I surrendered, hoping that Monty and Ken would do a better job finding Jeremy than I had. I put my hands to my face and began to sob. Waves of fury and sorrow welled up and I hit the hard ground with the sides of my fists as if I might simply crack it open, allowing it to swallow me into the molten lava deep below. I felt the force of my being pounding the unforgiving earth, and I felt small and useless. The dry dirt simply rose up with the dust as if to mock me.
I put my aching hands to my face and felt my wet cheeks against my palm. Jeremy cannot spend a night out here alone, I kept thinking over and over. I looked through the woods, tall shapes merging into a mass of something so much bigger than me, than Jeremy. I thought of how scared cats bolted into the night and would hole up for days until they felt safe enough to come out. If he went into shock and we didn’t find him, he would not survive the night. I wiped my tears, smearing debris across my face and forcing myself to try to calm down, to focus.
Finally I stood up and looked around. Someone had begun to search in the distance with a flashlight and I was about to yell to them that he wasn’t in this direction, that I’d already checked it out, when I spotted a lighter-colored shape at the base of a tree, not twenty feet away. At first I thought I was imagining it. My eyes were burning and strained, so I wasn’t sure. I went slowly toward it. “Jeremy?” I whispered.
There was no answer.
I went closer, and as I neared, I could see I wasn’t imagining it. It was him. He sat in a bundle, hugging his knees, the side of his face pressed against the trunk as if he could disappear into it. “Oh, Jeremy . . .” I reached both of my hands out toward him as if I was approaching a frightened, stray pet. “I’m so sorry, please just stay right where you are. I’m going to take you to your parents. Don’t move.” My heart pounded with fear that he might run from me.
He sat still, one side of his face alight with the orange glow of the fire, his cheeks wet with tears or sweat and marked with dirt. I knelt beside him. “Jeremy, I’m so, so sorry for what I did. I only did it to get him to come in. I had to make it real so he’d open the padlock.”
He nodded, but he seemed catatonic, and I worried he was going into shock. “Jeremy, I’m going to yell for the others now. Don’t be startled.”
“No,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Don’t leave.”
I reached back for him and he fell sobbing into my arms. I held tight, feeling the ridged bones of his spine. In spite of the heat, his skin felt cold, clammy. The orange and red flames shuddered in my vision, and my blood pulsed through me with all the energy of Jeremy’s life, of my life—our ichor. “I won’t leave you,” I said and began to cry with him. I stroked his hair while he clutched my wet, sweaty T-shirt. “I’m so, so sorry, Jeremy. I’m so very, very sorry.”
34
* * *
Monty
I’D GONE IN expecting a fight with Combs. I had walked through all the aisles with my gun and flashlight, Ken behind me for backup. When we finally reached the cage at the back of the enormous plant, I saw Combs lying on his back, motionless inside a filthy cage. I carefully approached, Ken still covering me. I gave the pastor a kick to the leg, but he didn’t flinch, so I checked his pulse and realized he was still alive.
I cuffed him anyway to be safe, sent Ken out into the woods to search for the boy, and waited for the paramedics. They came quickly—within minutes—since almost all of them from the valley were on standby on the north end because of the fires.
By the time we got Combs out, more backup had arrived, and I organized a quick grid to begin searching through the woods to help Ken and Gretchen. I headed to the north of the plant near the base of Teakettle Mountain, calling out both their names. I had seen the boy for only a flash, but when he ran by, he seemed to be heading in that direction.
I ran until I got to the denser part of the forest, sweeping my flashlight through the tall pines. Ash fell around me and my beam lit it up like snowflakes. My breathing was too fast in the smoke, and it made me hack. I stumbled my way through the tangled brush and the lumpy roots of the forest floor. I felt extremely relieved to have Combs in our custody, but fear for Jeremy mushroomed inside me. That we’d found his captor at all was more than I’d hoped for, but I had a sinking feeling, the irony that after all of this, we might lose him again. That he might never return from these angry woods.
I brushed the thought away and kept my beam low and wide, straining to see through the cloudy darkness. The hot wind poured out from the canyon. I went up a small knoll, and when I reached the other side, I thought I heard whimpering. I strained to block out the other sounds: the men calling out to one another, the helicopter blades slicing the sky, sirens in the distance. I was certain I heard someone weeping.
I quieted my breathing myself and listened for the direction. When I figured it out, I went there, my light skimming across the trunks of trees until finally I caught a glimpse of two bodies hunched at the base of a large pine. My first instinct was that these were two horribly wounded individuals, but I could make out Gretchen and I knew she wasn’t so wounded that she couldn’t run.
I called her name, but as I got closer and could see them desperately clutching each other, I walked over and gently reached out and touched both of their shoulders. Even in the heat, I could feel they both had become cold. Jeremy had begun to shake, and Gretchen’s teeth clattered, which told me they might both be in shock. Her eyes looked right past me at first, but after a second, she made eye contact with me. I radioed to Ken that I had found them, then I simply tipped my head to indicate that it was time to get going, time to get out of these woods and to an ambulance.
