by Jeff Shelby
I pointed in the direction of the trail. “Let's worry about that if and when we get to it.”
EIGHT
The trail was mostly switchback, a fairly well-groomed path of gravel and dirt, only wide enough for us to walk single file. Tim led the way, Elizabeth behind him, me bringing up the rear. I peppered him with questions as we walked. His story stayed the same, and any skepticism I might've had about him leaving any pieces out was gone. I got the sense that he was worried about his friend and worried about being alone in an unfamiliar area, unsure what to do.
The terrain was an odd mixture of mountain and desert. Pine trees, scrub brush, and the occasional cactus lined the path. There were insects here and there, mostly butterflies and dragonflies, and a lizard or two that darted between rocks and brush, but it felt desolate, like nothing would want to call this place home. The further we went, the more desert-like it became.
We'd been walking about fifteen minutes when Tim led us off the trail and into the brush. The area was sloped and we walked carefully, slipping occasionally on the angled rock and gravel. The ground leveled out and five minutes later, we were standing in a small clearing with a green nylon tent, two small backpacks, and a red cooler.
Tim opened the cooler and handed each of us a water bottle.
“Thanks,” I said, taking it from him and uncapping it. It wasn’t cold, but I didn’t care. I was already sweating. “Aaron knew where this spot was, right? He brought you here?”
He unscrewed his own bottle. “Said he'd been here before and told me when we went off the trail that there was an open space that was kind of secluded so we wouldn't have people walking through or anything like that.” He took a long drink of water. “He knew right where it was.”
I pointed at the bags. “Which one is his?”
“Gray one.”
I walked over to it and bent down. I unzipped the canvas bag and pulled out the contents. A pair of cargo shorts, two T-shirts, a stick of deodorant, his wallet, and his phone. I shoved the clothes and deodorant back into the bag. I opened the wallet. Driver's license and two twenty-dollar bills. I dropped it back into the pack and searched the exterior smaller pockets, finding only a small pocketknife. I flipped the phone over and pressed the center button on the iPhone but nothing happened. He’d powered it off completely, just like Tim had said.
I stood. “And you’re sure water was all he took with him?”
Tim nodded. “That's all I know of.”
“You said he’s been here before, right? Do you know how many times?”
Tim thought for a moment. “I don't know exactly.”
I looked at Elizabeth.
“Same,” she said. “I just know that he’s gone camping before.”
“Did he say what he did when he was here? Like, why he came up here? Did he come by himself, with his parents?”
They both shook their heads.
There was no way to know how familiar Aaron was with the terrain and the area. He could've camped by himself those previous times, and either spent his days hanging out close to camp or exploring the trails and canyons, hiking for hours. If it were the latter, it seemed less likely that he would have gotten lost on a return trip. That left two choices: he really was unfamiliar with the park, or he'd disappeared this time on purpose.
There was a third option, of course. That Aaron had somehow become incapacitated and unable to return to the campsite. But I didn’t want to think about that—or mention it—just yet.
A soft rumbling sounded toward the west and I turned. Thick, gray clouds were building on the far horizon. Rain was unusual this time of year, but given the extra high temps, the atmosphere was unstable and anything was possible. I figured we had at least a few hours until it reached us.
I turned back around and motioned to the gentle hillside and the valley floor. “Let's go this way. We spread out, but we maintain visual contact. No more than 25 yards apart between us to start. Understood?”
They both nodded.
“Just keep your eyes out for footprints, or for anything he might've dropped,” I said. “Receipts, food wrappers, whatever. Anything that shouldn’t be in the brush. Go slow. We're in a hurry to find Aaron, but that doesn't mean we want to miss anything that might help us locate him.”
They nodded again and we moved slowly, fanning out. I waited until we got the right distance between each of us, then took a look at the surroundings so I'd have a mental map and guide of where we were starting from. The area was wide open, so I didn't think I'd have a problem getting us back, but I wanted markers just in case.
We moved slowly through the vegetation, our eyes downward, scanning. I'd done numerous searches just like this when I'd been looking for Elizabeth, and a familiar sense of dread began building. Searches like this were slow and painstaking. The hard truth was that they rarely turned anything up, and in this case, it seemed even more of a futile effort. We didn't even know which direction Aaron had gone, and there was no way the three of us could cover the entire area. What we were really doing was making ourselves feel better by doing something that felt productive.
I watched Elizabeth, her eyes glued to the ground, her head swiveling back and forth with each step. She was completely absorbed in what she was doing, determined that she'd find something that would magically reveal Aaron's location.
I'd learned that about her. Even before Lauren's death, I had seen it in her. Lauren had, too, remarking to me that it was how she knew she was my daughter. Once she locked onto something, she didn't let go. Just like I'd done when Elizabeth had been abducted.
I took a few steps forward but kept my eyes on her. She'd changed even in just the short period since I'd found her. She'd grown taller, more statuesque. Her hair had lightened up, a product of the time she was spending outdoors, and her skin had darkened from the sun as well, as she'd developed an affinity for not just running on the beach, but sitting on it, too. She'd been thin when I'd found her, probably a byproduct from the stress of finding out about her ‘adoption’ and then running away, but now she just looked healthy from eating regularly and running and being home.
