Saving Jason (22 page)

O
ne last question. I realize that you may be limited in how much you can tell me—or want to tell me—but the presence of U.S. Marshals here raises some concerns. We have worked with the feds many times before and we respect each others’ drives and abilities. But I need you to give me your trust and be as open with me as you possibly can.”

“I’ll do my best.” We were sitting across from each other at the dining room table, a rough-hewn, thick-plank affair that had been painted with a clear plastic finish to a depth of about a quarter of an inch. We each had a cup of steaming black coffee. Robertson had ordered everyone else outside.

“You see, Mr. Sauerman, I can’t put my people at risk. They are volunteers. They will brave rough terrain, heatstroke, snakebite, and even being stalked by mountain lions, but if there is any reason they might be harmed by a member of the human species, I cannot put them out there.”

I did trust him. I couldn’t say why exactly. Maybe it was his solid self-confidence, or maybe it was simply relief that a calm and capable man was taking charge of the search for my son. Or it may have been desperation.

“I believe that my autistic son has gone ‘walkabout.’ Children with ASD do that.”

“I know that,” he said. “We call it elopement.”

“Or wandering. No one knows exactly why they do it.”

“We are operating under the assumption that this is what we are dealing with here.”

“Or he may be pissed off at me. I gave him a hard time this morning.”

He smiled. “I’ve got four boys.”

I continued. “As to your question, I know of no reason why or how my son and I would be in danger here. We came to this place to avoid that kind of danger. I have to believe that we have been successful.”

He stared at me so long that I felt an urge to confess even more. I wanted to tell him about Aimee’s death, my wife’s murder, the drug cartel that might still be after me more than a year after I had helped send some of them to prison—including the now-dead banker. I wanted to explain that, although I had made a mistake and spent time in prison, I was not that man anymore. I didn’t say any of that.

“Find my son, Mr. Robertson. Please.”

A
topographic map covered the table. Robertson and I had been joined by three of his team leaders.

“We’ll start with a search through the various buildings here on the property. Mitch, I want you to start on that immediately. Then check on other houses on this road. Look into everything. Barns, woodsheds, even dog houses. Often, autistic children will head for shelter. He could be hiding here on the property, for all we know. Mr. Sauerman, would your son have any specific phobias in that regard?”

“Dirt. Anything dirty, moldy, or covered in spiderwebs will creep him out. If it even looks like that, he’ll stay away.”

“So we can leave out the dog houses,” Mitch said.

“Actually, he likes dogs. All animals, really. He has no fear of mammals.”

“Is he a runner?” the other man said.

“He’s a sprinter. He can duck and weave, and he can move quickly when he’s scared, but he can’t do distance. He has no control that way, he just gives it his all until he drops.”

“That’s good info, but I want to know if he has a history of elopement. Has he done this before?”

I remembered a chase through our old neighborhood when two FBI agents surprised us. The Kid had moved like lightning. “Yes and no. He runs when he’s scared, but he doesn’t just wander off and disappear. This is a brand-new symptom.” New symptoms of his autism seemed to arrive on a seasonal cycle. I was never prepared. The episode in Central Park and his brief disappearance in Tucson began to take on a different hue. “The best I can say is that he’s never done anything exactly like this before. Not this extreme or for this long.”

“Betty, you have the local knowledge. Talk to your people. I want to know about abandoned houses or outbuildings. Also caves. I very much doubt he’s made it up into the Sangre de Cristos yet, but we’ll want the information at hand.”

“We passed over an old house in the helicopter,” I said.

Betty nodded. “About five miles west? The Haines place.” She tapped the map.

“It’s exactly the kind of structure he would avoid,” I said.

“Gotcha,” she said.

“I’ve got to ask. We didn’t see much when we were up in that helicopter, but isn’t there some way we can use it? It seems you could cover a lot of ground in a short period of time.”

Robertson smiled indulgently. “My people are looking for sign. Dropped items. A scuff mark from a sneaker in a dry wash. A gum wrapper. A dried-up puddle where he stopped to take a piss. Even a loose thread. You don’t see any of that from the air. We’ll put people on horseback to get to a search location, but once there, it’s all about eyes on the ground.”

“What about technology? Those thermal whatevers?”

“Thermal imaging?” He shook his head. “The average human at rest in a neutral environment shows an image of about ninety-eight and a quarter degrees Fahrenheit. Would you like to take a guess at the ground temperature up in those hills right now?”

“Weather said it was going up to ninety-four today.”

“Weather temp is taken at between four and six feet off the ground. Ground is going to be an easy ten degrees warmer.”

“So a person wouldn’t even show.”

“A grown man or a group might show up as faint shadows, and if they were moving, you might be able to pick them out with military-grade equipment. But a small child? Nothing. Hiding or standing still? Not a blip.”

“What about dogs, then? He’s not afraid of them, and I’ve got plenty of his things to get a scent.”

