A big chunk of the route north was fairly monotonous, but about twenty minutes from the end, I took a curve in the road and the Adirondack Mountains suddenly slid into view, these blue-green giants that made me catch my breath. During my stint in Albany I’d never managed to make it this far north, which I could see now was a shame. Since it was only late September, the trees hadn’t changed colors yet, but many of the leaves were tipped with yellow and rust, and some of the tangled brush below was already vivid shades of burgundy and lipstick red.
As I neared the village of Lake George, I finally caught a glimpse of the lake, the lapis-blue water sparkling in the sun. But I probably wasn’t going to see much of it today. My immediate destination was the hastily organized volunteer command center, a.k.a. Dot’s soft-serve ice cream shop, which apparently had closed for business after Labor Day. I abandoned the highway at exit twenty-one and continued north on Route 9N.
It was noon when I finally pulled into the parking lot at Dot’s, and I was lucky to find a spot—the place was packed with cars, vans, SUVs, and pickup trucks. Even with my window up I could hear the insistent buzz of a helicopter circling in the sky above. Instantly I felt a double dopamine rush fromsimply being there. I was smack in the middle of a missing-person case that was packed with not only known unknowns but hopefully some tantalizingunknownunknowns as well.
Before stepping out of my Jeep, I stole a couple of minutes to suss out the scene at the far end of the lot. Volunteer centers for missing-person searches, at least from my experience, were generally set up in church basements, hotels, or volunteer firehouses, any space big enough to handle the swarm of people coming and going. A soft-serve ice cream shop was a pretty surreal choice—I mean, there was a giant chocolate-dipped cone with two eyes and a smile greeting everyone from above the door. Considering what was going on, it seemed like a smiley face above the gates of hell. But the place reportedly had been offered by a friend of Shannon’s family.
I counted a half-dozen people inside the shop, and about thirty more milling around near the front of the building, under an overhang with cedar picnic tables arranged beneath it. They were dressed in jeans and sturdy-looking shoes, and for the most part their expressions were grim. Searchers, I assumed, who would be covering a broader area than had first been examined by authorities.
Of course that assumed Shannon actuallyhadgone running Monday. At the press conference yesterday, the sheriff explained that Shannon’s oldest child, an eight-year-old boy named Noah, told authorities that when his mother dropped him and his six-year-old sister, Lilly, at school, she’d been wearing a white T-shirt, dark shorts, and running shoes, and Cody Blaine had reported that those items weren’t in her dresser. But so far the authorities had failed to locate a singleperson who’d noticed Shannon on the road that morning. According to the owner of the Lake Shore Motel, who was interviewed by thePost Star, Shannon Blaine crossed the road in front of his establishment every day—but not this past Monday. He claimed to have turned over security camera footage to the police that backed up his statement.
Had Shannon changed her route for some reason? Had she been abducted before making it as far as the motel? Or had she never actually left her house for a run that day?
I squinted through my windshield, searching for anyone I might recognize from photos I’d viewed online. Cody Blaine didn’t appear to be here. Nor was Shannon’s mother. But I was pretty sure that a woman beneath the overhang was her older sister, Kelly Claiborne, who, I’d learned, worked as a reading specialist. As I watched, she yanked a handful of sheets of paper from a cardboard box and began to distribute them. I realized that the people gathered around weren’t searchers after all but rather volunteers who would soon be tacking up or handing out flyers about Shannon.
It was time to get my ass in gear and cover as much ground as possible before the next press conference, scheduled for five o’clock.
When I swung open the door of my Jeep, I found that the air, laden with the scent of resin from the pine trees all around me, seemed about ten degrees cooler than it had been in Manhattan, a bigger change than I’d anticipated. I felt suddenly stupid in my pink cashmere tee, tan skirt, and suede mules. But I certainly wasn’t going to take the time to drive to my motel to check in and change.
I grabbed a jean jacket from the back seat and made my way toward Kelly. She had long hair like her sister, though hers was brown, and pulled back today in a ponytail. She was tall—at least five ten—and fairly slim, dressed in jeans, running shoes, and a zipped navy sweater. From a distance, her stance and decisive-looking gestures gave her the look of someone organizing a political rally, but as I drew closer, I could see from her pinched expression how distressed she was.
“Who wants to head up to Ticonderoga?” she called out, waving a fresh stack of flyers. Next to her was a box loaded with thumbtacks.
“I can take that area if you want,” a middle-aged guy volunteered. “You want me to just tack these to trees and stuff?”
“Trees, utility poles. But even better is getting them into shops and restaurants. That’s where the real traffic is.”
“Gotcha.”
“Talk to the manager or owner, engage them. Tell them about Shannon if they don’t know already. Encourage them to call if they’ve seen anyone remotely fitting her description.”
She had a real no-nonsense style and a precise way with her words, perhaps reflecting how she worked with her reading students.
I hung back, waiting for Kelly to go through the procedure with a couple dozen people. After the last one departed, she let out a tense sigh and I stepped forward.
“Kelly, hi, my name is Bailey Weggins.”
She ran her gaze over me, somewhat distractedly.
“Great, thanks for coming,” she said. “But do you have any other shoes? Those are gonna be a bitch to canvass in.”
“I’m actually a reporter. WithCrime Beat. I was hoping you had a few minutes to talk.”
“Is that a TV show?”
“No, an online publication. We want to cover the story, of course, but we’re interested in getting the word out about Shannon as well.”
She scrunched up her mouth and nodded at the same time, one gesture almost contradicting the other. I assumed she had mixed feelings about doing interviews. They took up time she could be using to corral and organize volunteers, but she was also eager for Shannon’s image to be displayed as widely as possible.
“Give me a couple of minutes. I need to check in with a few people inside, and then we can talk.”
I thanked her, and as she hurried into the building, I plucked a flyer from the box. The wordMissingran boldly in red above two color photos of Shannon, both solo, which captured her gorgeous blond hair and grass-green eyes. At the very bottom was a promise of a reward—$15,000 for any information leading to her whereabouts—as well as the tip-line phone number and email address.
“Well, well,” I heard a sly male voice announce behind me. “Look who’s in town.”
I spun around to discover Matt Wong, an obnoxious reporter who was now doing his own stint at theAlbany Times Union. He’d recently taken a gig there after years of freelancing in New York City, where we’d sometimes crossed paths. I should have known he’d turn up here.
“Hi, Matt. How you doing?”
