by Maureen Tan
A thunderstorm, I thought, would be a welcome relief.
Chad immediately pitched in to help me unload our gear and add it to the lightweight backpack, canteen and metal detector he’d brought with him. Climbing harnesses for both of us. Nylon rope. Binoculars. A canteen for me. And my backpack, filled with ready-for-anything supplies that included toilet paper and wet wipes, an all-in-one tool, a first-aid kit and the inevitable crime-scene tape and evidence bags. Chad, I knew from experience, would have packed an assortment of supplies very similar to mine and some kind of snack for us both.
“Sorry I was late. Been waiting long?” I asked as we slung on our backpacks.
He shook his head.
“Fifteen minutes at the most. Figured that you’d gotten hung up admiring Ed’s tropical paradise. His wife should know better than to leave him home alone.”
Though he was chuckling, now that my attention was focused on the details of his face, it was easy enough to see that his thoughts while he’d been waiting hadn’t been happy ones. The line of old scar tissue along his jaw was stark white against the irritated redness of his cheek.
As if to confirm my observation, he raised his hand to his face again. But this time, his anxious fingers drifted toward the new, much smaller wound on his cheek. The one framed by adhesive residue and bridged by several no-longer-white butterfly closures.
I grabbed his wrist and stopped the movement. Gave his hand a quick shake before releasing it.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “It itches.”
“Yeah. I bet it does. But leave it alone. I did a darn good job patching that cheek, and I’d be pissed if it got infected.”
“Wouldn’t want that.”
I couldn’t tell from his voice whether he meant pissing me off or infecting the cheek, but he’d taken that moment to rub his fingers over his eyes, so I couldn’t read his expression, either.
He looks tired, I thought as our eyes met again. As if the past several nights hadn’t brought him much sleep, either. Though I still wasn’t optimistic, I hoped that we’d find evidence in the ravine proving that the remains belonged to his mother. Chad would sleep better knowing that.
So would I.
We followed the River-to-River Trail from Camp Cadiz, with the two of us walking single file and steadily, but not quickly. Conserving our energy for the more difficult terrain at the bottom of the ravine.
For a time, Chad took the lead, and I couldn’t help but notice how confidently he moved through the forest. Long practice, I thought, remembering all the time we’d spent outdoors together hiking and camping. As childhood friends. As adult lovers. And though I knew that the reason for going into the forest was serious, for this little bit of time I indulged myself. I pushed away anxious thoughts about the past and future, focusing only on the pleasant and familiar present. On the sight of a man who was undeniably sexy in tight jeans. And on life as it might have been.
Halfway across the footbridge, Chad paused. He leaned on the railing, looking up the ravine toward our crime scene.
I joined him and spent a moment peering downward.
Fallen trees, many of them mature, were wedged across the narrow ravine. Some of them had roots that—like a child’s loose tooth—clung tenaciously to the embankment or to one of the more substantial ledges. Those trees were still green and leafy. But most were dead or dying, their leaves a withered, tattered brown.
At some point either rockfall or rotting would send them tumbling to the bottom of the ravine, more than forty feet below the bridge where Chad and I stood. There, hundreds of years’ worth of rotting trees and the water from a meandering stream supported the abundant vegetation that softened the edges of all but most recent rockfall.
“See the stream down there?” Chad asked. “That’s the dividing line between federal land on the Camp Cadiz side of the ravine and county land on the opposite side. Nearer the crime scene, Maryville jurisdiction intersects with the county’s. No landmark there, just an arbitrary line on the map.”
I nodded, acknowledging the information as I kept looking downward. Today, there was more sandy, rock-strewn stream bed than there was stream. But heavy rains could change the meandering ribbon of water into a torrent that could sweep away whole trees. And as we left the bridge, I thought—not for the first time—that Chad and I were embarking on a fool’s mission.
It was just past 8:00 a.m. when we left the marked trail and began hiking parallel to the ravine.
I took a turn walking in front and watching for hazards.
The strip of land nearest the ravine was relatively clear of plants, enabling us to avoid much of the tangled undergrowth and jutting rock formations that had made searching for Tina so difficult. But the same erosion that swept away so much of the forest’s lush growth had created crumbling edges, deep fissures and sinkholes, often camouflaged by thin layers of soil, vegetation and forest debris.
As we walked, a dank breeze occasionally scrambled up from the stony depths of the ravine, providing welcome moments of relief. But it wasn’t enough to offset the humidity and steadily rising temperature, which made the air heavy and difficult to breathe. Before long, perspiration was trickling down my forehead and the clothing beneath my backpack was damp and itchy.
I called out a warning to Chad, and we carefully skirted a spot where a narrow tower of limestone had sheered away from the face of the ravine. The rockfall had created an abrupt drop-off along the edge where we were walking and added tons of jagged rubble to the dangerous tangle of debris forty feet below us.
Even Possum would be feeling this heat, I thought to myself as we moved away from the shade of the tree canopy and back along the ravine’s edge. I was glad I hadn’t been tempted to bring him with us. Though I had the equipment to lower him down into the ravine with me, and Possum—like Highball—could negotiate the trails better than any human, today Chad and I were searching for objects, not people. Unless we were looking for tennis balls, I thought with a smile, Possum wouldn’t be any help in this kind of evidence search.
