Power lines hang low over the narrow, gravel-lined stretch of asphalt in McCleary called Maple Street.
Cars roll past rows of small houses. Sprinklers spin in the front yards. Shrubs and street lights stand on either side of the road.
From the front step of her nearby home, Melissa Baum can almost see its intersection with Fifth Street where her 11-year-old daughter took her last known steps into oblivion.
“I feel like she’s right under my nose and I can’t find her,” she said.
Baum sat on her front step earlier this week, staring eastward toward Maple Street with the faint plinking of wind chimes behind her. She lit a cigarette.
“It’s really frustrating,” she said.
The family dog, Cadence, curled up on the concrete at her feet. Signs of support hung in the windows. Empty Diet Coke cans and fountain drinks sat stacked beside her chair after hours of waiting and watching the end of the road.
“It was all a fluke that whole night,” Baum explained quietly. “It’s like everything fell into place. The one time she left the house without her cell phone. The one time she started walking home alone.”
A prayer candle with an image of the Virgin Mary rested among the cups and cigarette butts.
“That wasn’t a usual night,” she said. “It was a very unusual night and very unusual circumstances.”
Disappearance
Lindsey Baum, an outgoing 4-foot-9 Girl Scout with shoulder-length brown hair, started walking home from her friend’s house shortly after 9 p.m. on June 26. She was 10 years old, just 11 days shy of her birthday.
Lindsey set out alone after an argument with her brother. Her cell phone battery had died earlier in the day and she left it behind. She wore a light-blue, hooded pullover shirt and blue jeans. The sun still burned low on the horizon as she started the short walk home.
A couple neighbors spotted her approaching 5th Street, but she never made it to her front door.
In the first frantic days of searching, hundreds of detectives, volunteers, search dogs, reporters and neighbors descended upon the rural crossroads. Thousands of new footprints scattered Lindsey’s last known steps.
They flooded the streets of the small East County town of about 1,500. They knocked on doors. They stomped through bushes and flew search planes over the nearby woods. Their dogs hunted for Lindsey’s scent. Television news vans transmitted her picture to screens across the country.
For weeks, volunteers in orange vests passed out fliers with Lindsey’s photo. Officers from nearby law enforcement agencies came into town to help. Neighbors held candlelight vigils in the city’s park to comfort each other and hold off despair.
Cable news programs, Nancy Grace from CNN and other shows, picked up on the mystery. Lindsey’s father flew in from Tennessee to help investigators. Lindsey’s photo turned up on bulletin boards from Ocean Shores to Olympia.
For all of the hoping and searching, investigators could not find any evidence explaining what happened to Lindsey.
Local detectives and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents eventually moved from leading search teams through bushes to establishing a “war room” in Montesano for a long-term search. They assigned a task force of core detectives to the case full-time and worked through weekends and holidays.
Grays Harbor Undersheriff Rick Scott said at times he forced investigators to go home as their determination to find Lindsey battled with their mounting frustration.
“They’ve put in a solid month on this case,” he said recently, “and they’re working as hard as they were when we first started.”
But as the weeks have stretched, many of the search teams went home, taking their planes, dogs and orange vests. Lindsey’s 11th birthday passed without word of her fate. Lindsey’s father returned to Tennessee. McCleary businesses who changed their reader boards to signs of support have changed them back to the daily specials.
The shadow of the unknown remains, filling the streets like the droning hum of the Simpson mill.
“It’s affected all of us,” Baum said. “It’s affected the whole community.”
With one hand reaching down to pet Cadence, she scanned the empty afternoon streets. Lindsey’s disappearance has shaken the small town. She said the groups of playing children vanished with her daughter.
“The streets are quiet,” she said, “almost deserted now compared to what they were a month ago.”
Investigation
Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Detective Polly Davin now spends most of her time about 16 miles away in a small Montesano office, filled with files, in-boxes and phones. A couple computers hum on the desktop.
The office has served as the “war room” for the investigation since the Sheriff Office’s mobile command center pulled out of McCleary.
“It’s not anything special,” she said, “but it does the job.”
Davin shares the office with a handful of sheriff’s detectives and FBI agents still dedicated to the case full-time. Other investigators come and go as necessary.
“This is my world,” she said. “I am assigned exclusively to this case.”
In the past five weeks, the investigators have questioned hundreds of people, collected thousands of tips and built a computer database of information that they hope will point them to Lindsey.
Short summary paragraphs of every tip are catalogued in 5-inch-thick binders. Davin said they just started their fifth binder.
“You get so much information on a daily basis,” she said.
Undersheriff Scott said the investigation has produced an abundance of clues, but almost no evidence. Thousands of tips have been called or sent in, but they lead in a thousand different directions, few any more likely than the others.
Investigators considered all possibilities from lost to run-away to abducted at first. As the days passed, they quickly began to fear Lindsey had been taken. They worked longer hours and re-canvased areas of town.
