Where the Lost Girls Go

by R. J. Noonan

  At least that part was true.

  “One reporter from our Portland affiliate suggests that the answers lie in the miles of forest surrounding the Jameson property, an area known as Stafford Woods.”

  In a blink Natalie was on the screen—my best friend Natalie—standing before a dense copse of fir trees, all silvery green needles and strong brown vertical lines.

  Nat was freakin’ adorable on camera. It concerned me that she was covering my case, but there was no denying my excitement for her, getting national exposure.

  “Many people in the Portland area have fond memories of Stafford Woods, the local forest named after Oregon’s poet laureate William Stafford.” Natalie’s jacket was open at the top, her hood casually flopped toward one shoulder. She made it look easy. “We may recall field trips or hikes, kayaking on the Willamette or attending the holiday concert at the Grove. But lately the woods have wielded a twofold menace: a threat for local residents who express concern about a band of roving indigents. And the mysterious death of a young woman in a fiery car crash that is still under investigation.”

  The report was intriguing and a bit poetic. When I looked over at Andy, I noticed that he was watching, too.

  “See that?” Sgt. Stanford said. “This is already big news, and she doesn’t even know that the driver of the car was one of the Lost Girls.” He turned to Andy. “No one in the media knows that we have you in custody, but they will soon. Everybody’s going to know your name.”

  “You’ll give them my name?” he asked, his eyes bleary and pink now. “So everyone’s going to find out about this? My parole officer, too?”

  “An arrest is public record,” I said.

  “That’s right, son,” the sergeant said, taunting Andy. “You’re going to be on TV and in the papers. They’ll have access to your mugshot. You’re a notorious outlaw now.”

  A loud breath hissed out of Andy as he doubled over as far as the handcuff would allow.

  “You’ll have a chance to make your case,” I said, wishing the sergeant wasn’t riding him so much. “You can prove that you weren’t involved with Kyra. Explain why you had photos of a naked fifteen-year-old in the attic.”

  “I told you, I never saw those photos before. I don’t know who put them there.”

  “Just make sure you tell your lawyer that.” I went back to typing up my report.

  “Do I at least get to call Heather?”

  “One phone call.”

  Andy groaned and dropped his head to his chest. “Well, eff me.”

  17

  “As you know, it’s rare for me as the mayor to be making this sort of announcement in a community like Sunrise Lake.” Mayor Ron Redmond paused to scan the crowd, his owlish eyes stern behind his reading glasses before continuing. Our mayor had always struck me as a crabby, dried-out prune of a man, popular because he did not upset the status quo. Today I saw the appeal in a staunch father figure, someone who could reassure people that justice would forge on despite tragic events.

  I had never been quite so close to Mayor Redmond, and I didn’t like feeling that eyes and cameras were focused on me. From where I stood on the stage, lined up with half a dozen cops, I didn’t want to eyeball the audience of reporters and community leaders, so the mayor was the most likely focal point.

  “To hold two press conferences in one day is probably unprecedented in our peace-loving community,” Redmond said with a note of sadness, “but here we are. Chief Cribben has information on the identity of the victim of the Stafford Road car crash, so I’m going to turn the podium over to him.” The mayor stepped back and motioned to the police chief at front of the line of cops.

  I watched blandly as Buzz Cribben swaggered forward, the medals on his dress uniform glimmering like a Christmas tree. Frazier once mentioned that there used to be a time when you could write yourself up for a medal for helping an old lady cross a street. Cribben had obviously been on the beat during that time.

  Even the goofballs like Brown and Rivers stood at attention as the chief walked by on his way to the mike. Not so much out of respect but out of awareness that all four major news networks from Portland had cameras rolling.

  From Brown’s face, I couldn’t tell if he had gotten dressed down by the lieutenant yet. When we had gone over the results of the canvassing in Stafford Woods, Brown and Garcia had been conspicuously absent. Rumor was they’d left the woods early because people weren’t answering their doors. But the story from Rivers and Frazier was altogether different.

