A River Through Two Harbors

by Dennis Herschbach

  The deserted cabin was rustic. It held that characteristic odor of a building that had sat empty for a long time—a mixture of dust and stale air mixed with the aroma of wood.

  A crumpled overcoat lay in a heap on the bed, evidently having served as a blanket. A mostly empty bread wrapper sat on the table, but they saw no other signs of food. Except for the coat and plastic wrapper, the cabin would have appeared unoccupied.

  “A set of tracks leads up the slope,” Jeff called from outside. “It looks as though whose ever tracks we saw coming in joins them. One must be following the other.”

  Deidre went to where Jeff stood, looking at the intersection of the two sets. “The set we saw are the most recent. They were made on top of those leading from the cabin. There must be two people squatting in the building.”

  Jeff and Deidre began following the trail. It was terribly difficult, because the slope to Palisade Head was almost too steep to climb, the snow was nearly knee deep, and the icy air seared their lungs as they gasped for oxygen. Deidre reflected that their trek was easier than that of the people they were following, because their predecessors had somewhat packed a trail. She hoped they were gaining on the pair.

  At one spot along the climb, the wind had made an unobstructed sweep across the terrain, and the snow was packed so hard they could walk on its surface. Jeff stopped. “Deidre. Look!”

  She knelt to get a better view. The tracks diverged enough that she could make out individual prints. One was a boot track. It was large and had a tread pattern much like Canadian pacs would leave. Deidre compared her boot size to the markings in the snow, and surmised it had been left by a man’s foot. The other track grabbed her attention.

  “What do you make of this?” she asked looking up at Jeff.

  “Whoever made these smaller tracks wasn’t wearing boots,” he solemnly observed. “It looks like feet wrapped in cloth or rags. And look there.”

  Deidre looked ahead to where Jeff pointed. She could see faint pink stains left in the snow. “Is that blood?”

  She moved to where Jeff indicated. “We better get moving. I don’t think the two we are following are together. By the looks of it, this person is clearly in distress.”

  Deidre picked up the pace, speaking over her shoulder. “You’re right, the first set of tracks has no distinct edges, and the blood we saw was seeping through whatever is on her feet.”

  She realized she had unconsciously made the assumption they would find a man chasing a small woman.

  Her lungs ached from sucking in the cold. She was almost ready to tell Jeff she needed a rest, but they were too near the top to stop now. Through the trees she could see nothing but sky, and she assumed they were nearing the crest of the cliff. Then they heard muffled sounds of a scuffle in the snow. There were no shrieks or screams, only grunts and groans as though the fight was too life-and-death for wasted energy.

  Jeff signaled to Deidre he was going to circumvent the scene and come up from the other side. He motioned for Deidre to come from the other direction. She veered somewhat to her right and moved toward the sounds of the struggle. The snow made it possible for her to move silently.

  She pushed aside the balsam boughs and grabbed for her service revolver. Her hand fumbled as she tried to clear it from under the layers of clothing she wore, and on the other side of a small clearing, she observed Jeff standing, his pistol in hand and pointed at the two people.

  Near the edge of the cliff, they were clasped in a death grip. A large man was clearly attempting to throw the other person off the cliff to a sure death on the rocks three hundred feet below.

  Deidre could make out a girl’s long, black hair flying in the wind. Her arms were clasped around the man’s waist, and her legs were entwined with one of his. She was barefooted, and Deidre saw that whatever rags had been wrapped around her feet had come loose and were lying in a bloody heap in the snow.

  “Get your hands up, now!” Jeff shouted. “”NOW!”

  The man was so intent on what he was trying to do, he was oblivious to the fact that the law enforcement officers had arrived. He kept edging closer to the brink and kept trying to pry the girl’s arms and legs from him. He would peel off one of her arms, and then try to untangle her leg, but whenever he let go one appendage and reached for another, she would clutch at him again. There was no way he could throw her over the edge without being pulled over himself.

