Page 77 of South of Nowhere

Starr had summarized exactly what he wanted.

“I’d still think about facial rec, but I’ll aim for what you’re saying,” McGuire said. He rose and sauntered off.

Starr leaned close. “He’ll do a good job. He’s the best hunter in town, so he can stalk like nobody’s business. And for fun, you can believe it, he writes computer code and does AI with his kids. Can you imagine?”

Olsen asked, “That man you’re talking about? Bear? Ex-service?”

“You usually teach better hand-to-hand, but yes, could have been.”

“So he could have a source for explosives.”

Starr responded, “If TC comes through for us, Colter, you do an affidavit that this Bear attacked you—sounds funny saying that seeing as how a real one did come after me once. Different story. You do an affidavit he tried to brain you. Show the picture of him and Redding together. We’ll get that warrant, sure as shootin’. Open up the Jumanji box of Redding’s phone records, texts. We may get all sorts of goodies. I’m thinking—”

She was interrupted by the squeal of tires above them, a car braking to a stop beside the Winnebago.

Shaw at first thought the Chip Man, Katz, had returned. But this was a late-model Lexus SUV.

“Hey!” a man’s urgent voice called as a door slammed hard. “Police? I need the police!”

He was in his late thirties and wearing a rumpled, though to Shaw’s eye, expensive suit.

The man radiated concern, not danger, and Shaw’s gun slipped from his mind as he saw the arrivee run to the breach in the levee and stare at it, dismayed.

Good-looking and with the body of a health club aficionado, he sported thick hair that probably brushed up into a stylish cut but that was now rain-messy and unattended. No shave that morning, and a thick growth further darkened his troubled face.

“Sir?” Tolifson called. “Help you?”

He hurried down the hill to the command post tent. “Up the highway, where the road’s blocked off. They said there were some police here for the accident. You have to help, please!”

Shaw was examining him clinically. “You need medical attention?”

“No, no, it’s not me. My fiancée. She was going to be driving this way earlier today, going to a spa in Fresno. She never showed up, and she’s not picking up her phone. I heard the news that the dam had collapsed and a car went into the river. Is that true?”

“An SUV, and we saved the people inside. There was no one else.”

He lowered his head and muttered something. Maybe a prayer of thanks. Then he looked up. “But something must have happened. I mean, I told her not to take her car on a day like this. But she insisted.”

Shaw and Starr looked each other’s way. She said, “Sir, did it happen to be a Chevy Camaro?”

“Yes! A blue one. How did you know?”

34.

His name was John Millwood and he explained that he and his fiancée, Fiona Lavelle, lived in Reno. He worked for an investment firm and she had recently left her teaching job to take creative writing classes and work on a novel.

“I told her not to come this way. To stick to the interstate, but she wanted scenery.”

Tolifson pointed to Louis Bell’s pickup truck, of which only the top of the bed and half the cab were visible. It was sinking into the levee as the mud softened further. “Fellow in that F-150 was right behind her. She gunned the engine and made it onto the highway before it collapsed.”

His voice rose, almost angrily. “Then what happened? Something must have happened! She’s disappeared.”

Shaw had done this business for long enough to know that courtesy went out the window when a loved one was missing. The tragedy was everyone’s fault, from God down to the man delivering coffee to a search-and-rescue task force. He’d learned not to take it personally.

Millwood added, “She never even got to Fort Pleasant.”

“You know that?” Starr asked.

The businessman nodded fervently. “Yes, ma’am. Officer. When I didn’t hear, I looked over this map. You know, Google Earth…And I found the first gas station you come to going south from Hinowah. At Hadleyville Road. I called the manager. I asked if they had video and if it showed the highway. There was one. I begged him to scan through it to see if she passed by this morning. She didn’t.”

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