Biology Reference
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would be hanging like invisible moss on the vegetation, floating above pools of water, waiting
for the dog's nose to harvest it.
This was not the first search Solo and I had been on where some central characters were
drug dealers. I suspected some were watching us from concrete stoops as I got out of the
car and sorted through my minimal equipment in the trunk. The cops were talking to the
missing person's girlfriend. I heard sobbing. I leaned farther into the trunk to pull out my
backpack, willing myself not to look. It wasn't my business.
This was our first search where climate change probably played an indirect role. It wouldn't
be the last. Drought followed by a tempest of rain had caused flash floods. Sheets of water
slid off dry, hardened soil into overwhelmed storm drains. Water, silt, and trash cascaded into
the already polluted remnants of Triassic Basin wetlands and woodlands.
The suspect's flight reportedly started with a 911 call. The caller told police that a group of
men were selling drugs out of a car. Police arrived. They realized one of the men was wanted
for a parole violation. When they went to arrest him, the suspect broke away and fled into the
woods. Flooding and darkness made the search dangerous. After a patrol dog tried to track
him and nearly drowned, the cops pulled out. By then the suspect was long gone, into the
woods and swamp beyond. He called his girlfriend from the middle of the swamp that night.
That was the last time she heard from him, she told police. His cell phone had gone dead.
The girlfriend and his family waited a couple of days before calling the police to say he'd nev-
er made it back home.
At the police station an hour before, investigators and I stared at a satellite map of the area.
It was acres. Some of it would be muddy; some might be flooded. I tried for calm confidence,
though my heart bounced around in my chest.
There in the station, I helped make decisions about how to run the search, trying to sound
as though I'd done this a hundred times, even while I confessed my novice status to the parti-
cipants standing around a table, trying to lower their expectations—and mine. I'd been train-
ing with Mike Baker for nearly two years and with Nancy Hook for more than three. It felt
like nothing. I slowed down my voice so I didn't sound like an eager amateur. I'm just a vo-
lunteer, I said. Dogs aren't perfect, I said. They're just one tool among many. I said all those
things, and I believed all those things.
But when cops call in a volunteer, they want results. I knew that as well. A couple of dozen
cops were on standby, expecting to make a line sweep of the swamp. Unless Solo and I could
find him.
Even though I'm a Yankee, North Carolina woods aren't alien to me. So when the police
asked what I needed, I asked for two people to accompany Solo and me. If they were avail-
able. Even within urban limits, a few acres of floodplain can contain sinkholes and creeks
with eroded sandy banks that may crumble beneath you. Two people could get us out if we
