Colden was struck dumb by the vitriol that larded Larry’s speech. She was indignant at his insults, at the way they dismissed her genuine interest in conservation and her years of hard work in the classroom and field. But she also finally recognized that his anger was bigger and beyond her. All the discussion with her parents and Drew had helped her realize that she was not a person to him but a representation of some injustice he’d suffered and never recovered from.
“Larry,” a masculine voice said, interrupting her thoughts.
Jack appeared over the wall of her cubicle, his voice bursting the bubble of hate Larry had blown up around her.
“Hey, man,” Larry said, moving his eyes from her to Jack, who had his hand extended.
“Just wanted to say good-bye and good luck,” Jack said, pumping Larry’s arm.
Larry nodded and smiled, clapped Jack on the back, then turned and walked away. Colden felt her heart squirreling in her chest.
“What was that all about?” she asked Jack once Larry was out of earshot.
“Didn’t you hear?” Jack whispered. “He’s leaving. Some kind of family issues. Among other things.”
“Larry is leaving?” Colden repeated.
“Yeah. Did you know he’s got a special needs kid? Think his wife isn’t that healthy, either. They’re heading back to, I don’t know, Iowa or something. No, Indiana. Be closer to family. Poor guy. Keeps getting hosed on tenure. They kind of screwed him over here. Made big promises but didn’t keep them. He felt pretty marginalized. And without tenure, well, you know. He’s going to teach at a community college.”
“Well, how can he expect to get tenure without publishing?” Colden demanded, miffed at Larry but also at all she apparently didn’t know about this guy.
“Oh, he’s published plenty,” Jack corrected her. “I mean, in the past. He’s a passerine specialist. A good one. But he got blindsided by his coauthor who was tweaking the results, fabricating research. He had no idea. She wasn’t even doing the fieldwork she said she was. She was independently wealthy, paying her students to do work she was supposed to be doing, giving them no oversight. Turned out she was also having an affair with the department head. Who had helped her get papers published. She blamed it all on Larry. Tried to make it all his fault. Even accused him of sexual harassment, which also wasn’t true. Just a distraction. She had plenty of money for lawyers. He didn’t. First in his family to go to college, actually. It was a big mess—all the papers got pulled; the university tried to cover it up. The guy’s such a jerk personally, even though he’s a good scientist, he hadn’t made any friends. So, no one came to his defense. They were too worried about their own careers to go out on a limb for him. The whole thing was a disaster. Really tainted, well, kind of wrecked, his career. He never regained his groove. Or found a new one.”
“Doesn’t seem to have made him any nicer,” Colden said.
“Nope. Not nicer. Just more angry at the world. Too bad, really. He’s actually a decent scientist. That’s not enough to make it in academia, though. You know that.”
“So, the harassment thing wasn’t true?” Colden asked.
“Apparently not. She admitted it, eventually. Pulled her charges. Sadly, it was too late for Larry. The damage was done. She didn’t need her career. But Larry needed his.”
“How do you know all this?” Colden asked. “How do you know what’s even true or not?”
“Friend of mine worked with him. Helped him get the job here.”
“He was always such a jerk to me,” Colden complained.
“Yeah, no bedside manner in that one, that’s for sure,” Jack allowed. “Maybe you just brought back bad memories. You look a little like his former research partner.”
He grinned at her, waved, and walked away.
Colden sat, stunned, at her desk. So many strange and unfamiliar sensations rattled around inside of her, filling her head with noise. This brief pulling back of the curtain on the private trials and tribulations of Larry’s life left her feeling confused about what and how to feel. She was resentful of his remarks but also sad that he’d had such a difficult life. And there was still the mystery of the e-mails and books. Did this new information mean Larry didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t harass her in that way? But, if not him, then who? And why? Colden was reluctant to give up on him as the prime suspect. Maybe this was his way of getting some revenge, if not on his original persecutor, then on someone who reminded him of her.
It was time to pack up and get going. She had to get back upstate. She and her dad had another mystery to solve. The offensive e-mails had stopped, in any case. There’d been no more books. She might never see Larry again. She might never find out exactly what had happened. Then her e-mail pinged. It was a note from Liam. He had answers for her, but the information he gave left her feeling worse than ever.
23.
It didn’t take Colden and Dix long to find the spot where Daisy had been caught. The snare itself was gone, but there were still signs of the dog’s scuffling, a smear of her blood on a rock, and even a few black hairs caught on a broken twig. Dix pulled a topo map from his pack. They’d work in spokes and circles about a mile from the snare site, looking for clues. The terrain was rough, unmarked by hiking trails, with plenty of steep hillsides and enormous rock outcroppings that would make getting around slow work. They had two-way radios but agreed not to use them except in an emergency or if either of them found something significant. They had set up their own campsite and planned to meet back there in a few hours, share info, set out again. They’d widen their circle as necessary.
