by M K Dymock
While they waited until Ben was ready to talk, the two men found a cafeteria for a very late dinner or an extremely early breakfast. As a man who lived on a lot of protein bars, Sol would never turn down cooked meat.
But at that hour, they ended up with cold sandwiches Sol did not want to know the age of. He took a sip of a Dr. Pepper. “Now that I’m back, I should jump back on those break-ins.” He told Clint about the boot print that didn’t belong to Ben. “Maybe our ghost found a place to stay.”
The summer had put his longest case on hold to put out literal fires. With fall coming to the mountains far sooner than in flat lands, he only had a few months each year to catch what the locals had named the Lost Gorge ghost. Each winter, especially the bad ones, they had a few break-ins at remote cabins. Food, clothing, and books would be taken, but never anything very valuable. There was never a sign of forced entry—no windows broken nor locks jimmied.
The exact timing of the robberies was difficult to pin down as some of the cabins sat empty for the winter. Like the first sight of a tulip, the sheriff’s office always knew spring’s arrival at the first call of a break-in.
“It would be nice to make headway on it after all these years,” Clint said.
They talked next steps until a nurse came to tell them Ben was awake. The nurse walked them up and said Ben had fallen into a deep sleep on life flight, which he’d only woken up from thirty minutes ago, as hungry as if he’d been hibernating.
Ben’s voice carried through the door as he reenacted the last few days to his parents. They wouldn’t need any help getting the kid to talk. Clint knocked and the door opened as Ben ended a story with “then I fell off a cliff.”
Ben sat cross-legged on the hospital bed, a chocolate milk mustache outlining his grin. Give them the chance and kids always bounce back. Parents not so much. The dad sat on the hospital bed, looking as though he’d been the one lost in the wilderness for days.
“Ben,” the father said. “You remember the man who found you.”
He stared at Sol, debating as if he did. He’d barely been aware as Sol carried him out. “Sure, thanks.” Ben returned to spooning in the pudding at an alarming speed for an adult but about normal for a boy.
Sol, never fond of effusive praise for doing what the county paid him to do, appreciated the response.
The mom stood and wrapped her arms around Sol, hugging him. Her entire body shuddered, and he awkwardly patted her back. “Thank you so much.”
“It’s alright; it’s what we do.” Over her shoulder, Clint smirked at what he called the “aw shucks, ma’am” routine. Sol didn’t know how else to respond.
“Cool job.” Ben finished the pudding and turned to some French fries.
“You did a good job staying safe. How did you find the mountain man cave? I didn’t see a thing.” Sol knew if you wanted to get a kid to talk, keep it light. Any kind of sternness, they think they were in trouble and shut down.
“I know, right? It’s the coolest hut ever. I was crawling through the bushes in the rain, and I hit a wall. I kept following the wall until it opened.”
“Like a secret room?”
“Totally! It even had a door and a bed.”
A gasp broke out through the dad’s stoicism. Ben’s demeanor immediately changed, and he cupped his father’s stubby face in his hands. “What’s wrong, Dad? Is it okay? Are you mad?”
Sol shook his head at the man, trying to convey he needed to hold it together.
He cleared his throat. “Of course I’m mad. You didn’t save me any chocolate milk.”
He nudged his son’s head with his own, and the boy burst into giggles. “I need it to get strong.”
“I don’t know. You look pretty strong to me.” Sol pulled Ben’s attention back to him. “Was anyone home when you got there?”
“Oh, I never saw anyone.”
Both parents slumped in relief.
“What did it look like?”
“The bed had a hairy blanket like at the museum. It was real itchy but it kept me warmer.”
“I bet. I wonder if it belonged to a bear.”
Ben nodded with all the wisdom of an eight-year-old. “I’m pretty sure.”
They asked a few more questions to fill in the blanks, much of which they knew or could’ve figured out. Ben had ditched his cousins, determined to find silver in the mine. He’d walked until he hit the canyon. Once he got to the end, a storm with a few lightning strikes passed over, and he climbed the cliff looking for a place to shelter. He saw no one, but did find a can of peaches, which he broke open with a rock.