  “Everyone we ran into was eager to talk,” Rivers said. “But not to Garcia and Brown. They’ve been assigned up on the hill a long time but got nothing to show for it.”

  “Yeah, the residents feel like Garcia and Brown have been shit-canning their complaints, running interference for the Jamesons,” Frazier explained. “All these people, the neighbors, they’re very respectful of the Jamesons. Everyone says the Jamesons are great neighbors, quiet and all. You can tell no one wants to say anything against them. No problems with the Jamesons, but they’re pretty angry about those hobo kids in Stafford Woods.”

  “We talked to a lady, Marge Bloom, who’s seen bands of homeless cut across her property. Gypsys, she calls them,” Rivers said, reading from his notebook. “Says they have an old covered truck they use, but she’s caught them taking apples and pears from her tree. Not that she minds so much, but she doesn’t like them trespassing. You know, a woman living alone. She’s locking her doors now.”

  “She should,” Omak said. “Why didn’t she call us? I would have sent a car out.”

  “She says she called twice in the past year.” Frazier’s lip curled in annoyance. “Garcia and Brown came out and talked to her, but nothing ever changed.”

  “They never filed a report, Lou,” Rivers added. “I checked.”

  From the hard set of Omak’s jaw, we could all see that this was a problem. But Brown stood onstage, badge gleaming in the lights, and Garcia had supposedly taken sick time for a dentist appointment. Right, I thought. Spontaneous root canal.

  I got a whiff of a citrusy cologne as Cribben walked by. Was the perfume compensation for his nickname? I stifled a smile and forced myself to focus on the moment. With a square jaw and salt-and-pepper hair, the chief was one of those men who had probably gotten better looking as he got older. Those bright teeth made me want to reach for my sunglasses.

  “As the mayor said, these are highly unusual circumstances for Sunrise Lake. My team of investigators has identified the victim of yesterday’s car crash as Kyra Miller, a fifteen-year-old girl from Salem. Her name may sound familiar because she is included in the group of so-called Lost Girls, the young women who have gone missing from the Portland area.”

  Although I knew for a fact that Omak had written the script, the police chief and mayor did all the talking. Funny that they called it a press conference when there would be no conferring going on. Cribben had once told a reporter that the last thing he wanted to do was answer a bunch of stupid questions.

  “At this time we are ruling the crash that took the life of Kyra Miller as a suspicious death, and as such it is being investigated by our very capable police force. We do not know how Ms. Miller obtained access to Kent Jameson’s vehicle, and we are investigating Ms. Miller’s connection to the Jameson family.”

  I clamped my teeth together at the bullshit of that statement.

  We knew that Kyra Miller got access to the car with a key from the garage. She had been living with the Jamesons.

  Why didn’t the chief include this information? Probably because he wanted to protect the Jamesons’ reputation.

  “Kyra Miller was an orphan,” Cribben continued. “She was in the care of the state of Oregon’s foster system for nearly a decade. We believe she arrived in Portland during the past year . . .”

  We had been told not to eyeball the audience, but I couldn’t help but scan the faces of the two dozen or so people in the sterile meeting room. Natalie had to be here; with h
er story hitting the five o’clock news, she would definitely be hot on the trail of developments.

  Azula Parks, a petite female reporter from channel six, sat in the first row, nodding attentively. Among the clusters of camera crews was a heavyset bearded man who wrote a column for the Oregonian as well as Sunrise Lake’s colorful veteran reporter Marigold Chase, decked out in a turquoise hat that matched the collar of her blazer.

  At last I found Natalie standing at the back of the pack, still zipped into her jacket and cradling a paper coffee cup. Had she just come in from the cold? Knowing Nat, she’d returned to those wild Stafford acres to search for her story. I wished I’d been able to traipse through the woods with Nat. I’ll bet she hadn’t turned back at the first sign of rain and scratchy brambles, like most of the officers Omak had sent out to canvas the woods.

  “It was pouring out there,” Garcia had said. “I couldn’t see a foot in front of my face, and then we started running out of trail. Brown wanted to head back, and I didn’t argue with that.”

