Missing Without A Trace (9 page)

Hours and days overlapped, merging into each other. Tom’s mind was a blur, his life a painful swirl of time that held no hope. Each moment of uncertainty was a waking nightmare, a slow-motion eternity. And Tom, without Tanya, felt he had no reason to get through another day.

The police needed to act. And Tom needed to
make
them. He distributed flyers and did everything he could, but he knew he needed to keep the case in the news. After dealing with the police, he knew that, as soon as they could, they would shelve the investigation. So, to keep the pressure on and to force the police to search for Tanya, Tom offered a $25,000 reward.

My breathing is rapid, each breath shallow. I am exercising. I am on my elliptical trainer, getting a workout. It feels good. Run, run, run. I like to feel my endorphins hit my bloodstream and then everything feels so good. I feel a drip of sweat on my face, just above my lip, and I open my eyes. I raise my hand to wipe it away. I look at my hand and see that it is fresh blood. I am not on my elliptical. I am in my grave. I raise my hand to my lip and feel for the wetness. I find it, below my nose. I look at my hand again and see that it is blood. I sniffle and taste it. I have a bloody nose? What the heck? I don’t get bloody noses! I try to lean my head up and pinch my nose to make it stop, but I don’t care. I’m tired. I want to rest. I need sleep
.

I am at peace. I see the bramble of bushes surrounding me and I smell the ugly smell, but I hear birds and other sweet sounds. I am happy as I talk to God. He is with me, in my forest meadow. God knows who I am, and I tell Him whatever is on my mind. It is beautiful
.

I think I was scared and hungry and thirsty but that was before. Now, I am not afraid, or hungry or thirsty. Now, everything is okay. I feel good. Life is good. Everything is so good!

Nothing hurts. I know I have had pain in my past, but not anymore. I have all I need in life. I have Tom. Where is Tom? Tom, where are you? Are you coming? Yes, I know you are coming! You’ll be here. I know you will
.

I drift off to a beautiful meadow, where the sun is shining. It’s warm. Yes, it’s warm! I see Lady, running over the grass. She runs toward me. The grass is dotted with wildflowers of every color imaginable. But it smells bad here. Why does it smell bad here?

I want to open my eyes, but they flutter. Can I open them? I see the place. Things are broken and dirty, disgusting. I want to get out, but I don’t want to move
.

At eight o’clock Thursday morning, Tom was on autopilot. He went through the motions of working. Every fiber of his body ached from lack of sleep as he drove to his first stop. He was in Tacoma when a King County Police detective called to request another “routine” interview. Tom had no problem answering more questions. “Where and when?” he asked.

They wanted him to come to the Regional Justice Center in the town of Kent, just south of Seattle. Tom called his boss, to let him know what was happening, and then it seemed to take forever for him to drive through sluggish traffic to Kent.

He struggled with his gut feeling that Tanya was fighting to get back to him—and to life in general—but he could feel her slipping away. Maybe he was just suffering from the effects of excessive anxiety and sleep deprivation, but reality started to grab at his heart and mind. He questioned his own feelings. Was there any hope of finding her? Would she be a different person if and when she came back? Was Tanya indeed fighting to survive? Nearing the Regional Justice Center, he let out an exhausted sigh.

He met the detectives in the Center and one of them asked if he was willing to undergo a polygraph exam. Tom readily agreed. First, they wanted to ask some “routine” questions of their own. They sat around a conference table with the tape recorder running while they went through their battery of questions. Then, they led Tom down a hallway to a small room.
Finally
, he thought.
Finally, they’ll see for themselves that I’m in no way responsible for Tanya’s disappearance!

Since Tanya went missing, Tom’s perception had slipped into slow motion and each second became an unbearable lifetime of strained and stretched moments. His lack of sleep showed on his strained face. Each step was a concentrated effort and each breath a labor. In such moments, Tom would have sworn that he could hear Tanya’s voice talking to him, calming him, telling him not to do something stupid. “I will be home
soon,” her sweet voice said, “and then we can talk.”

