Difficult Run

by John Dibble

  By the fourth day, M.J. was beginning to lose hope that the trail camera would produce a picture of an ape. She removed the memory card and took it to Dodd’s office. There were more pictures of deer grazing in the meadow and they scrolled through the familiar scenes.

  Suddenly, Dodd said, “Wait a minute, what’s that?”

  Behind the grazing deer was a dark shape atop the rock outcropping, just beyond the range of the full flash. Its eyes appeared as two bright spots. Dodd enlarged that portion of the image.

  The grainy outline of a figure was clearly visible and it looked like an ape walking on all fours across the rocks—what M.J. recalled from her visit to the zoo was known as “knuckle walking.”

  “That’s what I’ve been waiting for,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  M.J. CONTINUED GOING TO THE PARK every morning, retrieving the memory card from the trail camera and, together with Dodd, looking at the images from the night before in the hope that there would be a better picture of an ape. After that, she would usually go for a run, shower and change, and drive to Anacostia Station to work on what she hoped would be her final report on the murder cases.

  One afternoon, she received a call from Dodd. “Doc’s funeral is going to be the day after tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.,” he said. “Sorry for such short notice, but another funeral got postponed and my friend at Arlington National Cemetery got Doc’s put on the schedule in its place. I’m going to keep just a couple of rangers here at the park and everybody else plans on attending.”

  “You know I’ll be there; my partner Jake, too,” she replied.

  On the day of the funeral, she and Jake put on their dress blue uniforms and drove together to Arlington. Six sailors in dress whites lined up as pallbearers and carried the flag-draped casket to the gravesite. A Navy chaplain said a few words about Doc’s service to his country and how he had been taken from this life by a senseless act. He exhorted everyone to remember his life as one of sacrifice for his fellow man.

  M.J. stood by the grave listening to the chaplain, but thinking about Doc and Lola. When taps was played by a lone bugler, M.J. saluted along with everyone else, but found herself crying quietly. Dodd, who stood next to her, also had tears rolling down his face, as did several of the rangers.

  At the conclusion of the service, the flag was folded by the sailors and the chaplain brought it to M.J. and Dodd. They received it together, but Dodd turned to M.J. and said, “You take this . . . Doc and Lola would want you to have it.” She hugged Dodd and put the flag firmly under her arm. “Thank you,” she said.

  Jake drove M.J. back to her apartment. She carefully placed the folded flag in a dresser drawer, changed out of her dress uniform and into her work clothes, and left for Anacostia Station.

  She was on her third draft of the report, which was close to forty pages long, not including attached copies of Fairfax County Police reports, Fire and Rescue reports, autopsy reports, crime scene pictures, Zerk’s forensic reports, the picture provided by Dr. Peterson, and the trail camera picture. She had decided that unless the trail camera produced a better picture of an ape in the next few days, she was going to file the report and ask for a meeting with Swain.

  By the end of the week, the trail camera had taken close to fifty more pictures, none of which included an ape. M.J. worked late Friday and into the night on Saturday. She finished the report early Sunday morning and called Jake around 6:00 a.m.

  “I’ll buy you breakfast. Pick you up in fifteen minutes,” she said.

  She brought a copy of the report with her and handed it to Jake. “Here’s some homework for you,” she said. “When we’re finished eating, I’d like for you to take it to your apartment and read it. I’ll check in later and you can tell me what you think.”

  She dropped Jake off at his apartment and went to hers to take a much-needed nap. She woke up around 4:00 p.m. and called Jake. He had finished reading the report and she went over to his apartment.

  “Well, what do you think?” she asked.

  “You did a great job, M.J.,” he said. “I don’t know what else you could have put in the report. It’s still going to be a tough sell with Swain, but you have to try anyway.”

  “I know that,” she replied. “I plan to turn it in tomorrow morning and ask for a meeting after he’s read it. I want you to come to the meeting, too, and back me up.”

  “You know I will,” he said, looking at his watch. “How about an early dinner—on me?”

  “It’s a deal,” she said.

  By unspoken agreement, they did not discuss the cases or the report during dinner. Instead, they concentrated on enjoying each other’s company, which included small talk about their families and friends. After dinner, they returned to Jake’s apartment where they spent the night together.

  M.J. arose before dawn the next morning, returned to her apartment, showered and changed into her work clothes. She arrived at Anacostia Station before roll call and handed a copy of the report to Tony Lauretta.

  “This is for the Lieutenant,” she said. “Jake and I would like to meet with him after he’s read it.”

  “Well, if investigations were measured by the pound,” he said, hefting the report, “this has to be one of the most thorough I’ve ever been handed. I’ll let you guys know about the meeting.”

  After roll call, M.J. drove to the park, went running and retrieved the memory card from the trail camera on her way back to the Visitor Center. After showering and changing clothes, she stopped by Dodd’s office and they looked at the pictures from the night before. There were only pictures of more deer, two foxes, and a large owl that had flown by the camera.

  “I turned in my report this morning,” she told Dodd. “Probably meet with the Lieutenant tomorrow.”