Being back at this spot made Colden feel sullen. It reminded her of her failure with the dog but also with Liam. With Drew. Even with Larry. It seemed she didn’t have any natural talent with domesticated creatures, human or otherwise. She noticed that Dix did not ask her about her mood. Which did not mean he didn’t notice it. He just tended to let these things ride themselves out. If Sally had been there, she might eventually push Colden for explanations. Dix rarely did. Maybe this was because he was taciturn himself. Maybe this was because he understood Colden at an intuitive level that words could not reach.
She and Dix set out in their respective and opposite quadrants. They were looking for something out of the ordinary, something not quite nature-made. They were both deeply and instinctively connected to what the landscape looked like when left alone for nature to take her course of growth and decay, life and death. They believed they’d notice anything, or at least most things, that seemed like it had been disrupted by a human hand or foot.
They doubted he, Brayden—he was Brayden to them now—would have any kind of regular camp. He would have been found by now if he did. Then again, maybe not. It was easy to miss things out here that seemed incredibly obvious once they were right in your face. Especially if it was one small tent in a multi-million-acre wilderness. They also didn’t know how much effort anyone had put into looking for Brayden. If he’d been a convict, they’d have brought in Staties and dogs, helicopters and ATVs. But Brayden was a runaway, a former foster kid with combative parents who had not made any friends in the system. Cops and social workers had seen tons of runaways disappear. There was little they could do, especially with the Canadian border so close by. Kids headed up there and never came back. Or they stayed away until life on the street finally got worse than whatever life at home was like. Sally had brought home story after story of kids like Brayden and his sister. Besides, Brayden was now an adult. He was free to do as he wished. There was a primal beauty in these mountains. Colden knew how compelling it could be. As well as how compelling getting away from other humans could be.
Colden welcomed the distraction that concentrating on her surroundings required. Looking at every punky log for signs that a hiking boot had scraped off a light layer of moldering wood, checking saplings for branches broken off by the pressure of a passing human body, bending down to small game trails through the leaf litter on the ground, searching for w
ell-disguised snares . . . it all took her mind off her own concerns. She knew her worries were minimal. She’d also come to think they were mostly self-inflicted. This realization made the feelings worse.
She tracked back and forth in a slow, methodically widening zig zag across her assigned quadrant. She tried to imagine what she might do if she were Brayden. She wondered if he had planned to stay out here, to essentially move to the wilderness, or if a temporary escape had unintentionally become permanent due to simply having run out of other options. He’d need to stay warm and out of the weather. A small cave or large crevice in a rock outcropping could provide that necessary protection and shelter. Sleeping bags had been stolen, perhaps by him. Food as well. Even reading material. Something to stave off the boredom, perhaps. Nothing had been stolen in many months. He’d likely gotten good at foraging, fishing, and hunting. There was bounty out there if you knew how to find it. Maybe he’d planned ahead, packed well, and the robberies were just a weird coincidence. The scientist in Colden had never put much stock in coincidence—recent experiences had started to change this attitude.
It had been a mild winter, fortunately. Holed up in a tight, dry space with plenty of down all around him, Brayden would be OK. He was young and tough. His snare was well made. He obviously knew something about camping and surviving in the wilderness. Maybe he’d been to one of those outdoor programs. His father seemed like the boot-camp type. Even a dedicated Boy Scout would know enough to make it in the woods. For a time, at least. As long as he didn’t get injured or ill.
They’d found pictures of him from high school. A long-unused Facebook page. He’d been a heavyset kid back then. That would help. Buy him time. The photos from the game camera showed he’d lost plenty of weight. He was still large and imposing, but after nine months or so in the wilderness, he appeared to be more deer than bear.
The hours passed. Sparrows and chickadees serenaded her while she worked. The oppressive heat of a few weeks prior had left the air. Some of the trees, those already stressed by attempts to grow in less-than-ideal locations, already had hints of fall color in their leaves. Soon enough, it would be back-to-school season. Which meant back to work, for her. To Albany, to the classroom, to regular meetings, and to time at a desk. There would be no more Larry. She was glad he was gone but also annoyed that the situation with him remained unresolved.
The thought of Albany meant thoughts of Drew. Even he seemed to have slipped out of her grasp. He had somehow created an independent relationship with her father and with Gene. He’d solved his own problems almost entirely without her help. Even though she had facilitated things early on, she was being excluded from the details of the final resolution. For some reason, it had all become secret. It seemed the men around her had closed ranks to the clubhouse, and she was no longer allowed in. Everything was irksome.
She called her father on the radio. She wasn’t supposed to. Emergencies only. Screw it. She’d had enough of the boys making the rules. She told him, in a hushed voice, that she was staying out for two more hours, moving over to the next quadrant, instead of trekking back to the camp. She’d meet him there later. She’d found nothing yet. There was no need to waste time and energy connecting up at camp when there was no information to share. Dix answered with just an OK and out. There was no way to tell from the single utterance if he was annoyed at her. Actually, she did know. He wasn’t irritated at her not because she didn’t deserve it, but because he didn’t get annoyed. Which in itself was annoying. Time to move on. Time to focus on the small, shoulder-height branches of the trees and shrubs, the damp spots on the ground that might hold boot prints, to look for rock faces that might offer crevices, overhangs, or caves large enough for a man to hide in. No, to live in.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. She found nothing.
