Wicked River

by Jenny Milchman

  “My guess is the usual,” Wilbur went on. “Dehydration, exposure. Got cold out there the last few nights.”

  The map Tim had been staring at swam in and out of focus. “Was the body found near Turtle Ridge?” He realized he wasn’t certain of the route Steve and Brad had taken.

  “Only if you call eighty miles near,” Wilbur said. “My guys are most of the way to the border. Place called Laughy Creek. Why? Turtle Ridge the PLS?”

  “Any ID on this guy?” Tim asked, ignoring the question. Point last seen didn’t matter if he had been wrong about the location. “We positive it’s him?”

  “No ID,” Wilbur replied. “But that’s not unusual on a backcountry expedition.”

  “Probably left behind in the car,” Tim agreed.

  Wilbur paused for a moment. “Hey, Tim, I’ve got that photo. Just synched up.”

  Something in Wilbur’s voice. Tim felt himself straighten. The lines and squiggles, depressions and hills on the topo map he was staring at suddenly grew distinct, as if the scene had come to life and Tim had been airlifted into it. He’d felt this kind of energy before, like the thrumming that came when you stood too close to a power line.

  “And?” he said.

  “Looks like there’s been a fair amount of decomposition, especially around the midriff. Could be a coyote or a cat had at him.” An audible breath. “Face is intact.”

  “There a reason you’re noting the face?” Tim asked, even though he was pretty sure there was. Even via satellite, he could sense the change in the climate.

  Another intake of breath. “I think so. This is more your territory, though.”

  “Describe what you’re seeing,” Tim said.

  “There’s a hole…through his forehead… Tim, this guy has been shot.”

  • • •

  Tim headed for the Laughy Creek recreation area, driving north toward Canada, going ninety, lights on, the whole way.

  The DEC had provided a makeshift war room in a building they operated, a wooden structure out on Highway 30. Information center, museum, gift shop, all exploring the region’s history and approach to conservation. A map encompassing Vermont, the Adirondack Park, and southeastern Canada had been taken out of its glass case and tacked up on the wall. A thumbtack indicated where the body had been found.

  Steve and Brad, plus other searchers from the Gumption office, were setting out on successive passes around the site in the hopes of locating Natalie Larson.

  Tim looked over the photo they’d been sent. A bullet in the forehead appeared to be the cause of death, although confirmation would have to come from the medical examiner. In the meantime, Tim cropped a headshot off the partially decomposed body and fuzzed out the patch on the forehead where a hole could be discerned. He left a message for Natalie Larson’s sister, apologizing for the grisly email she’d be receiving.

  The Wi-Fi was supposed to be decent in this building, but when Tim began a search online for Douglas Larson, hoping to confirm his identity, the links took forever to download, the little disk spinning.

  Claudia Redding called back, listening as Tim issued his warning.

  “Oh no,” she said. “But it’s a… I mean, they just found a…”

  “The victim is male, yes,” Tim said, as gently as such news could be delivered.

  Claudia swallowed hard enough to be heard over the patchy signal. “I don’t see any email. It must not have downloaded yet.” She said something under her breath, then added, “We’re in your area actually. We decided to come up.”

  It was Tim’s turn to swear inwardly. Even with a typical search and rescue, there was little the family could do to help, although understandably, they often tried. But this was a whole different territory now. Claudia Redding shouldn’t be here if it turned out that her sister had shot her new husband, which statistically was the most likely explanation, newlyweds or not.

  Plus, Claudia had said we. Who all had come up?

  He thumbed a text to Dorothy, asking her to reserve the apartment they used for such circumstances. It had decent connectivity and was above a small market and café, which made up for the fact that its inhabitants were essentially trapped, one of Tim’s men stationed outside, preventing a bad situation from becoming worse.

  “Chief Lurcquer?” Claudia Redding said, her tone light enough to float. “Your email just came through.”

  Tim replaced the phone by his ear. “And?”

  “That isn’t my brother-in-law.”

