Seven

“Where do we start?” Sheila wiped tears from her face.

“Maybe Brian went camping on his own,” I said. “Maybe something happened to his Jeep.”

Maybe he was injured—or dead, somewhere out in the wilderness. I kept that thought to myself.

Conventional wisdom says that one shouldn’t go hiking alone, especially in rugged or unfamiliar terrain. But people do it all the time. I’d done it myself, in Yosemite Valley. Yes, there’s always someone around in Yosemite Valley. But I’d been there in March on that particular trip, in the middle of the week. There was snow on the ground, and fallen trees and rocks on the trail I’d chosen. I had felt isolated—until I encountered those hikers from Australia.

Brian was an experienced camper and hiker. No doubt he figured he was up for any sort of terrain, or conditions. But things happen out in the woods, or on the coast. It was possible he’d gone hiking and had a fall, breaking an arm or a leg and making it difficult for him to return to where he’d left the Jeep. Presumably he had his cell phone with him. But sometimes cell phone signals were few and far between, especially on the Northern California coast. He had been gone several days now. The cell phone could be out of juice. But he must have his charger. It wasn’t in its usual place on the dresser, Sheila informed me, and he had a car charger in his Jeep. Maybe something else had happened.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

None of this offered a plausible explanation for how his Medic­Alert bracelet ended up on a burning boat with a corpse.

“I thought of that, about his going camping alone,” Sheila said. “The note he left just said he was going away for a few days. It didn’t say specifically that he was going camping. But he must have. I looked through the camping gear. Several things are ­missing.”

“Let me take a look.”

“It’s in the garage.” Sheila led the way back through the house and out to the double garage, with unpacked boxes stacked in the middle. Utility shelves held several clear plastic tubs. She pointed at an empty tub. “His sleeping bag is gone. The camp stove and the big cooler are gone. So is the tub with cooking stuff, the pots and plates and utensils. Both the lanterns are gone, but the tent is still here.”

That told me he was going to be sleeping indoors, or that he’d gone camping with someone else who had a tent.

“His closet?” I asked.

“I checked,” Sheila said, “and checked again. His hiking boots are gone. And his trek poles and backpack.”

“Has his credit card or debit card been used since Friday?”

“That detective from the Petaluma Police Department asked me the same thing. Colman, her name is. I’ve got her card here. When I was talking to her yesterday, filing the missing persons report, I got the impression she figured Brian took off on his own. To get away from me.” Sheila compressed her lips tightly and brushed away a tear. “Maybe he did.”

“I don’t think Brian would do that,” I said. “You checked your bank account and credit card. What did you find?”

“There are no charges on the credit card,” Sheila said. “Not since he used it at the hardware store two weeks ago. The last time he used the debit card was near here, on Wednesday of last week, to buy gas.”

“Let me look at the desk and the computer. Is the desktop the only computer you have?”

“Yes,” Sheila said. We went back to the house, to the desk in the corner of the dining room. “It’s a Windows PC. We both have different log-ins to get onto the computer. As for email, we both have our own Gmail accounts. I don’t know what his passwords are.”

“I might be able to figure it out.”

I sat down at the desk and turned on the computer and the printer as well. As the computer went through its start-up phase, I examined the desk and the surrounding area. On the right side of the keyboard and mouse, I saw an oversized pottery coffee mug, glazed in an iridescent purplish red. I picked it up. It was heavy and there was a faint brown residue inside. “Brian’s mug?”

“Yes. He got that at some craft fair in Sonoma. He likes it because it’s big and he drinks lots of coffee.”

“Family trait.” I, too, drink lots of coffee.

Sheila took the mug from me and looked inside. “Well, that needs washing.” She turned and went to the kitchen.

I picked up a weekly calendar, and leafed through the pages. For the previous week, my brother had written in “Plumas,” then he’d crossed out the notation. For this week, he’d written in two appointments, a lunch date with Lance tomorrow, Wednesday. On the calendar section for Thursday, I saw a name and phone number I didn’t recognize, for a meeting at ten o’clock in the morning. For this coming Saturday, he’d written “Apple Fair.” So Brian and Sheila had planned to take the children to the Gravenstein Apple Fair at Ragle Ranch Park up in Sebastopol. It was usually held the second weekend in August.

I looked at the books stacked on the desk to the left of the computer monitor. One was about mushrooming, finding and identifying wild mushrooms. I knew this was one of Brian’s recent interests, along with birding. The other three books were hiking guides. The first was written by my friend Dan, about hiking at the Point Reyes National Seashore; The Hiker’s Hip Pocket Guide to the Mendocino Coast; and Day Hikes Around Sonoma County.

Underneath the books I saw some papers. I pulled them out and examined them. They were printouts from the Internet, one containing information about the campground in Plumas County where Brian had intended to take the family camping. He’d written “CANX” and a date in black ink over the first page, showing that he’d cancelled the campsite reservation, the day after his phone argument with Sheila.

As for the other printouts, it looked as though Brian had been researching places to go for a short camping trip on his own. He had printed out information on campgrounds on the coast, in Sonoma County and Mendocino County.

Two brochures were stuck into the pages of the Sonoma County hiking book. Both were for Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve and the Austin Creek State Recreation area. The two parks were adjacent, in an area a few miles north of the small town of Guerneville, on the Russian River. The larger brochure contained a map and descriptions of the parks’ flora, fauna and trails. The smaller brochure was specific to the Bullfrog Pond Campground at Austin Creek.

