One Step Too Far

by Lisa Gardner

  I don’t know, but the more I learn of Tim, the more I wish that I’d had a chance to meet him. My life is filled with ghosts. Images and stories of people I never knew and, in most cases, never will. They haunt me. And yet I keep coming back for more, collecting memories that aren’t even my memories and clutching them tight to my chest. If you hoard other people’s tragedies, does that make your own easier to bear?

  I’m still waiting to find out.

  “We could search from here.” Luciana speaks up softly. She and Daisy are standing at attention twenty feet away, Luciana holding a small bladder in her hand. I’ve seen it used by trackers before, puffing the orange powder in the air and watching how it drifts to determine the direction of the wind.

  Martin stares at her a long, long time. Once again, his face is shuttered. Once again, he’s seeing things only he can see.

  The three amigos shift restlessly. Bob adjusts his pack. We wait.

  Still, Martin doesn’t answer.

  Now that we’re here and the moment is at hand, does he really want to proceed? To stumble upon his child’s bones? To learn once and for all what happened to his son, realizing he can never unknow it?

  Closure is such a tricky, tricky thing.

  A single snaking tremor, rippling through his entire body. Martin turns to Luciana.

  He says, “Yes.”

  * * *

  —

  “Searches work best as a team of three: canine, handler, and support person.” Luciana eyes our group expectantly.

  Martin immediately raises his hand. “Support person.”

  Luciana regards him for a moment, clearly considering. Then abruptly: “No.”

  Martin blinks. This is the first time I’ve heard someone tell him no. It’s clearly not his thing.

  “Wait just a damn moment—”

  “Do you even know what a support person does?”

  Martin scowls. “No.”

  “You plot progress using compass points and are in charge of communicating with the rest of the group to ensure we don’t intersect one another or duplicate efforts. Do you feel like staring at a map and compass, or do you want to keep your eye out for signs of Tim?”

  That scowl again. Martin doesn’t have to speak for us to know his answer. Luciana waits for it anyway. This is her area of expertise and she’s establishing her dominance right out of the gate. I want to applaud but I worry it might be in poor taste.

  “Fine,” Martin bites out, graceful to the bitter end.

  Bob speaks up. “I’m good with a compass.”

  Luciana nods at him. “Perfect. You’re support. So this is how it’ll work.” At the word work, Daisy perks up. Luciana acknowledges her canine companion with a pat on the head. “Yes, work, work, work,” she coos. “We’re getting ready to work.” Now Daisy positively vibrates with excitement.

  “It’s important to get her revved up. The more engaged she is, the better she’ll do,” Luciana informs the rest of us. “Not that Daisy ever needs much. She genuinely loves the hunt.

  “Now, Daisy is our tracker. Bob is our recorder. That makes me the navigator. Most of you probably have real hobbies. I do things like watch how mist rises off the water, the movement of fog as it eddies through a canyon, the waft of smoke from a backyard grill. Scent behaves exactly the same way, as it is captured by the same air currents. It rises up with temperature and open expanses. It pools at barriers, such as fence lines, mountain ridges, thick outcroppings. Cooler mornings you want to start downwind in a gully. Hot afternoons you want to be at the top of the same gully.” She pauses. “I put our current conditions at base neutral, not too hot, not too cold. Meaning I’ll start Daisy downwind”—she holds up the puffer—“then keep an eye on topography. The rest of you can assist with that as well. A downed tree, a steep rise in elevation. Look for anyplace you can picture fog collecting. Those are great targets for Daisy, increasing her probability of picking up the trail.

  “Your next job: Stay out of Daisy’s way. You should spread out behind us, like sweepers on a soccer field, where you’ll serve as extra sets of eyes. Daisy will be tracking for human remains, meaning she’ll go straight past everything else—a discarded backpack, a scrap of cloth, a bit of cord, et cetera. For that matter, she could be standing three feet from the body, and if it’s even slightly downwind, she’ll walk right past it. Her focus will be on what she can smell. Our focus needs to be on what we can see.”