  All this happened in an instant, and Deidre realized that Jeff was rushing the frantic duo. She became aware she was doing the same. Jeff arrived first.

  “Let go of her!” Jeff bellowed, and the man looked up in surprise, a momentary look of panic in his eyes. He relaxed his grip on the girl and involuntarily stepped back. In the same instant, the girl let go of the man.

  The smooth rocks on the top of the Palisade were covered with a thin coating of ice. For a second, the man’s arms windmilled empty air. With one curse and a loud groan he disappeared over the edge. What seemed like a minute later but must have been only seconds, they heard a thud as if a sack of flour had been dropped on a concrete floor.

  Deidre moved toward the girl but stopped in her tracks when she looked into her eyes.

  The waif backed closer to the drop, and Deidre couldn’t help notice the snow turning red beneath her bare feet.

  “Please, stop,” Deidre begged in a soft voice. “We’re police and want to help you.”

  The girl shook her head over and over, a wild look in her eyes, and moved even closer to death. Jeff moved to the other side and attracted her attention. He put his gun in his pocket and held up both hands as a sign that he meant no harm.

  Deidre had seen cornered wild animals, and the girl reminded her of one. She was so frightened she couldn’t speak and only made a mixture of whimpers and snarls. Deidre could see utter panic in her eyes and was fearful the girl would leap, preferring death to being taken alive.

  Jeff spoke in as reassuring a voice as he could. “We’re here to help you. Whatever it is you are running from, we can protect you. Please believe me.”

  He kept moving, not toward her but enough to keep her attention focused on him. Jeff kept his hands in the air, showing her that he had no bad intentions, all the while speaking softly. The girl seemed to have forgotten about Deidre’s presence. While Jeff held her attention, Deidre silently moved into position between her and the cliff. Finally, she remembered Deidre and spun to make a dash for the edge.

  Deidre was nearly in position. She lowered her shoulder and made a forceful tackle. No way was she letting the slight frame elude her grasp. Together they fell in the snow.

  The girl didn’t utter a sound but fought like a wildcat, biting and scratching as only a deranged person could. Jeff wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her torso. Still she struggled, kicking and writhing so that Deidre could hardly subdue her.

  Finally the girl collapsed, totally spent. Deidre had seen this happen to animals. When they sensed all was lost, they would enter what she could only describe as a stupor, waiting for the end to come.

  Deidre took off her jacket and wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders. Jeff did the same but wrapped his around her feet. She placed the girl’s head in her lap, and curled her body over it, trying to be a shield from the bitter wind that whipped from the northwest. She could feel the slender body trembling, and she thought it wasn’t from the cold. The snow turned yellow beneath where the girl lay, and Deidre realized the poor thing had urinated.

  Steam and the smell of ammonia rose in the brittle air.

  “Hold her, Deidre. I’ll phone for help,” Jeff said as he fumbled out his cell phone with shaking fingers numbed by the cold.

  Deidre tried to comfort the child, whispering in her ear that all was going to be fine, even though she didn’t believe it. The girl lay perfectly still, her eyes open but seeing nothing.
She had lost all ability to communicate. For a moment, Deidre thought she had died but noticed a slight rise and fall of her chest.

  Jeff finished his call and joined Deidre in trying to protect the frail girl from the elements, but by that time, all three were reaching the point of succumbing to hypothermia.

  It seemed like an eternity while they waited for the expected help to arrive. She and Jeff hovered over the girl, crowding their bodies together to conserve body heat. In actual time, within five minutes of Search and Rescue receiving the call, they were on the road. Ten minutes later they were at the entrance to Palisade Head.

  Deidre heard the whine of a snowmobile motor start up. It grew louder, and she knew that within a very short time help would arrive, bringing plenty of blankets, she hoped. She could see flashes of yellow through the brush, and Scott, the head of Lake County Search and Rescue, came into full view.

  “My God! What happened here?” He looked around, as another snowmobile pulling a sled arrived.

  “Quick, get those blankets over there,” he ordered the driver of the other rig. “We’ve got two more sleds coming. What else do we need?”

