Breaking Wild

by Diane Les Becquets

  “Command, go ahead,” Colm said.

  “We’re over a mile in. Negative on any prints or signs of the subject.”

  GPS coordinates were then given, which I knew Colm was marking on the station’s master map.

  Occasionally, Colm’s voice broke the radio’s silence. “Command, Air One. Anything?”

  But the pilot’s report remained the same as everyone else’s.

  The wind bit and stirred beneath my layers of clothing, running currents over my skin, despite the working of my muscles.

  “The weather’s changing,” I told Jeff.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Don’t your ears get cold?” I asked.

  “Frostbite got them years back. I don’t feel a thing.”

  Though we reported in to Colm every half hour or so, we had no news other than the points of our location. Kona picked up no scent either.

  “We’re in the wrong place,” I finally said. “Kona’s not getting anything. Not even a trace from the wind.”

  “Despite these clear skies, some snow fell pretty hard last night,” Jeff said. “Blue Mountain got hit with more than a foot.”

  Blue Mountain was just west and slightly north of Rangely.

  “If she’s covered in snow, then she’s not alive.” I hated the way those words sounded. And yet I felt something true in what I’d said. For the most part, Kona was an air-scent dog, but because of his cadaver training in avalanche certification, he was considered a trailing dog as well. Other than a few earlier traces near the subject’s vehicle, so far Kona wasn’t showing any sign of air scent associated with the subject. If a person was covered by snow—during sleep or unconsciousness or in a state of hypothermia—the person’s body heat would melt some of the accumulation, which, as temperatures dropped, would freeze around the person, sealing off the body’s scent. The subject might then just as well be trapped under frozen water. In those cases, Kona would be of no help. Because of the winds, the low humidity of the West, and the ground’s topography, snow accumulation in a single mile radius could vary dramatically, from a couple of inches where it might have scattered like fine grains of flour, to large mounds or drifts piling up several feet in arroyos and rocky fractures.

  Jeff and Kona and I covered more ground, and after about twenty minutes we came upon one of the oil well disposal pits.

  “Don’t suppose she fell into one of these,” Jeff said.

  “It would have to be a deliberate suicide attempt. And there are much better ways to commit suicide than that,” I told him.

  As we continued on, I felt something taking hold of me—something black and looming. Despite Jeff’s and Kona’s presence, this was pure aloneness. Maybe it was from the thought of someone falling into one of the disposal pits, or maybe it was triggered by the very fact that we were looking for someone missing, someone integral to a community of life. It was the same kind of loneliness I had felt after Brody was gone, a kind of companion, that in some ways I was still afraid to live without.

  More than four hours had passed when Colm made the call. “Command, calling all search teams. We’ve got a large storm pattern due west of here. It’s moving in quicker than we’d thought. Start making your way back to the command station.”

  Each group responded in turn to Colm’s call—Alpha One, Team Two, Team Three, and so on.

  “Colm’s right,” Jeff said. “You can taste the snow. Feel it blowing in.”

  I knew what Jeff was talking about. I tasted it, too, like a faint mineral deposit on the back of my tongue, a cold in my airways that burned metallic. We hiked the two miles to the vehicle and then drove back to the station.

  Kona followed Jeff and me into the command headquarters. A group of people—mostly men, a couple of women—were talking to Colm around one of the tables. Colm motioned Jeff and me over to him. “I want you to meet someone,” he said. “This is Farrell Latour. Amy Raye’s husband.”

  When Farrell said hello, I was surprised by the timbre of his voice, much like a teenage boy’s. He carried a down parka in the crook of his right arm and wore Sorel boots that laced up to his knees. He’d come to find his wife. I was certain the two men from the hunting party had wanted to search as well. I also knew their assistance wouldn’t be allowed. These men weren’t trained in search and rescue, and any fresh track they made would have to be looked at as a potential sign of our missing person.

  The husband had brought pictures. Colm had laid them on the table.

  “This one was taken over the summer,” Farrell said as he pointed to a photo. The woman’s hair was dark blond. She wore a Rockies cap, was holding a bottle of beer. She was smiling coyly, as if teasing the person behind the camera. Her eyes were brown.

  I looked at another picture. The husband picked it up.

  “This is our boy, Trevor. He’s four.” Farrell set the picture down and picked up another one. “This is Julia. She’s twelve.”

  “You have a beautiful family,” Jeff said.

  Farrell laid the picture on the table, still holding on to the photo’s edges.

  “Where are the kids now?” I asked.

  “With my sister,” Farrell said.

  I cupped my hand over his shoulder. I almost said, We’ll find her. Don’t worry. But I couldn’t. What if we didn’t?

  I walked over to the stove, removed my gloves, and began to warm my hands. Jeff joined me. He would be heading home to Dinosaur to get some sleep before the next shift. The rest of the search members would be staying at a hotel in Rangely. I was used to these kinds of unexpected interruptions. They were part of the job. I kept a small duffel bag packed with my necessary toiletries and basic clothing, as well as food for Kona, in the Tahoe.