“You can’t work, eat and sleep one situation like this and not become obsessed about it,” Scott said.
Sheriff Mike Whelan agreed that the detectives have given everything they can to the investigation.
“Our detectives are going out there and talking to the family over and over again,” he said. “They do this so much that they get an idea of what this child is like. … It’s almost like they knew the child even though they have never seen her before.”
Whelan said he has authorized long hours of overtime and extra resources for the case despite the department’s current budget issues.
“I don’t know what it’s cost us,” he said. “It’s cost us an awful lot, but we’re going to spend whatever it takes.”
Scott said it has been difficult to balance staff levels dedicated to the case while making sure other everyday crimes and previous cases are not neglected. He said no other cases will be ignored, but they will have to be prioritized.
“There isn’t a single detective on this case that was sitting around with nothing to do,” he said. “They all had big case loads, so we’ve had to dole that out.”
Scott said the detectives now practice a “routine” of collecting and prioritizing new tips and assigning investigators to check them out daily. The methodical approach is meant to single out valuable information, but it often ends in false leads and little reward at first.
“Every time you think you’re onto something that’s going to be viable, you hit a brick wall,” he said. “It fizzles out. Then you have to regroup and take the next task you’ve been assigned, the next tip and hope that it’s the one. And you have to go at it with the same energy.”
Davin said she is responsible for coordinating incoming information and helping sort through the daily assignments. She feels encouraged by the support from other law enforcement agencies and the investigative experience many have brought to the case.
The core investigators — Davin, Keith Peterson and Ed McGowan — have a good balance of temperaments and perspectives. They will often sit over meals and try to sort through different aspects of the case as a group.
“We talk,” she said. “We sit as a team and we talk.”
Having worked more than 10 days straight at the beginning of the search, Davin said the case has definitely taken a toll on some of the detectives. They are trying to make sure each other get enough time off so they can recharge and come back with fresh insights.
“It’s probably hard to focus at home,” she admitted.
The lost leads and dead-ends also weigh on the investigators, she said, but they know one small piece of information could turn things around quickly.
“We haven’t given up,” she said.
Despite the setbacks, Scott said the case remains the office’s highest priority. Investigators will do whatever is necessary to bring Lindsey back to her family.
“The hell that we’re going to can’t compare to theirs.”
Waiting
Melissa Baum said the anxiety hits her at night when the air quiets and she runs out of tasks to keep herself distracted.
“I cry myself to sleep begging and praying for the Lord to lead me to my daughter,” she said. “Every night I lay down with the hope that it will be tonight that they come pounding on my door at 3 a.m. and hand her to me, but every night it gets harder and harder.”
She sleeps with a copy of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” next to her on the nightstand. The book hasn’t moved since Lindsey disappeared.
“Lindsey and I were sort of taking turns reading aloud to each other,” she said. “I haven’t touched the book. It’s still on my nightstand. I haven’t touched it.”
Baum said she and her 12-year-old son, Josh, will sit down at night to watch a movie and feel overwhelmed by Lindsey’s absence.
During the first two weeks, she almost never left home for fear she would miss a phone call. She now tries to stay busy throughout the day by posting fliers, often replacing old black-and-white versions with color posters. She talks to investigators and tries to make sure Josh has things to keep his mind occupied.
“He’s having a difficult time,” Baum said. “He’s angry. He misses his sister a lot. He’s wanting to go out and find whoever has her.”
When Baum runs out of things to do, sometimes she just gets in the car, which is plastered with fliers, and drives.
“I’ll just drive around for hours,” she said, “just drive around, hoping something will pull me toward her.”
Baum said the community support has been great. Her friends and family have collected donations to help her pay bills until she can return to work. But she says she still can’t focus on anything else.
She struggles with wondering how the investigation is going. She calls daily for updates on the case.
“I’m just at that point where I’m having a really difficult time sitting back and trusting them to do it,” she said. “I have tried really hard from the beginning to just stay out of their way.
“It’s getting hard.”
Baum said the worst part is knowing somebody holds the answer. Somebody, if they wanted to, could bring her daughter home at any moment.
“I can’t believe that nobody knows anything,” she said. “They just need to come forward. They need to re-evaluate their morality and put my little girl first.”
She said she knows Lindsey is alive and soon somebody will have the courage to lead investigators to her. She asked anyone with information to call the tip line at 1-866-915-8299.
“I just want her back,” she said. “You can stay anonymous, even calling a tip in. You don’t have to give your name or anything.”
After five weeks, yellow police tape still hangs over Lindsey’s door. Hand-written signs of support still hang in the windows of the house. Log trucks still slowly roll past Maple Street.
“She’s an 11-year-old little girl with her whole life ahead of her,” Baum said. “I will find her because I won’t stop. I’ll never stop. I will find my daughter.”
She lit a second cigarette and glanced eastward.