Gretchen nodded and nudged Jeremy upward. Her legs buckled at first, and I caught her, grabbing her arm to steady her. Then I held Jeremy’s other arm, helping him stand, and directed both of them toward the parking lot, where the flashing lights of emergency vehicles waited.
As we walked, I looked out at the hillside across the river. A patch of fire had jumped and blazed on a small plot of land just southwest of Teakettle Mountain. The flames snaked up the trees in a great flourish. Firemen surrounded it, hoses spitting great fans of water across the wilderness, keeping it back from the toxic plant.
Because of the fire, I instinctively wanted to rush them, but I didn’t dare. They both seemed too fragile and I didn’t want to frighten the boy any more than he already had been. Jeremy clutched Gretchen’s shirt the entire way, and when the paramedics met us on our way back with a stretcher and led Jeremy to it, he wouldn’t let go of her. She walked by his side to the parking lot, and when they loaded Jeremy up, they took Gretchen too, deciding it was best if she stayed next to him.
I wanted to ride with them, to hold their hands and tell them both that all would be okay, but I couldn’t. I had statements to give to the feds about the apprehension of Combs. I would have to meet them at the hospital afterward.
I could tell Gretchen had been shaken deeply, and as for Jeremy, I didn’t want to contemplate the overwhelming sadness I saw in his eyes. But I also sensed he had parents who—regardless of the strains between them—would do all that they could to make his reentry into life as gentle as possible.
35
* * *
Gretchen
AT THE ER, they separated Jeremy and me, and got right to the examinations. Jeremy had been too weak to protest when my hand finally left his. They took me to a private room, began checking my blood pressure, my pupils, my ears, and my heart, and took some blood. A nurse cleaned the cuts on my face, including the old one I’d gotten from sleepwalking the other night, and butterflied the newer ones. When the doctor came in, I assured her I’d only lost consciousness for a small amount of time, and that I didn’t need a scan, but it didn’t matter. She sent me to radiology for a CAT scan to rule out a traumatic brain injury and for X-rays of my left shoulder.
When the scan ruled out a subdural hematoma, the nurse made su
re I was comfortable and gave me a painkiller. I had begun to shiver from the trauma, and she placed heated blankets on me and hooked me up to an IV because they insisted that I’d become dehydrated from shock and smoke exposure. I wondered about Jeremy—thinking that if I, who’d been in the plant for only the better part of a day, experienced dehydration, Jeremy must be much worse off. When I asked her about him, she said she’d let me know how he was doing as soon as she found out. She then brought me two packs of ice, for my shoulder and my throbbing head, and told me to get some rest.
“No,” I said, “I can’t.” I immediately pictured myself roaming through the halls of the hospital like a zombie, but my mind and my body felt weighted with a thousand stones pulling me into sleep. “I have a sleep dis . . . ,” I slurred. “I can’t, I can’t . . . sleep here.”
“What’s that, honey?” the nurse asked.
“I need someone to make sure I don’t sleepwalk,” I said.
“Oh, okay, honey, we’ll do that, but I don’t think you need to worry.” She smiled kindly at me. I fell asleep, unable to move, and later when I woke to the nurse shaking my arm, I heard voices in the corridor.
I opened my eyes slowly, my head still foggy with painkillers, and turned to look at her. I could barely move my head because my neck was so sore. “How’s Jeremy?” I asked.
“He’s fine,” she said. “But there’s some folks here who need to talk to you, that’s why I’ve woken you. Are you okay to talk?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.”
Monty and Ali came in, both wearing close-lipped smiles. “How’s our star?” Monty asked.
“Oh, please,” I said.
“Gretchen,” Ali said, “are you feeling up to giving us a statement?”
I tried to nod, but it hurt. “Yes. I’m fine.”
The nurse raised my bed so I could face them. Monty told me to take my time, and Ali turned on a recorder. “Do you think you can take us through it? Every detail?”
“Of course,” I said, my voice scratchy. I cleared my throat. “I’d been looking at samples from the gas and brake pedals in the Chevy,” I began and slowly told them everything, from the moment I left the dump and arrived at the plant until I kicked Combs.
“So you kicked him and he fell? That’s how he hit his head?”
“I think that’s what happened.” I said. “It’s kind of a blur, but I was kicking him like crazy. He’d hit me in the face, and I saw him reach for the leg of the stool I’d unscrewed, but I got to it first. I tried swinging at his head, but missed. I was still on the floor and he’d gotten to a standing position, so I kicked him as hard as I could with both legs and knocked him back away from me so I could get up. He stumbled and fell back, crashing his head on the base of the vat. I saw blood, and he went limp, and that’s when I ran outside and found Monty and Ken.”
I told them about how I went into the woods to find Jeremy. I skipped the parts about crying and hitting the ground. It wasn’t their business. I told them how I spotted Jeremy by the tree, and how when I went to call for help he grabbed me and we stayed that way until Monty found us huddled against the tree.
“Were you disoriented at that time?”
I swallowed, trying to think of how to answer the question. I knew she was trying to figure out why I just stayed with the boy and didn’t get help or try to get him out of the dangerous woods. “I saw the flashlights from the men looking,” I said. “Jeremy looked like he was going into shock. I didn’t think it was wise to move him on my own and I knew help was coming.”
