A brief detour takes us up a long flight of wooden steps to a quiet neighborhood. Nothing there, so we drop back down and head across a slope, through a network of shrubbery with bedding-down spots for transients--empty now, save for discarded food tins and scraps of cloth, a wadded-up plastic tarp. Again nothing; we return to the path. Todd points at a chain-link fence that marks the boundary between Monterey and the U.S. Army’s Defense Language Institute. “I’ll see if there are breaks in the fence, any way through,” he says. As we watch him scramble up the hill, pairs of shining green lights punctuate the night’s blackness: raccoons; they’ve stopped their nighttime rambling to watch. Perhaps they know the secret we seek the answer to.

While Todd moves along the fenceline above us, I move onto what looks like a deer path, a slight ribbon of dirt between a tangle of blackberry vines on my left, the start of the slope up to the DLI on my right. “Does that keep going?” Jesse asks. I proceed a few yards farther, past a clot of fallen limbs. “Yeah, it even opens up.” I step into the small clearing, listening as Jesse and Sierra follow me. To my right is a steep hill that, flattening out a ways up, is topped by the DLI fence; oak trees give the scene texture. To my left is a short rise.

I choose left, climb, then drop into a ravine clogged with fallen branches. Downstream, I see the lights of a car on the road a couple hundred feet off. I stand enjoying the silence, the moment alone. Do I know what I’ve gotten myself into, volunteering for Search and Rescue? Not really. But that’s part of the allure. Life is uncertain. I’m glad to be able to do something. I watch as another car shines its lights my way, then turns and moves up the hill, the drivers unaware of the drama being played out so close by. I look up the ravine. The going gets more tangled, but I decide to check it out and start off. Just then Sierra’s voice comes wafting down: “Anne? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“You can come back.”

I slip and slide back up the hill. “What’s up? Did we get recalled?”

“No. We found him.”

Dropping down to the path, I join Sierra and Jesse. “Where?”

“Up there.” Jesse shines his light up the opposite slope, illuminates a yellow rope. It’s all I can see: a taut rope moving in the still air. Jesse says, “It was the only straight thing around. And then I saw his shoulders.” Jesse is taller than me, with a different perspective on the scene. I step a foot to the right, and then I see the man’s head, wavy brown hair. I step back to the left.

That’s enough. We found him. It has taken just under half an hour.

For another 20 minutes I stay planted, waiting to direct whoever comes along next to inspect the scene. Eventually the two Monterey policemen show up, and a couple of SAR volunteers. They clamber up the steep slope, slipping on the dirt, reconnoiter a flattened wire fence. I watch as their lights paint the trees, listen to them as they talk softly, unintelligibly. One has brought a digital camera, and occasionally a sharp flash of light reminds me that this is a crime scene. Just like on TV.

Miranda arrives. “We were right here,” she says, “but Izzy didn’t scent it.” Izzy hasn’t been working on cadavers for long--just a couple of months--though she has mastered the art of finding live subjects, at least on trainings. Miranda is upset, disappointed. She wanted her dog to find him.

It turns out the brother--the guy with the two flashlights--stood right here too, in this same spot, and shined those big lights around. Maybe he stood in not quite the right spot; maybe he was a little too short to catch a glimpse of what he was seeking. Maybe he didn’t really want to see that anomalous straight line slicing through the organic oaks. One thing I’m sure of: he wasn’t disappointed not to find him. He still had hope at that point. He had hope right up until Jesse radioed to the command center, “We found him,” and that message was relayed to the family, who were standing close by.