Girl Lost

by Kate Gable

  "Can I still see you again?" he asks. "Can we pretend that I never kissed you?"

  I think about that for a moment.

  "Yes," I say definitively.

  He stands there with his hands to the sides, knowing full well after being turned down and unable to make another move. It's my turn. I reach over and give him a brief hug and an even briefer peck on the cheek.

  "Call me," I whisper into his ear and walk away.

  Later that evening after talking to my mom and Captain Talarico, but avoiding calling Luke just yet, I decide to stay in LA because there are no more updates about Violet or Natalie.

  In the middle of the night, I get a call. A body has been found and there's a strong possibility that it belongs to my missing person, Karen Moore Kaslar. It's not necessary for me to drive up there right now at one a.m. They will be processing the scene and the body will be going to the morgue, but I can't help myself. I have to know if it's her. She fits the general description and I know that I won't be able to get any sleep tonight unless I confirm this for myself.

  I get into my car and get on the freeway. After pulling my hair up into a loose ponytail and throwing some water on my face, I have a change of clothes and a makeup bag that I keep in the car in case any public is going to be there or any reporters. For now, I don't bother with any of that. The freeways are empty and I drive fast, but just barely over the speed limit.

  GPS takes me deep into the hills and to a point where my phone loses reception. The roads are winding with little light, black trees, and deep forests lining each side. Finally, I get there. The scene has been set up not far from the trailhead. I flash my credentials at the deputy in the parking lot near the trailhead and he points me in the direction of the scene. I'm already wearing a pair of sneakers and I'm thankful for that because the body is about a mile and a half up. I walk by myself in the forest and the trail is eerie at night.

  There's no light and I use my phone as a flashlight to illuminate my path. I trip a few times over a few loose stones. I get a cramp in my side and I regret not bringing a bottle of water. Finally, I see the tent out in the distance, with people mingling around, setting up, and processing the scene.

  Detective Rodriguez, a family man in his mid-forties with five kids, the youngest of whom is already heading to college, meets with me to discuss the details.

  "Glad you came," he says. "We just found her wallet. She's going to have to get identified by the next of kin, but it seems like it's her."

  I walk over to the taped-up scene and see Karen's lifeless body lying on her stomach with her head twisted to the side. Her hair is matted down and the top of it is covered in blood.

  "The rock used is right over there," Rodriguez says.

  Somebody is photographing the palm-size piece of granite, also covered in blood.

  I'll have to wait for the crime scene investigators, but it seems like a match to me. I take a few steps closer to look at her face. It’s tilted toward me. It matches the woman from the pictures that I've seen. Straight nose, strong jaw.

  "It's hard to tell whether she's been hit once or more than once," Rodriguez says. "This is likely the murder weapon."

  "No bullet holes?"

  "No. Well, not that I can see from here. They'll be processing the scene."

  I nod. It's not unusual to find additional evidence and we have to wait until all of it comes in. I think to myself before drawing any conclusions, but there are already conclusions that can be drawn.

  "How did she get here?" I ask.

  "Most likely scenario," he says, pushing up his glasses to the top of his head, "she walked here. The bastard who did this, walked her here of her own accord. Maybe they took a hike and then he did it here. There are no drag marks and unless he carried the body and dropped it off, it seems like a long way to go."

  I nod thinking back to the trail that I had just walked. It's winding with lots of corners and I'm sure anyone would hesitate to carry a dead body all this way just to drop it along the side of the trail, without bothering to go deep into the forest.

  "What about an ATV or any other alternative outdoor vehicle?"

  "I didn't see that many marks or tracks leading up here. They're forbidden on the trails, but that doesn't mean that someone hadn't used one."

  "Yeah, I didn't see any either," I say, thinking back to the trail that I had just walked and all of the details that I tried to notice on the way up here.

  "Also didn't see any obvious droplets of blood, which might have happened if he had carried her body here."

  "Any chance that she was wrapped up in anything? Like, I don't know, some sort of bag?"

  "That seems unlikely, too. I was looking at her face and you can see right there that the blood is pretty much coagulated right where it formed. It seems unlikely that she was moved from this position at all, let alone, that she was wrapped up in anything and then transported."

  "So, she walked here?" I say, biting my lower lip and looking around. There are flood lights illuminating the forest, casting long, jagged shadows in all directions. "Who found her?"

  "Somebody called it in. We're still trying to track it, but they used a cell phone. It sounded like two girls, young twenty-somethings, had a strong Valley accent. Sounded a bit ditsy if you don't mind me saying."

  "So, they never actually met you guys here?"

  "No. They called about three hours ago, called 911, said that they were taking pictures and stumbled upon her, but they had to go and they couldn't stay and then they gave the information. We're going to track the phone, but it's going to take some time. We sent someone out here. A deputy was about to turn back thinking that it was just some sort of prank call when he stumbled upon her body right there."

  "Wow."

  "Yeah.” Rodriguez nods. "I guess she's not a missing person anymore."