Seems to be a life theme these days, she thought.
She was late getting back to their campsite. Only by about forty minutes, which was not enough to be alarming but enough to show her disregard for their original plan, as well as her own revision of that plan. Dix already had their two small tents set up, as she suspected he would. He was not one to wait for someone else, even when there was no rush and waiting would make the task at hand easier. He even had the bear line strung up and the camp stove set out. Colden sat on a log he had placed near the stove for just that purpose. She sighed and unlaced her boots. She peeled off her socks, found a pair of sandals, and took a long draw of water from her bottle. Dix put a pot of water on the stove. She knew he was leaving her be.
“What’s that stuff?” she asked, pointing with her chin to a few twigs of varying lengths leaning near the flap of his tent.
“Found another snare, as well as an ad hoc fishing pole that was set into the ground so that it didn’t need tending.”
“You think it’s a good idea to dismantle them? Won’t it make him suspicious?”
“Better to have him suspicious than to have another dog injured,” Dix said mildly.
Colden watched Dix as he lit the stove. She wanted to see if she was exasperating him yet. She didn’t understand why she wished such a thing was possible, even when she knew from long experience that it was not. He would not be drawn into the tangle of other people’s emotions when they had nothing to do with him and he knew he was not the cause of whatever feelings had gotten twisted up. He busied himself with setting out a small tarp and arranging the cooking implements and packets of freeze-dried food.
“Stroganoff or chili?” he asked her.
Colden shrugged in reply.
“Something you want to talk about?” he finally said, sitting back on his heels, eyes flicking back and forth from watching the stove to watching her.
Colden shrugged again. Then hot tears sprang, shockingly, embarrassingly, to her eyes. She pulled her baseball cap down over her forehead and busied herself with extricating a light jacket from her pack. Dix did not press her. Instead, he settled himself onto the other log he had set up for a seat and told her of his efforts in the woods. He spoke slowly and carefully, almost to himself, as if he was thinking it all through, out loud. He hadn’t found much to report. He tried tracking back from the snare and the pole, but whatever trail there may have been was too faint or old or nonexistent for him to follow. The snare may have been set out weeks or months prior and forgotten. Dix wondered if Brayden was still in the area. If he might be moving from one place to another. Maybe he had a permanent camp. Maybe not. Maybe both. A well-concealed home base and then other spots where he went to forage or hunt. Or steal.
“I wish you wouldn’t use that word,” Colden interjected.
“Steal? Why not?”
“It’s so hard. So condemnatory.”
“It’s just descriptive. It’s just what happened.”
“Well, maybe he did it. Maybe someone else did. Maybe whoever did it needed to. For survival.”
“True. But stealing is still stealing. Regardless the reason.”
“Those people won’t miss the stuff he took,” Colden said. “Probably don’t even use it. Rich folk. They can easily afford to replace it.”
“Someone stole your favorite down bag, you’d be pretty upset, I bet, even though you can afford to replace it.”
There it was again. The accusation. She was rich and comfortable and could have nice things, and this made her spoiled and separate and different from other people. People like Larry. Jack. Even Drew. She knew she was being irrational and unfair to her father, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“Whatever,” she said dismissively.
Dix handed her a bowl with some dry ingredients and a spoon; he poured hot water over the food. She stirred the concoction methodically.
“Did you find anything interesting in your travels?” Dix asked, ignoring, as usual, her foul state of mind.
“Not a one,” Colden replied.
“Where you want to start tomorrow?”
“Guess the next quadrant. Like we planned.”
They fell int
o silence as they ate. Then Colden collected the bowls and cutlery, took them down to the nearby pond, and scrubbed them with sand from the shoreline. She took longer at her chore than was necessary. She scanned the distance for beaver activity. She knew there was none. She’d been at this pond earlier in the year. Sparrows skimmed the still surface of the water. The day was coming to a close, darkness dropping its opaque curtain slowly, unwillingly. She put everything in a pile and was about to return to her tent when, instead, her father appeared at her side. He sat next to her and reached into his pocket. He handed her a candy bar. Extra-dark chocolate. With salted almonds. Her favorite. A peace offering, even though she was the only one arguing, and the disagreement was totally within herself. She took the treat, peeled back the wrapper, broke off a large hunk, handed it to him, then took a piece for herself. The sweetness and bitterness melted together on her tongue, dissolving the hard spot that had been at the back of her mouth all day.
“Sorry, Dad,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
“Oh, I bet you actually do,” Dix said. “Why don’t you try telling me? Might make you feel better.”
Colden took in a long breath and blew it out through her lips. He was right. She just wished he wasn’t.
“It’s just . . . I feel like . . .”
She didn’t know where to begin. Then she admitted to herself that she did know. She didn’t want to start there. She was embarrassed. She wasn’t used to being embarrassed. She was used to getting things right. She began again and spoke quickly, a tumble of words rushing out in an effort to get the pain of admission over with.
“So. I guess I was totally wrong about Larry.”
Beneath the Trees Page 20