Both of them stared at me as if they weren’t sure they were satisfied with my answer. Then Monty said, “Well, given the trauma, the shock, the fire, it’s completely understandable that you’d do exactly as the boy requested of you, which was to stay with him. And you were right, we found you quickly.”
“Okay then.” Ali turned off her recorder, and Monty put away his notebook.
“My turn,” I said.
“Shoot,” Ali said.
“How’s Jeremy?”
“He’s fine. Sedated. His level of shock was more severe than yours and he’s dehydrated as well. He’s sleeping and his parents are by his side.”
“And Combs?”
“In the ICU. Pretty serious head injury. We’re not sure if he’ll make it yet, but that’s not something you need to worry about. If he makes it, he makes it. If he doesn’t, well, that’s just the way it goes. We’re hoping he does, though. We have questions, as you can imagine.”
“Do you think he’s done this before? The way he went on, when he said that he needed to prove himself again, it sounded like he had.”
“It seems that you might not only be a hero, but a damn good detective as well,” Monty said. He told me about the notes in the Bible at Combs’s house and how the years matched the ones I’d pointed out to Monty that night at his place. They told me Combs’s house would be searched as soon as the IC gave the go-ahead to cross the canyon. In the meantime, there was nothing we could do but hope the house didn’t burn down along with all the evidence that might be in it.
“And,” Monty said, “I hate to inform you, but you won’t be working that scene. Ridgeway’s called, told us to tell you he’ll visit in the morning after you’ve had some rest, but he said to make sure you knew that you will be taking a few days off at least.”
I frowned. “I already took a day off, and I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Monty smiled. “Getting samples at an abandoned aluminum plant is not exactly R&R.”
I sighed, but I wasn’t done with my questions. “And Wendy?”
“She’s up next,” Ali said. “Speaking of which, we should get going.” She reached out and tapped my arm twice with the ends of her fingers as if she was testing my reflexes, probably the warmest gesture I was going to get from her. “We’re glad you’re okay, Gretchen. And,” she added, “we’re really glad you found that boy.”
“Thank you,” I said right before the nurse knocked, saying it really was time that I got some more rest.
“Couldn’t agree more.” Monty followed Ali toward the door. Right before he exited, he turned to Ali. “One sec,” he said to her. “I’ll catch up to you.”
He came over to my bed. “Gretchen,” he said. Something else welled in his eyes, a look I’d never seen on his face before—a mixture of empathy, curiosity, and understanding. It stunned me momentarily because the last time I’d seen that look was on my doctor in Norway.
“What is it?” I said.
He pursed his lips, still studying me with his eyes, then shook his head as if to shake all thoughts away. “Nothing,” he said. “You just take care. I’d like to get your car for you. From the plant. Your keys in here?” He went to the chair on which Ali had dropped my pack and picked it up.
“Front pocket,” I said, my head still spinning from the look he’d given me.
Monty dug around in the pack, pulling out the plastic bag with the belt buckle. “What’s this?”
“Oh,” I said, my throat scratchy again. I took a sip of water. “That’s the buckle from the dig I wanted to show you.”
Monty went quiet, tilting the bag around to look at it. Then as if suddenly deflated, he slumped into the chair.
“What’s wrong?”
Monty didn’t speak at first, just looked at me with an anguished look, then out the window behind me. I knew there was nothing out there but a dark night accented with yellow streetlights and a parking lot full of cars. “I do remember this.” He held the Baggie in his palm as if it were heavier than it was, his hand sinking from the weight. “I didn’t realize it when you said it on the phone, but seeing it now, in front of me. The colors. It’s, of course . . . Nathan.” He sighed with affection. “Now I remember, he was so psyched when he mail-ordered this.”
I tried to push off the bed and sit straight up, but my neck and
shoulder screamed at me and I sunk back into the hospital bed. “Monty,” I said. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. But it would never hold up in court. How many kids had these belt buckles back then?”
“I’m sure a lot, but still, with those dates on the note and given the location in relation to Combs’s house, it’s pretty clear, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Let’s hope he lives so that we can verify all this, for the Faraways, for the Ericksons.”
Monty stared at me, that wounded, beautiful look swimming back into his dark eyes. He stood up and came over to me. “Gretchen, listen to me. If this guy doesn’t make it and we can’t question him, you will not blame yourself. Do you understand?”
He spoke to me like I was a child, and for a moment, I felt anger, but it was very quickly replaced by relief. The words were so simple—so parental, and I’d never been spoken to that way, ever. “Understand?” he repeated. “You’ve carried enough of that load, already.”
I froze at his words. I knew he knew, but I didn’t want to ask. I wasn’t ready to discuss it, not while I lay like a wounded bird in a hospital bed. If I said anything, I’d cry.
Finally, when he realized he wasn’t going to get an answer from me, he reached out and softly brushed my forehead with his knuckles. “I’ll tell the nurse in charge to make sure you sleep soundly,” he said, holding up my keys. “I’ll take care of your car, okay?”
I nodded.
“And I’ll check on you later.” He gave me a wink and left.
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