She stooped lower for a moment and reached down for something, then stood back up, frowning, not having found whatever she thought she had. She set her hands on her hips and sighed, her shoulders dropping. I could tell she was disappointed. She took another step forward, her gaze sweeping the brush in front of her. She wasn’t giving up.
Tim was looking, too, moving slower than Elizabeth. He crouched down, pushing aside branches, peering closer at the sand and rocks. I wondered what his story was. Were he and Aaron best friends? How well did Elizabeth know him? Did they all hang out together at school, at the beach? As close as Elizabeth and I had become, there were still things I didn’t know. I’d had to be intentional about that, because I wanted to provide as much of a sense of normalcy for her as I could. Not sticking my nose into all of her business, including chaperoning or quizzing her about her friends, was hard, though. I wanted to be greedy when it came to her, as if doing so might somehow make up for everything I’d missed out on in the years that she was gone.
I thought back to our dinner conversation the night before. Talking about colleges with her had struck a nerve inside me, reignited the desire to keep her close. Thinking about her going to school in Minnesota was bad enough for reasons I didn't want to have to break down in my own head. But I knew that even if she went to a local school in San Diego, she most likely wouldn't be living at home. She'd be in a dorm and out from under my roof.
I wasn't ready for her to leave again. And even though I wanted her to do what was best for her, it was going to be incredibly hard to be okay with it if it didn't end up being what I needed, too.
She took a few more steps and pushed aside a couple of barren branches from a chest-high bush. I watched her, my mind wandering away from the search and further into the future of what-ifs.
I wondered if part of the reason she was asking about me having a
job was as much for her as it was for me. Maybe if I gave her that stability—of me having a job, keeping regular hours, providing a constant in both of our lives—she might be more inclined to stay. If I had a job and a steady income—and fewer stacks of unopened mail—she might feel more comfortable about sticking around. I didn't want her to feel like she was having to escape from something, like taking care of a dad who was bogged down by grief and indecision and…fear. Did she feel that way? I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to find out. I'd need to concentrate on being a parent and helping her get to where she needed to be.
And maybe helping her find her boyfriend was a good way to get myself going in that direction.
I tried to clear my head and remember why we were in the canyon in the first place.
Thirty minutes later, we still hadn't found anything. The gray clouds had stayed in the distance and the sun was warmer, beating down on us as we navigated the canyon. My arms were scraped from several of the tumbleweeds I'd rubbed up against, and I was pretty sure I’d seen—and come in contact with—poison oak, too. I was examining one of the cuts on my forearm when something a little greener than desert vegetation caught my eye. A row of small, green plants was about six yards in front of me, at odds with all of the browns and beiges of the surrounding bushes. I stepped carefully down the slope, then bent down to get a closer look.
The leaves on the plant were narrow and pointed at the end. The row I'd seen actually extended further back. By my count, I saw about twenty plants.
I stood and scanned the area. There were at least four more areas that had rows of the same plants. I walked forward another ten yards and found six more areas, these plants a little more mature, their leaves fuller, longer.
They weren't indigenous plants. They'd been brought in and planted in the middle of the brush. The soil beneath them was fresh and damp, as if they’d been freshly watered.
Marijuana.
I stood for a moment, making sure I could see both Elizabeth and Tim. I'd read about growing operations in remote locations, but I'd never seen one. Dealers and growers would find hard to reach locales and set up an operation to care for and harvest the plants. It was safer than growing them in a garage or backyard, and far more difficult to prove ownership of. As I looked around, I thought we'd stumbled into someone's very carefully crafted illegal garden.
I started to call out to Elizabeth, but a burst of noise down below us stopped me. Several short rat-a-tat-tat sounds echoed. I put them at least several miles below us. I listened for voices, but if there were any, they didn't carry up into the canyon to our position. I knew that sound, though. It was unmistakable.
Gunshots.
Both she and Tim heard the noise, too, and they froze where they were.
Elizabeth glanced in my direction. Even from the distance, I could see the confused look on her face. “What was that?”
I motioned them toward me. “Both of you. Come this way. Right now.”
She looked at Tim. He just shrugged. She turned back to me, confused. “Why?”
I watched the bottom of the canyon, looking for signs of movement, but didn't see anything.
I knew that didn’t mean anything.
“Come here.”
“Dad?” There was a hint of alarm in her voice. “What’s going on? Why?”
There was no mistaking who was the parent in this situation. “Because I said so.”
NINE
They made their way through the brush toward me and I led them back up the hill about thirty yards in the direction we'd come, at a pace both of them were having trouble maintaining. There were no more sounds and no movement from below. It was almost as if I’d imagined the burst of noise. If it hadn’t been for Elizabeth and Tim’s reaction to the popping noises, I might have questioned myself.