  • • •

  Tim was gathering up printouts of both photos—the original and the one he had doctored—then rerolling his maps when a member of the Force, Canada’s finest and good men to work with, came into the war room.

  “Looks like your honeymooners weren’t Mike and Carol Brady,” he told Tim in faintly accented English. “Or maybe they were. Didn’t Mike keep a few secrets?”

  Tim remained silent.

  “We located the canoe on our side,” the other man informed him. “Its hull had been opened. We sent out the samples, but it’s a fair bet they test positive. There were traces of powder in the compartment we exposed.”

  Tim paused in packing up.

  The gentleman concluded, “I think the Bradys had a reason for heading up to fair Canada. And it wasn’t to try poutine.”

  Tim held a secret conviction that the reason he was a good cop was because he allowed himself to be surprised on the job. Like right now, for instance.

  He aimed a wordless double check—cocking one eyebrow—at the member of the Force, who nodded confirmation before offering a brief salute in goodbye.

  Tim returned the gesture.

  As soon as he’d pointed the Mountaineer south toward Wedeskyull, Tim put two of his men on the drug angle, attempting to match the photo of the unidentified corpse with known traffickers, as well as tracking down footage to see if Larson’s Rogue had ever been noted crossing the border. Then Tim began trying to reach Phil Wilbur again, ruing the spotty signal for his thousandth time on the job.

  Funny thing about living in a border state. Borders were often surrounded on either side by miles of untracked land, and they afforded the explorer willing to trek through that wilderness a few key opportunities. Here in the United States, drugs could make a guy rich. Across the border in Canada, they could make a guy richer.

  Twice richer, to be exact.

  Make a $10,000 buy in Poughkeepsie or Albany or Troy, manage to get it across to a contact on the other side, and you’d return home with $20,000 in your pocket.

  Useful if you needed to turn a profit fast, or get your hands on a large amount of cash in a hurry. Tim didn’t suppose the honeymooners to be drug kingpins, more likely just caught up in something bad, but the sorting out was going to keep Tim’s men busy for a while.

  He glanced down at his phone, rejoicing when he saw bars. Tim placed a call to Wilbur, keeping both eyes on the curving road and speaking into the Bluetooth. “How would you feel about lending me two of your best to take a look in a different location?”

  A pause while Wilbur took that in. “What’s on your mind, Tim?”

  Tim swiveled the Mountaineer’s steering wheel, tires skidding on the gravelly shoulder as he took the turn toward the Turtle Ridge Wilderness Area.

  “I don’t think this couple is near Laughy Creek,” Tim said. He rubbed yesterday’s stubble, feeling his Adam’s apple move in his throat like a stone. Leaving behind policies and procedure, the cold, hard, lifeless facts of evidence, was like entering an unknown land. Anything could be there. Including the answers.

  It had been a while since Tim had relied on instinct. In the wake of the old chief’s departure, Tim had schooled himself to ignore his gut. But that hadn’t gotten him anywhere. And, he suspected, it wouldn’t get him to Natalie and Doug Larson.

  “So where are they?” Wilbur asked.
He spoke carefully but not dismissively.

  “In or around Turtle Ridge, if I’m guessing right,” Tim said. “And in case I am, I’d sure appreciate having your guys at my back.” Tim’s own resources would be tapped, given the drugs and the Redding family’s arrival.

  Tim had grown up in Wedeskyull, hadn’t left these mountains for more than a few days at a time, and even such short excursions as those could be counted on the fingers of one hand. People said that searching the woods was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but that wasn’t accurate, unless it was a haystack that spoke. For the woods offered clues, if only a searcher could hear them, was fluent in their language.

  In this Tim had an advantage over the SAR guys, whose work required them to look for people who wanted to be found. If Tim’s hunch was correct, he’d be hunting somebody trying to stay hidden, a man who’d already killed at least once.

  “I’ve got to keep my boys at the site. I mean, come on, Tim. The canoe has been found a hundred miles north of where you’re talking.”