  Jeff said, “I’m afraid you’ll need your rappelling gear. I hate to ask this of you guys, but there’s another person down there.” He pointed to the edge of the cliff. “I doubt if there’s much hurry, but we need to retrieve his body. Deidre and I need blankets and something hot to drink. Has the ambulance gotten here yet?”

  Scott spoke into his two-way before answering. “I heard it coming when I left the staging area down below. It should be waiting.”

  The other driver took three heavy wool blankets to Deidre, and the two of them wrapped the covering over the limp body. Deidre was able to put her parka back on, but nothing could stop her shivering. Jeff did the same.

  The four of them gently lifted the unconscious girl and laid her on the sled. Three straps were laced over her to prevent her from being dumped out on the way to the parking lot below.

  “Jeff, this is your county,” Deidre said. “You don’t need me taking over your jurisdiction. I’m going to hitch a ride down to the road and accompany this girl in the ambulance. As soon as you can, will you stop by my office and let me know what’s going on with that guy down there?”

  Before Jeff could respond, she hopped on the machine behind the driver, and they slowly made their way down the trail. On the way, they met two more members of the squad coming up. She didn’t envy them their job.

  Chapter 14

  What happened up here, Jeff?” Scott wanted to know.

  “When we got here, some guy looked as though he was trying to throw that girl off the cliff. Deidre and I startled him. He slipped and fell himself. He’s down there somewhere, I know that. No one’s ever survived a fall off this ledge. He went over right there.” Jeff pointed to a place where the scuff marks in the snow ended in empty space.

  The two most recent members of Search and Rescue to arrive were busy belaying ropes to a large tree. They strung out the lines, threw the coils over the edge, and watched them disappear. They were rewarded by a tug on their end. The ropes were secured and hung down the side of Palisade Head.

  Jeff watched them strap on their harnesses, and he was thankful there were people with enough courage to hang from the side of vertical rock walls. He knew he couldn’t have done it. They slipped the steel rings of their harnesses over the ropes, looped the end of it under their thighs and around their backs and began the three-hundred-foot descent to the bottom.

  In minutes, Scott received a call on his hand-held radio. “Scott, lower the stretcher down. No need to hurry. Not much left of him.”

  Scott and the other team member dragged a heavy wire and conduit stretcher to the edge, rigged a rope to it, and lowered it to those who waited below. While the men at the bottom were doing their job, he, Jeff, and the third man fixed an electric winch to a tree in preparation for lifting the dead weight to the top.

  They had just finished when they felt a tug on the line, and a voice on the two-way said, “You can start bringing him up. Go slow so we can guide from here, but it’s tough going. The entire cliff face is coated with two inches of ice. This will take awhile.”

  A half hour later, Jeff spotted the hand of one of the climbers reach over the edge, and then his sweaty head emerged.

  “Once is enough for today,” he gasped and rolled over on his back in the snow. It took the combined effort of all to haul the stretcher onto flat ground. Jeff was glad the crew had completely wrapped the body with a blanket.

  It took them another twenty minutes to haul up the lines and coil them neatly away for the next time, but eventually they rode the snowmobiles down to the road. As expected, the ambulance was gone, but it didn’t matter.

  *****

  Deidre watched as the EMTs carefully placed the stretcher in the ambulance. “Careful,” one warned the other. “We don’t want to trigger a sudden cardiac arrest.”

  He turned to Deidre. “Are you riding with?” She didn’t need a further invitation and climbed in the back of the rig.

  As the ambulance slowly lumbered away from the road leading to Palisade Head, the paramedic took the girl’s temperature. “Ninety-four degrees,” he announced with little inflection in his voice. “Respiration, ten. Heart rate thirty-six and irregular.”

  Deidre realized his comments were being recorded. He continued. “I’m applying heat packs to her neck, thorax, and groin areas.” She watched as the EMT placed chemically activated heat pads around the girl’s chest, under her armpits, and near her pubis.

