ROCKLAND -- For months, dogs trained to sniff out human remains have searched for Jennifer Fay's resting place. Finally, after working their way through fields and private basements across Southeastern Massachusetts, investigators are hopeful they may learn the fate of the teenager who disappeared more than 16 years ago.
The 16-year-old left her home in Brockton on Nov. 14, 1989, to go to a party and never returned. Since then, her mother, Dottie MacLean, has imagined many scenarios of what could have happened to her eldest daughter. She was kidnapped. She was sucked into a cult. She was sold into the sex trade.
Now, MacLean has had to face the growing possibility that her daughter is perhaps buried somewhere in a nearby town.
''Do I want them to find her? Yes. Do I want them to find her remains? No," she said in an interview at her house yesterday. ''But that's probably where this is headed."
On Saturday, a team of about 15 private investigators, dog handlers, and search volunteers visited an overgrown field off Manley Street in West Bridgewater.
The four dogs became interested in the site, and one went into full alert, wagging its tail and jumping up and down, the strongest reaction investigators had witnessed during their searches, said Phillip White, one of the private detectives volunteering for the Jennifer Fay Investigation Team.
''We have some strong intelligence; we have some good interviews," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. ''I think we're on a way to a successful conclusion to find out where Jennifer Fay really is."
The team plans to return to the site in the coming days to find out if the animals' reactions are the same, he said.
If the owner of the property agrees to let the team return for a more thorough search, the volunteers will sift the earth for human remains. If something turns up, a bone fragment, anything human, the site will become a crime scene, White said.
MacLean, 52, said she plans to return with the team, as she has the other times the investigators visited a site with the dogs. MacLean, who has never held a memorial service for her daughter, thinks the chance she may find her remains is stronger this time, and that upsets her.
''Are they going to find her? Has she been there for 16 years?" she asked as she sat on her couch, wringing a paper towel and fighting back tears. ''It's hard."
Fay, a slight, blue-eyed blond with an interest in drama and a fan of supermodel Christie Brinkley, was a happy teenager, MacLean said. The one time she ran away, she scurried to a friend's house and called her mother to tell her she was safe.
About two months before her disappearance, she wrote her mother a note on lilac paper, apologizing for coming home late. MacLean still keeps the letter in a photo album of her daughter's pictures and the news clippings about her disappearance.
''Jennifer was very bubbly," MacLean said. ''She had a lot of friends. . . . Unfortunately, Jennifer trusted everybody."
The night she disappeared, Fay was baby-sitting her sister Yvette, then 11, and her brother James, then 4. Fay decided to go to a party on Broad Street and asked her cousin to watch her siblings, MacLean said.
She knows little else about what happened.
''It's like she disappeared right off the face of the Earth," she said.
Last December, she met with White and other investigators, volunteers for the Molly Bish Foundation, an organization devoted to promoting child safety and named after a 16-year-old Warren lifeguard who disappeared in June 2000. Bish's remains were found in 2003.
No one has been charged with her disappearance or death.
White and the investigators began interviewing people familiar with Fay's case. They started working closely with Brockton and State Police.
Brockton Detective Michael Damiano, who has been working on the case for at least five years, said he was hopeful the search will yield more information about Fay.
''These dogs are obviously very well trained," Damiano said. ''It would be great if it's in fact true."
Investigators and police now have a person of interest in the case, White said. They believe they know the motive behind Fay's disappearance, White said. He declined to identify the person of interest or provide details about the motive.
The investigation has led to some false hopes. During the summer, MacLean followed a tip her daughter might be in Texas. She flew to Corpus Christi, but the woman who answered the door was not Fay.
Around Memorial Day weekend, the investigative team took the dogs to the Howard Street bridge area in Brockton known as The Muck. The dogs dove into the water in their excitement, convinced something was there. But it was only an animal carcass.
Other searches around Brockton and Holbrook turned up nothing.
On Saturday, the team returned to the West Bridgewater site, where the dogs had shown interest before. The animals perked up again, buoying the investigators' confidence they may be in the right place.
A rural spot surrounded by some businesses, it was also the neighborhood where the person of interest once worked, White said.
''We're optimistic," he said. ''Are we 100 percent positive the remains are there? The answer is no."
In the meantime, MacLean steels herself for the worst, but hopes her daughter may be alive. She takes comfort in a poem one of Fay's friends wrote for a benefit the family held years ago to raise money for the search.
The entire poem is about Fay, except for the final verse, which is addressed to MacLean.
''Please know Dot, if you lay me to rest, that you as my mother, were truly the best."