C. Box - Nowhere to Run

Joe nodded, still dumbstruck from seeing Sheridan and imagining what it would be like if she left one day and never came back. He paid polite attention to a postcard she handed to him.

“This was sent to our Michigan address a year ago,” she said.

The card was a generic COLORFUL COLORADO postcard with faded images of Pikes Peak, the Maroon Bells, a skier turning down a slope, and the Denver skyline. He flipped it over. It was postmarked from Walden, Colorado, but over the border.

The handwriting was crimped and severe, as if the author had struggled with the words. He guessed the sender was male.

Jenna:

I’m sending this to you on behalf of your daughter Diane. I saw her and she is fine. She says not to worry about her. She asks that you not share this message with her Dad.

It was signed, A Friend .

Joe handed the card back. “Any idea who sent it?”

“No. But it gives me hope.”

He kept his voice soft. “Her disappearance wasn’t a secret. I mean, anyone could have sent this to you. It could be a cruel hoax, or it could be someone well-meaning trying to ease your pain.”

She looked down. “I know that. But I want to think it’s real.”

A moment went by as Joe tried to form his question as diplomatically as possible. “So, did you show it to Brent?”

She shook her head quickly but didn’t look up.

He sat back. “Why not?”

She looked away. He could see moisture in her eyes.

“You didn’t want him to know,” Joe said.

She whispered, “It’s tough.”

Joe was confused. He knew he was on thin ice. Finally, he said, “Jenna, is it possible the relationship between your husband and your daughter was, you know, a little too close when she was growing up?”

Jenna refused to answer, which was an answer in itself, Joe thought.

Minutes passed. Joe didn’t press. And he tried not to stare at her while she sat silently, looking away.

At last, she said, “Would you like to look at some photos?”

“Sure,” he said. Anything to move past his last question, he thought.

He’d seen most of them before in the initial briefing before he’d struck out with the search-and-rescue team, and others on fliers the Shobers had posted, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by not looking at them. He did look at them to try to find what it was about the unknown woman he’d seen that made him think of Diane Shober. Maybe a profile or an expression? But thus far, none of the photos made a direct connection.

Most of the shots were of Diane running in competitions. She had a determined set to her face, and her blond hair flew back like frozen flames. Her fists were clenched, her arms pumping, the muscles in her arms, thighs, and calves taut as ropes.

“Here,” Jenna said, “this is the one we wanted you to see.”

Joe took it. The photo was not from a track meet, but from training. In it, Diane wore tight running clothes but she looked happy and relaxed and she had a nice open-faced smile. The right front fender of her Subaru poked out from the bottom left corner of the photo, and behind her were lodgepole pine trees and a glimpse of a cobalt blue sky between openings in the branches. Joe wondered if the shot had been taken at the same trailhead where her car had been found.

“Justin sent us that picture,” Jenna said. “He said he took it a week or so before she disappeared but he’d forgotten it was in his camera. He sent it to us almost a year after she’d been gone.”

Joe nodded. As he studied the photo, it hit him. He jabbed at the shot with his index finger. “Oh, man,” he said.

On Diane’s left arm was an iPod in a pink case.

“This looks exactly like the case Caleb had in his daypack,” Joe said softly.

“Bobby made the connection,” she said. “He said he asked you about it when you were in the hospital.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Brent was supposed to show that to you today, but he was so upset he forgot. That’s why I came back.”

Joe shook his head. What was the possibility the case he’d seen in Caleb’s daypack was similar but different? Given the remoteness of the tableau, the odds were tremendous they were the same item.

He looked up. How to say it without upsetting her? “Mrs. Shober, they look the same. Yup, they do. But that doesn’t mean she’s up there with them. I told you I was probably mistaken. And there’s the possibility they found this case on a trail or even stole it from a car or something.” Or found it on her body and took it , he thought but didn’t say.

He started to hand the photos back, but one of them nagged at him. He flipped through the stack again to a shot of Diane in a heated discussion with two other women runners in what was obviously a track meet at a stadium. All three wore uniforms that looked the same. Joe looked up for an explanation.

“Oh, that one,” Jenna said. “It’s from college. I have that one in there because I think it shows Diane’s passion. Those other two girls are on her team, and one of them had lost a race because a competitor tripped her deliberately. Diane was so angry. ”

But what Joe was struck by was the gesture Diane was making: stabbing her right index finger into the palm of her left hand to make a point.

“Your daughter,” he said, “has she always been blond?”

Jenna laughed. “Since high school, anyway. She dyes it religiously.” Joe took his index finger and placed it along the brow of Diane’s face in the photo, creating bangs. “So if she doesn’t color her hair, it turns back to the original dark brown,” he said.

“Yes.”

Joe looked up. “Do you know the name Terri Wade?”

Jenna looked back quizzically. “Of course I do. She was our housekeeper when Diane was growing up. Diane loved her, we all did. But she left us years ago. She and Brent had a disagreement. ”

Joe’s jaw and shoulders dropped. He flashed back to that moment when he saw the faces reflected in flame.

Jenna saw his reaction, said, “What?”

“Mrs. Shober-I saw Diane. She’s using the name of your old housekeeper,” he said. “A name she’s comfortable with. She let her hair go brown and she dressed frumpy so I wouldn’t recognize her. But at one point outside that burning cabin, she turned away and then turned back. The angle of her face or the way the fire made her hair look lighter and her face look younger and resembled the photo on all the flyers. It made me think there were two women when there was only one.” He thought back again to that scene in the woods, that one quick glimpse of the “fourth face.” Wade turning away into the darkness, then the flash of one he’d thought was a different woman. Except it hadn’t been. It had been Diane all along. He shook his head in amazement. “And she’s got the brothers thinking her name is Terri Wade because they used it when they talked to her. I told you earlier I was probably mistaken but I don’t think so now. She was alive when I saw her last. So you need to know that. But. ”

Her expression didn’t change but her eyes glistened with tears. “So you won’t help us?”

He couldn’t look into her eyes any longer. He handed the photo back and said, “I’m sorry.”

She started to say something, but her throat caught with a sob and she snatched the photo back and turned angrily away.

As she shoved the photos back into the envelope, Joe stared at the ceiling, the window, the floor. Anywhere but at her.

“Joe?” It was Marybeth, from behind him. He hadn’t heard her come into the house from the garage and place her briefcase on the kitchen table. And he didn’t know how long she’d been there in the doorway to the kitchen, or how much she’d heard.