by M K Dymock
The yellow spot grew larger. A domed top of a tent heralded a campsite.
Hope rose, not only at the sight of the tent, but the red rectangle next to it. If that wasn’t a cooler, she’d hurl herself off the next cliff.
19
The boyfriend, Jacob, didn’t actually live in Lost Gorge. His parents had a house in a town called Rock River, population 500. The town, such as it was, lay at the bottom of Lost Gorge Canyon where the canyon road met the highway and the river finished its steep descent. The miners and ranchers who settled the land 150 years ago had a literal mind when it came to naming landmarks. Jake’s family moved in twenty years ago and opened a gas station, called Junction, by the highway.
On his way there, Elizabeth texted Blake to tell him Jacob’s mother had called her and he had returned. That explained what finally made the boy come home. The text also contained the information that Jake had emailed Keen the day she went missing, asking her if she wanted to go out. With this new update, he knocked on the parents’ front door.
The parents led Blake to a floral couch and offered him an iced tea while waiting for their son to get dressed. His mother mentioned the early morning hour her son had arrived and how concerned he was about that poor girl. Blake chatted with them about business, or lack thereof. In his old neighborhood, people asked what you did for work to see if you even had a job. Among Grace’s college friends, the question established status. Here, folks asked usually out of curiosity. Making a living in these mountains required creativity. A lot of people worked a couple of different jobs. The mechanic ran a few head of cattle; a storeowner waited tables at night. The fun-loving life of a resort town.
Photos of Jacob, and what Blake assumed were his brothers, wallpapered the room. All were shots of the boys biking, hiking, or otherwise engaged in the outdoors. Most of the kids in town could ski a black diamond but were unable to tell you what an atom was. A mistake Grace wouldn’t allow with their own kids.
They made awkward small talk about the storms coming and how fast the kids grow, until the twenty-two-year-old boyfriend walked in mid-conversation and sat on the couch between his parents. Like most the young men in the area, he had perpetual stubble and tanned arms. A few strands of bleached, curly hair wrapped around the edge of his Rockies ball cap.
Blake sat across from them and leaned forward with a smile to disarm the protective wall. “I appreciate you talking to me. Right now we’re fairly sure Keen went mountain biking and had an accident or something. We’ve got searchers threading up and down the trails for any sign of her.”
Jacob gripped his knees with his hands. “She wasn’t a very good mountain biker.” He turned to his mom. “I tried to teach her.”
She squeezed his arm. “Of course you did.”
Jacob faced the sheriff. “She’s a good biker, but when it came to mountain trails, she fell apart. Her first downhill turn, I yelled instructions but she panicked, hit her brakes, and tipped over.”
“Did you ever take her on the black trails?”
Jacob’s father leaned forward. “My son knows better than to take a green rider on difficult terrain.”
Jacob looked to his father before speaking. “No, we stayed on easier terrain. I … I tried to convince her to try some more difficult trails, but nothing too steep.”
Blake took a sip of the lemon water they’d set out for him. “I don’t think I’ve got any more questions, but I sure appreciate your hospitality.” He stood. “Jacob, can you walk me out? I’ve got a trail map in the car, and I was hoping you could show me which ones you went down. See if we can narrow down the search at all.”
The mountains rose in the distance as Jacob followed Blake out of the house. Blake tried to picture Keen lying somewhere out there waiting to be rescued, but that vision blurred. When the door shut behind him, he spoke. “When was the last time you talked to her?”
Jacob took slow shuffling steps down the porch. “I don’t know, maybe a few weeks ago.”
Elizabeth had forwarded both the email and Keen’s phone records. “You didn’t talk to her at all on Monday?”
“No, when we broke up it seemed better to keep our distance.”
Blake opened his car door and propped an arm on it. “So, if I looked at her phone records, it wouldn’t show her texting you?”
Jacob looked back to his house where his parents waited. “Just because she texted me doesn’t mean I texted her back.”
Four days and he’s just now saying this. “What did she say?”
Jake didn’t respond, so the sheriff moved between him and his line of sight to the house. This kid wasn’t going to cry to mommy for help. “What did she say?”
“Just hello.”
An edge of a phone stuck out of the kid’s front pocket. Blake took one swift step to Jake, grabbing the device before he could stop him.
“Hey.”
Jake tried to grab the phone back. But Blake, used to dealing with his own kids’ reaches for his phone, deflected his arm. “You don’t really want to be assaulting a police officer, do you?”
Jake’s hand dropped and he took a step back, his eyes defiant.
Blake swiped the phone on, pleased at the lack of a security code. The first text message was quite a suggestive one to a girl named Molly. Blake lifted his eyes at Jake, who looked away. If the kid complained, he knew he could hold this over his head with his mom.
He had to scroll down a while until he got to Monday’s messages, and sure enough, there was one from Keen.
“Are you around? I could use some help.” Blake read the text aloud, enjoying watching Jake squirm. “You didn’t text back?”
“I figured she wanted to get back together. Thought it might be a trick or something.”
“She take it badly when you broke up?”
“Yeah, she got a little hysterical. Don’t know why; we just dated for a while.”