  “I’m asking you to trust me here,” Tim said.

  There was a long pause. “Steve and Brad,” Wilbur said at last. “I’ll divide my team. For six hours, no more. Then if whatever this is—your hunch—doesn’t prove out, I’ll yank ’em and send ’em back to Laughy.” He paused. “And you’ll have to know that we squandered half a day below capacity.”

  Tim kept silent. It was simple math: every pair of feet on the ground widened the area that could be covered. The more eyes and ears, the more signs would be detected.

  “We’ve got a couple of clueless subjects out there,” Wilbur went on. “Kids really, just starting out their lives together. I want them to have a chance to grow up. Become a little less clueless.”

  “That’s what I want too,” Tim said.

  He told Wilbur where to send Steve and Brad.

  They would start on the trail from which Theresa Valero had vanished.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  If Mia hadn’t been so worried about her aunt, this trip would’ve felt like a vacation. Falling asleep in the backseat as her parents drove out of the city before the sun had even risen—up earlier than dawn for the second day in a row, yawn—then waking up in a different world filled with trees, streams, and narrow, curving roads. Even when they came to a stop in a town with a funny name—Weeds-kill, her mom said it was called—the vacation feeling didn’t dissolve. The GPS led them to a parking lot with a big barn on one side and a splashy brook on the other.

  Wayside Market & Necessaries was looped across a painted sign. The place sold outdoor wear, fishing licenses, worms, and food. Mia had to suppress a giggle.

  Both her parents turned around in the front seat.

  Her mom had wound up having to finish most of her double yesterday, but arranged to take something called FMLA after that, just as Mia’s father had suggested. They’d all gone to sleep for what seemed like hardly any time at all in the Bronx apartment, Mia on an ugly, thrift shop couch, and her mother and father squashed side by side on a double bed.

  It’d felt so crowded, it’d been hard to breathe. Mia wondered how her dad had stood living in such a tiny place all year. Here where they’d wound up in the country was way nicer. Especially because Mia was near Aunt Nat now. She could feel it.

  She looked out through the car window. “What is this place?”

  Her mother spoke up first as usual. “This is where we’ve been told to go.” But after that she paused, looking at Mia’s father.

  He looked surprised, then said, “The police are going to meet us here.”

  Mia figured her dad wasn’t used to filling in information, not when her mom was around anyway. She noticed the gray police car at that moment, parked beside a draping tree, and felt a twist in her stomach. “The police have to talk to us?”

  Her mother opened her mouth to answer, again stopping to look at Mia’s father. He took a breath and said, “While you were asleep, the police chief called, Mi. He told us that searchers found a man in the woods.”

  Mia jerked upright, the seat belt yanking her back down. “Uncle—”

  Her mother shook her head firmly. “It’s not Uncle Doug. We don’t know who this man is, or why he was there. But, Mi, he’s dead.”

  Mia frowned.

  “Looks like we’re about to find something out,” Mia’s dad said, indicating a gray-uniformed policewoman who had just walked up to the car.

  They all unlatched their belts and got out.

  Mia liked that the cop was a woman. She introduced herself as Mandy Bishop while she walked Mia and her mom and dad into the building. The bottom floor was a café, which smelled of crumb cake, spicy and good. There was a circle of dented metal tables and chairs, plus an area with worn couches surrounding a bench, which spilled over with trail maps and guides. The place had a battered but homey feel—splintery wooden floorboards, notices tacked up askew on the walls—that in the city would’ve been artful and affected, but here seemed authentic.

  Officer Bishop offered a hello to the man behind the counter, then led the way to a spiral staircase. The steps opened into the sweetest apartment Mia had ever seen: two rooms into which the scent of baking carried, both overlooking the brook.

