Episode 2: The Lawsuit
Have you ever been punched in the face? You know that thud followed by ringing? Violated to your core. That’s how Alex described the lawsuit he was served two years prior. As I listened I could tell it shook him - after all he led his small empire with heart as one of his employees said at the gathering held by his close friends two weeks after their disappearance.
That’s all Alex had left, employees and friends. Sure he had distant cousins that while close during their childhood drifted apart, as life happens. Alex’s parents died three years ago and Brianne’s had full dementia committed to hospice a year earlier. I guess you could say they were orphaned. But that lawsuit had a profound effect on Alex. A feeling that no matter how much ‘more,’ one could accomplish no matter how ‘good,’ someone could do, there would always be detractors; and Alex had critics.
Brianne too started to get disillusioned in helping Seattle’s homeless crisis. She confided in Katie. Money does not seem to help individuals truly turn their life around in the long term. With a less than five percent success rate Brianne had to deal with the brunt of Seattle’s wildly liberal politics while shilling to the city’s elite to raise millions year after year only to see the well intentioned money be abused by those it was earmarked for.
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At the diner I impulsively, secretively pulled the Jansport backpack out of the waste can. Without hesitation I looked around the old diner - for security cameras. Nothing. Katie was on to me and while she was still hysterical I immediately became focused. Till today I don’t know why. Everyone reacts differently to stress as Malcolm Gladwell outlines in his book “Talking to Strangers.” There I was with Alex’s backpack. I tucked it under my arm.
Katie and I stayed at the diner for hours, as troopers, fire and rescue would filter in. The look of defeat on their faces.
Eventually, we were driven back to the campsite about seventeen miles from the diner. There detectives and cadaver dogs looked through the Land Rover and tent of Alex and Brianne, as well as ours. In the Rush’s tent, sleeping bags were thrown about and an empty En Route Pinot Noir bottle lay on its side. There was a huge rip on the back side of the tent as if an animal claw slashed through the thin vinyl wrap. Investigators also found an empty Ambien bottle, a powerful sleeping pill prescribed to Brianne Rush. Outside of the tare there was blood lightly splattered similar to that of mist on the tent’s backside and a small hatchet lay near a tree stump with little blood droplets now dried.
72 hours after the disappearance investigators assigned to the ‘accident site,’ were interviewing Katie and I. Fire crews called a tow truck and the campsite was cordoned off with the yellow ‘Do not cross,’ font.
“When was the last time you saw Alex or Brianne,” the lead detective Mitchell Woods asked Katie and I.
I responded, “I believe it was early around 5:30am.”
“I don’t know when the last time you went camping but you tend to wake up with the dew and cold of the air,” I felt like I needed to add for Mr. Woods.
“That early,” Woods questioned out loud. And you didn’t venture to wonder where they we could have been till about seven hours later?”
His questioning became more pointed.
“Of course we were panicked, Katie blurted, but we had no cell service and the keys to the Land Rover were missing.”
Woods shared, “it was a very steep embankment that they went over. At the bottom of which is the river. There is a chance that when their bodies went off the road they were hurled all the way to the river and would have been knocked unconscious, swept downstream. We have the Leavenworth water rescue team working that scenario now.”
I nodded my head, knowing full well the backpack could not have ended up in the diner’s garbage can on its own.
Woods gave us his business card and told us to stay close. Katie and I packed up the camp site and hitched a ride back to Seattle.