she was too valuable to let go. She’d been to see her doctor recently and she said she was doing really well on her medication. She had been through some hard things recently, but she was looking forward to the future. She wasn’t a woman who was despondent, or who wanted to take her life.”
“What kind of medication?” Graham asked.
Sophie’s face flushed, but she kept her chin up, and met the captain’s direct gaze. “About six months ago, Lauren was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She’d struggled for years, primarily with mania. The stress of the divorce and job pressures made it worse and there had been a couple of...episodes that forced her to take some time off work. But with the proper diagnosis and treatment, she’d been doing much better. And as I said, she was very excited about this project.”
“What was the project?” Carmen asked.
“I don’t know. But something to do with work, I think.”
“She was the prime-time news anchor at Channel Nine in Denver?” Simon, an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asked.
“Yes. And as I believe you’ve already learned, she had been told her job was in jeopardy.”
“Why was that?” Graham asked.
The worried furrow in her forehead deepened. “She wouldn’t say outright, and the station refused to talk to me, but I suspect it was because of her sometimes erratic behavior in the months prior to her diagnosis as bipolar. She missed some work and showed up other times unprepared. But she was doing much better in the weeks before she disappeared. She was happy to know what was going on and was following her doctor’s orders and feeling better.”
“But that didn’t stop the station from threatening to let her go?” Carmen said.
“Ratings had fallen. Lauren told me she was going to do something that would boost ratings.”
“Maybe she came here to hide.” Marco Cruz, with the DEA, spoke so quietly Rand wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly at first.
“Hide?” Sophie asked. “From what?”
“Maybe she faked her disappearance to draw attention to herself and to the station, and then she planned to emerge after a few weeks in the headlines.” Marco shrugged. “People have faked all kinds of things for attention, from gunshot wounds and muggings to their own deaths.”
“Lauren isn’t faking anything,” Sophie said. “She started her career as an investigative reporter. I think she had a lead on a big crime and came here to report on it.”
“What kind of crime?” Graham shifted in his chair, the only sign that he was growing impatient.
“I don’t know. It would have to be something big, if she was going to boost ratings.”
“And she didn’t tell you anything?” Carmen spoke slowly, thoughtfully.
“No—just that she was working on a new project that would fix everything.”
“And she never said anything about coming to Montrose or Black Canyon Park or anything like that?” Simon snapped off the question, as if interrogating a suspect. Rand knew this was just his way, but Sophie bridled at this approach.
“No,” she said, and pressed her lips together, clamming up.
“How often did you talk to her?” Rand asked.
She turned toward him. “Once a week or so. Sometimes more often.”
“Anyone else she was close to? A best friend? Neighbors?”
“She still talked to her ex-husband, Phil, occasionally. Have you interviewed him?”
Rand frowned. “Why do you think we should talk to him?”
“Aren’t husbands—or ex-husbands—always the first people police suspect when someone disappears?”
“It depends on the case,” Graham said. “Did Lauren and Phil Starling have a contentious relationship?”
She flushed. “No. I mean, she wasn’t happy about the divorce—he was cheating on her, after all. And he left her to be with the other woman.”
“But she’d already granted the divorce, right?” Simon asked. “She didn’t put any obstacles in his way.”
“No. She even agreed to pay support, since she made more money than he did.”
“So he didn’t really have any reason to follow her from Denver to Montrose and do her harm,” Rand said.
“We don’t know that for sure. And you won’t know until you talk to him.” She looked stubborn, chin up, mouth set in a firm line.
“What about other family members?” he asked. “Brothers, sisters, parents?”
She shook her head. “There’s just the two of us. Our parents were killed in a car accident when I was a sophomore in college. Lauren was a senior in high school.”
“So you’re used to looking after her,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Maybe she resented that,” Simon said. “Maybe she purposely kept things from you.”
“I’m sure she kept a great deal from me. Whatever you think, I didn’t try to run her life. But I know her. She wouldn’t take her own life. And you can quote statistics all day long, but even if—and it’s a huge if in my mind—even if she wanted to kill herself, why would she travel five hours away from her home to disappear in a national park?”
“Sometimes people choose a place that’s meaningful to them,” Marco said. “One they associate with memories or special people.”
“She’d never been here before. This park meant nothing special to her. She loved the city. She wasn’t a hiker or a camper or anything like that.”
“So why was she here?” Graham brought them back to the essential question. “What was this story you think she was working on?”
“I don’t know, but it must have been something major, if she thought it could save her career.”
“If she wanted to report on a major crime, you’d think she’d stay in Denver,” Carmen said.
“Except you guys are here.” Sophie sat up straighter, and looked them each in the eye. “Why form a special task force if there isn’t something big going on here? I did my homework. I know about the drug busts, the human-trafficking ring and the murder of that pilot. Maybe Lauren had uncovered something to do with all that.”
“She never came to us, or to local law enforcement with that information,” Graham said.
“Maybe she never had time,” Sophie said.
“In the course of your research, did you see the newspaper articles about your sister’s disappearance?” Graham asked. “Written by a local reporter who’s taken an interest in the