“You tell her you love her?”
The front door squeaked behind them, and Jake flinched. Blake gestured to the street, and they walked away from the door. The boy was no longer eager to have his parents listen in. “No.”
Blake understood twenty-something guys. “But she thought you did, and you didn’t say anything to dissuade her until she wanted more.” Blake hadn’t been much older than this boy when Grace came into his life. He was a lot of things back then, but not dumb, and held on to his wife for as long as she let him.
Jake looked away. “She started talking about what we were going to do after graduation. What’s it matter, anyhow? I didn’t see her on Monday. I ignored the message.”
Blake gave him a long look. “Yeah, you did. And now you’re here while the entire county is up there looking for her.”
“I came home to help, but her mother called mine last night and they started arguing. My mom said it’d be better to steer clear.”
Blake stepped up to him, and Jake shut his mouth. “But you didn’t steer clear of the daughter. After that text, you sent her an email. The new girl, the one in the text, does she go to school with you?”
Jake pressed his mouth shut and shifted from foot to the other.
“I get it. You were heading back to school, leaving the other girl behind. It wouldn’t hurt to have a backup during the school year.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m not as gullible as the girls. All you had to do was hint at getting back together and she’d be right at your door. Did you go meet her, hoping for an easy hook-up, and she finally caught on?”
“No!” Jake yelled. “I ignored her. I was busy and didn’t want to deal with her.”
“What were you doing?”
“I ran the river with my buddies on Monday. They’ll tell you.”
“If you’re telling the truth, get your rear end up to the trailhead and find Sol Chapa, and you show him every trail you took that girl down.”
He took the names of all Jake’s friends to check up on later. He wouldn’t clear the boy yet. Eliza
beth had admitted that she and Keen argued that morning over her unwillingness to move on from Jacob. Keen may have been biking up the road along the river Jacob rafted down.
Blake had forgotten his phone in the car during his interview. Several texts and voicemails filled his screen. He clicked on the first one and Clint’s anxious voice came through. “Get down to the river. The dogs have found something.”
He peeled out of the gravel driveway, spraying rocks behind him, and headed to the canyon. To the west, the lightning danced with a wall of black clouds behind it.
20
Thursday Afternoon
Keen refused to let the draw of the tent make her careless. She stayed on the ridge as long as she could, watching for people. No one came or went. The lightning drew closer, though, and with it the need to descend—and fast.
The steep cliff with its patches of scrub oak and rock blocked the path between Keen and the tent’s salvation. Never mind those obstacles; she would climb down. The scrub oak thickened the farther she descended. Each tree grew intertwined with its neighbor, its thin branches bush-like and about ten feet tall. The branches tore the fabric of her jersey, scratching her skin as she pushed her way through. As one pointed branch ripped the scab on her head; she cursed loud and hard.
Keen forced herself forward, keeping her eyes closed to protect her eyes from the sharp branches. Finally, she broke through the thicket and opened her eyes. Several large boulders had created an opening in the oak. They were larger than her with about a five-foot drop from one boulder to the next. Steep, but there was no way she’d go around them in the torture of the thicket.
Down on her rear seemed the best solution. She sat on the rocks and scrambled monkey-like from one to the other. With each slow step, she pictured the campers returning to their tent, packing it up, and heading home. All she would find would be tire tracks and an empty water bottle. The rocks angled steeper until one dropped off, leaving her legs dangling over the edge. Thirty feet of empty space lay between Keen and the ravine floor. Jumping off wouldn’t kill her, but would seriously injure her.
Keen screamed in frustration. And when that scream was only answered by silence, she screamed again. Everywhere she went, she hit a wall.
Move, the voice in her head said. “Shut up.” She was sick of that voice.
Thunder, louder and closer, forced her up and she began the long climb up the boulder field. She would have to force her way through the oak. This time, instead of an empty campsite, she tried to imagine a friendly couple cooking hamburgers over the fire, offering her water from that shiny red cooler. They would be older with an afghan to wrap around her and a car to drive her home in.
She scraped her body getting through the scrub oak to find that same thirty-foot drop on the other side. The sky rumbled around her. She climbed back up to the ridgeline to find a better way down—a waste of the entire morning. Thirty feet, so close, and she couldn’t make it.
By the time she reached the edge again, the storm clouds had moved much closer. To the north, the ridge began a slow descent going beyond the tent. She couldn’t yell to the inhabitants; the wind stole every noise she made. She saw no car at the site, but it could lay hidden in the brush, so that didn’t mean much. She’d have to go north and find an easier way down before circling back. This time she stayed on the faint trail, hoping the cows who made it would lead her down.
The sun, playing hide-and-seek all day, hid for good, leaving the hills in shadows. The wind blew at her back, carrying sand that left a film on her tongue and in her ears. The winds had shifted to come from the west, strengthening so much she couldn’t stand straight on the cliff. Once the winds came from the north, the storm wouldn’t hold its fury in much longer. The exposed ridge would be the worst place to be. She had to get down, now.
The dogs had sniffed out Keen’s bike, buried in a pile of reeds at the riverbank.
