by RB Schalin
Chapter 14
The following day the search party moves into the woods at the point where Maria’s body was found. There are Forest Rangers, volunteers and some police deputies from other towns. A total of one hundred people begin to search the area. Hawk manages to get the use of a helicopter with infrared cameras that can see through the canopy and search for people.
Mrs. Read joins in the search against Hawks advice. He doesn’t know what they will find and he doesn’t want her to be there if they find Alex's body. After four days in the wilderness it will have been chewed on by wild animals, not a pretty sight.
One of the surrounding Police Departments has a search dog, and he follows the tracks of Maria back from the road, but after a mile or so he loses track, and ends up sniffing any tree that looks good to piss on.
They search for three days without any luck. The weather is good, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing is found, no bodies, no backpacks, and no clothes. Hawks is disappointed, he was sure they would find some kind of clue to what happened to the kids and Alex Read.
On the last day he is standing by the I20 just where Maria’s body was found. An SUV drives up and stops in front of him. When the driver lowers the window Hawk recognizes him.
"Hi John, how’s it going?"
"Good, I was just up at my cabin, I went looking for them up there also, but I saw nothing?"
Hawk has met John Kerry a few times around town, always a friendly man, a little off but friendly enough. He knows John went missing in the Amazon some years ago, and was found by fishermen almost dead three years later. He hasn't read his book, but he has seen it in the local bookstore, “My Years in The Amazon”, a best seller.
"Where is your cabin, John?"
He points back from where he came, "about two miles back, and then up the mountains. You can’t reach it by car, you have to hike up there."
"Oh, and how do you do it with Becky and Danny?"
"They love a good hike, and it’s so peaceful up there. Sadly Becky doesn’t have much time these days, but I like to go up there as much as possible."
They chat a bit longer and then John drives away. Hawk lights a cigarette and watches the SUV disappear around a bend.
John is whistling and laughing inside at the cop. After getting rid of the black kid's body, he went in search of the other bodies and buried them too. When he didn't find the body of the Latin girl he got a little worried. He went back and forth around the area where she had fallen, but couldn't find her. After a while he found her tracks and followed her. He was hiding behind a tree when the older couple stopped by the road. He had thought about killing them, and taking them and the girl with him, but changed his mind. There was nothing on the girl that could lead the police back to him.
There is no way the police or the volunteers will find them. They haven’t even gotten close to where he killed the first kid, the blond girl. And they will most likely never get that far from the I20. For him to run hours on end through the dense forest is nothing, but the search party, they get tired after an hour of walking, only a few of the younger Forest Rangers have the stamina to keep going for longer times, but then it’s the darkness. They run out of time.
His mind drifts back, to a time when fear was his only companion, and all hope of rescue was gone. He had run for his life, and lived alone for months in the jungle, living off whatever he could eat. He got diarrhea, and painful attacks of vomiting. He lost his mind and became an animal, a growling, snarling beast, killing and eating raw flesh just to stay alive, and to stay away from them. But they found him, and brought him back to their village. And that was only the beginning of his transformation into what he was today.
He comes back to the present and turns into his driveway, where he can see his son play catch with the neighbor's kids. He smiles to himself and wonders if his son would like to play catch with a human head that has just been cut off from the body. The kids in the village loved it.
Hawk calls Burt to tell him he’s got the ID of the girl, but Burt says he will look into the girls background, maybe there is something there that could explain who would go after her.
Hawk doesn’t think Maria is the key to the missing kids and counselor, he is sure something happened to them, something they saw or heard up there in the mountains. The bolt is the key to everything, but the result from Seattle came back with nothing. It’s a regular crossbow bolt which is sold by the thousands in stores around the country, no way to track it to the shop it was sold in.
Hawk is having a coffee with Friedman in the station when Doc Martin walks in waving a paper in his hand.
"You got to see this Hawk."
"What is it?"
The three of them go back to Hawks office and sit down, Hawk says, "tell me, what’s got you so excited?"
"I got the results from Seattle on the blood work I ordered."
"OK, what did they find, drugs?"
Doc grins and says, "but not the type you can buy around here."
Hawk sighs and looks at Friedman, who shrugs his shoulders, and then turns back to Doc, "OK, I give up, tell me."
"Get ready for this, they found Curare and something called Strychnos."
Hawk leans forward, and says, "I know what Curare is, but what is the strych-?"
"Strychonos. It's a poison, comes from a plant as does Curare."
"OK, and Maria had that in her blood?"
"Yes Sir, and that explains why I thought she died of a heart attack."
"How?"
"Well, I did some searching on the internet and both poisons can be mistaken as heart attacks."
"Uh-huh. We have a sixteen year old gang banger, who dies of poisoning, and the poison is not native to the US."
"Nope, it’s found mainly in South America."
Friedman says, "makes sense, Maria was Mexican right, couldn’t someone from her old gang have killed her."
Hawk nods, "it’s a possibility", but then Doc says, "no, in the amounts they found in her blood, she died rather quickly after the poison entered her bloodstream. The guy I talked to guessed she was poisoned six to seven hours before she died."
"That proves it wasn’t someone from LA. Six hours before she would have been deep in the forest."
"What about the twin brothers, the Rodriguez twins, they were from Nicaragua right? Maybe someone paid them off."
"It’s a possibility. But what happened to Alex Read, Jenna and the black kid Marlon?" asks Hawk.
The three men are quiet for a while, and then Doc says, "the twins could have killed them too, but where are they now?"
"Good question, let's assume that’s what happened. What do the twins do after killing everyone? They must get out of the area, and as far as I understand they knew nothing about hiking or living in the wilderness. Did they have help, a back up team who tracked the group and then pulled them out after they did the job on Maria and covered their tracks?"
Friedman and Doc shake their heads, and Friedman says, "an extraction team? Sounds a bit advanced for two kids, don’t you think?"
"Mm, I do, but we have to look at every possibility. Anyway, keep up the good work going Doc, we’ll talk later."
Doc leaves and Friedman goes out on patrol. Hawks sits at his desk, his eyes closed, thinking hard. After awhile he stands up and goes to lunch, food is what he needs, and a lot of sugar, remembering what Collins had said.