The Rescue

Chapter 4

It made no sense to her. One minute he was sleeping soundly in the backseat of her car, and in the next minute he was gone. Just like that. No warning at all, just a split-second decision to jerk the wheel and nothing would ever be the same again. Was that what life came down to?

Sitting in the back of the ambulance with the doors open while the flashing blue lights from the trooper’s car illuminated the highway in regular, circular sweeps, Denise waited, her mind racing with such thoughts. Half a dozen other vehicles were parked haphazardly as a group of men in yellow raincoats discussed what to do. Though it was obvious they’d worked together before, she couldn’t tell who was in charge. Nor did she know what they were saying; their words were lost in the muffled roar of the storm. The rain came down in heavy sheets, mimicking the sound of a freight train.

She was cold and still dizzy, unable to focus for more than a few seconds at a time. Her balance was off-she’d fallen three times while searching for Kyle-and her clothes were soaked and muddy, clinging to her skin. Once the ambulance had arrived, they’d forced her to stop. A blanket had been wrapped around her and a cup of coffee placed by her side. She couldn’t drink it-she couldn’t do much of anything. She was shivering badly, and her vision was blurred. Her frozen limbs seemed to belong to someone else. The ambulance attendant-though no doctor-suspected a concussion and wanted to bring her in immediately. She steadfastly refused. She wouldn’t leave until Kyle was found. He could wait another ten minutes, he said, then he had no choice. The gash in her head was deep and still bleeding, despite the bandage. She would lose consciousness, he warned, if they waited any longer than that. I’m not leaving, she repeated.

More people had arrived. An ambulance, a state trooper who’d been monitoring the radio, another three volunteers from the fire department, a trucker who saw the trouble and stopped as well-all within a few minutes of each other. They were standing in a sort of circle, in the middle of the cars and trucks, headlights on. The man who’d found her-Taylor?-had his back to her. She suspected he was filling them in on what he knew, which wasn’t much, other than the location of the blanket. A minute later he turned around and glanced at her, his face grim. The state trooper, a heavyset man losing his hair, nodded in her direction. After gesturing to the others to stay where they were, Taylor and the trooper both started toward the ambulance. The uniform-which in the past had always seemed to inspire confidence-now did nothing for her. They were men, only men, nothing more. She stifled the urge to vomit.

She held Kyle’s mud-stained blanket in her lap and was running her hands through it, nervously rolling it into a ball and then undoing it. Though the ambulance sheltered her from the rain, the wind was blowing hard and she continued to shiver. She hadn’t stopped shivering since they’d put the blanket over her shoulders. It was so cold out here. . . .

And Kyle was out there without even a jacket.

Oh, Kyle.

She lifted Kyle’s blanket to her cheek and closed her eyes.

Where are you, honey? Why did you leave the car? Why didn’t you stay with Mom?

Taylor and the trooper stepped up into the ambulance and exchanged glances before Taylor gently put his hand on Denise’s shoulder.

“I know this is hard, but we have to ask you a few questions before we get started. It won’t take long.”

She bit her lip before nodding slightly, then took a deep breath. She opened her eyes.

The trooper looked younger up close than he had from a distance, but his eyes were kind. He squatted before her.

“I’m Sergeant Carl Huddle with the state troopers office,” he said, his voice rolling with the lullaby of the South. “I know you’re worried, and we are, too. Most of us out here are parents, with little ones of our own. We all want to find him as badly as you do, but we need to know some general information-enough to know who we’re looking for.”

For Denise, the words barely registered.

“Will you be able to find him in this storm . . . I mean, before . . . ?”

Denise’s eyes traveled from one man to the other, having trouble focusing on either. When Sergeant Huddle didn’t answer right away, Taylor McAden nodded, his determination clear.

“We’ll find him-I promise.”

Huddle glanced uncertainly at Taylor, before finally nodding as well. He shifted onto one knee, obviously uncomfortable.

Exhaling sharply, Denise sat up a little, trying her best to stay composed. Her face, wiped clean by the attendant in the ambulance, was the color of table linen. The bandage wrapped around her head had a large red spot just over her right eye. Her cheek was swollen and bruised.

When she was ready, they went over the basics for the report: names, address, phone number, and employment, her previous residence, when she’d moved to Edenton, the reason she was driving, how she stopped for gas but stayed ahead of the storm, the deer in the road, how she lost control of the car, the accident itself. Sergeant Huddle noted it all on a flip pad. When it was all on paper, he looked up at her almost expectantly.

“Are you kin to J. B. Anderson?”