There was no making a straight line from the road above to the bike; the steepness of the river cliffs made Blake switchback his way down to the water. This arm of the river ran flat and slow. Here, the bottom of the Gorge was a floodplain covered in water during the spring runoff, but now, this late in the season, the water had receded to reveal tall reeds and weeds.
Blake stopped to catch his breath before going under the crime scene tape Charlie had put up before his arrival. One of the searchers handed him a water bottle and he sucked it down.
The bike had been buried underneath the reeds and pushed into the mud. The reeds, now smashed down by all the extra people, usually stood six feet tall. A person could stand within a few feet of someone else and not see a thing. They’d never have found it without the dogs.
“Charlie,” Blake said after he spit some of the water out. “Where’s Sol?”
“We sent him a few messages on his GPS but haven’t heard anything back.”
Blake knew without asking that he’d be very angry at the state of the scene. “Nobody comes back to where the bike is without an escort.” Blake stood and moved closer to Charlie before lowering his voice. “How did the scene get this trampled over?”
Charlie ducked his head slightly to the dog handlers. “They followed the dogs in and dug around until they saw the bike.”
“Okay, question them about how the site looked before they mangled it up. And from now on, everybody stays on the same path in and out. Get Clint here.” Clint had specifically trained in crime scene analysis and could handle things until, and if, they needed the state technicians to come in. “Bring Daniel or Elizabeth here to identify the bike.”
“I’m on it.”
Blake turned to the lingering search and rescue crew. “No one talks about what we found yet. We need to get the family here first.”
Charlie picked up Elizabeth and Daniel from the Pines within the hour while Clint and Blake made a desperate attempt to protect the scene from the encroaching storm. Their first two attempts to hang a tarp over it ended when the tarp blew into the river and no one wanted to chase it down. One of the SAR guys brought in an awning that they stretched between the nearby trees.
“Can you finish this off?” Clint asked as he and Blake hammered in stakes to the awning. “I need to get as many pictures as I can. If the river rises at all, we’ll lose the crime scene.”
Thunder echoed up the canyon. “Hurry.”
The Dawsons ran down the edge of the Gorge with Charlie trailing a few yards behind them. Elizabeth’s eyes, terrified, met his first. He shook his head. “We found a bike, nothing else.”
“That’s what Charlie said, but I thought maybe …” She scanned the river, which flowed on, ignoring all the chaos around it. Its deep green depths offered no hint of what had happened.
Daniel pushed past his wife and yanked the crime scene tape up. Clint, who had been kneeling nearby snapping photos, rushed in front of him. “You have to tread carefully.”
“I’ll walk them to it,” Blake said. “We need you to look at the bike to see if it’s hers. Stay in my footprints; we’re trying to minimize damage.” Elizabeth and Daniel followed him through the reeds to where the bike lay, still half-buried. Its bright purple frame shone through the filth caking it. Weeds wended themselves around the seat stem and the no longer white seat.
“How did it get here?” Elizabeth demanded.
“Is it hers?”
“Yes.” Her angry eyes pierced his and he knew she wouldn’t accept anything but the truth. “How did you find it?”
“The dogs sniffed it out in the reeds.” Before she could grill him more, he continued. “We’re hunting through them now, but they haven’t found anything else.”
He led them out of the murky area. Daniel sunk in one hole up to his knee, pulling his leg out caked in mud. Blake offered him a hand but he ignored it. “Sorry,” Blake said. “I should’ve warned you about how deep it is.” Elizabeth’s lighter frame didn’t sink into the sludge as much and both men struggled behind her. The smell of dead reeds and fish overcame the sweet s
cent of the pines.
Once on solid ground, both parents scanned the steep cliffs. Their eyes measured the distance to the top where the highway ran and the drop to the river.
Blake anticipated the next question. “We can’t say for sure what happened.”
“The trees,” Elizabeth said.
He hesitated a second before responding, not wanting to come off as impatient. “What about them?”
“They’re thick along the road. I’ve been up and down this canyon a hundred times this week.” Elizabeth turned to face him. “If she fell, they would’ve broken her fall. You would’ve found the bike up there.”
“We’ve already got a crew up there searching them.”
“But the bike was here.”
She would know soon enough. “The bike had been pushed into the mud, and the searchers who found it said several reeds were folded over it.”
Elizabeth walked to the edge of the river, its slow pace taking no notice of her. She sank to her knees. “Keen!” she screamed. “Keenley!” Sobs tore through her body as Daniel knelt next to her, his body shaking. “I’ve spent the last three days on this damn river,” she cried out. “Where is she?”
Blake had no answer to that question. No one did.
21
Keen shivered as the first cold raindrops hit her bare arms. It wasn’t so much the cold that brought on the shudder, but the knowledge that she’d run out of time.
The brush and rocks of the ridge had given way to a terrace-like cliff. Each terrace had twenty or so feet of level ground, then a ten-foot drop. Three of these stood between her and the tent. She still carried a stick, using it to prop up her aching body. Like a lancer, she threw it off the ledge to be picked up later. She would need both hands for what faced her.