“Similar problem. It’s the heat, Mr. Sauerman. Scent is carried on oils. Perspiration. Amounts so finite we can’t even test for most of them. But a dog can smell them. The problem out here is that once the sun goes to work on those oils, the odor rises off the ground and gets dispersed. On a still day, the dogs just get confused, because the scent seems to be everywhere. If there’s even a breath of wind, they won’t find anything at all.”

There was a hot breeze coming up off the plains.

“How familiar is your boy with the area?” Betty asked. “Would he know how to get to Storrie Lake, for instance?”

“We’ve only been here a few days.
I
wouldn’t know how to get there.”

“People with ASD often head for water,” Robertson said. He pointed to the map. “What about these creeks?”

“They’re both out of probability range,” Betty told him. “And they’ll be very low this time of year.”

“Where do you get all this?” I asked. They were a lot more educated on folks with autism than the average law enforcement professional.

“SAR is about two things, Mr. Sauerman. Statistics and eyes on the ground. Lost-person behavior is the statistics. There’s an international database covering rural, wilderness, and urban settings for people in various age groups, or with specific disabilities. It’s updated regularly and as comprehensive as they can make it. One thing I can tell you is that recovery of autistic children has a very high probability of success within the first twenty-four hours. We plan on finding your son.”

Y
ou mentioned mountain lions before,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to say it, but I had been thinking it so much that it just popped out.

It was later in the afternoon and the Kid had not yet been found. Robertson wanted me to stay at the house with him. I was more valuable as an information resource than as a searcher. The teams reported in over the radios regularly, which helped me to control my soul-destroying anxiety. It sounded like things were progressing. If I had been out in the field, I would have been defeated by the immensity of the problem.

“Not likely. Big cats don’t come down unless they’re driven down. This time of year, there’s plenty to eat up in the mountains. It’s cooler. There’s water. I wouldn’t worry about that problem.”

“What would you worry about?”

“We think we’re going to find him,” he said. “Safe.”

“I’ve heard coyotes at night.”

“No doubt. But have you seen one? Our western coyotes are small. They might take a small pet, but even a small seven-year-old is big compared to them. They’ll protect a den, but they don’t usually attack. They run or hide.”

Searches of the house and barn had turned up nothing more than another two shoe marks in the dust near the corral. The house over the hill, where an older retired couple agreed to keep an eye out for any seven-year-old children—lost or not—revealed no sign of him. The teams were now focusing on a small but hourly expanding circle of probability. Robertson and Betty had broken up the map into search cones, beginning at the IPP (Initial Planning Point)—the house—and
fanning out across the hills. They had assigned probabilities to those cones based on geography. Some areas were too steep or, for some other reason, less accessible to a small traveler. One group had gone off in three pickup trucks to investigate the lake area and surrounding waters.

Hal was nervous with all of the strangers coming in and out of the house and roaming around the property. He stayed near me. Willie made a big pot of chili before heading out with one of the search teams. Robertson didn’t question why I had two armed men living in the house with me, and I made no effort to explain.

My iPad chirped. Incoming email. A beer ad with an outdated coupon for discounts on Rolling Rock longnecks. That was Manny’s way of letting me know that there was someone in our chat room who wanted to talk. It was after nine in New York, so I guessed that it was Skeli.

“I’ll be in my room for a little while. Sing out if there’s any word.”

Robertson was busy examining the map again and didn’t look up. “Will do.”

Skeli looked tired. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like.

“You’re still at the office,” I said. Her diploma and licenses covered the wall behind her.

“The last client just left. Benny’s straightening up the equipment and then we’re walking out.” Benny was one of the therapy technicians. He was a big, gentle blonde from Iowa who had come to New York to seek his fortune on Broadway, but had enough foresight to pick up a marketable skill along the way.

“You okay?”

“Yes, we’re doing fine.” She looked down at her belly and back to me. She smiled. “Missing you.”

“And I, you.”

“You don’t sound good.”

“You’re right. I’m stressed. The Kid went missing today.”

“Oh my god. Is he back? Is he okay?”

“No. The state search-and-rescue people have been looking for him all afternoon.” I filled her in on the little that I knew. “This is all a mess. We should never have come out here.”

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice. I pulled him out of the only world that he understood—that he felt even remotely comfortable in—and brought him out to this very weird place. This would not have happened if we were still in New York.”

“You don’t know that. And he would not be better off if you were dead. And
that’s
what might have happened if you were still in New York.”

“I could have found a way.”

“Well, find it now. That’s got to be your goal. The only way you can help him right now is by making plans for the future. So do it.”

“Anybody ever tell you you’re one tough broad?”

“I know they’re going to find him, Jason. So do you. He’s hiding right now. But when he gets thirsty enough, or hungry enough, or forgets whatever it was that spooked him, he’ll show up. Meanwhile, you have dozens of trained people out there doing what they do best. You said so yourself.”

I had. She was right.