I set the brochures aside and opened the lower desk drawer, which was deep enough for file folders. Here were bank records, information on the retirement savings Brian and Sheila were building, and details about their health plan. There was a tax folder as well. They had a will and durable powers of attorney, and they’d made arrangements for who would take care of the children should they die. Here too was a file about the house in Sonoma that Brian and Sheila were selling, and another containing Brian’s résumé and information about his new job in Petaluma. I found folders for their vehicles, Brian’s Wrangler and Sheila’s Honda. I jotted down the license plate number and vehicle identification number for the Jeep.

I moved on to the shallow drawer and found a checkbook and an assortment of check registers. I also found a small notebook, two by three inches, with a red cover and lined pages. People frequently keep lists of user names and passwords, because these days there are so many of them, and it’s difficult to remember all of them. My brother was no exception. Here was the key that would give me access to Brian’s computer, his email, his financial records.

I looked at the little book in my hand. The sort of probing I would normally do in a missing persons case felt like an intrusion when the people involved were my brother and his wife.

But if I was going to find Brian, and a reason for his disappearance, I had to intrude.

I turned my attention to the computer monitor, which offered me the opportunity to log in either as Brian or Sheila. I consulted the little book. Brian had used a password that was easy for him to remember, a combination of his children’s initials and birthdates.

The wallpaper was a picture of the two children, an outdoor shot, with Yosemite Falls in the background. It must have been taken during their camping trip earlier in the summer.

I began looking through the list of documents on the computer, in a folder labeled “Brian.” Here I found correspondence and learned that as far back as last September, my brother had been updating his résumé and applying for jobs in the Petaluma school district.

At the bottom of the computer I saw a toolbar with the logo of the Mozilla Firefox browser. I clicked on this and the browser opened to Brian’s home page, which was the Sierra Club website.

I clicked on the Bookmark tab. The drop-down menu gave me a list of folders, organized into subjects and topics of interest. One tab held financial links. Brian and Sheila had a bank account with Wells Fargo, and investments through Fidelity and Vanguard.

“How are your finances?” I asked Sheila as she returned from the kitchen.

“Okay for now. Lance is giving us a break on the rent. We need all the help we can get, financially. In addition to paying rent on this place, we’re still paying the mortgage on the house in Sonoma. That’s causing some real financial pain, I can tell you that.” Sheila pointed at the calendar. “This meeting on Thursday is with the principal at the school where Brian will be teaching. He’s supposed to start the new job next week. If he doesn’t start that job, and we don’t have his salary...oh, hell, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“We can call and reschedule the meeting, that’s all. The principal doesn’t need to know why.”

I turned back to the computer and found the link for Brian and Sheila’s Facebook page. It contained pictures of the family. Here Brian and Sheila had posted more pictures of the Yosemite camping trip, and photos of other places the family had gone. Here was a visit to Monterey, where my mother lives, and pictures of the children at the aquarium.

I looked at the photos of Brian and Sheila’s friends on the Facebook page. There were a lot of people I didn’t know, but I found a picture of Lance Coverdell. Brian’s college roommate and best man was tall and lanky, with a lean face and dark hair. In another photo, Lance was with Becca, his wife. She was nearly as tall as Lance, with long blond hair and a willowy figure.

Willowy, I thought. Willow? I peered at Becca’s face. A tenuous connection at best. Surely not. Brian wouldn’t have an affair. And certainly not with a friend’s wife. But... What if Becca had a thing for Brian? What if she was using the name Willow? I mulled this over. I didn’t know Becca at all. Come to that, how well did I know my brother? We didn’t see each other that often. He had his life and I had mine. And Sheila didn’t like Becca at all. She must have a reason for her antipathy.

I put these thoughts aside and turned my attention to the bookmarks in the browser. One caught my eye, called “Wish List.” It turned out to be a list of locations, mostly various state and national parks in California and other states. I guessed that it was a list of places Brian would like to see. I copied the bookmark list into a document and sent it to the printer. If Brian had decided to go camping on his own, maybe he’d gone to one of these places. Somewhere close to home, though. He’d left on Friday and planned to return on Sunday. That meant he’d gone somewhere within a day’s drive, probably closer. I opened another browser window and did a search on state parks in Sonoma County. I sent this to the printer as well.

Other folders in the bookmarks were labeled according to Brian’s interests. He had a bookmark called “Organizations,” which included links to a number of environmental and conservation organizations, including the Sierra Club. One of these was the Mono Lake Committee, which I also belonged to, and the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, headquartered here in Petaluma. One of the links was to the Friends of the Petaluma River. Becca belonged to the group and she’d encouraged Brian to join. According to the description on the website, the Friends was “a non-profit organization that is dedicated to celebrating and conserving the Petaluma River, its wetlands, and wildlife.”

I found a link for Gmail and logged into Brian’s email account. There was nothing here that was out of the ordinary. Nothing from anyone named Willow, or Becca for that matter. Just a message from Lance confirming the lunch date on Wednesday, tomorrow.

Brian and Sheila both had cell phones and accounts from a well-known provider. Using the password list, I logged into Brian’s account and found a list of calls for his cell phone number. But it only went up to the end of their billing period. I printed out the list of calls and asked Sheila to take a look at it, to see if she recognized—or didn’t recognize—any numbers. The area code for Sonoma County was 707. I lived in Oakland and Dad in Castro Valley, which was the 510 area code. Mother’s area code in Monterey was 831, and Sheila’s family in Fresno County was in area code 559.

I looked through the browser history on the computer, focusing on the past week. During Sheila’s absence, Brian had accessed a number of websites that told me he was planning a trip. It looked like he’d done a search on state parks in Sonoma and Mendocino counties, and used other websites that showed campsite photos, trails, and hikes. He’d also looked at the State of California’s website on state parks.

Sheila’s voice interrupted me. “Do you want something to eat, Jeri?”

I looked up and then at my watch. “No, too much to do. I’m going to talk with the police. And have a talk with Lance Coverdell.”