Bernie relayed Cooper’s information to the coordinator. “If the program director has to leave, I’ll wait here until the officer arrives. He’ll see my unit in the parking area. I hope my captain doesn’t give me any grief.”
The coordinator chuckled. “I know Largo. Have him call me.”
Bernie ended the call.
“Thank you for handling that,” Cooper said. “What happens now?”
“We wait. The state police officer will talk to us and then launch the search.” She explained how the officer would assess the situation and contact a regional incident commander to activate teams of trained volunteers who lived in the area. The teams would then put their everyday lives on pause, organize gear, load up, and head out with the goal of getting to the area to be searched and setting up a command center there as rapidly as possible.
Cooper nodded. “That gives Cruz more time to come back. He’d be embarrassed about causing a fuss. But it also means more time to suffer if he’s hurt out there. I’m not going to think about that.”
“They’ll want to start the search at the last place Cruz was known to have been.”
“That’s up there at base camp where I saw him leave, hiking down the trail to the parking area. He planned to cross the highway and head out into the lava.”
“Did you notice anything different about him today? Anything he said or did?”
“It’s hard to explain. He’s always professional. But it seemed like there was something on his mind all week that took away some of his focus.”
“Did he say anything unusual?”
“Not really. As we were driving, he mentioned the political game all of us agencies have to play to get money from the government. He said he enjoyed working with me and that he appreciated all the time and energy I gave the program.” Cooper zipped her jacket against a gust of wind. “On the other end of the age spectrum, there are twelve lively reasons in this camp to be distracted, but Dom had dealt with it all before. The Rainsong girl, for instance, the one he went to find, is a hard case.”
“I want to talk to her.”
Cooper nodded once. “She’s not much of a talker. And now, besides the stress of getting lost, I think she’s still shaken from her vision state.”
“Vision state?”
“That’s part of the solo. The girls come here to think about their future, their past, how to dismantle or navigate the obstacles in the way of their happiness and success, however they define it. We talk about all that and do some outdoor-skills work in preparation for the solo. The idea is to let them calm down, get more introspective, be at peace when they are alone. A staff member helps each girl find a special campsite for herself, and she spends about twenty-four hours alone. We make them leave cell phones, music players, video games, all that in the van. Only a tent, a sleeping bag, water, a flashlight, some snacks, and their own thoughts out there with them.”
“Do they actually experience a vision?”
“If things go like we want them to, the kids have insights.” Cooper shrugged. “Sometimes a spirit animal visits them as a guide. Sometimes they hear a voice giving them advice or hope. Like I said, when it gets light, Cruz or Mayfair or I come for them at the solo site. Then they pack up their tents and hike back here for our group breakfast and a circle of sharing.”
Cooper put her pack back on. “I need to hike back to the campsite for our closing ritual. You’re welcome to join us and say a few words. I’m sorry you didn’t get to give your talk. And no hamburgers today. All this commotion has put us way behind schedule.”
“No problem. I need to wait down here for the search team.”
After Cooper headed off, Bernie called the Shiprock substation and learned that Largo had stepped out. She chatted a moment with her friend in dispatch.
“How did your talk go?” Sandra asked.
“Best talk ever. Because of all the commotion with the girl and Mr. Cruz, I didn’t have to give it. I’d rather deal with a missing person any day.”
“That poor man. And the young girl who was lost out there. She must have been scared, and now she’s probably thinking this is all her fault.”
After Sandra signed off, Bernie dialed Chee’s cell phone, surprised that she had service and disappointed when the call went to voice mail. She left a “call me” message and then changed into her hiking boots and locked the unit. She’d noticed the white van with a Wings and Roots logo on the side when she first pulled into the parking area, the only vehicle besides her own. Now she realized that the driver’s-side door was slightly ajar. She closed it, hoping that the battery still had some juice. Cooper, Mayfair, and the girls didn’t need any more complications.