Those passing thoughts sustained him. Sometimes, he felt as if they were all that kept him from slipping over the edge where he would be swallowed in a very dark place.
Stay strong
, he reminded himself.
I’m the only one who can help Tanya, so I need to stay strong
.

Walking down the hallway, Tom’s legs felt rubbery. With each step, he grew wearier. Passing faces in the hall, he noticed their sympathetic smiles, betrayed by looks of persecution in their eyes. He could see that they already had their answers. They assumed that he was guilty.

The polygraph examiner introduced himself and explained the procedure. Though his eyes were open, Tom had mentally dozed off into a dreamlike state.

“Tom,” said the examiner, “I’m going to ask you a series of questions to make sure that we get a clean test. To get a clean test, there can be no surprises to taint your responses. Do you understand?”

“Sure,” Tom responded. He didn’t really care how the contraption worked or why, just wanted it to prove his innocence. Tom looked into the man’s eyes and saw his disgust, as plain as if he had a sign tattooed on his forehead that said, Y
OU’RE GUILTY AND I’M GOING TO PROVE IT TO THE WORLD
. Given the entire feel of it, Tom felt as if he was being led to the gallows, as if the wires would be woven into a noose to fit Tom’s neck.

Finally, the examiner spoke. “Okay,” he muttered, like a robot. “We can get started.”

Tom could hear and feel the rhythmic beating of his heart and the wild turbulence of his sleep deprived mind, but the room was heavy with silence. He looked at the examiner.

“First question,” he said. “When was the last time you saw your wife?”

Consumed with stress, Tom felt as if his body was pretty much shot. He wondered how his body would react to the strain of the questions, though Tom never hesitated with his answers. “It was Wednesday,” he
said. “In the morning before I took off for work. Tanya had the day off or, maybe, I should say the night off. She was still home when I left for work about five-thirty in the morning.”

The examiner droned on about the upcoming question as Tom’s mind continued to toss around his turbulent thoughts.
Oh, God!
his mind screamed in silence.
Where is she?
He prayed again, the same prayer he’d been praying for the past eight days:
Lord if you can’t keep her safe, then keep her with you. Let no harm take her from you. Let no wrong be done to her. Keep her in your grace
. Again, the prayer sustained him, providing feelings of hope and peace.

“When you last saw your wife was she alright?” the examiner asked.

Tom felt a surge of anger, realizing that the police seemed far more interested in
him
than in his missing person—their victim. Tom looked at the examiner and sensed that the man expected the answer to be a lie. It must have been hard for him to understand that someone like Tanya could love someone like Tom.
Of course, he couldn’t comprehend it
, Tom thought.
I haven’t even figured it out myself!

Tom never let his gaze leave the examiner’s eyes and he never became nervous before answering. “Yes,” he stated with confidence. He didn’t even have to think.

At one-forty-five that afternoon, a search-and-rescue crew on case number 07-284-580 drove to the Maple Valley area of Renton to look for a cell tower in the neighborhood of State Route 169 and Jones Road. This intersection just happened to be on Tanya’s route home from work.

“Our latest information would be a three-to-five-mile range southeast of the towers,” the dispatcher told the rescue crew, Guardian One.

“Did you do anything to make her angry?” the examiner continued.

“No,” Tom said. He tried to think of anything he might have done that rubbed her the wrong way but he came up empty. “I don’t know,” he said, expanding on his answer. “She’s been angry at me about half the time we’ve been married and we’ve been together for a long time.” He knew they wanted a yes or a no answer but the truth was that this was a grey area.

The examiner continued to ask the same question in several different ways, so Tom braced himself for the next variation on the theme.

“The last time you saw Tanya was she unharmed?”

“Yes,” Tom answered.

“Have you ever hit your wife Tanya Rider?”

“
What?
” he seethed. “
No!
” He answered with a hint of attitude in his voice. Tom lost his patience and finally looked straight at the examiner. “Are these questions designed to make me angry while she’s out there in God knows what condition?” he asked. “I think this is ridiculous.”

“Easy, Tom” the examiner responded. “You have nothing to fear. Don’t look at all the wires.”

But Tom thought that it was next to impossible to ignore the mass of wires. He squirmed, although he’d done nothing wrong. The wires scared him.

