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“Plus, he has extensive experience volunteering at the command post for various search efforts locally. Put him to work. Please?”
Damn it. Monroe was a man who knew the power of a well-placed please. I couldn’t exactly turn down the guy who’d brought me here, was giving me a place to stay, and whom I probably still owed a favor from our navy days. Glancing at Holden, I considered various tasks, searching for something that wouldn’t require too much maneuvering of his chair on the uneven ground.
“Okay. I suppose I can use help wrangling volunteers when they get here. Maybe he can check people in?”
“Excellent.” Monroe beamed as I dug out my clipboard. I’d stopped in Boise a couple of days prior, found a chain shipping store, and printed off a roster and a few other papers.
Naturally, Holden—Professor Justice—ended up being great with the volunteers, many of whom seemed to know him. Hard to tell because he greeted everyone with the same enthusiasm: fist bumps, handshakes, and back-slapping hugs all around. He answered all the basic questions, like where to park, which usually took me out of my pre-dive prep. As I continued checking over my equipment, he assigned tasks and checked in volunteers with the ease of a natural-born extrovert. His ever-smiling, always-joking demeanor made it hard to stay mad, but somehow, I managed. I had no idea why he got to me so much, but he did.
Monroe did a commendable job as well, coordinating with local law enforcement and state parks reps who arrived on the scene. He gave all those assembled a quick review of what we already knew about the case and what evidence pointed to the lake.
“We believe the serial killer known as the Multi-level Marketing Murderer rented a lake cabin here the summer Melanie Stapleton disappeared. He’d dropped out of a nearby college sometime prior and become involved in recruitment and marketing for Kitchen Kingdom. We’ve recently learned that Melanie became a popular party hostess, and the same landlord who verified the rental occasionally saw other cars at the cabin, including a green sedan similar to the one Melanie drove.” This revelation made a murmur pass through the group before Monroe continued, “The suspect had a fishing license, and the landlord remembers repeatedly warning him to avoid the western shore of the lake.”
“Then why not start the search on the eastern shore? Near the popular fishing piers?” One of the younger, more-eager volunteers raised her hand. She was a fresh-faced woman who’d introduced herself as Heidi from Washington. She had a limited number of dive hours under her belt and a bottomless supply of questions. I made a mental note to pair Heidi with Holden for volunteer command.
Monroe gave the young woman a patient nod. “A couple of reasons. First, the suspect repeatedly references west, treacherous waters, pits of despair, underwater tracks, and buried trains in his cryptic statements using movie quotes. Second, the suspect’s cabin was the one closest to this shore. We have some reports that the suspect may have even joined local search parties. Third, when the original searches took place after Melanie’s disappearance, search dogs were used all along the lakeshore. Two of them pawed at the water near this area, but heavy early autumn rains delayed getting a police dive team out here. Their eventual dive didn’t reveal evidence, but technology has advanced significantly over the last twenty years. Experts, like Cal here, have reviewed their data and believe it’s worth another look.”
“Yep.” I nodded when Monroe glanced over at me. This was my chance to reassure the masses. “I’ve charted out the most likely areas based on what we know and what I’ve learned on other recovery dives. After twenty years of chilly lake water and silt, evidence may be in short supply, but if it’s there, I’ll find it.”
And I kept that same attitude as we started work. Long experience and hours reviewing footage from prior dives at this lake had me homing in on a few specific spots before I ever ventured below the surface. I relied on the volunteers to help me set the jackstay search pattern using surface buoys, down weights, and lines.
To maximize my dive time, I preferred to use a small ROV, driving the underwater camera to scout and do a recon of specific sites before I dove. Some volunteers with older and civilian-grade ROVs had done earlier work at my request, and reviewing their footage helped, but I still always did my own recon. The ROV didn’t search the area as much as give me valuable information about what I might encounter and where. Once we’d collected the necessary footage, I returned to shore to review and prep for actual diving.
“What are you seeing?” Holden wheeled over to where I was working on my laptop. Intently working, not that he seemed to pick up on that.