Three girls were hiking down the trail toward the parking lot, carrying duffels. The last one of them was Annie. The girls set the bags by the truck, and then the other two headed back up the mesa as Annie stepped toward Bernie.
“Mrs. Cooper said I should talk to you.” The girl looked as though she’d been crying.
“Let’s go over there.” Bernie walked toward an empty picnic table.
“Why do you want to talk to me? I didn’t mean to get lost.” Annie’s voice trembled.
“It’s about Mr. Cruz.”
The girl was silent.
“Sit down with me a minute. You’ve had a rough morning.”
Annie lowered herself onto the bench across from Bernie and rested her head in her hands. The sunlight added a sheen to the girl’s straight black hair. She had chipped purple polish on her nails, and silver and turquoise rings on various fingers. With her head bent, her hair created a curtain around her face that moved when she spoke. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re not in trouble.”
“Really?” Annie looked up. Gold balls paraded around her ear lobes, from small to larger. “Mrs. Cooper said Mr. Cruz got lost because of me.”
“What do you think?”
“Cooper hates me. She’s a witch, and I hate her more.” Annie reached for a water bottle emblazoned with the program logo. “If I tell you something, will you have to tell her?”
“That depends on what it is.”
Annie rolled the bottle between her hands, and when she put it down, Bernie noticed a tattoo of a skull on her wrist. She rose from the bench, graceful as a fawn, and paced for a moment. “I guess it doesn’t matter if you tell her,” she said as she came back. “The witch already thinks I’m a hopeless loser because I screwed up my solo. Did she tell you about it? I mean the rules, how it was supposed to work?”
“I’d like you to tell me.” Build a little rapport, Bernie thought, and maybe Annie’s story would offer a clue to finding Cruz.
Annie picked at a cuticle. “Well, OK. We all had our own vision site, and Ms. Mayfair—she’s the one who does the work around here—she said we could walk around until it got dark, and then we had to stay put until it got light again. We could think about things, take a nap, sing to ourselves, whatever. In the morning, everyone would come back to talk about what happened. Then Mr. Cruz hiked out with me.”
“So after Mr. Cruz left, you were out there alone.”
“I thought it sounded lame, but it was all right at first. I heard ravens making those sounds, you know, kind of like voices. I saw a deer. I walked around a little and saw some prayer sticks, but I didn’t touch them. I came back to the vision site, but I thought it was stupid.
“Then I was starving, and it was soooo boring and weird. I had a headache. I tried to sleep, but I felt all nervous, cramped up, you know? I hated the stupid little tent. It smelled like old feet. I took my sleeping bag outside, and that was better.
“Then it got dark, and I got cold. I started hearing crazy noises, and that freaked me out. And then the moon came up, and that was worse than the dark because there were all these bizarro shadows. Things would move out there, you know, like maybe trees or a hawk or something scary with shiny eyes. I didn’t know if that was my vision, you know, or if all this stuff was really happe
ning.”
Bernie pictured the scene. Blessedly quiet except for ma’ii, the coyote, the quiet of a winter night broken by the call of the Trickster. Perhaps, if the wind were right, she’d hear the muted, faraway roar of a big truck on the highway. She imagined watching the sunset and then seeing the night sky alive with its winter banner of stars, stars you couldn’t see in Farmington, Gallup, or even Shiprock. She pictured the moonrise. The hours of peaceful solitude sounded wonderful to her. No television, no cell phone, no police scanners. No reports to write.
“So how did you get lost?”
Annie stood again, paced, hugged herself. “They told us not to leave the vision site no matter what, but I had to get out of there, you know? I had to get back to base camp before I went crazy or got eaten by something or died from hunger. So what if the other girls or Mrs. Cooper thought I was a loser, a freak? So what? But now, well, but now I only wish . . .”
Bernie heard the girl’s voice crack. “Let me say this back to you. You were frightened and hungry out there, so you decided to come back to base camp, right?”
