Missing (page 8 of 8)

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Ready to Come Home

The faces of the missing haunt Caison around the clock. To ward off nightmares, she sleeps with the TV on, preferably tuned to Forensic Files. Although she's passionate about her family, she occasionally forgets to pay bills, shop for groceries or buy presents for her children's birthdays ("I tell 'em they got to remind Mama," she says). But the kids -- all grown now -- support her, sometimes accompanying her on investigations or helping out at rallies. So does her husband. "He's the even keel I always needed," Caison says. "We're never in a bad mood at the same time."

"I'm proud of her, man," says Sam. "When she comes home from a search, I'll give her a massage and cook her dinner and see she gets her rest."

And when Caison finds someone, she says, there's no better feeling in the world. Last November, she got a call from a detective in East Texas, with whom she'd worked on another case some years earlier. The two had clashed over turf before. ("I'd said to him, 'One of two things is gonna happen here today: Either you're gonna help me find my missing person, or I'm gonna find him without you.' ") Now Caison's first thought was, Am I in trouble?

But the detective was calling with news of Freddy Locklear, the young man who had disappeared from his sister's Fayetteville home nearly a year earlier. The lawman had stopped at a mom-and-pop restaurant in town and could have sworn that the guy washing dishes -- with his curly black hair and rimless glasses -- was the man Caison had e-mailed him about a few days before. " I about broke my leg running out to phone you," the detective said.

When Caison called Freddy's sister at work with the news, Fawn let out a yelp so loud that her office mates burst into cheers. Stepping outside, she had a good cry, then phoned the restaurant and asked for her brother. Freddy couldn't explain exactly how he'd gotten to Texas, but the folks who owned the place had given him free room and board, and treated him like a member of their family. Now he missed his own family. "I was hoping you'd find me," he said. "I'm ready to come home."

That's the kind of thing that keeps Caison searching. "I may not be in church on Sunday," she says, "but I'm not at home gossiping on the phone. I'm out in the woods -- looking for somebody."