I found an outcropping of taller bushes and we moved in behind them. There was some welcome shade there and we stopped, red-faced and out of breath.
“Sit,” I said. “Take a break and have a drink.”
Tim immediately complied, finding a large boulder. His shoulders sagged and his T-shirt clung to his chest with sweat. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his cheeks were tomato red. He sat down and guzzled from his bottle.
Elizabeth stood there, still confused about why I called them over. “Why are we stopping?”
The last thing she needed was something else to worry about. I’d heard the thread of fear in her voice when I’d ordered them back to me and I didn’t want that to grow into something bigger. Not until there was something concrete to worry about.
“It's hot,” I said, glancing down the canyon. Nothing. “We need to make sure we stay hydrated and smart.”
“What was that sound?” Tim asked.
“Not entirely sure,” I lied. He started to open his mouth but I shot him a look and said, “Could be a lot of things. Would be silly to hypothesize without seeing or hearing it again.”
He took the hint, looking away and tilting his bottle back for more water.
Elizabeth refused to sit. She took a few gulps of her water and repositioned the cap. “Okay, well, I'm ready to keep going.”
“I know you are. Just hang on for a second.”
She frowned and shook her head but I ignored her.
Something didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what was going on, but things weren’t adding up. A missing person. Marijuana plants growing in the middle of the desert, plants that had been purposely put there. Potential gunshots—at least from the sound of things—at the bottom of the canyon. I didn’t want to think about if or how those pieces were connected, but I was beginning to worry that Aaron might have wandered into a very bad situation—and that we might need more than a search party of two teenagers and a former private investigator.
But part of me questioned this line of thinking. The sound could have been anything, maybe an engine backfiring or something. People rode dune buggies all over the desert; I didn’t know if there’d be any in the park, but it was a possibility. There could be other hikers, someone playing around with firecrackers. Or maybe it had been a gun and someone was just doing some target shooting.
I knew that I owed it to Elizabeth to stay, to see if we could find some clue that might hint at Aaron’s whereabouts. If we heard anything else, any more cracks that sounded like gunshots, we were out of there. She wasn't going to like it, but we weren't going to hang around to find out where the sound was coming from. I was going to draw the line there.
I looked at Tim. “Do you know exactly which way he went when he left?”
He wiped at his mouth and pushed his hair off of his sweaty forehead. “No, I was in the tent. I wasn't really paying attention because...I don't know. I didn't think I needed to.”
“So he could've walked back to the road? Where we parked?”
He thought, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. But he said he was going for a hike, so I assumed that meant down into the canyon and not that way.”
“But we don't know that for sure,” I pointed out. “Because you didn't see him go that way.”
He blinked. “Uh, I guess. Yeah. I can't say for sure that's the direction he went.”
I sighed, frustrated, and looked at Elizabeth. She was watching me warily, waiting for me to speak.
“We don't even know where to look,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice and expression neutral. “I think this is a wild goose chase.”
“So we shouldn’t even look for him?” She held out her hands, clearly irritated with me. “We shouldn't try?”
“It’s a big area,” I told her. “We don’t know which way he went. How fast he was hiking. We don’t even know if he’s still in the park. He could have hitchhiked into town for all we know. We don’t have a lot to go on.”
She looked away, shaking her head, and I swallowed down the guilt I was feeling. I hated that I was letting her down.
I turned back to Tim. “Give me an estimate of how many times you think Aaron's been he
re. I know you said you don't really know, but what’s your best guess?”
He’d drained his water bottle and was tapping it against his thigh. “That I know of? Maybe four? I mean, he would mention it when he came back, but it's not like we had long conversations about it. I'm just not a camper, so I wasn't super interested.”
“But all were recent?” I asked. “Like within the last few weeks?”
He rubbed at his chin. “Probably within the last two months.”
“And you haven't been here before with him?”
“Nope, not ever.”
Four times within the previous eight weeks.
That he knew of.
I was putting two and two together. And I didn’t like how it was adding up.
Elizabeth straightened and cleared her throat. “If you don't want to go look for him, I'm going without you,” she announced.
“No, you're absolutely not,” I said, cutting my eyes in her direction.
“Yes, I am,” she said, her back like a steel rod, her eyes hard. “We drove all the way out here to look for him. I don't care how big it is or how hot or how hard it is. You said we could look until it gets dark or until it starts storming. So I'm looking.”
I watched her start back down the hill, even after I called after her in warning.
I looked at Tim. “Stay put for a minute, alright?”
He hesitated, his eyes following her, then nodded.
I turned and took off after Elizabeth.
TEN
I let Elizabeth make her way down the slope, keeping her within sight, until we were out of Tim's earshot. I took quick steps, huffing a little as I caught up to her. I took her by the elbow and spun her around.
She tried to pull away, but I held on.
“Dad,” she said, trying to break free. “Come on.”
“Just hang on a second,” I said. My fingers tightened around her elbow. Not hard, but enough so she knew I meant business. “I want you to listen to me before we do anything else. Will you do that, please?”