Annie picked up her plastic bottle and took a long, slow drink. “I ran out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t mean to get lost. I was . . .” Annie raised both hands, palms open. “I don’t know how to say it.”
“Is that how you got lost?”
The girl nodded. “I thought I could get to camp, but instead everything looked different than when I’d walked out there. I couldn’t see the trail. Everything turned weird in the dark, even with my stupid flashlight. After a long time I stopped, and just stood there, bawling my eyes out. That’s when I found the cave because the moon was brighter now and the light was, you know, like leading me up there. I thought maybe that was my vision, and if I died in there from hunger or something, at least my body wouldn’t be out in the open for bugs and animals to eat.”
Annie stood again and returned to pacing. “So I crawled in, just barely in, and waited. I didn’t want to fall asleep, but when I opened my eyes, the sky had changed from black to gray. That’s when . . .” Annie stopped moving and stared at her boots.
“That’s when something else happened?”
Annie nodded.
Bernie could read fear in the way the girl’s body tensed. “Take a breath.”
Bernie took a breath, too, considering how to proceed. “Did Mr. Cruz find you out there and do something he shouldn’t have?”
“No way. No bleepin’ way.” Annie yelled the words. “The dude is way chill, and that’s too creepy. Besides that, he’s gay. Has he come back yet?”
“No.”
Annie pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I know he came to look for me because he promised that he would when he dropped me off. It’s my fault that he got lost.” The girl rose to her feet again. “Why don’t you go out and look for him? I can’t talk to you anymore.”
“If he doesn’t come back soon, a whole bunch of people will search for him.” Bernie consciously slowed her rate of speaking. “You know, I’ve had experiences I don’t like to talk about, things that scared me. Things I couldn’t make sense of . . . like what happened to you in that cave.” She softened her tone a bit more. “Discussing it helped me figure out what was going on. Why don’t you tell me what scared you? Start at the beginning.”
Annie squared her shoulders. “I’m not sure what it was.”
Bernie waited.
“When I got to the cave, the moon let me see inside a little. I got on my knees to shine my flashlight into it in case there was a bear or something. I didn’t see anything, but it smelled kinda funny. The cave had a little ledge, so when I thought it was safe to lie down, I kept my head on the ledge so I could see if there was something, you know, coming for me. And because of the stink. In the morning, as I was waking up, I noticed a big piñon tree, one with two trunks. I thought it might have nuts that I could eat to keep from dying because I already ate those dumb little snacks.”
The girl grew quiet and then picked up the story, her tone changing. “I stretched out my legs, you know, from the ledge into the dark part of the cave. My foot pushed against a hard thing, and I pulled away. I looked in the cave again, and I felt a chill, you know, like there was something evil in there. I could see that the cave went back a lot farther than I realized. Then I saw an old rope. When I picked it up, it wasn’t a rope, it was a beat-up sandal. You know, the kind woven out of yucca. I put it back, and that’s when I saw the other thing.”
Bernie waited for her to continue, but she sat frozen in place.
“What did you see?”
Annie put her hands on her cheeks and then over her mouth.
“Was it alive?”
Annie shook her head.
“Talk to me. Tell me about what you saw.”
“I don’t know how to say it.” The girl’s voice had an edge of hysteria now. “It looked like old bones. I was in a cave of bones.”
Bernie knew the Malpais was dotted with lava caves. Despite what Mrs. Cooper had said about Annie’s lying, this part of her story rang true.”Could you find that cave again?”
“I don’t want to go back there ever again. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Annie leaned away from her. “What if I hallucinated it? What if the bones were my stupid vision?”
“From the way you’ve described it, the experience really happened.” Bernie pulled out her notebook and jotted down the sketchy details of Annie’s cave of bones. If these were human bones, an ancestor of the Diné or Laguna or Acoma or Zuni people or even bilagáana settlers, they deserved respect. She hadn’t heard of Navajo burials in the lava, but the Ramah Navajo land bordered the Malpais. The Big Rez, the major reservation for the Navajo Nation, was farther west and north. No matter. This wasn’t the kind of thing people talked about anyway.