  “I’ll be back in the morning,” Jeff told me. “Maybe earlier if the storm lets up and Colm sends us out again.”

  “Drive safely,” I said.

  I was sure Jeff sensed my defeat, and I knew he felt it, too. “Hang in there,” he told me.

  I inhaled deeply, letting the warm air from the stove seep into my cold lungs. I hated to admit even to myself that I was tired. But I was. “At this point, that’s all we can do,” I said.

  After Jeff left, I sat on one of the metal folding chairs. Kona sat in front of me. I wrapped my arms around him, buried my nose in his fur. I thought of Amy Raye and her husband before Amy Raye had left home. Imagined him hugging her good-bye, telling her to be safe.

  Colm laid a hand on my head. I was still wearing my fleece hat. He offered me a cup of coffee. “It’s decaf,” he said. “You need your sleep.”

  “You heading to town soon?”

  “Still waiting for two of the containment volunteers to check in.” Colm pulled up a chair beside me and sat down. “I checked with the hunting party. The compass was hers,” Colm said.

  “Any other ideas of what she might have had with her?” I asked.

  “They said she kept waterproof matches in her pack. A fire-starter kit. She would have had her map. They weren’t sure what else.”

  “She wasn’t new to this sort of thing,” I said.

  “No, apparently not. Of course, with this weather, I don’t see how she could get a fire going. Not with the storm we got moving in.” Colm leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, a cup of coffee in his right hand. “There’s something else. A couple of the volunteers were checking out Coal Draw, just west of where you and Jeff were. A big tomcat was following them. One of them turned around and caught the cougar’s eyes with his headlamp before the thing took off.”

  “How close was it?”

  “Twenty yards.”

  “Damn.”

  “I’m just saying.” Colm gulped down his coffee.

  “Did you let the other volunteers know?”

  “It’s one of the reasons I called everyone in.”

  “Th
at’s not a lion’s natural behavior to get that close,” I said.

  “Unless it’s hungry. Snow’s coming early this season. Hunters have already been through the area, firing their guns, scaring off the game.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Colm looked over his shoulder as if making sure the woman’s husband wasn’t anywhere in earshot. Then he stared forward again.

  “He couldn’t even picture the area,” Colm said. “He’s never been out here before. Do you find that odd?”

  “The husband?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That may not be so odd. Maybe he doesn’t hunt. This could have been her thing. Mother’s day out.”

  “Yeah? I thought moms went to the mall or to a day at the spa.”

  “Not every woman fits Maggie’s description.”

  “Maggie was never a mom.”

  “Sounds like you’re still getting over her,” I said.

  “I’m just trying to put this whole thing together.”

  “Maggie or Amy Raye?”

  Colm didn’t like what I’d said, and he let me know so by the way he looked at me.

  I held up my hand. “Sorry.”

  I changed the subject. “Cattle wander off cliffs on nights like this,” I said. “What’s the weather report for tomorrow?”

  “Doesn’t look good. Supposed to get new snow. Little change in the wind. You turn around after five minutes and your tracks are already gone.”

  Frustration was getting to both of us. We’d already put in almost a full day of search without finding a single clue as to the woman’s whereabouts. Not to mention we were almost into the third day since the woman’s disappearance.

  “I know this isn’t avalanche country,” I said. “But there are some windrows beneath a number of the overhangs in the higher elevation. Could she be buried in the snow?”

  “Could be.”

  “You’ve thought of that.”

  “I’ve thought about it. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.”

  “Any ideas?” I asked.

  “Mesa County has a new electronic detection device. It picks up energy off watches, cell phones, handheld radios. It can pick up a frequency as much as eighty meters away, as long as there is insulation.”

  “Meaning snow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Colm sipped his coffee. I held mine to my face, tasted the steam.

  “One of their deputies is bringing it out to us tomorrow,” Colm said.

  “You wouldn’t think the snow was deep enough.”

  “It’s not, but like you said, there’s some drifts.”

  “You know what you’re saying?”

  Colm nodded. “We’d be looking for a body, not a live person.”

  “We’d be switching to search and recovery,” I said.

  “It’s too early to call it that yet.”

  Farrell approached us, stood next to Colm. “Can I ask you something? How long can she stay out there? Realistically, how long could she make it?”

  Colm looked to me before answering. This was turning into the first multiday search we’d had in Paisaje County in five years, and the last had ended successfully with a backcountry skier finding a vacant cabin after spending only one night outside. People usually turned up within the first twenty-four hours. Men were the worst. They grossly underestimated distance and their ability. Women typically stayed put. Colm could tell Farrell we were at an advantage. We were looking for a woman.

  “Maybe a few days. Maybe a week. We just don’t know,” Colm said.

  —

  That night as I lay on the double bed in the small hotel room, drafts of cold from the window blew in. I thought of Amy Raye Latour out there in the cold. And I thought of her husband, in a part of the state he’d most likely never been before, by himself in another one of these rooms. I wanted to tell him I understood. But the truth was, no one can really understand what another person is going through. I didn’t know what it felt like for him to hold his wife, to sleep by her side, what it felt like to bring a child into the world with her.