  With nearly twenty years on the job, Brown had seniority, and he never let us forget it. Along with his police skills, he had finely honed the ability to do as little work as possible.

  Now the chief was finally acknowledging the rumor that had drawn the media here. “We do have a suspect in custody in relation to Kyra Miller’s death. Andrew Greenleaf has been arrested for parole violation.” Cribben lifted his eyes from the paper and gave the crowd a mournful look. “No further comments. Thank you for your time.”

  “Chief!” a handful of reporters called in unison.

  “Just one question!”

  “Is the suspect being charged with homicide?”

  “How did the victim die? Cause of death?”

  The corners of Cribben’s mouth curled slightly as he held up a manicured hand to stop the questions. He was enjoying this. “That’s all, folks.”

  * * *

  “Nat!” I descended the stage and waved her over. There would be no hugging in the precinct, but we could chat. “You made the national news. I was doing paperwork so I saw the whole thing. Very impressive.”

  “Thanks. It’s kind of a fluke that the network picked it up, but what a story. I’m psyched.”

  I lowered my voice. “By the way, you looked amazing. Perfect hair.” Natalie had a thing about her hair, which she complained was too thin and flat. She’d taken to back-combing it underneath so that it puffed up on top, sort of like that mound atop Malibu Barbie’s head. I found that it had a warping effect, but it was supposed to elongate the face.

  “Did I?” She grinned. “Thanks. It was thrilling to have the network pick up our coverage, but it’s sort of a nonstory unless I can get an interview with one of the campers. I gotta tell you, I am fascinated by those hippie campers.”

  “Same! I’m dying to talk to their leader, but I understand they move whenever someone gets too close. Some people think they’ve been eluding society for more than a year. Have you found them yet?”

  “I’m getting close, working some connections. I met a kid who knows the Prince,” Natalie said with raised eyebrows. “If I could snag them, I’d have the juiciest interview Sunrise Lake has seen in twenty years. My source tells me he knew Kyra Miller.”

  He did, I thought as goose bumps rose on my arms. Natalie was closer to a big story than she realized.

  “But even if that doesn’t pan out, the story of young hippies living off the land in a prosperous suburb will appeal to weird Portland. It’s all I can think about. And you know I can be a stubborn bitch when I want to.”

  “Uh-huh.” We both laughed, and I gave her a prod with my elbow. “You’re a Taurus. The stampeding bull.”

  “And I’m not backing down until I get a face-to-face with the woods people.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” Frazier interrupted. “Chasing down people who don’t want to be found. That never works. And if you do manage to corral one of those stinkbugs and get an interview, people here don’t want to sit in their living room and watch some toothless girl talk about the hermit in critter hollow. Portland may be weird, but most people around here fancy themselves way beyond enjoying a hillbilly moment.”

  “Wow.” Natalie folded her arms, checking Frazier out. “I’m feeling the burn. I’m Natalie Amichi, and you are one hostile media critic.”

  “This is Zion Frazier,” I said, then introduced Natalie.

  “I’ve heard your name, Officer Frazier.” Natalie extended a hand. “I followed your case with the department. I didn’t know it was resolved.”

  Suddenly icing over, Frazier gave her hand a reluctant shake. “No comment on that.” It was the first time anyone had acknowledged Frazier’s lawsuit against the department. I’d never heard a cop go near it, and Frazier never brought it up. “And don’t call me Frazier. That’s that affected white shrink on TV who gives bad advice. I go by Zion or Z. Your choice.”

  “Okay, Z. Tell me what you know about the band of campers in the woods,” Natalie said.

  “All I’m saying is, if you’re thinking about trying to meet up with those homeless kids, just watch your back. Some of them are mentally ill and some of them are tweakers. They don’t play by the rules.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she said.

  “You’d be better off not going after those runts.”

  “It’s her job,” I said. “She’s going to meet with them if she has the chance.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Everybody wants adventure until it all starts going south. That’s when you call us to save your skin.”