  I take a few steps away from Rodriguez and take a closer look at the body. She's dressed in leggings and a sports bra, but no sweatshirt or a top layer. She looks like she has been here a long time.

  Her face is blue, and the blood looks old. How long exactly? I'm not sure. The fact that she wasn't wearing a sweatshirt probably means that she went hiking during the day.

  The state forest officially closes at sundown. It looks like some animals have already gnawed at her legs and arms. There is a lot of evidence of insect activity as well. I count back the days that she's been missing, though body evidence science is never that precise.

  Once the body gets over a week old or probably even sooner than that, there’re a lot of different experts with different opinions, but we are still in the early stages of finding out exactly the time of death.

  Things like insect activity, location of the body, the heat, and the humidity all play a role in decomposition. A body that decomposes in the hot and humid sun in a place like Georgia has a different rate of decomposition than a body that would decompose in Alaska or California.

  Here, the sun is strong and warm during the days, but the nights can drop as much as thirty to fifty degrees in temperature depending on the altitude. This is a desert after all, making the climate rather unique.

  I lean down and get as close to her body as possible to look for details that might mean anything. She's wearing a gold locket, but I won't know what's inside until the medical examiner puts out her report.

  She's wearing an Apple watch and I wonder if it might hold any clues as to how she got here or how far she’d walked. I point the watch out to Rodriguez, and he nods approvingly.

  "Yeah, that's going to be the first thing we check out."

  "Let me know as soon as you do. There may be apps on it that she used to track herself even if she didn't use the main walking app."

  "Yes, I know I have one myself," he says. "Been trying to get those 10,000 steps in every day."

  "How's that working?" I ask.

  "Eh, some days better than others. All that time in the car isn't helping much. With the hike up here, I might get that 10K yet." />
  I smile. It may sound coarse and rude to talk like this, to make jokes, but this is our job.

  We're not mocking the victim, not in the least.

  We're just trying to make a terrible tragedy bearable for us to investigate it.

  26

  In the morning, after the Apple watch has processed, I get the result. Karen was recording her hike on a trail walking app and it showed that she started it in the parking lot on the day that her husband reported her missing, the eighteenth.

  I don't bother going home after a few hours at the scene. So, I take a little cat nap in my car, get some coffee, and head back to the parking lot at the beginning of the trailhead.

  Benjamin Lawrence, the computer tech who got up early to work on this as a personal favor to me, sends me the GPS coordinates of everything that the watch recorded. I start in the exact spot. I use my phone to line up my own GPS coordinates and start to follow her trail. Her walk up the trail precisely. It's morning now and I'm not limited to the flashlight or my phone for visibility.

  The trail is winding with a steep incline. I follow the GPS coordinates as precisely as I can while also taking note of the trees, the vegetation, and the shrubs all around. I'm looking for blood droplets, anything that would indicate that she hadn’t walked up there. I'm also looking for other things, maybe something that was dropped, or forgotten, or anything that could be of any significance whatsoever.

  When I get almost to the top, to the location of the murder site, I head back down and do another loop. Nothing catches my eye until my shoelace unties and I kneel down to fix it.

  I get a cramp in my back. I do a few stretches. This is the most exercise I've gotten in a while and my body is not ready for it.

  I do a brief sun salutation and stretch from side to side.

  That's when I see it.

  The camera.

  It's positioned toward the trail, going down toward the parking lot in the opposite direction that I'm walking. It's hidden. It's in the tree at about six feet up. There's a raven that sits on a branch just a little bit higher chirping loudly or rather obnoxiously.

  I walk over to the camera for a closer look.

  Am I really seeing what I'm seeing? Why would it be here?

  Then I remember that this must be a trail camera, a webcam set up to monitor wildlife.

  Sometimes they’re used for tracking purposes, but they’re also commonly set up on national forest and state park websites in order to get the public interested in going there. High school kids and younger kids will monitor the cameras for science classes. Occasionally there'll be a brown bear or a mountain lion who will do something interesting, funny, or cute and then it will go viral on YouTube.

  I'm so excited by this discovery that I immediately start to run. It's a good quarter mile uphill and I'm completely out of breath when I get there. A ranger from the National Forest has already arrived and I ask him about the camera choking on my own breath.

  “I just found it there, not too far away, by the big boulder," I say, my breathing is rapid and out of control. "There's a camera there. How long is that footage kept? Do you think that maybe she might be on it?"

  "We actually stream it live and we do keep it for about two weeks," he says and then asks me for my name.

  I realize that I haven't even introduced myself to him. We shake hands and he tells me to call him Michael and says that back in the office, he has access to all of the webcams that are set up around the forest.

  "Okay. Can you show me where you have it? Can we go there right now?" I ask, finally catching my breath.

  "Yes, of course.” He nods.

  Half an hour later, I park in front of the ranger station and Michael shows me inside. He's a young man in his early thirties with a wedding band and a crew cut.

  He tells me that he's been working here for about five years and his wife isn't very happy with the hours or the salary. He has to decide whether or not he'll continue to work here and get divorced or go work for her father selling furniture and stay married.

