Book Five, Chapter 7: Search Party

Dina continued to fight back tears as Benny watched his son run off into the distance.

“I’m so sorry about that, ma’am,” he said. “The boy’s just going through a lot right now. Not as much as you, I’m sure. But he’s just gonna go to one of his hiding places, and he’ll be fine.”

He kind of looked down, unsure of what to do next, taken by intense emotion. “I’ll fix your car. I can do that. I’ll fix it,” he said, looking at Kimberly. Then he walked off to do just that.

We were still On-Screen, so Kimberly continued to console Dina, and Dina continued to be inconsolable.

“She tells me she’s at peace, but I don’t want that. I want her home,” Dina said.

Kimberly looked at me and then back to Dina. “You saying your daughter’s talking to you?”

“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy,” Dina said. “Please don’t look at me like I’m crazy.”

“I’m not,” Kimberly said softly.

“He is,” she said, looking at me. “I can see it. How couldn’t he? Who could hear something this ridiculous and not think I was crazy?”

Kimberly looked up at me as if nudging me to say something, so I did.

“My grandmother, she said that she could see things, hear things, feel things,” I said. “She always hoped I’d take after her. When I was young, I always thought she just did it so she could win arguments by saying that she had the gift and that she knew better… But after I lost her, I feel like I can feel her too,” I said, and in that moment, a tear escaped my eye that I didn’t intend.

“Are you really going to help me look for her, or is this just some news story?” Dina asked.

I looked at Kimberly, and then Kimberly said, “We really want to find her.”

“We’ll do whatever we can,” I said.

Kimberly nodded.

Off-screen.

“Woof,” I said. “This one’s making us emotional, huh?”

Dina nodded. “I’ve got to go to some dairy farm. Patcher Dairy, I think. My character’s daughter is hauling me around all over town so that Carousel can get shots of me looking all over for her.”

“Do you need a ride?” Kimberly asked.

Dina shook her head. “No, my character has a bicycle.”

We slowly walked back to Benny’s garage, and Dina grabbed her bicycle with its little woven white basket and rode off to her next destination. As she did, an announcement started playing over Benny’s radio, calling for volunteers to help in a search party near White Lawn Church.

Kimberly and I looked at each other. That was a pretty clear-cut call to action.

Benny managed to get Nick’s sedan fixed in record time, and he set us off, not without lecturing Nick about proper maintenance and telling him he wouldn’t get lucky twice. The next time, he’ll be buying a new car.

~-~

White Lawn Church, on White Lawn Road, was abutted by a field of wheat where the search would start.

Kimberly stood with her back to the field and the many volunteers in it.

“I’m here with Sheriff Miller, who has been leading a citywide search for Tamara Cano. Sheriff Miller, can you tell us anything about the current search efforts?”

The sheriff, who was a smooth-talking man and clearly a city slicker, stuck out like a sore thumb around Eastern Carousel. He wore pomade in his hair and had a clean-shaven face. He and Robert Redford were probably made from the same mold.

“I’ll tell you, we are going to find this missing girl,” Sheriff Miller said, “because we have three things: we have a generous population who is giving of their time and resources to help search for this girl, we have an unbreakable spirit and the power of believers coming together, and we got award-winning hunting dogs that are trained for competitions to follow the scent of a target from miles and miles. With those three things, I am confident we are going to find young Tamara and bring her home where she belongs. I will not rest until that happens.”

He nodded his head and then walked back to his cruiser, where Antoine and another deputy named Tommy Patcher were in the process of providing a clothing sample to a trio of baying hounds. I made sure that Nick caught this on film. It seemed like an important part of the investigation. Sheriff Miller pulled a small white sock out of a paper sack and held it out to the dogs to get an impression of.

After a few sniffs, the dogs were off.

“And we’re out,” I said.

Off-screen.

Kimberly and I stared out at the field beyond the little white church. There were acres and acres of wheat. Dozens of volunteers walked through the wheat out toward the woods in the distance, walking with intention and keeping their eyes peeled on the ground and in the distance.

Stolen novel; please report.

We had sat around getting footage of these efforts for nearly an hour. Antoine was busy being a cop, and at a glance, it seemed that he was On-Screen constantly as he struggled to keep one of the hounds from tearing its leash out of his hands.

“Where’s Bobby when you need him?” I asked.

“I know, right?” Kimberly said. “We finally have a story that actually calls for dogs, and we left him behind.”

“He’s going to be devastated,” I said.

I looked around. I didn’t anticipate that there would be anything worth finding out in the fields in the distance, and if there were, the volunteers would call out.

“Let’s check out the church,” I said. “What do you think?”

“Good,” Kimberly said. “My character didn’t wear shoes meant for running in the fields.”

As we made our way over toward the church, we saw an NPC named Eustace Patcher.

Kimberly politely said hello as we passed.

He grumbled something that didn’t sound friendly.

“Excuse me?” Kimberly asked.

“You heard me,” he said.

Neither of us had.

We never went On-Screen, so that interaction couldn’t have been too significant, but it was interesting.