  We nod obediently.

  “I recommend arranging yourselves in three teams of two. Partly for safety’s sake. We don’t need anyone staring at the ground so hard he or she loses their way and steps off a cliff. You might think I’m being silly, but trust me, it happens.”

  “It happens,” Nemeth agrees.

  “Daisy, are you ready to work?”

  Daisy prances again. She is so ready to work. Her entire being screams, Work, work, work.

  “So, in a moment, I’m going to give Daisy her search command. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but it’s an inside joke. Immediately afterwards, Daisy’s going to race around, desperate to discover the scent trail. So be prepared, and stay out of her way. Then you’ll see her settle, grow more methodical in her approach. We’ll give her two hours, standard protocol. If she hasn’t discovered anything by then, we should probably move on.” Luciana glances at Martin. “This particular site does seem temporary in nature, versus the caves you’ve identified as possible long-term shelters.”

  Martin nods. He appears mollified to have his master plan acknowledged.

  “Any questions?” Luciana asks us.

  We shake our heads.

  “Pair up.”

  I already figure Martin and Nemeth will partner, being superior beings and all. That leaves the four members of the B team—myself, Neil, Scott, and Miguel—to sort out. I’ve been looking for a chance to talk to Neil, so I turn to him automatically. But he and Miggy have already closed ranks. And not subtly at all. They take a definitive step away from Scott, leaving him standing alone. I watch the sting of rejection play across his face. Then the squaring of his shoulders as he accepts his fate.

  He gained a wife from the events of the past five years, but it clearly cost him dearly. I wonder if he ever thinks the price was too high.

  I cross to him, stick out my hand in formal recognition of our partnership, and say, “You chose wisely, my friend. I have Josh’s secret candy stash.”

  He flashes me a grateful smile, while Miggy blusters, “Candy stash?”

  “First one to help Daisy pick up the trail gets a peanut butter cup.”

  Nemeth and Martin roll their eyes—kids! But Luciana and Bob are definitely in. I’m sure Daisy will earn mucho rewards from Luciana, so it seems fitting the humans have something to look forward to.

  Luciana pulls out a map, reviews it shortly, then hands it to Bob, who already has a compass in hand and a pencil tucked behind his ear. She holds out the puffer. Releases a plume of orange powder. We all watch it float through the air, curling sinuously, and I realize the dog handler is right: There is something incredibly mesmerizing about wind flow.

  Luciana heads closer to the original hiking path. Releases a second puff. Corrects her position slightly, till the orange powder is drifting directly toward her.

  “Direction?” she asks Bob.

  “Wind is coming from the northwest.”

  “Have our start point on the map?”

  “X marks the spot.”

  “All right. Behind me. Spread out. Make sure you’re tracking your own positions. Are we ready?”

  Martin’s face shutters, while beside me Scott trembles so hard, I grab his hand. The only one of us who appears happy is Daisy, who is one hundred percent fixated on her handler’s face, body tense, ears forward.

  “Time to work,” Luciana announces to her eager mutt. Then to the
rest of us: “The command word for cadaver searches can be tricky. Search, seek, find it, are too general. Adding corpse or dead person too gruesome. So one of my teammates came up with something a little different, based on a code word her daughter used for her menstrual cycle—another training tool is used tampons. Now that the rest of you are good and freaked out, ready, Daisy? Time to work. Find Fredericka.”

  We are totally surprised.

  Daisy bolts forward, and just like that, we’re on the hunt for human remains.

  CHAPTER 16

  True to Luciana’s prediction, Daisy is anywhere and everywhere. Sniffing, running, sniffing some more. Scott and I both have to leap back as she comes barreling at us. Then it’s Neil and Miggy’s turn to scramble out of the way. We’re all so fixated on the dog’s explosion of energy and effort, we quickly forget our own tasks.