  “I hope that goes well,” Dodd said. “We need to do something before there’s another murder. I even thought about taking this up through Park Service channels myself, but they would just say it’s a police matter. Might even call your Lieutenant and piss him off.”

  “I think you’re right about that. He’s not the kind that would appreciate having somebody try to cut around him,” she replied. “Besides, it’s my case and my problem for now. No reason to hang your ass out yet. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.”

  The next morning, Tony Lauretta came up to M.J. and Jake before roll call. “Lieutenant wants to meet with you guys at ten,” he said.

  “Did you read the report, Tony?” M.J. asked.

  “I did,” he responded.

  “What did you think of it?” M.J. asked.

  “Well, M.J., it’s really something and a fine piece of detective work,” he said, “but that’s just my opinion and the Lieutenant has the final say.”

  “I know that, Tony, but I appreciate your opinion,” M.J. replied.

  At ten o’clock she and Jake went into Swain’s office. He was sitting behind his desk and motioned them to the two chairs in front of it. The report was lying on the desk in front of him.

  “I read your report very carefully. It’s a hell of a story,” he said. “Let me ask you this, though: Even if everything in it is true, isn’t this a job for Fairfax County Animal Control?” He wasn’t smiling.

  M.J. was incredulous.

  “Animal Control! Animal Control!” she exclaimed. “This isn’t a raccoon caught in a chimney or the neighbor’s dog shitting on someone’s lawn. This is a creature that’s killed three people on our watch and God knows how many before that!”

  “Now calm down, Detective,” Swain said. “Let’s take a look at the evidence you’ve got—and I think you’ll agree it’s all pretty circumstantial. This whole theory of yours started with a story about two apes released into the forest in Great Falls Park in what”—he paged through the report—“1936. Then you’ve got a suspicious death in 1942 where the M.E. is second-guessing the county coroner and says it’s the same cause of death we’ve been dealing with in the last year.”

  “It’s als
o consistent with the way these apes kill their enemies,” M.J. interjected.

  “That may be true,” Swain continued, “but it still assumes the 1942 death was from the same cause as the recent ones. It also assumes that this ape—or its ancestor—was the killer in both cases. That’s a lot of assumptions.”

  “But what about all of the unexplained deaths in between?” M.J. asked.

  “Well, I don’t agree that all of those deaths are unexplained or at least unexplainable,” Swain replied. “Working backwards, you’ve got an amateur ornithologist that the EMS guys said broke his neck when he fell into some rocks—and, of course, he was cremated, so we can’t confirm your theory with an autopsy. Then you’ve got some drunks who were probably so tanked that they fell in the water and drowned, a photographer from the city who didn’t know his way around in the woods, and a couple of fishermen who probably got their lures caught on something, went in to retrieve them and got swept away in the current—hell, I’m always having to go after lures when I fish.”

  “But what about the sightings and the picture?” M.J. asked impatiently.

  “Let’s see,” Swain said. “You’ve got a sighting of some dark figure in the woods by a homeless Vietnam vet, who was probably drunk at the time . . . ”

  “Doc didn’t drink,” M.J. interrupted.

  “Be that as it may,” Swain continued, “he could have just seen some guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt out in the rain. And by the way, Detective, you were allowing that guy to camp illegally on federal park land—we’ll be talking about that later.”

  “And what about the couple that saw an ape-like creature on Difficult Run?” M.J. asked.

  “They reported that they saw a bear and it probably was a bear,” Swain said. “I think they just imagined the gorilla face.”

  “But there’s a trail camera picture!” M.J. exclaimed.

  “There’s a trail camera picture of something, I’ll grant you that, but it’s hard to say what it is. It could be a bear,” Swain replied.

  “It’s too early in the year for bears to be in the park and bears don’t walk that way,” M.J. said.

  “Look, Detective, the picture is just of the outline of something on a rock. I don’t think you or anybody else can say for sure what it is,” Swain said. “Now, what are you recommending that we do?”

  “Close the park and get some people in there who know how to track these things and either capture or kill them,” M.J. replied.

  “That, Detective, would require that I go up through our chain of command to the Chief, who would then have to go to the Director of the Park Service and tell him that we think Bigfoot is loose in Great Falls Park . . . and that’s not going to happen,” Swain said. He paused. “Jake, I haven’t heard anything from you. What do you think about all of this?”

  Jake cleared his throat and said, “Well, I think you’ve got some good points there, Lieutenant.”

  M.J. turned and scowled at Jake.

  Swain nodded and continued, “Here’s the bottom line: You’ve got thirty days to either come up with some better proof of your theory or find another solution. After that, I’m going to try and palm this off on the FBI and get it off my desk. That’s it for now.” He stood to signal the end of the meeting.

  M.J. and Jake stood, but before leaving M.J. said, “If we don’t do something now, Lieutenant, more people are going to be murdered and we’ll be responsible for it.”

  Swain didn’t reply and M.J. and Jake left his office, closing the door behind them.

  Outside, M.J. turned to Jake and said “Thanks for backing me up, you prick!”