  Kona, who had been lying beside me, stretched his torso and plopped his head on my chest. I stroked the short, silky hair on his ears. His mouth made a slight smacking sound.

  I tried to calculate how far Amy Raye might have traveled from the truck. Typically when hunting for big game a person stayed within one, at most two miles of the vehicle. Packing an animal out any more than that could be an enormous feat. Perhaps she’d traveled farther from her truck than our search group had first anticipated, especially if she’d been bugling back and forth with a male.

  I’d suggest to Colm that we expand our search. If the woman had been pursuing an elk, it would have been easy for her to become lost even with a compass. People rarely checked their maps when in the heat of a chase, and once someone was lost, panic could drive a person farther in the wrong direction. By the time she checked with her compass, she wouldn’t have known where she was on the map, so there was a chance her directional device would have done her little good. This inhospitable country looked much the same, whichever way one looked.

  There was another possibility. She might have gotten a shot, and if she hadn’t made a clean shot, she could have tracked the animal for miles, possibly never finding him.

  I’d talk to Colm. We’d have to expand our search. Maybe he was awake.

  The wind rattled the windowpanes. The storm was moving in. I climbed out of bed, walked over to the large window, and pulled the curtain aside. My room was on the second floor, with an exterior door to a concrete walkway. The sky looked black and thick, like soot, despite the handful of parking lamps below. I opened the door, leaned my torso out. The temperature felt warmer than when I’d first turned in, maybe by ten degrees, the air more humid. In these parts, a warm trend nearly always preceded a snowstorm. Colm’s room was three doors from mine. I stepped onto the cement and looked to my right. His light was off. Then I looked toward the lights in the parking lot to see if there was any snow coming down; the darkness and the overhang had made it difficult for me to tell. I thought I detected the beginnings of flurries, or else the wind was picking up flakes off the trucks. I stood there like that for a few minutes more, letting the cold and damp awaken my skin, stood there staring out over the vehicles, recognizing most of them as belonging to volunteers on the search. The whole thing was peaceful, as if I were the only living soul awake.

  I closed the door and climbed back into bed. Kona was still lying at the foot of the covers. Despite my stirrings, he hadn’t moved.

  “Hey, boy,” I said, nudging him with my foot.

  I lay on my back, pulled the covers up to my chin. Kona moaned, a long sigh that rumbled in the back of his throat.

  —

  When I awoke I checked my watch on the nightstand. Four o’clock. I made coffee in the four-cup carafe in the bathroom. I took a shower. As I finished dressing, there was a knock on the door.

  “Saw your light on,” Colm said. A dusting of snow covered the shoulders of his jacket.

  “I see the snow’s coming down.” I shut the door behind him.

  “Four inches so far, and we’re in the valley.”

  “Want some coffee?”

  “I was going to ask you the same.”

  I walked back to the bathroom and filled two cups. When I returned, Colm was sitting on the foot of the bed next to Kona. I handed Colm a coffee and sat on top of the desk, facing him.

  “We need to go out farther, expand our probability of area,” I said.

  “I was thinking a couple more miles.”

  My face settled into a slow smile of acknowledgment. “You didn’t sleep much either.”

  “No.”

  “Your light was out.”

  “So was yours.”

  “So, what ar
e your thoughts?”

  Colm didn’t waste any time. “We found the truck. We know she is there. We should have a hundred percent probability of area. So, one, she couldn’t find her way back to the truck, panicked, and wandered off in the wrong direction. Two, she spotted an elk, maybe got a shot, traveled too far away from her base and wound up lost. Except if she was an experienced hunter and she was on a blood trail, she would have left marking tape. So she probably didn’t get a shot, or else we haven’t spotted the tape. Three, she got cold.”

  “But she had matches.”

  “Doesn’t mean she was able to get a fire going. If she got caught up in that rain yesterday, she would have been soaked down to the bone. And that kind of cold can make a person stop thinking straight. People should learn from the animals,” Colm said. “Find a warm spot and hunker down for the night.”

  “Maybe she did. Maybe we just didn’t look in the right places.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you give any more thought to the lion?”

  “Thought about it,” he said.

  “And?”

  “That’s another reason I want to expand the search. If a lion got her, Kona should still be able to pick up her scent.”

  Colm held his right hand over the top of the cup and was tapping the rim lightly, a gesture I’d seen him do before when he was thinking about something. “I put in a call to Glade,” Colm said. Glade Caswell had spent the summer before surveying the canyon for cliff dwellings. “I wanted to know if he’d seen any old cache sites in the area,” Colm said.

  “What’d he say?”

  “Said he found a cache northeast of Coal Draw on the top of the bluff, though he thinks it’s pretty old. Found some cattle bones in there. A cow probably wandered off on open range. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were other cache sites. He gave me some coordinates of some other areas to check out.”

  “Jeff and I were just up there.”

  “I know you were.”

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Suppose our missing hunter isn’t lost. Suppose we got a cougar out there who got to her. I’m thinking we ought to be looking for areas where there might be a cache.”