  Officer Bishop smiled as Mia and her mom and dad all got assembled inside. “We hope you’ll be comfortable here. The market serves meals, and you can feel free to take out items and bring them up.” She turned a neat half-step and pointed to a TV on the wall. “You can stream movies, and your phones should work. If they don’t, I’ll be right downstairs or in the lot outside, and can come up and troubleshoot.”

  “You mean you’re staying here?” Mia’s dad asked at the same time as Mia’s mom said, “You mean we’re staying here?”

  Officer Bishop smiled. “Yes to both,” she said. “This way we’ll know you’re in one place, and I can find you easily as soon as there’s news.”

  The arrangement sounded okay to Mia—she never got to watch movies at home due to the limits her mother imposed on screen time—until she got a look at her parents, who seemed a lot less happy about it, her mom at least.

  “I’ve been Googling SAR,” her mother said, holding up her phone as if for proof. “The clips I’ve read say that volunteers often help with a search. Even family members. It allows more ground to be covered. And one thing I can tell”—her mother crossed to one of the windows and gestured outside—“is that there’s a lot of ground up here.”

  That had never occurred to Mia, the idea that they could all go looking too. It should have, though—why else would her mom have made her wear boots and find all that other stuff from camp?

  Mia’s dad walked over to the window and took her mother’s hand.

  Mia looked at the policewoman.

  She gave Mia a friendly smile. She was pretty: hair held back in a ponytail that peeked out from under her gray hat, barely any makeup. “You’re right, that does happen in some circumstances,” she said to Mia’s parents, who turned around to face her. “But you’re going to have to trust us that such an approach isn’t appropriate in this case.”

  Mia’s mom frowned. “That really doesn’t sit right with me,” she said, freeing her hand from Mia’s dad’s grasp. “I’d like to help. This is my sister we’re talking about.”

  Her mother had spoken sharply, and Mia’s father took over. “My wife isn’t exactly the wait-around type,” he said. “And she’s very close to her sister.”

  Officer Bishop’s face looked no less pleasant. “I understand that,” she said. “But the single best thing you all can do for Natalie right now is stay put. We have top people from two countries searching for her. You couldn’t ask for a better team.”

  “And you’re not making use of volunteers?” Mia’s dad asked. “At all?”

  Mia’s mom sent him a grateful smile.

  “Not at t
his time,” Officer Bishop said.

  Her tone made a phrase pop into Mia’s head, something her mom used to say whenever Mia argued. This is my last word on the subject.

  Mia saw her mother’s shoulders settle.

  Mia’s father touched her mother briefly on the arm, then looked over at Mia. “I wonder if they sell pizza downstairs.”

  After a moment, Mia’s mom said, “Family movie day?”

  Four hours later, Mia felt woozy from food and movies. Maybe her mother’s screen restrictions made sense. Her father had brought dishes up from the café, neatly packed in takeout containers and reheated in the small kitchen’s microwave, and they’d eaten them in front of back-to-back comedies whose plots already escaped Mia’s memory. Now her dad was reviewing summer reading assignments on his phone, while her mom watched some medical show on TV.

  Officer Bishop had come upstairs twice to check on them, talking to Mia’s parents, but not really—Mia realized upon reflection—saying much of anything at all.

  After the policewoman left for the second time, Mia’s mother dragged her father into the kitchen—which made the one back home in their apartment seem roomy—and they began to talk in whispered breaths.

  “I don’t get why they’re just keeping us here,” Mia’s mom hissed. “It’s not the norm in situations like this. I read about this one case where the sibling—they were twins—found his sister. She’d been gone for sixteen days, they’d just about given her up for dead. And that was in the salt flats out west. Far more dangerous terrain.”

  “Right…” said Mia’s dad.

  When her mom spoke next, there was a tremble in her voice. “This is my baby sister, Elliott. And there are lots of stories like the one I just told you, where family members are especially tuned in to their missing loved one, and accomplish what police and searchers can’t.”

  “I believe you,” Mia’s dad said. “But there’s a reason we’re not supposed to be in those woods. Don’t forget about the body. I’m sure the cops know what they’re doing.”