The discovery of Shannan’s remains in our county has given us greater traction in the search for Cameron overall. We’ve always been missing evidence and hard clues. Now that it seems more and more likely that the two cases are linked, we finally have more manpower and equipment, not to mention volunteers. Reserve land is being searched mile by mile, plus the estuaries and the coastline, with particular emphasis on any cabin, shed, or structure in or near Montgomery Woods. Most serial killers have a comfort radius and a clear anchor point they hunt from, a narrow range of territory they’re intimately familiar with. All things being equal, Cameron is probably no more than thirty miles, give or take, from her own home and where we found Shannan’s body. This is our most plausible grid.

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The Cameron Curtis Rescue Center begins to run twenty-four hours a day. Local business owners donate postage, phones, and fax machines. Everyone does what they can to help with the mailings, stuffing envelopes, pasting flyers all over the area, and answering the phone. Calls begin to come in by the hundreds, some just to say that Cameron is in their prayers, some offering ten dollars, twenty dollars, kids wanting to donate birthday money and allowances. Most of the calls are from women reluctant to give their name. “I know who he is,” one says. “I dated him in college.”

Patterson’s hosts a fish fry for all of the volunteers. A team of counselors is sent into Mendocino High as well as the elementary and middle schools, to offer support and comfort. Some of the older kids in the community start doing afternoon shifts, going door-to-door, organized by Gray Benson. Clay LaForge and Lenore spend hours a day addressing envelopes to hotels and restaurants, gas stations, laundromats, anywhere someone might have seen Cameron since she disappeared. In each mailing—Lenore’s idea—there’s a handwritten note asking whoever receives it to place Cameron’s poster in a prominent location and not let it be taken down or covered over. It’s a small touch, personal and direct.

Wanda volunteers to be in the center late nights. “I’m a night owl anyway,” she explains when I find her there, alone at a long collapsible conference table, stuffing envelopes. She perks up to see Cricket, the two falling on each other like old friends. And then the door swings open, and Hector walks in, blinking against the yellow fluorescent lighting.

He wears a denim jacket that seems to jut at the shoulders and the same ass-kicking boots I noticed in Ukiah, but the look on his face is tentative. Uncertain. “I read about that murdered girl,” he says. “That can’t happen to Cameron. Tell me what to do.”