  She watched as the EMT cut away the girls clothing, exposing her groin. She diverted her gaze to the girl’s face. She could be the twin of Anna Woodsong, she thought. Same hair color, same facial features, same body shape. This is more than a coincidence.

  By that time the ambulance was speeding down Highway 61 toward Two Harbors with its lights flashing and its sirens screaming. They reached a passing lane, and Deidre was relieved to see the lone vehicle on the road swerve to the side and stop. They sped by without having to change lanes.

  In twenty minutes the ambulance pulled into the emergency bay of Lakeview Memorial Hospital, and two attendants ran out to meet them. One was guiding and the other pushing a gurney. The girl’s limp body was wheeled inside, Deidre following closely behind.

  “Deidre, good to see you,” the charge nurse said as she walked by, not breaking stride. Deidre followed behind without invitation.

  The nurse began to hook the patient up to all sorts of sensors. On a monitor screen, Deidre saw her temperature register first: ninety-five degrees, up one degree since they left the Head.

  Another lead was attached to her index finger, Oxygen level: ninety-four percent Deidre’s eyes were fixed to the monitor. Respiration rate: fifteen. Another lead. Heart rate: forty.

  The orderly had stripped away the clothing from the victim, and she lay naked on the bed. Deidre’s eyes were fixed on her breasts. They were small, and her brown nipples were nowhere nearly fully developed. She can’t be more than fourteen, Deidre surmised.

  The ER nurse began fixing EKG patches to strategic spots: one under the girls left breast, another on the side of her ribcage, another above her breast near her collar bone.

  Deidre watched as she palpated the girl’s thorax on the right side of her sternum, feeling for her ribs. When the right spot was found, she stuck a lead connection there. Finally, a lead was placed on each arm and her leg.

  When the nurse was done, ten wires fed impulses to the monitor, and Deidre could see a series of peaks and valleys etched on the screen by an invisible stylus. Even without medical training, she could observe that every few beats an irregular peak was recorded. Sometimes it was missing, at other times it was too soon, and sometimes it was higher than the others.

  An LPN inserted a urinary cathet
er, and Deidre saw a bag attached to the side of the bed begin to collect an amber solution. Then the girl was covered with a warming blanket.

  An ER doctor who looked like he was hardly old enough to be out of high school entered the room and observed the cardiogram as it was being made.

  “I want a 1,000 mil, ninety-nine-degree normal saline drip started. Do not leave her side, and call me when it has been totally infused.” He left the room without saying another word and ignored Deidre.

  The nurse hurried away, leaving her alone with the girl she had rescued. Tears came to her eyes as she looked at the helpless child laying on the table, and she tugged the blanket up a little higher in a feeble effort to help.

  A med tech came in, carrying her tray of tools. She broke open a packet and produced a needle attached to a tube. She palpated the girl’s forearm, located a vein near her wrist, and inserted the needle into a virtually non-existent vein. Deidre winced when the needle went in, but the tech matter-of-factly taped it in place, flushed it with saline, and left the room. On to the next patient, Deidre imagined.

  Her nurse returned, carrying an IV bag, and with no hesitation hung it on a stand and connected it to the port the med tech had inserted. Deidre could see fluid begin to drain down the tube into the girl’s thin arm.

  In fifteen minutes the bag was nearly empty, and the nurse retreated to the main desk for a few seconds. She returned with the ER doctor.

  By now, the monitor registered a temperature of ninety-eight degrees. The EKG had fewer anomalies, and her heart rate had risen to fifty-five.

  “I think she’s coming out of the woods,” the doctor stated, relief evident in his voice. “Looks like we won’t need a saline lavage. Young people always respond quicker than the elderly do. By the looks of it, she’s been through a lot.”

  He turned to Deidre. “Are you the adult in charge of this juvenile?” he said with an accusatory tone.

  Deidre shook her head. Then she identified herself, producing her badge. She went on to explain the happenings leading up to the girl having been brought to the ER.