I'll Be There

by Holly Goldberg Sloan

  And then wouldn’t the authorities, the people he hated with all his heart and soul and very being, have to come check on that?

  Wasn’t that some kind of law?

  And so, in complete agony, he inched his way over the sticky seat and into the far back. After clawing through boxes of stolen jewellery, credit card statements he’d lifted from mailboxes for identity theft, old baseball cards, and someone’s collection of semiprecious stones, he finally found the phone.

  Clarence held it in his twitching palm. Victory.

  But when he dialled 911, nothing happened. The battery had long since died.

  And then something broke inside the already broken part of his soul, and he began to weep.

  It was all so unfair. All of it.

  So . . . unfair.

  Jim Lofgren was an extreme cyclist.

  He routinely rode over one hundred miles in a single day. He’d first gotten the bug after college, when he decided to commute on a bicycle and bought a ten-speed to get around Berkeley. The ten-speed gave way to a better bike, which turned into a racer, and from there it was a lifetime of pedalling.

  The more Jim rode, the more he had to be challenged. He’d ridden six hours in heat above forty degrees. He’d pedalled through rain and even snow across desert floors and up tall peaks.

  Part of the reason that he’d stopped living in a city in California and moved to Utah was to give himself access to more demanding rides.

  And on this day, Jim loaded his six-thousand-dollar, carbon-body mountain bike on top of his hybrid and headed out to Manti-La Sal National Forest.

  It was late spring, and most of the roads heading up into the mountain peaks were still closed off. But Jim was an expert bike rider, and experts know that ‘closed to the public’ doesn’t mean closed to them.

  Jim turned off the highway onto the service road. Mount Peale loomed in the background. Jim knew the spot where the road widened and where he could tuck his car unnoticed for the day.

  By the time he adjusted his helmet and clicked his feet into the pedals, soft, puffy clouds dotted the sky. A gentle breeze made the tops of the trees sway.

  It was a perfect day to scale a mountain.

  Riddle and Sam had been by the river for almost a week.

  And for nearly every waking moment, Riddle was focused on their survival.

  He caught fish, gutted their bellies with the ballpoint pen, and roasted them over the fire. A fire that he had to keep going, with Sam’s help, day and night.

  During that time, they’d eaten four frogs. Dozens and dozens of cattail stalks. Toasted grasshoppers. They didn’t know the names, but they had eaten lady fern fiddleheads, the flower clusters of fairy bells, sweet cicely, wild ginger, and licorice ferns.

  Riddle had dug up the tuberous roots of plants in the soft parts of the riverbank and put them in the hot embers of the fire, just as he’d seen Debbie Bell put baked potatoes alongside her barbecue coals.

  Riddle brought back everything he could find to Sam, who wouldn’t allow them to eat the big bunches of wild oyster mushrooms, which looked like layers of soft babies’ ears. Sam rejected the black and yellow morels and the camouflaged king bolete fungus Riddle found growing in a dead cottonwood.

  Sam said it was better to be safe than sorry, not knowing that Riddle ate half of the king bolete anyway.

  And once Sam realised that the crunchy black nuts were actually beetles, he put an end to that as well.

  The days were long for Sam, who was always flat on his back.

  The nights were long for Riddle, who stared at the stars and worried that rain would come, or something worse, before someone would find them.

  Sam had stopped worrying about Clarence appearing out of nowhere with a gun in hand.

  And he’d started worrying about how they would ever get out of the forest.

  He had hoped that the smoke from their fire would be some kind of signal, but he watched in despair as the swirls of white disappeared as soon as they moved up into the moist, cold mountain air.

  They were deep down in a narrow gorge, and unless they burned the place to the ground, it didn’t appear that anything visual would ever give them away. And that was assuming that someone was even looking for them, which was a big ‘if’.

  Sam’s ribs had stopped hurting so much, but his shoulder was a major problem. So he spent most of the week asleep, and even in his unconscious state he was amazed at his little brother.