By necessity, our route was a meandering one, sometimes angling sharply away from the ravine and into the surer footing of the deeper forest. The last time Chad and I had passed this way, we’d been going in the opposite direction, carrying equipment back to the crime technician’s van. Then, we’d stopped along the way to remove the temporary trail markers that Chad had placed for the technicians’ safety. It was a strategy intended to discourage the curious or the ghoulish from visiting the murder site.
Now I noticed that much of our path was marked by plant life that had been broken or trampled underfoot on our previous visits. Easy enough, I feared, for someone to follow our trail straight to the crime scene. But then I told myself not to worry. That the weather predicted for tomorrow would take care of the problem. Rain and wind would cover any sign that we’d come this way and make the “easy” route along the edge of the ravine discouragingly slick.
Something about that thought made me stop in my tracks.
Chad, who was walking close behind me, misinterpreted my reason for stopping.
“By my reckoning, we’re just minutes away from the scene,” he said once he was beside me. “Probably as good a time as any to take a breather.”
He took a couple dozen steps away from the precipice, stopping in a small clearing beneath a clump of pines. There, with an audible sigh, he slipped the gear he carried from his back, dropping it to the soft, needle-covered ground. After rolling his shoulders and stretching, he sat down. With his backpack supporting his back, he stretched out his long legs in front of him, twisted the top off his canteen and took a long swig.
Almost absentmindedly, I followed his example. I dropped down beside him and, with my canteen in my hands, supported my elbows on my knees. As fresh air cooled the damp patch between my shoulder blades, I looked back in the direction we’d just come. I put my canteen to my lips, took tiny sips, and let the cool water trickle slowly down my throat as I tried to tease t
he edges of a thought into something more substantial.
Undoubtedly, this was the most direct way to get to the scene. No other marked trails or access roads were nearby, so any other approach meant hiking for many miles through the deepest part of the forest. Chad and I had encountered—and avoided—any number of natural hazards just to get safely to our resting spot. And we had a lot of advantages. Our overall fitness. Years of experience trekking in the forest. Sturdy hiking boots. Familiarity with this route. Dry weather. And daylight.
“What are you thinking, Brooke?” Chad said.
I shook my head, briefly postponing my reply as I tried to sort through a tangle of facts and emotions. None of them happy.
I put my canteen down beside my pack and shifted so that I was facing Chad. Within an easy arm’s length of him. In his clear, green eyes and relaxed expression, I saw nothing more than friendship and trust. And maybe a little curiosity.
Hope, I thought bleakly, had blinded us both to the obvious.
“Would you hike along this ravine at night?” I said.
He shook his head immediately.
“No way. Too dangerous. You’d have to be crazy, suicidal, or a pretty gal determined to find a lost kid.”
The beginning of a smile conveyed the teasing compliment he’d intended. But, almost immediately, his smile wobbled and disappeared as insight ravaged any thoughts he might have had about finally putting his long-lost mother to rest.
Then I explained my reasoning. Because, though it made my heart ache to hurt him further, we were investigating a crime. Assuming that another investigator saw things exactly the way I did ran contrary to everything I’d been taught about law enforcement.
I delivered the information as gently as I could.
“At night, even in good weather, no one could have made it as far as the crime scene. Not without falling. The night your mother died, it was storming. And your father was drunk. He couldn’t have negotiated this trail, Chad. Especially not if your mother was fighting him. And she would have been, wouldn’t she?”
Chad nodded. Began scraping his fingernails along his cheek. But his expression remained almost emotionless and his voice was cool. Very detached.
I wondered how he managed it.
“You think we have a daylight killer,” he said flatly.
“Yeah. Or someone who disposed of the body in the forest during the day.”
“No. That’d be too risky. And too much work,” he said, echoing the conclusion I’d reached the night I’d found the remains. “Odds are, our victim died right there.”
By then, he was struggling to keep his voice steady.
“Thank you,” he said, “for seeing this. For telling me. This is your first murder investigation, but you’re thinking clearly. Professionally. I’m the one who let it get personal, let my emotions—”
That’s when his voice cracked. And he turned away. So I couldn’t see his face. But the way he was dragging his fisted fingers back and forth along his jaw made it easy enough to guess at his expression.
“I tried to keep my perspective, but I just kept thinking how it was my fault that she died, that she’s lost,” he continued. “The only person my daddy ever really wanted dead was me. His bastard son. That night, I think his hate just spilled over on my momma.”
He looked back at me, his eyes bright with the threat of tears.
“I shouldn’t have let her push me from that truck. I should’ve hung on. Should’ve stayed to protect her.”
And then you would have died for sure, I thought. But I didn’t tell him that because, at some level, I was certain that he already knew. That he understood he’d only been a boy back then. Not a man with big fists or a tough cop with a gun and the power of the law behind him. But his words proved that, at least at this moment, he was feeling a child’s helplessness. And guilt.
I knew exactly how that felt. And how much it hurt.
