The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman

Author:Jon Billman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

We pull into a rest area near Olympia and climb into the back of the Arctic Fox. There’s a peaceful white noise of idling diesel trucks and tires buzzing on the highway. Randy sleeps with bear spray in arm’s reach, and I just hope he doesn’t accidentally trigger it in the confines of the camper. We’re both out fast. Mallory mines the computer back in Santa Cruz. She’s the Internet research wizard this kind of search needs. She acts as a type of dispatcher for Randy in the mobile unit, the Arctic Fox. Every now and then she’ll text something we should check out. She’s been doing some research on a lake called Lord’s Lake, south of Sequim—she’s intrigued by the name and how it may fit into Jacob’s mind-set. That’s where we’re headed. “I’m going to give Jacob this camper when I find him,” he says. “He’ll love it! We can strap the surfboards on top and just live at the beach.”

It’s still dark five or so hours later when Randy says, “Good morning,” and reaches to light the stove for coffee. In half an hour we’re on the road. Randy watches his speed closely, uses the cruise control, because he’s one more ticket away from landing back in traffic school. There’s a Sirius station called Deep Tracks, and we play a game of Guess the Artist. Small Faces? Jefferson Airplane? Canned Heat? James Gang? Blind Faith? When I’m ahead he can always best me by reminding me he’s seen the group they’re playing live.

We meet with Brandon Nelson, who was one of the first Olympic Peninsula residents to help search for Jacob in those early days last April, at a café. Brandon is a RZR side-by-side—essentially a light turbo dune buggy—enthusiast. He got his RZR club involved in the search in the Olympic National Forest and spent days on end helping Randy in the Sol Duc River. It’s thirty-four degrees and sunny in Sequim when we meet Brandon at the Mariner Café, where we look at maps and hash out a game plan.

After breakfast we climb into Brandon’s Toyota Tacoma four-by-four pickup and head south into the mountains. We hit snow quickly after we start to climb. Lord’s Lake is fenced off as a municipal water source, but we make the loop.

We tie back into Highway 101 near the 7 Cedars Casino outside of Sequim. Randy recently got a call from a psychic, who has become a friend, who heard a drunk Olympic National Park employee blab about Jacob’s case. “It’s not what everyone thinks,” he says. “He’s not dead.” But that’s all she could get out of him.

These kinds of things are maddening. A hang-up phone call. A drunk park employee at a party. But Randy’s got to take these things seriously. And there’s an element of hope in them—both suggest that Jacob may be anecdotally alive. The psychic thought she might see the employee again at a New Year’s Eve party at the casino. She’d talk to him and try to get him to say more.

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