If Annie had stumbled upon an ancient native burial, the family would have interred the dead one with the traditional gifts. Annie hadn’t mentioned seeing anything except the bones and the sandal.
“What happened next?”
“I ran out of there, away from those bones. But I knew that Mr. Cruz would be looking for me so I sat on a rock for a while, until it got light, so I could find a trail if I had to. And then I started moving and I saw some stuff, you know, that looked kinda familiar and made it back.”
“One last question. Did Mr. Cruz go in that cave?”
“No.” She emphasized it with a shake of her head. “Never. He told us how dangerous caves are. He would be so angry if he knew I’d been there.”
Bernie put the notebook back in her pack. While she and Annie were talking, Cooper and Mayfair had returned with the girls behind them and enough gear to fill the van. The girls clustered together now. They seemed like the dibé, sheep huddling for warmth on this cold, sunny winter afternoon. Annie had noticed them, too. “Can I go?”
“Yes. I may need to talk to you again.”
The girl glided off to join the flock and Mayfair, who was organizing the girls to create small piles of tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, and the rest.
Cooper took Annie’s place on the bench.
Bernie summarized the interview. Sensing Cooper’s unspoken skepticism when she reached the part about the cave, she didn’t mention the bones.
“She’s not the first girl to have issues during the solo,” Cooper said. “Mr. Cruz and I designed the program to shake them up, to motivate them to reconsider their lives. We push their limits, but they are never in any serious danger. That Annie loves attention even more than the rest of this bunch. I wasn’t surprised when she broke the rules. We specifically tell them to stay out of caves. She’s probably elaborating on that story now, talking with the other campers, adding a bear, a treasure chest full of gold. Who knows?”
Bernie said, “I want to take a look at the place where she soloed and see if I can find the cave she mentioned.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, Mayfair needs to hike out to get the equ
ipment Annie abandoned. She’ll show you where the tent is. I doubt that you’ll find a cave. What about the search and rescue people?”
“If a state police officer gets here before I come back, you can tell him about Mr. Cruz better than I can.”
Cooper ran her hand through her curls. “That girl is a good liar. Why do you care about a cave?”
“I’ll tell you later.” Bernie gave her a smile, hoping it offered some reassurance. “I’ll tell you if it’s something that matters.”
Mayfair wasn’t happy about having company. She tapped a spot on a hand-drawn map with her index finger. “Why doesn’t Cooper send wacko Annie back for her own things? Part of the experience is learning personal responsibility. Cooper is losing it. Thank goodness she’s leaving the program before she embarrasses us and herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess you didn’t hear. Cooper’s retiring.” Mayfair folded the map and put it in her pocket. “Why do you want to hike out there? We already searched that route for Cruz, and you won’t find him there.”
“I need to check on something Annie said.”
“Seriously?”
Bernie nodded.
Mayfair gave Bernie a challenging look. “I hope you can keep up.”
“Let’s go. I want to get back before the state cop gets here.”
Mayfair looked like she could walk the fifty miles to Grants and back without breaking a sweat and, with her long legs, she set a challenging pace. Bernie was breathing harder than usual when Mayfair stopped abruptly, after about fifteen minutes of serious hiking.
“Officer, if I knew what you were after, I could help. Tell me why you’re coming with me. Did Cooper suggest this?”
Bernie welcomed Mayfair’s change in attitude. “No, Cooper tried to talk me out of it. Annie told me she climbed into a cave and she saw something unusual inside. I’d like to find that place. Do you know this area well?”
“I’ve been working with Wings and Roots out here for the last two years. So, yes. Not as well as Cruz or Cooper, but a lot better than most people. We wouldn’t be hiking out here otherwise, right?”
Cave of Bones Page 3