  Jim Lofgren had seen the chain lying on the ground instead of pulled taut between the cement pillars when he started up the incline into the national forest.

  But he didn’t think twice about what it meant. And he had no way of knowing that it was cut, not simply lowered by a ranger.

  Jim had been pumping uphill on the gravel road for nearly four and a half hours when he rounded a bend and saw the black truck in the middle of the stream.

  The vehicle was at an odd angle, and it was obvious that it was stuck. Jim slowed. The rushing water seemed to have made adjustments to accommodate the wheels, and there was something about the dust on the truck that said to Jim that this all wasn’t recent.

  Jim slowed to a stop and got off his bike. That’s when he saw the shotgun on the side of the road. Jim felt his heart rate, which was slowing down now that he wasn’t pumping like a maniac, again increase. Was this a crime scene?

  Jim called out. ‘Hello!’

  No answer. Jim laid his bike down on the uphill side of the embankment and, stepping cautiously around the gun, continued slowly towards the truck.

  ‘Hello? Anyone there?’ No answer.

  Jim now stood at the edge of the stream. He’d have to wade into the water to get a look inside the vehicle. His shoes had been heated and custom-molded to his feet. They cost a lot of money and, as he stared at the racing water, Jim seriously wondered what he was getting into. Now would be the time to turn back.

  The icy stream swirled around his legs as he waded towards the front door on the driver’s side. The windows were rolled up, and the way the harsh light hit the glass made it impossible to see inside.

  Jim put his thumb onto the handle and pulled up, half hoping the door would be locked.

  But it wasn’t.

  It opened, and the air trapped inside was released. It was the worst smell Jim had ever encountered. A combination of rotting flesh, urine, spit and alcohol sent Jim’s hand reflexively to cover his nose and mouth. He stepped back into the rushing water, nearly falling over as he saw Clarence’s twisted body in the back seat.

  And then he heard a raspy voice say, ‘What the hell took you so long?’

  Riddle had been up, searching the rocky part of the riverbank for food, and his feet hurt.

  He had little cuts and scratches all over his body, and some of these were now puffy red, a starry field of minor infections that stood out on his sunburned skin. Some of the scrapes itched. Riddle rubbed his eyes and looked down at his shoes. They were a problem that he could at least do something about.

  His sneakers were caked with dirt and debris. Riddle wore socks, even though they were always wet, because without them the blisters and abrasions couldn’t be tolerated.

  Now, with the sun overhead in the middle of the afternoon, Riddle allowed himself to stop the endless searching. He had to take off his shoes. He had to free his aching toes.

  The first shoe came off easily, but his second shoe required that he work open the tight, waterlogged knot.

  But when Riddle got frustrated, his fingers didn’t have the dexterity they needed to manipulate the laces. Instead of taking a moment to collect himself, he pulled hard, and the canvas and rubber piece of footwear suddenly came off his heel and flipped up into the air, beyond his grasp, landing in the river.

  The shoe bobbed in the cold water and began moving downstream, and Riddle took off on the shoreline after it.

  Throwing himself off a cliff had been an impulsive act, but since then he had been methodical. Riddle took careful,
deliberate steps as he gathered firewood and tried to find things to eat.

  But now, eyes on his travelling shoe, Riddle was reckless. He did things he would never have done had he not been locked, irrationally, on the shoe. He scrambled over rocks and ripped his way through thickets, all the while gasping for breath, following the beat-up sneaker. He took two big falls, one nearly landing him in the river and one twisting his ankle so severely that he hobbled as he continued to give chase.

  And then, after almost a mile of running and scrambling, just when he thought it was all over, when the shoe was too far ahead and disappearing from view, the renegade piece of footwear maneuvered into an undercut, and the chase was over.

  Strong currents can erode a riverbank, leaving an overhang of topsoil. Rocks can then get lodged in such a way as to form a kind of trap, and it was here that the shoe stopped running. Riddle had tears in his eyes when he finally reached the undercut. But he did not feel victorious for long. His ankle was now throbbing, and he had used more energy than he actually had.

