John Putnam's Journal
May 27, 2003 (Part 2)
Once back at the hotel, we showered up and made a couple of phone calls. I was trying to get Audrey's dad in Houston to do some research for me about how bodies react underwater. I figured there had to be some research out there that could reasonably give us a time line on what was going on with her. Let's see, a 23 year old female, 5'2", probably 100 lbs, less than 5% body fat, eaten within 4 hours, moderate amount of alcohol, water temperature 65 degrees at bottom, 70 feet deep. DO THE MATH! What are we looking at here. He didn't understand what I was asking him to do. I again became frustrated and told him not to worry about it. Eventually he must have understood. He later placed a call to a guy in Galveston who gave him some numbers but they were based on salt water and there was really nothing there. I gave up on it. We headed down to Chili's for some dinner and drinks. We were eating now. It was about 36 hours since we initially found out. Although the stomach issue was still a player, we were starting to settle into having to think about this all the time. That night we sat out on the patio and had an excellent view of Lake Marble Falls from about 3 stories up. Our conversations that night were very intense. They ranged from how we felt about the wreath floating and how we felt about the participants in this, to did what the boys were saying really happen that way and why are we not helping look. We had started discussing crazy scenarios. It is not that we felt like the boys were lying, it was just an open minded brainstorming session. It started off with a question of what if this were not an accident. After running through what we had seen and heard, that scenario became quickly dismissed. Next came a portion of the discussion which really made us think about the account of the accident. Our concern was, did the accident really happen where they said it happened. The game wardens and local law enforcement were basing the accident site on some numbers they crunched. The numbers had to do with what time the 911 call was placed, how long it took the boat she was in to come ashore, wind speed and direction that night, the type of boat and its above water profile and so on. I was concerned that the searchers were in the wrong place. The one variable I saw that could be wrong if someone was lying was the time of the 911 call being minutes after the impact. According to the boys, the boat hit them, they realized Laura was gone, they had a short exchange with the other boat and immediately called the police. Our "what if" came from that scenario. What if the boys decided before they called authorities, to clean up their own scene first. Perhaps out of fear of trouble with the authorities if there was a case of beer on the boat and they were both pretty well lit, they took some time to get rid of some stuff. Not too far fetched. But, if that were the case, then the numbers that were run by the experts would be wrong. If they were wrong, then they quite possibly could be looking in the wrong spot. So from that, we decided to attempt to find out if there was a cooler on the boat. If so, what was in it. Reason being, we knew our sister. If we had been there, there surely would have been a cooler full of beer on that boat and we fully expected there should have been one there. If not, then the story might not have happened the way it was explained. As it turned out, the following day Phil spotted the cooler at the lake house and opened it up. True to form, it was full. After that we no longer focused on the accounts being false. Another conversation had to do with the search itself. We were concerned that not enough people were looking for her. They had stopped dragging the lake and the divers had left for good. Maybe 3 times a day, a single boat would run a perimeter and that was it. I thought that if this search was going on land, there would be a thousand people out looking for her. Since it was marine, no one was looking for her. We decided the next day we would rent some jet skis and look for her ourselves. We asked the bartender at Chili's for a phone book so we could make some calls for jet skis. They obliged. Shortly after we got some numbers, the manager appeared with one of the waitresses. The waitress' husband worked at the rental facility at Horseshoe Bay. She gave us his number and told us to call him. Great. Once we were done with Chili's, Phil and Robyn took off for Wal-Mart. We didn't have anything. We needed bathing suits, aqua shoes and a slew of other things. Audrey and I went on to bed. Our plan was to get up around 8am and get to the marina early. By God, we were going to find her ourselves.
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