John Brian Anderson had been her maternal grandfather, and she nodded.

Sergeant Huddle cleared his throat-like everyone in Edenton, he’d known the Andersons. He glanced at the flip pad again.

“Taylor said that Kyle is four years old?”

Denise nodded. “He’ll be five in October.”

“Could you give me a general description-something I could put out on the radio?”

“The radio?”

Sergeant Huddle answered patiently. “Yeah, we’ll put it on the police emergency network so that other departments can have the information. In case someone finds him, picks him up, and calls the police. Or if, by some chance, he wanders up to someone’s house and they call the police. Things like that.”

He didn’t tell her that area hospitals were also routinely informed-there was no need for that just yet.

Denise turned away, trying to order her thoughts.

“Um . . .” It took a few seconds for her to speak. Who can describe their kids exactly, in terms of numbers and figures? “I don’t know . . . three and a half feet tall, forty pounds or so. Brown hair, green eyes . . . just a normal little boy of his age. Not too big or too small.”

“Any distinguishing features? A birthmark, things like that?”

She repeated his question to herself, but everything seemed so disjointed, so unreal, so completely unfathomable. Why did they need this? A little boy lost in the swamp . . . how many could there be on a night like this?

They should be searching now, instead of talking to me.

The question . . . what was it? Oh, yes, distinguishing features. . . . She focused as best she could, hoping to get this over with as quickly as possible.

“He’s got two moles on his left cheek, one larger than the other,” she finally offered. “No other birthmarks.”

Sergeant Huddle noted this information without looking up from his pad. “And he could get out of his car seat and open the door?”

“Yes. He’s been doing that for a few months now.”

The state trooper nodded. His five-year-old daughter, Campbell, could do the same thing.

“Do you remember what he was wearing?”

She closed her eyes, thinking.

“A red shirt with a big Mickey Mouse on the front. Mickey’s winking and one hand has a thumbs-up sign. And jeans-stretch waist, no belt.”

The two men exchanged glances. Dark colors.

“Long sleeves?”

“No.”

“Shoes?”

“I think so. I didn’t take them off, so I assume they’re still on. White shoes, I don’t know the brand. Something from Wal-Mart.”

“How about a jacket?”

“No. I didn’t bring one. It was warm today, at least when we started to drive.”

As the questioning went on, lightning, three flashes close together, exploded in the night sky. The rain, if possible, seemed to fall even harder.

Sergeant Huddle raised his voice over the sound of the pounding rain.

“Do you still have family in the area? Parents? Siblings?”

“No. No siblings. My parents are deceased.”

“How about your husband?”

Denise shook her head. “I’ve never been married.”

“Has Kyle ever wandered off before?”

Denise rubbed her temple, trying to keep the dizziness at bay.

“A couple of times. At the mall once and near my house once. But he’s afraid of lightning. I think that might be the reason he left the car. Whenever there’s lightning, he crawls into bed with me.”

“How about the swamp? Would he be afraid to go there in the dark? Or do you think he’d stay close to the car?”

A pit yawned in her stomach. Fear made her mind clear just a little.

“Kyle isn’t afraid of being outside, even at night. He loves to wander in the woods by our house. I don’t know that he knows enough to be afraid.”

“So he might have. . . .”

“I don’t know . . . maybe,” she said desperately.

Sergeant Huddle paused for a moment, trying not to push her too hard. Finally: “Do you know what time it was that you saw the deer?”

Denise shrugged, feeling helpless and weak. “Again, I don’t know . . . maybe nine-fifteen. I didn’t check the time.”

Instinctively both men glanced at their watches. Taylor had found the car at 9:31 P.M. He’d called it in less than five minutes later. It was now 10:22 P.M. More than an hour-at the least-had already passed since the accident. Both Sergeant Huddle and Taylor knew they had to get a coordinated start right away. Despite the relative warmth of the air, a few hours in this rain without proper clothing could lead to hypothermia.

What neither of them mentioned to Denise was the danger of the swamp itself. It wasn’t a place for anyone in a storm like this, let alone a child. A person could literally vanish forever.

Sergeant Huddle closed his flip pad with a snap. Every minute now was precious.

“We’re going to continue this later, if that’s okay, Miss Holton. We’ll need more for the report, but getting started with the search is the most important thing right now.”

Denise nodded.

“Anything else we should know? A nickname, maybe? Something he’ll answer to?”

“No, just Kyle. But . . .”

It was then that it hit her-the obvious. The worst possible type of news, something the trooper had never thought to ask.

Oh God . . .

Her throat constricted without warning.