  While he was gasping for breath, his head hung low, something unnaturally red caught his eye. In the snarl of rushes that had grown up on the other side of the undercut, a spot of cherry was peeking out.

  He was too curious to let it go. And after a full twenty minutes of arguing with himself, Riddle put the soaking runaway shoe back on his left foot and went farther downstream to investigate.

  It was a tandem kayak.

  Flipped over, wedged between a rock and the shore, it had to have been there for a long time, because slimy green algae covered most of the red surface.

  It took Riddle almost an hour to untangle the lead rope and dig out the hull. But he was able, finally, to get the boat free. By the time he made it back upriver to Sam, the sun had long set and darkness had closed in.

  Despite the pain, Sam pulled himself up when he heard his brother. He’d been eaten alive inside with worry. Riddle had never been away for this long.

  It was another surprise. Not only was his little brother safe, he had his biggest catch ever.

  Riddle’s face, despite his exhaustion, had an expression of wild excitement. ‘I found —’ He was sputtering. He could barely breathe. ‘I found . . . a —’

  Riddle was wheezing now. It was all too much for him. He opened his mouth and managed to get out, ‘A boat.’

  Sam at first thought he was seeing things when he realised Riddle was pulling the kayak.

  Sam could only use his good arm, which was on his weaker left side, to help. But finally, with great effort, he and Riddle were able to drag the boat out of the water and up onto the shore.

  And they were rewarded for that effort.

  In the hull of the molded red plastic kayak, in the front area tucked in a waterproof plastic case, was a first-aid kit.

  Inside were Band-Aids, a small pair of scissors, aspirin, sunscreen, lip balm, a bar of antibacterial soap, salt pills, a small roll of duct tape, and a pamphlet on emergency aid.

  But the greatest treasure was wrapped in tinfoil and tucked underneath the first-aid kit. The jackpot was the discovery of two Snickers bars. The slogan Hungry? Grab a Snickers brought tears to their eyes.

  The two boys stared at the bounty as if they’d just robbed a convenience store, which had always, in their lives, been a possibility.

  This was better than any holiday, any birthday, and any celebration. It was a gift. It was a reward. It was a triumph.

  And it was theirs.

  Jim Lofgren carried a cell phone when he rode. He also carried gorp mix, energy gel, peanut butter pretzel nuggets, hard candies and beef jerky. While Clarence ravaged the sack of food, Jim dialled 911. His call didn’t go through. He was too high up to get any reception. So he’d have to head back down the mountain on his bike in order to get help.

  It was a huge relief.

  The man in the stinking truck freaked him out. It wasn’t just that he was on death’s doorstep; he was straight out of a horror movie. He was the Crypt Keeper. That was the only way to describe him. Jim knew that if the guy wasn’t starving to death with a rotting leg that looked like it was about to fall off, he would be dangerous. Very dangerous.

  The guy had the wrong attitude. Instead of being grateful, he was enraged. He kept swearing and spitting and making impossible demands.

  Jim filled one of the vodka bottles he found on the truck floor with water from the stream, dropping in an iodine tablet to kill bacteria or viruses. When the Crypt Keeper took a sip of the water, he spewed it out, as if firing a weapon, straight into Jim’s startled face.

  ‘Are you trying to poison me? Did you take a leak in this first? What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Jim tried to explain water sterilisation, but it was useless. And so he climbed back on his bike, his own stomach growling now with hunger, and took off down the mountain.

  Jim said that he’d be back with help, but as he heard the man sputter more obscenities, he made a decision, he’d let professionals deal with this guy. He never wanted to see him again.

  28

  In spite of the bad shrimp, Emily felt closer to Bobby Ellis after the night at the country club. He hadn’t made a greedy run at the seafood buffet. He hadn’t freaked out at his parents when they’d put her on trial at dinner, and most kids would have. And at the end of the night, he’d thanked her as if she’d given him her left kidney.

  But at the same time, she felt even more uncomfortable about the situation.

