a half years. Besides the family, she might be the only person looking for her.

In March the ground thawed and she tacked up the map. She’d turned her older boy’s room into a command center, emptying his desk and filling the drawers with her notebooks. On a brand-new corkboard she posted her schedule. Four days a week she’d search, weather permitting. She’d been too impatient in the fall, letting her emotions get the best of her. She’d actually expected to find the girl her first time out, as if she were psychic. She needed to be calm and methodical. If she was going to succeed, it would be because she knew how to work.