The first thing that happens in a case like this is that ordinary objects stop being ordinary. A scuffed backpack on a desert roadside becomes a kind of talisman. People stare at it the way gamblers stare at a last card, willing it to mean something.
This week's Nancy Guthrie update delivered a quick, cold splash of reality. Volunteers searching near Guthrie's Tucson home found a backpack, but Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said it was not the same bag carried by the masked figure seen in doorbell footage from the night she vanished.