Oh, no . . . oh, no . . .

Why hadn’t she mentioned it earlier? Why hadn’t she told him right away, when she first got out of the car? When Kyle might have been close . . . when they maybe could have found him before he got too far away? He might have been right there-

“Miss Holton?”

Everything seemed to wash over her at once: shock, fright, anger, denial . . .

He can’t answer them!

She lowered her face into her hands.

He can’t answer!

“Miss Holton?” she heard again.

Oh God, why?

After what seemed like an impossibly long time, she wiped her tears away, unable to meet their eyes. I should have told them earlier.

“Kyle won’t answer if you simply call his name. You’ll have to find him, you’ll have to actually see him.”

They stared at her quizzically, not understanding.

“But if we tell him that we’ve been looking for him, that his mom is worried?”

She shook her head, a wave of nausea sweeping through her. “He won’t answer.”

How many times had she said these words before? How many times had it simply been an explanation? How many times had it really meant nothing when compared with something like this?

Neither man said anything. Drawing a ragged breath, Denise went on. “Kyle doesn’t talk very well, just a few words here and there. He . . . he can’t understand language for some reason . . . that’s why we were at Duke today.”

She turned from one man to the other, making sure they understood. “You’ll have to find him. Simply shouting for him won’t do any good. He won’t understand what you’re saying. He won’t answer . . . he can’t. You’ll have to find him. . . .”

Why him? Of all the children, why did this have to happen to Kyle?

Unable to say anything else, Denise started to sob.

With that, Taylor put his hand on her shoulder as he’d done earlier.

“We’ll find him, Miss Holton,” he said with quiet forcefulness. “We’ll find him.”

Five minutes later, as Taylor and the others were mapping out the search pattern, four more men arrived to help. It was all that Edenton could spare. Lightning had sparked three major fires, there had been four auto accidents in the last twenty minutes-two with serious injuries-and downed power lines were still a hazard. Calls were flooding in to police and fire departments at a furious pace-every one was logged by priority, and unless a life was in immediate jeopardy, they were informed that nothing could be done right away.

A lost child took priority over nearly everything.

The first step was to park the cars and trucks as close to the edge of the swamp as possible. They were left idling, headlights set on high beams, about fifteen yards apart. Not only would they provide extra light necessary for the immediate search, but they would also serve as a beacon in case one of the searchers got disoriented.

Flashlights and walkie-talkies were handed out along with extra batteries. Eleven men (including the trucker, who wanted to help) would be involved, and the search would start from where Taylor found the blanket. From there they would fan out in three directions-south, east, and west. East and west paralleled the highway; south was the last direction Kyle had appeared to be headed. It was decided that one man would stay behind, near the highway and the trucks, on the off chance that Kyle would see the headlights and return on his own. He would send a flare up every hour on the hour, so that the men would know exactly where they were.

After Sergeant Huddle had given them a brief description of Kyle and what he was wearing, Taylor spoke. He, along with a couple of the other men, had hunted in the swamp before and laid out what they were up against.

Here, on the outer fringes of the swamp near the highway, the searchers were told that the ground was always damp but not usually underwater. It wasn’t until half a mile farther into the swamp that water formed shallow lakes above the ground. Mud was a real danger, though; it closed in around the foot and leg, sometimes holding it like a vise, making it difficult for an adult to escape, let alone a child. Tonight the water was already half an inch deep near the highway and would only get worse as the storm wore on. Mud pockets combined with rising water would make for a deadly combination. The men grimly agreed. They would proceed with caution.

On the plus side, if there was one, none of them imagined that Kyle could have gotten far. Trees and vines made the going rough, hopefully limiting the distance he might have traveled. A mile, maybe, definitely less than two miles. He was still close, and the sooner they got started, the better chance they would have.

“But,” Taylor went on, “according to the mother, it turns out that the boy probably won’t answer if we call him. Look for any physical sign of him-you don’t want to walk right by him. She made it very clear that we shouldn’t depend on him answering us.”

“He won’t respond?” asked one of the men, clearly baffled.

“That’s what his mother said.”

“Why can’t he talk?”

“She didn’t really explain it.”

“Is he retarded?” another asked.

Taylor felt his back stiffen at the question.

“What the hell does that matter? He’s a little boy lost in the swamp who can’t talk. That’s all we know right now.”

Taylor stared at the man until he finally turned away. There was only the sound of the rain coming down around them before Sergeant Huddle finally let out a deep sigh.

“Then we ought to get going.”

Taylor turned on his flashlight. “Let’s do it.”