  I don't know how to advise him because I've never been in that situation. Personally, I kind of hope that he stays doing what he loves, despite all the obstacles.

  At the ranger station, he takes me to a nondescript room with office furniture and a pinkish gray carpet that Michael apologizes for and says that they will finally be changing out in a month or two.

  "It's not the best thing to have in a place where people walk around in muddy shoes," he says. "Bureaucracy. Other stations need other things."

  He shows me to his desk, a metal clunky thing covered in papers and with drawers that make an obnoxious metal on metal sound. He opens his laptop and starts scrolling through the files on the eighteenth.

  "Can you check that first? Maybe morning?" I ask. "How do you know which camera is which?"

  “They're all numbered. That one is 4327," he says from memory. "Occasionally gets a few deer. Last year, I caught a mountain lion with a baby kitten. So, we had fun with that."

  "Ever catch a murder suspect?"

  "Nope. That'd be a new one for this." He smiles. "This is actually going to take a little bit. There’re a bunch of files and I'm not sure what time they were. They get overwritten after a while."

  "Okay. I understand," I say. "I'll wait."

  "If you want, there's a vending machine out there if you're hungry."

  “Sure. Can I get you anything?"

  "Yeah, a pop," he says, and I immediately know that he's from the east coast.

  27

  I stay with Timothy for about an hour as he searches through the camera footage all without luck. I know that she went there, and we have the camera that was working. The question is what day did she actually go missing and was it later in the day than I thought? It's all very possible because I don't know exactly when she was there.

  I tell him not to give up and to keep looking and that I'll send Benjamin, the computer tech, over here to get the footage. He says that he can't stay for long because he has a few department meetings to attend. So, he agrees to upload the footage from his computer for the LAPD computer professionals to look through.

  I text and arrange everything and then get back into my car and sit here for a while trying to process what has happened. In the last few hours, there have been so many highs and lows. First, her body was found, and then she was identified as the woman, Karen Moore, that I've been looking for, but now I have no idea where to go from here.

  Robert is the primary suspect, but so is his girlfriend, Margaret. She put on a good face but that doesn't mean that the two of them didn't lure her out somehow and get her to that trail.

  While they continue to look through the footage, I drive down to Park La Brea. I need to go over some parts of the story with Elin again and tell her that we’ve found her friend’s body. This is going to be difficult. Elin seems to be the only one who cares about Karen and it’s going to break her heart.

  I knock on her door and wait a few minutes for her to answer. Just as I’m about to give up, she opens the door with her finger over her mouth, telling me to be quiet.

  “I just put the baby down,” she whispers.

  I nod and tiptoe into the apartment. It’s probably not the best time to tell her the news but I don’t have a choice.

  “I have some bad news,” I say, taking a deep breath. Elin’s eyes grow wide and when I tell her about Karen’s body, she begins to sob, burying her face in her hands.

  It takes her a little bit to compose herself and I give her time before launching into my questioning.

  “I just can’t believe that this has happened.”

  “I was just wondering if you have any idea who she could have been hiking with.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There are some wildlife cameras set up, so the techs are going through the files now. Hopefully, we can get some answers.”

  We talk about it for a little bit and then I get a call. I excuse myself and walk out
onto the patio so I don’t wake up the baby.

  "It's her," Captain Medvil says. “It’s her.”

  A bird flies up and lands on the railing, distracting me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Get out of there!”

  Cold sweat runs down my back.

  I reach for my gun, but then I feel the barrel of the gun at the nape of my neck.

  "Give it to me," Elin says.

  "Elin, what are you doing?" I say, as she reaches, as I freeze.

  She reaches over and puts her hand on my weapon and pulls it out of the holster.

  "You don't need this anymore," she says. "Be very quiet. My baby is sleeping."

  That part is true. She keeps pressing the barrel of her gun to my neck and tells me to walk backward into the living room. She tells me to sit down and stands right across from me holding a 9mm pointed straight at me with one hand and my gun in her other.

  The tears are gone.

  The expression on her face is completely changed. She's like a chameleon.

  There's a harshness to it now, a darkness. The pleasantness and the beauty of the friendly Elin that I had met before has vanished.

  "What are you doing?" I ask.

  She doesn't reply and Captain Medvil’s words run through my mind.

  "It's her,” he says.

  The video, he must have seen it. He must have seen her walking with Karen on that trail.

  "Why are you doing this?" I ask, pretending that I have no knowledge about anything.

  "Don't lie to me, Detective Carr," Elin says. "You've seen the footage on that wildlife cam. I know you have."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," I insist.

  "You're not such a good liar after all."

  She tucks my gun into the waist of her jeans and then holds hers straight out supporting the barrel with her other hand, just like we are taught in the police academy.

  "What are you doing, Elin? Did you kill your friend?"

  "She had it coming," she says, taking me by surprise. She was so good at playing this game.

  Why is she suddenly coming forward? I clench my jaw.