“Hey, honey.”
“Hey, Dad.”
He sat on the foot of her bed and wiggled her big toe. It was an old joke: when she’d told him she was too big for hugs, he’d insisted she would never be too big for him to hug her big toe. Her eyes brimmed with tears, then overflowed, but she wasn’t crying, not exactly.
“It’s hard, huh?” he said.
“At first I was just, like, well, if anyone’s going to snap out of a coma and be normal again, it’s totally going to be Bree. Even after we went to the hospital. But she’s probably always going to be messed up. Her life is going to be sohard. Assuming she, you know...”
“She’s at one of the best hospitals in the country.”
Sydney suddenly changed the subject: “People are assholes.”
“Some of them are.” He played along, waiting to see where she was going.
“I can’t believe theymemedyou.”
“It goes with the job.”
“Yeah, but it’s already on a top-ten cops-are-a-joke list on Reddit. Such bullshit.”
He let go of her toe and poked her foot with his finger. “Maybe I don’t needallthe stats.”
“You have to find her and shut them all up, Dad,” she said earnestly. “You probably shouldn’t have come home.”
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked it reluctantly. A 310 area code.
“I was getting tired of looking at Beto and I wanted to see you and your mom,” he said, rising from the bed. “Sorry, honey, I have to take this.”
He answered in the hall.
“You wanted, like, an update? How about this: the fire is hot but the trail is cold,” said AJ Wen. “We’ve chased a butt load of false sightings by area civilians, some of them mischievous. But we think they’re still in what you so poetically call the backcountry. Absent any bodies or signs of life, our working theory is that they’re hiking together for some reason yet unknown. We’re continuing to search with planes and helicopters, but the odds of finding them are getting less and less likely.”
“You going to tell that to the media?”
“Too busy.”
“Look, Wen, if you’re in charge, then you’re in charge. I can’t tell people what I don’t know.”
She sighed. “OK, tomorrow. I’ll make a statement.”
“What are the next steps?”
“Your people continue to support my people. We’re going to wallpaper all surrounding towns with wanted posters and blanket the media with her picture.”
“And me?”
“This is a federal task force. Last time I checked, sheriffs are paid at the county level. I’ll call you if I need anything.”
When she ended the call, Jordan put the phone in his pocket so he wouldn’t throw it down the hall.
CALIFORNIA DEATH TRIP PODCAST
SEASON ONE, EPISODE THIRTEEN
Hi, Crime Fam, it’s Dylan. If you’ve been following the events of today, you already know that Cara Campbell is in the smoky wind. This afternoon, I was at the so-called press conference given by Madera County Sheriff Jordan Burke, who admitted that Cara was tracked to what sounds like some sort of compound, but by the time a search warrant came through, both she and the landowner had slipped through the dragnet.
I, like the other journalists on the scene, am left with more questions than answers.