  He was easing his way into her life.

  If she went outside by the metal picnic tables to study during free period, he found her. If she stayed late after school to talk to a teacher, he was waiting for her at her locker. If she went over to Spumoni’s to grab a slice of pizza with friends during lunch, he’d somehow show up minutes later.

  It was like he had a computer with her coordinates programmed twenty-four/seven. She wasn’t sure, but twice, late at night, she’d gone downstairs to get something to drink and she thought that she’d seen his SUV cruise by on the dark street.

  And her house wasn’t on his way home.

  She was thinking what to say, how to get him to back off, but then they were together when she got the Big News.

  And that changed everything.

  Detective Sanderson hung up the phone and swallowed a mouthful of his cold coffee. He’d taken notes from the call and now his eyes fell on the yellow pad.

  A man claiming to be named John Smith had been found in Manti-La Sal National Forest in Utah.

  He was in the truck matching the picture Bobby Ellis had taken, which was in the report that the detective had circulated.

  The truck also matched the one identified by the officers the week before in Cedar City. The plates had been changed and belonged to a vehicle in Nevada, but positive identification from contents had subsequently been made.

  This John Smith, found in Manti-La Sal National Forest, had a counterfeit driver’s license in his wallet. Also at the site was a shotgun. Two other illegal firearms were found in his truck with other identified stolen property.

  John Smith was currently in the custody of the Utah County sheriff’s department and a patient in the Landon Regional Hospital, where he was recovering from the amputation of his right leg.

  Once his condition improved, he would be moved to Andryc Prison to await his arraignment on multiple felony charges.

  The suspect had not said anything about children until the second day, when he came out of surgery. After he’d been positively identified by an elderly woman named Mrs Dairy, and then interrogated by Cedar City officers, he asked for a lawyer. And then he made a statement. He had done nothing wrong. There had been an accident. And his two sons were dead.

  Bobby Ellis had driven Emily home from school after practice. She didn’t want him to come in, but when they pulled up to the brick driveway, Bobby’s father’s car was parked at the kerb.

  That was alarming. To both of them.

  They quickl
y went inside and found all four of their parents in the living room. There were empty coffee cups on the table, so they’d been there a while. Debbie Bell’s eyes were puffy. Emily stared at her mother. Had she been crying?

  Everyone immediately got up, but Tim Bell was the first to say anything. ‘We got news from the police department that Sam and Riddle’s father was found in the mountains of a national park in Utah. He’s right now in the hospital —’

  Emily interrupted. ‘And Sam? What about Sam and Riddle?’

  Now her mother was talking. ‘They weren’t with him.’

  Emily exhaled. This was good news. They’d gotten away from the horrible man.

  But none of the adults looked like it was good news. They were all so anxious. And then her father said, ‘Both of the boys were with him in the truck when he left Cedar City. He appeared to have abducted them. All of their things were left inside a motel room.’

  Bobby Ellis was staring at Tim Bell. He was stuck on the word abduct. Can you abduct your own kids? Especially when one of them was a teenager? He didn’t think that was the right word.

  Emily’s head swivelled from her father to her mother and then back again. ‘Well, what did he say? Where did he say they were? What did he say happened to them?’

  Silence.

  Barb Ellis wasn’t looking at her son or at Emily. She was looking at the hardwood floor. Her husband was staring at a book on the coffee table. Tim Bell stepped towards his daughter. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  Debbie Bell, the person in the room who dealt daily with emergencies, now spoke directly to Emily. Her voice was strong, reassuring. Her daughter knew the voice. It was the voice that took care of you when things were very, very bad.

  ‘There is no reason to believe anything the man said. He’s a proven liar and a thief, and he’s right now still experiencing the effects of heavy medication . . .’ Debbie Bell took a moment. ‘But he said that there was an accident. He told the police that the boys were standing by the side of the road up in the mountains. There was a big drop. He said that Riddle slipped, and that Sam tried to keep him from falling, and that he went over the edge with his brother . . .