  “Eyes,” Luciana snaps, and we belatedly jump to it. Luciana hasn’t moved yet, just tracks her dog with her gaze. Bob has his map and his compass and looks as eager as the dog to find the trail.

  Scott and I retreat, trying to put more space between us and the crazy canine. “Natural barriers,” I mutter. “Places that would pool scent.”

  This seems to galvanize Scott, and we start moving in unison. Neil and Miggy have headed back toward the main path, so we track in the other direction, eyes on the terrain. I try to think like a wafting fragrance. Where would I go? Where would I linger? But in this flat terrain, with its collection of skinny, half-dead pine trees, I’m having a tough time identifying any kind of collection point. I move on to searching for random spots of color—say, a scrap of fabric, as Luciana mentioned. Mostly I see muted neutrals. Reddish brown dirt. Silvery gray tree trunks. Small patches of green growth. The woods here have a rich, loamy smell. Not the glacier crispness of our campsite, but something earthier. I wonder how it must register for Daisy, and her exquisite nose that is at least ten thousand times better than ours.

  Scott has drifted farther away from me. He is looking down so hard, he snags a strap of his backpack on a broken branch and is momentarily caught. I cross over to help.

  “Doing okay?” I ask him.

  “Sure,” he says in a tone that indicates he’s not okay at all.

  The others have become distant figures, people we can hear more than see. I loosen the strap, then wordlessly remove his water bottle from its side pocket and hand it to him. Whether he knows it or not, he’s sweating profusely.

  “How’s the chest?”

  “I’ll live.” He rubs it self-consciously.

  “Your face is flushed. Sure you’re feeling all right?”

  He unscrews the cap of his flask. Drinks deeply. Replaces it. “No.”

  “Present injury or past regrets?”

  He flashes a smile. “Wouldn’t I like to know.”

  “If you need to go back to camp, I’ll go with you. I don’t mind.”

  He shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says quietly, and I think I understand.

  “So how shall we approach this? You want to monitor our location, or be on the lookout for signs of human passage?”

  “You mean stare at the map versus look for my friend’s body?”

  “This can’t be easy.”

  “No.” Scott turns away from me, peers into the desolate woods. “Marty wants nothing more than to retrieve Tim’s remains,” Scott murmurs. “I’ve tried to picture it in my head a hundred times. What that might look like. A mummified corpse still clad in Tim’s clothes? A pile of bones topped by a skull? A single clump of dark hair? I just can’t imagine. Do you mind me asking—how many dead people have you found?”

  “Too many.”

  “Is it awful?”

  “Yes. But not so awful that I don’t go looking again.”

  “But you don’t know them; it’s nothing personal. Whereas for the people who loved them . . .”

  “And yet you keep showing up year after year.”

  Bitter laugh. “Have you met Marty?”

  “Miggy said the same.”

  Scott pauses. A fresh spasm rocks his features. We haven’t resumed our search. We should, but I don’t push. He wants to talk. He needs to talk. And I want to listen.

  “They blame me,” he whispers.

  “Do you blame you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Sleepwalking is sleepwalking. It’s not like you wanted to get lost in the woods in the middle of the night. Or meant for Tim to head off in search of help and never be seen again.”

  Scott doesn’t answer for so long, it is its own kind of answer. Guilt trumps logic. Always has.

  I give him another moment, then I start walking again.

  “Tell me about Tim,” I say, peering along a fallen log, studying a low clump of vegetation. This particular area has an almost ghostly feel with its sickly trees and barren ground. It keeps me on edge as I try to sharpen my gaze, pick apart the colors and shapes around us.

  “Tim’s that guy,” Scott says at last.

  His voice is rough. Clearly, while I’ve been looking, he’s been thinking.

