Excerpt taken from Chapter 6

I find it difficult to write the next words. So much emotion and horror is wrapped up in them that it is almost too much to recall. Even now, with the memory of that day, my hands are suddenly cold and my fingers tremble as I write.

As Angie and I left the restaurant, several people who were assisting in the search approached us discussing future strategies. Then I looked up, and someone was trying to get my attention. They said that Bill wanted to talk to me. Then Bill Gorman was standing in front of me. Angie's attention was elsewhere. His face bore the look of unspeakable hopelessness. There are just no other words to describe it. His eyes, holding back an obvious flood of tears, shifted between the ground and my own eyes. "You need to go to the school," he said firmly but very quietly. "Take Angie and go now." "Did they find him?" I asked, and Bill looked down, into some deep, perhaps even bottomless chasm that had suddenly opened in the ground between us, then slowly lifted his eyes to mine and said, "Yes."

I don't remember getting Angie and walking to my truck. My next memory is of driving into the school parking lot where I noticed several searchers getting into their cars and driving away. I saw others just emerging from the dark woods, also heading for their vehicles. No one made eye contact with us, no one even looked in our direction. Instead, they turned their heads and looked away as they passed.

I parked the truck in the same place I'd parked earlier to address the search party. I remember climbing out of the truck. My body felt like lead, my limbs moved as if mired in cold molasses. I met Angie on her side of the truck, and we started slowly walking the several hundred yards through the school parking lot to the wood line. About halfway there, Shelly Colvin, another friend and co-worker, joined us. The three of us walked slowly, arm in arm. Angie asked her if they'd found him. Shelly was crying quietly, looking at the ground as we walked, I heard her reply that they had. We walked onward.

The next thing I remember was standing in a marshy clearing where the growth was knee to waist high. Water and mud squished around our feet. There were more people down here and more arriving from different directions. Someone, probably a deputy sheriff, halted our progress. I remember thinking that they must have been notified and responded prior to our arrival since I didn't remember seeing them at the beginning of the search. I noticed one deputy standing less than fifty feet from us through the trees, alone and more than waist deep in mud and water. He saw that I was looking at him and looked away. I think he wanted to be somewhere else at that moment, anywhere else but there. He shifted uncomfortably back and forth in the muddy water but remained where he was; one hand locked on to a sapling.

I heard myself ask, "Is that where he is? Where is he? Where is my son?" Someone got between me and the direction I intended to travel. "You can't go there, sir, you have to stay back!" "But my son is out there," I explained, "I have to see him, I have to go to him!" Angie started crying and screaming and was almost hysterical. She started to fight with me and others who tried to restrain her. Her pain poured out of her, overflowing from her eyes and screaming from her soul.

The sound of her pain was that of a little girl in sheer and utter agony, and I was powerless to do anything about it. I was her husband, her protector, and I was useless. I put my arms around her and held her tight. It didn't help to ease her pain, but it was all that I could offer.

She seemed to calm a little as more people surrounded us. We would not be allowed to go any closer. More of our friends came now. I can't remember all of them specifically, but I know they were there, supporting us. Another friend, Steve Dawson, appeared beside us. Steve is a strong person, and when he promised that he would keep me from going any closer, I remember thinking that I believed him.

On one level, Angie and I knew we couldn't go to Chris. We knew it wasn't a good idea, but on another level we didn't understand why, but we waited. A yellow crime scene tape was put up, wrapped around trees and bushes, looking thoroughly out of place in an area that would normally be beautiful, green, and natural. One boundary of the roughly rectangular crime scene came to within a foot of where we stood.

My memory of what happened next and for the next few hours is hazy. I think shock had set in at that point. I remember the terrible waiting, waiting for the detective to show up. I believe it took him about ninety minutes to get there and I remember thinking that I could drive anywhere in Fayetteville from one side to the other in about thirty minutes or less. How could it take him more than an hour? Someone said he had gone to the bridge on Morganton Road first, to where some of Chris's clothes had been found yesterday. All I know is that ninety minutes seemed like ninety hours.

After a while someone decided that Angie and I had to leave the area. With much initial protesting, we were escorted back up the hill through the woods. As I walked, I noticed that I was unable to feel my feet hitting the ground and it felt as if my knees were wobbling almost comically with each step. I couldn't smell the damp forest air or the decaying leaves. White noise was thundering and pulsing in my ears. Others around me were saying things, possibly to me, but I couldn't make out their words. I believe I nodded as if I agreed with what they said. My eyes were fixed on the ground before me as we headed up the hill. To one side was Angie; to the other, someone else, and there was Chaplain Hash, a military chaplain assigned to Special Forces at Fort Bragg. He always seemed to be there, tall and remarkably comforting. Sometimes it seemed that he was there even when another part of me knew that he really wasn't. I never had to turn and look for him because I just knew that he was there, ready to lend support. God bless that man.