“As long as that asshole lawyer, what’s-his-name, Blackmore, keeps you in purgatory, he wins and you lose. There must be some way you can turn this thing around. You’re the smartest man I know.” She looked away. Someone had just come into the room. “Give me one minute, Benny, and I’ll be ready to go.” She looked back at me—at the screen. “Is there any way that I can help? Pass messages to Virgil? Or talk to your FBI buddy?”

“Thanks. I don’t know whether there really is a way out of this mess, but I’m the only one who’s going to look for it. Do you pray?”

“Not since I was about the same age as the Kid,” she said.

“I never got the habit. Times like these, though, I understand its appeal.”

M
r. Sauerman?”

Neither the voice, nor the words, registered. I heard them, but I did not understand how they might apply to me.

Skeli made a good point. I was in hiding because someone was afraid of something that I supposedly knew. Some vital piece of information that would disrupt their plan, and possibly send one or more people to prison. The fact that I had no idea as to what that might be was irrelevant. They believed and were afraid, and had, therefore, sent someone to kill me. If they were afraid, I had the power. I just needed to find the key to use it.

“Mr. Sauerman?”

The Kid was going to be found. That mantra was for my own fear. If I let myself think anything else, that would be all I could think about. Fear for him would drive out every other thought. I had let my fear rob me of my home, my family, and even of my own identity. I did not want to ever face a man with a gun again. Nor could I bear the death of another innocent, sacrificed in lieu of my own sorry ass. But I could still fight back with what I had left. My brain.

“Mr. Sauerman. Sir!”

My head snapped up. It was one of the state cops at my bedroom door—they all looked identical in their black uniforms—and I had the immediate realization that he had been trying to get my attention for some time. But who the hell was Sauerman?

“Yes? What’s up?” I asked. Of course.
I
was supposed to be Sauerman. Sauerman was a frightened man on the run. Well, I was a frightened man, too, but I was no longer running.

“IC wants you downstairs.”

Incident coordinator. Robertson.

“Thank you.”

Robertson and two of the team leaders were at the table. The woman, Betty, had a bowl of the chili, which she was attacking with ferocity.

“You need to hear all this. There’ve been some developments. They found sign. Some yellow threads on the edge of a patch of bougainvillea. It looks like the boy hid there at one point. Our people could have walked right past him.”

“But he’s gone again.”

“Yes, but this tells us where we need to concentrate. I can bring in teams from more remote areas and get everyone in this area here.” He pointed to the map and a purple-outlined cone that covered a few hundred acres.

“What says he hasn’t already walked out of the area?”

“This border? Very steep and all rock. It would be like trying to climb up the side of a thirty-foot-tall frying pan on your hands and knees. There’s plenty of places for a small child to hide all along the base, but climb over it? No. Not during the day.”

Sunset was not far off. I guess he saw that thought on my face.

“We’ll post people on that ridge all night if we have to. We’re close, Mr. Sauerman. This is very good news.”

“You’re right. Thank you.”

“But night is coming. We’ll continue, but usually we try to attract people at night. Fires, big lights, horns. Anything to give someone who is lost a beacon of some kind. Autistic children don’t usually respond.”

“You’re right. Big noise scares him. Hurts, actually. He might find light interesting, but not a fire or floodlight. Christmas tree lights, maybe. Sparkling, twinkling. Or colored lights.”

Robertson looked at Betty. “Can we find something like that?”

“I’ll make some calls,” she said.

“Lastly, sir, we have a developing press problem. We can’t ignore them. We set up a dummy command post down at the high school gym. I’m going to drive down there in a little while and talk to the reporters. I don’t know your issues or why the marshals are interested, but a moment in front of the cameras might help us. People see a grieving parent on the local news and maybe remember seeing the boy walking along a road, or hiding in an outhouse.”

“Let me think about it.”

“That’s fine. But I want you to know. They’re not going to stay down there and be well behaved for very long. I’m surprised they’re not up here already. By tomorrow morning they’ll be right outside the door with trucks blocking the road and folks poking cameras in the window. They’ll dig until they get every last bit of information available. It’s going to be very hard to keep secrets, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand.”

He wanted me to say more, but I wasn’t ready. I still wanted the Kid found in the next minute—or five.

“Now that we know the general area, wouldn’t I be more valuable up there?” I asked. “He might come to me.”

Robertson looked pained. “You’re not trained. Sorry. If we put you out there, we have a greater likelihood of doubling our problem rather than resolving it.”

“I want to go.”

“Sir, I am not sending an untrained man out at night into that kind of terrain. And as it is an official SAR site, I can have you detained, if need be.”

“If you don’t find him tonight, then I’m going out there in the morning.”

“We’re going to find your son. I still believe he is close by and relatively safe.”

“I’ll talk to the press in the morning. When we’re finished, I’m going out there.”

“I don’t make trades, Mr. Sauerman. I find lost people.”

“I
do
make trades, Mr. Robertson, and I’m going to help you find him. Send one of your volunteers with me. If he hears my voice, he may come. I should be up there now.”