  Zion didn’t seem to realize that Natalie wasn’t a damsel-in-distress type. “Well, I’d like to talk with those campers, too. I’d go with you, Nat, but I know having a cop along would kill the deal on something like this.”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Do you have any background on the Prince?” I asked Nat. “You’ve got to wonder what drives a guy to go survivalist. And to have followers, he must be charismatic. But what’s his real name?”

  “I’ve heard him called Prince Aragon, but when you Google that, you get these medieval cartoons.”

  “His last name begins with a V, something that sounds Dutch,” I said. “That’s all I have so far.”

  Natalie’s eyes sparked. “That’s a start. I heard he comes from a wealthy family up in the Seattle area. My contact said he was in a plane crash as a kid, and he’s never been the same since.”

  “Seriously?” Intrigue sizzled through my body like an electrical current. Fascinating info. I wanted to run to my desk in the squad room and dig deeper. “I wonder if that’s the reason he’s rebelled from society.”

  “He’s just a spoiled brat.” Zion Frazier shook his head in disdain. “All those campers, they’re squatting on state lands. The governor should go in and chase them out, the whole pack of them.”

  “But they’re not hurting anyone by living there,” Natalie pointed out.

  “And it’s not easy to find a dozen or so people hiding in four miles of forest. It’s the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “There are plenty of ways to do it,” Frazier insisted. “Smoke them out. Starve them out. You cut off their clean water and then wait them out.”

  “But they’re people, Frazier,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”

  He sighed. “Political correctness is ruining this job. And listen, if you’re going to partner up with me, you need to call me Z.”

  As Z continued verbally sparring with Natalie, I had a vision of finding those campers in the woods. If one Lost Girl had emerged from the woods, who was to say there wasn’t an entire subculture hiding there, living off the land?

  When I excused myself to return to work, neither Natalie nor Z seemed to notice. Interesting.

  Back at my beat-up desk, I immediately pushed my copy of Andy’s arrest report aside and started plugging in terms to find more on Prince Aragon. Natalie was right about those cartoons. I switched away from the Prince moniker and started searching
for “Seattle survivalist” and “Seattle prince”—also a no go.

  I searched for the top ten wealthiest families in Washington. Well, hello, Bill Gates. Three people on the list were from Microsoft, and then Amazon, Starbucks, and a few other familiar brands. None of the people in the top ten began with V, but then I suspected that the Prince came from more of a low-profile family. Maybe older money but not exceptional.

  So what was exceptional about the Prince’s past?

  In the search bar I typed “Seattle youth in plane crash.”

  Yes!

  Two hits took me to articles about a Seattle boy who had been the only survivor of a flight that had crashed in the mountains on a private Cessna to Canada. When I saw the name Emory Vandenbos, I knew this had to be the one Andy had mentioned. An heir to the Boss Shoes dynasty, Emory had been twelve when the plane crashed, killing the boy’s aunt and uncle and the plane’s pilot. Stranded in the woods, Emory had managed to survive by building small shelters at night and eating wild berries. After almost two weeks, he came to a road, where he waved down a trucker for assistance.

  “Emory Vandenbos,” I whispered, clicking on two black-and-white photos of a boy with serious eyes and thick, brown hair. He’d been twelve when the crash occurred sixteen years ago. That made him twenty-eight now.

  Kind of old to be camping in the woods with a bunch of teenage girls. I wondered if the hippie campers were older than people realized. Or maybe Vandenbos had a fondness for younger girls.

  18

  After a bit more digging on Vandenbos, including a few failed attempts to reach his parents, I put that line of inquiry aside to go over the details of the case. I wanted to be prepared for the meeting with the prosecutor in the morning, and there were still a few loose ends.

  In my e-mail inbox was a message from Andy’s lawyer, Harrison Baylor, indicating that Andy was considering our request. I rolled my eyes. We had collected Andy’s cell phone as evidence, but we needed the passcode to access his data. A clean cell phone would help vindicate him. That had been my proposal. Now that he was stalling, I wondered if the phone contained some incriminating text messages or photos. It was up to Andy now.