  “Smiling, happy, life of the party,” he continues. “People noticed him, that whole girls-want-to-sleep-with-him, guys-want-to-be-him thing. Saint Timothy, we called him. Because the heavens opened and choirs sang every time he walked into a room. Nickname pissed him off, but he couldn’t deny it. He had presence. Knew where he was and where he wanted to go. And man, his thirst for living. A guy with his looks and smarts could’ve been a complete arrogant asshole. But he didn’t want to own the world; he wanted to experience it. All of it. Let’s kill this exam. Let’s crash this kegger. Let’s take off into the woods for a weekend. He led, we followed. We were just so excited to be along for the ride.”

  “Dudeville,” I comment.

  Scott laughs. “Miggy tell you that? Those were the days.” But then his laughter fades, and a different, more painful emotion flickers across his face. Because those days didn’t last and would never be again.

  “My family lives in Connecticut,” he says now. “Didn’t make sense for me to travel all the way back east for the shorter holidays, so I’d go home with Tim. Thanksgiving with his folks, three-day weekends at his house. Patrice and Martin always made me feel welcome, any-friend-of-Tim’s sort of thing. Tim and his dad were clearly close, but Patrice, she was the center of their shared universe. The two of them doted on her. Tim brought her flowers, would pull out her chair when she sat at the table. Martin was always fussing, offering up extra food, grabbing her favorite sweater. They were the first family I ever met who seemed to actually like one another. It blew my mind, while adding to Tim’s luster. He was the perfect guy; of course he had the perfect family.”

  “I take it your home crew in Connecticut are different?”

  “My parents divorced when I was five. I have one full sister, two half sisters, and one half brother. Households are many and varied. Holidays numerous and scattered. I gave up tracking it all years ago.”

  I think I spy something near the trunk of a tree. I head closer, tossing over my shoulder, “I hear congratulations are in order.”

  “You mean on my wedding? Or that Latisha and I are expecting?” A pause, then: “Who told you?”

  “Does it matter?” Upon closer inspection, my visual target is nothing more than a clump of fallen moss. I straighten, look around, and realize we’re truly alone now. Like isolated and possibly lost in the middle of a forest, straight out of a scary movie. Nope. Don’t like it. I head to our right, hoping that’ll bring us back to the others.

  “Miggy and Neil are just jealous.” Scott falls in step behind me.

  “Of you and Latisha?” This is interesting.

  “If you ever met her, you’d understand. Latisha has this smile . . . One look and all you want is to make her smile again, just so you can feel the glow. She used to volunteer
in the children’s cancer ward. Needless to say, she was the kids’ favorite. She’s generous like that. Warm, genuine. Not to mention successful, smart, and gorgeous.”

  “How long have you been in love with her?”

  “From the first moment Neil brought her home.”

  “But she took to Tim?”

  “Everyone takes to Tim.”

  “And you were okay with that?”

  “I accepted that. I was happy for them. Truly.”

  “And the others?”

  Scott doesn’t answer right away, which, of course, makes me wonder. “Tim had this thing,” he says at last. “He was a good guy, a great guy. But he could also be a total jerk.”

  “Thank God. The Saint Timothy thing kinda freaked me out.”

  “That’s one way to look at it. Tim always got what he wanted. But he had a tendency to want the things other people had.”

  “Such as Latisha?” I peer at Scott’s face. “Who did she belong to first?”

  But he won’t take the bait. “This is a different story. End of senior year, we’re all desperate to land jobs. OSU has this co-op program where you get to spend time working for other companies. Often, if all goes well, this leads to an official job offer. For Josh and me, this is looking good. But Tim didn’t love the places he worked, while Miggy is being his usual indecisive self. He liked his final co-op experience, could see himself working there. But then he’s reading about an engineering position at this other new and exciting start-up and maybe that’s what he should pursue? On and on. Clock is winding down. He still hasn’t heard from the start-up. He finally makes his choice, going with the co-op company.

  “A week later, he learns from a friend he did get contacted about an interview at the start-up. Call came the day after he accepted the co-op position. He never got the message. Tim did. And Tim went to the interview instead.”

  “Wait, Tim took Miggy’s place in a job interview? At Miguel’s dream company?”