  She turned to walk away and Jake said, “But M.J., I . . . ”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  M.J. DROVE TO GREAT FALLS PARK and went running. She pushed herself for a full six miles, a lot of it uphill. By the time she returned to the locker room, she had calmed, but hadn’t eliminated, the anger she felt toward Swain and Jake. In the case of Jake, she thought, there was also an equal measure of hurt feelings and disappointment. He had completely let her down and she didn’t think she could ever forgive him for that.

  As soon as she entered Dodd’s office, she remembered that she had forgotten to get the memory card from the camera.

  “I forgot to check the camera,” she said. “I’ll go back and get the memory card.”

  Dodd noticed that she seemed upset and said, “I’ll walk with you and you can tell me what happened this morning.”

  As they walked toward Mather Gorge, she told him about the meeting with Swain and the thirty-day ultimatum.

  “Damn!” he said. “Well, all we can do is keep checking the camera and hope for a break.”

  They swapped memory cards and went back to Dodd’s office. The pictures from the night before were of the usual collection of park animals, but no ape.

  When M.J. arrived for roll call the next morning, someone had placed a toy gorilla on her desk and when she sat down its eyes started flashing and its arms started beating its chest. She could hear muffled laughter from the other cubicles—all male. She wanted to stand up and start yelling obscenities, but decided against it. Instead, she turned off the toy and unceremoniously dropped it in her wastebasket.

  Tony Lauretta appeared at the entrance to her cubicle. “What the hell’s going on M.J.?” he asked.

  She pointed to her wastebasket and said, “Some of the guys thought that would be cute.”

  Lauretta leaned down and picked up the toy gorilla. At roll call, he held it up and said, “One of you kids seems to have lost a toy. Now I’m going to keep it for you so you don’t hurt yourself on any of the moving parts.” He paused and said, “If any of you think this was funny, I’m here to tell you that this was one of the most unprofessional things I’ve ever seen and totally disrespectful of a fellow officer. If anything like this happens again, you’ll be dealing with me. Is that understood?”

  They all nodded their heads and none of the male officers, except Jake, would even look at M.J. All of the women officers looked her way and smiled.

  After roll call, Jake came up and tried to talk to M.J. She turned and walked away.

  M.J. went to Tony Lauretta’s desk and thanked him. “Don’t mention it,” he said, “just doing my job.” As she turned to leave, he added, “You’re a good detective, M.J. You keep on this.”

  The trail camera produced nothing of use for the next week and M.J. and Dodd were becoming more discouraged with each passing day. When M.J. went to the park the following morning, the sky was becoming overcast and as she entered Dodd’s office he said, “We may have a problem developing. I just checked the weather reports and there’s a large storm that’s been stalled for almost two days over what they call the Potomac Highlands—that’s a large area in Virginia, West Virginia and Western Maryland that feeds the river. It’s dropping one to two inches of rain an hour and if that keeps up we’ll have flooding down here for sure.”

  “How long before that happens?” she asked.

  “The River Desk at the National Weather Service says we should start to see the river rising late this afternoon and that it will probably reach flood stage late tonight or early tomorrow morning,” he replied.

  “Can I check back with you later today?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  M.J. drove to Anacostia Station and shuffled through some papers on her desk, not really reading any of them. Just after four in the afternoon, she called Dodd.

  “What’s the latest on the river?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s come up quite a bit already,” he replied. “The River Desk says flood stage will start about 2 a.m.”

  “How about Mather Gorge?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’ll be to the top a lot earlier, midnight at the latest,” he said.

  She thanked him for the information.

  “M.J.,” he said, “don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t
,” she replied. “See you tomorrow.”

  She sat at her desk thinking for a while, then walked to Jake’s desk and found the Nikon camera he kept in one of its drawers. He had already gone for the day, so she left a note on his desktop that said “Borrowed your camera – M.J.”

  She went to her apartment and microwaved a frozen dinner. When she had finished eating about half of it, she lay down on her bed and set the alarm.

  The alarm went off at 1:00 a.m. and she went into her bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face, put on her hiking shoes and looked outside. It was drizzling, so she found her black rain slicker. Before she put it on, she checked the ammo magazine in her gun and the two spares she carried on her belt.

  There was almost no traffic on the drive to the Difficult Run parking lot, which was empty. She put the camera strap around her neck and zipped up the rain slicker, then opened the trunk of her car and removed a heavy flashlight from its bracket. It was still drizzling and the cloud cover was thick enough to obscure all but occasional glints of moonlight. She switched on the flashlight and started toward Difficult Run.

  She alternated between illuminating the trail and the wooded hillside to her left with the flashlight, walking slowly enough to sweep the beam back and forth several times every few feet. It took her close to an hour to reach the end of the trail where the stream emptied into the Potomac. She could hear the water crashing against the rock walls that lined the right-angle turn at the bottom of Mather Gorge.

  She had not seen or heard anything on her walk down the trail. This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, she thought. Maybe Swain was right and there isn’t any ape. Maybe I just started looking at everything through one filter and made it come out the way I wanted.