Without thinking, I leaned forward, gathered him in close, closing the inches that separated us from each other. I held him as I often had in the past, during the other times he’d had to face old loss and newly shattered hope.
My fingers smoothed the short copper hair at the back of his head, stroked his broad shoulders, patted his back. I comforted him as if he were weeping, though he didn’t cry or even make a sound. Because I knew that cops—especially big male cops from small towns—were always afraid that someone might guess they weren’t nearly as tough as they seemed.
I don’t know when comforting and being comforted demanded more than mere holding. But in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the limits so carefully maintained between friends were forgotten as lovers became desperate to reunite.
Impossible to know whose lips were the first to seek the other’s, whose hands moved from caressing cheeks and face and hair to seeking more intimate warmth. But he was the one who unclipped my bra, who held my breasts cupped in his warm, callused hands. And I was the one who tugged his shirt from his waistband and skimmed my hands upward beneath it, following the contours of the muscles that wrapped his ribs, relishing the softness of the hair on his chest as it slid through my fingers and tickled my palm.
And whether his fingers slipped beneath the waist of my jeans before mine sought the zipper on his…Who was to know?
What mattered was that the days and nights of loneliness and longing were coming to an end. That Chad was back with me where he belonged. He pushed my willing body down onto a bed of soft pine needles and his lips moved against my bare skin, following the path of his hands.
As my eyes slitted with pleasure and my thoughts focused inward, the canopy above me blurred into a kaleidoscope of green and shadows and dappled sunlight.
Shadows tore through the pattern. Black wings fluttered in the trees above us. Angry birds screamed out a warning.
Carrion birds. That was the image that flashed to mind.
Carrion birds with yellow beaks tipped in blood.
Caught off guard by a living nightmare, my eyes flew wide open, and my body tensed as I fought the impulse to panic. A cry, almost stifled, escaped my lips.
It was not a sound of satisfaction.
Chad lifted his head. Looked anxiously down at me.
I don’t know what he saw in my face. And for my part, I couldn’t put a name to the emotions I saw slide across his. But he tugged my shirt back down over my breasts and shifted away from me.
The crows continued flapping and cawing out an alarm, alerting each other to some threat to their flock.
Between Chad and me there was silence.
As we sat up, we were careful not to touch each other, careful not to meet each other’s eyes.
I wrapped my arms around myself, fighting my body’s reaction to frustrated desire. But if Chad hadn’t called a halt to our lovemaking, I knew that I would have. Months earlier, I’d had a good reason for sending him from my bed and insisting that we had no future together as lovers. Nothing about that had changed. Except that, in recent days, the situation seemed even worse. Yet knowing all that, I’d still stepped over the line I’d drawn for myself. And for Chad.
As I cursed myself for being a weak, self-indulgent fool, Chad’s hand moved to his right cheek again. But this time his fingers deliberately sought the bandage protecting the wound on his cheek. In it, he seemed to find inspiration.
He spat out a bitter accusation.
“If I hadn’t stopped, what exactly was that going to be? More first aid? A little sympathy sex for the ex-boyfriend?”
That’s when I looked straightforwardly into his angry green eyes. I’d hurt him, I thought, and not just today. If he now despised me, I deserved it. But I had to tell him the truth. At least, about this.
“It was more than that,” I said softly. “Not at all as trivial as you’re making it out to be. But, yes, it was a mistake. My mistake. And I’m sorry.”
It was troubling that he forgave me so quickly. That his next words carried no hint of rebuke. Or inquiry.
Just resignation.
“I don’t understand…about us,” he said.
For the briefest moment, he extended his hand, almost touched my face. Then he curled his fingers back into a fist, dropped his arm to his side. Quickly, he rose to his feet and turned away as he spent a minute or two buttoning, zipping and tucking.
Just as well. Because I spent that time dashing away tears I didn’t want him to see.
He turned back in my direction when his clothing was neat again.
“Can we still be friends?” he asked almost brusquely.
I nodded, managed a shaky smile.
And I wasn’t lying to him. At least not about today or even tomorrow. But I knew now that our friendship was doomed. Had finally admitted to myself what I’d been so determined to deny. Chad and I would never stop wanting to be more than just friends. More that just lovers.
Only I understood why that was impossible.
Chapter 15
We hiked to the crime scene.
For a moment we stood silently in front of the big cottonwood tree, our eyes drawn to the vine-shrouded split in its massive trunk. Chad’s hand crept up to the scar on his cheek, his expression signaling that his thoughts were on what he hadn’t found there. My thoughts were likely as bleak as Chad’s as I considered what had been found. A murdered woman’s remains and a corroded inhaler. And I feared that Katie’s mind held more answers than this scene—or the forensics report—would be likely to provide.
“Do you still want to do this?” I asked.
Chad dropped his hand, shrugged.
“Why not?” he said. “We’ve come this far. And who knows? We might just find something relevant.”
I thought, Why not? And then I said, “Okay. Let’s get to it.”
After that, whatever else was on our minds became secondary as we focused on familiar technical issues. The first was finding a safe place to descend. With the big cottonwood tree as our starting point, we walked in opposite directions along the edge of the ravine, peering downward.