“Ah, let’s continue here, Tom,” said the examiner. “We’re almost done, I promise.”

Tom doubted it.

“Did you do anything to hurt Tanya the last time you saw her?”

Before Tom could take a deep breath and answer the question, the examiner stood and stretched awkwardly.

“Let’s take a break,” he suggested. “I am going to let you unwind for a few minutes before we continue. Do you have any particular questions about the equipment?”

The only question on Tom’s mind was, “Where’s my wife?” But Tom didn’t ask. Instead, he summoned all of his strength and simply said,
“No, I don’t have any questions about the equipment or the test.”

The search-and-rescue crew reported, “We have found the vehicle about a quarter mile south of the south end of Jones Road.” In a moment, they added, “We have movement.”

“Copy?” responded the dispatcher.

“We’ve got movement,” they repeated.

The dispatcher then asked the County to send an aid car, saying, “It’s that missing female, Tanya Rider, that was on the news. We found her vehicle and she’s still moving inside of it! Whew! Wow! Goodness!” The dispatcher continued delivering instructions. “Just tell them to go really fast to the Jones Road off of State Route 169. Whew, got my blood pumping!” she added.

After giving directions for a moment, the dispatcher said, “Oh, my God. This is a car accident!” And, again, the dispatcher adds, “So this is basically, I think, a car accident and she’s been trapped for this long! Wow! Where’s the supervisor? Melinda? This is basically gonna be a car accident and she’s been trapped in the vehicle ever since. Copy. Wow!”

The dispatcher turned to the rescue crew. “And this is just a blue Honda Element?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” came the reply. In a moment, the rescue crew added, “She’s moving. That’s all he told me.”

The dispatcher canceled the car response as fire and medical personnel headed to the site and Guardian One, the helicopter, hovered above the scene.

The examiner left the room so Tom looked around to check out his surroundings. The small office was bare, with no windows and empty, white walls. Aside from the examiner’s polygraph certification and a few other notices of achievements, the room had no decorations of any kind. The computer sat on an undersized desk and the various wires ran
to a square case that opened like a suitcase. The box had several leads for various attachments—heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, and body temperature. Together, Tom thought that all the leads resembled spaghetti. He wondered how they could get an accurate test when the stress alone would make a person sweat? With nothing to do besides look around the boring room, Tom almost dozed off even though he was sitting erect in an uncomfortable chair.

Barely three minutes after the examiner had left, the door swung open. Tom recognized the detective, who had asked him for his computer several days earlier. Flanked by another detective and a uniformed officer, the detective came in, dangling a piece of paper from one hand.

What was going on?
Tom wondered.
Why is it three against one?
Tom noticed that the paper held a map, but he could barely make it out through the fog that was overtaking his mind. Finally, he could see that the area on the map was a stretch of road he’d driven often—probably a hundred times in the past week. Tom was confused. He couldn’t think of much that was there, along that stretch of highway, except the river and a stoplight.

Tom wondered what the map had to do with Tanya, and why wasn’t the detective saying anything? He just stood there, looking at Tom.
Games
, Tom thought.
That’s all they’re doing—playing mental anguish games with me
.

The detective looked intently at Tom. Finally, he abruptly asked, “Do you know what a cell-phone ‘ping’ is Tom?” The guy didn’t wait for Tom to answer. He showed Tom the map, which had a circle drawn on it. He pointed at it and explained that the last calls on Tanya’s cell phone had gone through the same tower. In fact, every call attempted in the last eight days had gone through one single tower. They concentrated on Tom’s reaction.

Time slowed down. Seconds turned into hours. Tom felt pure
dread.

The detective paused.

Tom was tired of waiting. “
And?
” he said, inching beyond irritated.
What are you waiting for? Tom thought. Why are you stalling? They’re afraid to tell me!
His rage rose to the surface.

“We found her car,” said the detective, pausing again.

Tom’s heart rate surged into overdrive and his brain jumped into high gear. He had hundreds of questions. His head spun and a cold lump rose in his throat. It was hard to speak. He swallowed convulsively, trying to be calm, trying to finish his thoughts.