His parents called it a miracle, but Sol called it darn lucky.
Clint and Sol left the family to celebrate their miracle in private. Once the door shut behind them, Clint said, “What do you think that enclosure was? Part of a larger mine or its own thing?”
“Could be its own thing—a shelter built by a trapper or a cowboy. Who knows how old it is.”
“I’ve got to call the forest service and let them know. If someone is living there, it’s illegal. They might want to check it out.”
“Let it alone, Clint. It saved the boy’s life. The feds don’t need to know about everything.” Sol held a Westerner’s view that the federal government controlled way too much of their lives. Considering the state was 80 percent federal land, he wasn’t off base. He also respected a person’s desire to pack up everything and hide in the forests. “But let me check it out for the ghost first.”
“I’ll think on it.” Clint’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at the text. “Car accident in the canyon. I’ve got to call in.” He walked away.
Sol pushed the button to the elevator, determined to top off on coffee before the long drive back to Lost Gorge.
As the elevator doors opened, Ben’s dad rushed up holding a small pink stuffed animal. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Ben found this in the cave. Do you mind if he keeps it? He grew pretty attached.”
“I didn’t see him with it.”
“He had it tucked under his shirt. Said he didn’t want her to get cold.” Dad smiled the same smile all dads do at the precociousness of their kids.
Sol took the toy and stared at it—struck by the familiarity of the pink fluff. It was a palm-sized Care Bear, long faded and with duct tape in places, showing its age. A memory at his mind’s edge took him back to another toy and another child.
He’d seen neither the toy nor the child in person—only a photograph of the two. The little girl had been blonde, but one of those blondes who darken with age. The toy was a fuzzy flash of pink against the child’s side. He swallowed. It couldn’t be . . .
Shaking himself, he stepped into the gaping elevator. “I have to take this, sorry.”
The doors shut on a stunned father.
Sol knew the faces of each of the people he’d failed to find, and hers burned in his retinas more than any other. Not only had he failed to save that little girl, he could never say for sure she even existed.
8
The years spent wandering the mountains were rolled up into a ball of memories Jen still struggled to unravel. The winters stuck together in one clump, the other seasons in another. But two days out of those thousands were as clear to her as the moment she’d experienced them—the day they arrived and the day she’d left—alone.
Ten years ago, at the age of twenty, she’d abandoned the confines of the wilderness. Merrell had sent her on a supply trip to Lost Gorge, something they did a few times a year, alternating towns with each visit. Once they loaded up, they usually stole a horse or mule to haul it back and then released the animal somewhere far from them.
It should take no more than three days, Merrell had told her. She’d left a goodbye letter in one of the flour reserves, knowing they wouldn’t see it for a while.
The first day of freedom had been intoxicating—she went to a movie—something she’d only done once since entering the mountains. Day two she missed her brother, and day three she needed h
er family.
She’d go back, she decided. She’d had her vacation, and she could return home. Maybe Merrell would see she could come into town now and then without it ending in disaster and death—maybe he’d loosen the rules a bit.
It took a full day and a half to make it back to their encampment—or what was left of it. The tents were gone with only flattened grass indicating their placement. Another few days and it would grow in enough to conceal their presence forever.
They had to have left a note for her. Jen scoured the site for any cranny that could protect a message from the elements. She looked and then looked again and again.
Their faded tracks into the woods disappeared into a rocky creek bed. Merrell would only move campsites right before a storm to help conceal them, and there hadn’t been rain in a week. She’d returned to the site and set up her own tent. They’d be back; they probably had gone on a hunting trip. There was no way they’d leave without a note and a storm to conceal their tracks.
Each day waiting, she circled the camp in larger laps, determined to pick up their trail. She finally did, and immediately packed up her gear to follow it. No way they could disappear completely; she’d spent as much time in these mountains as they had.
The afternoon of day three heralded a thunderstorm that filled the small creek she followed with a vengeance of water. Her single-person backpack tent lacked the proof part of waterproof. Jen huddled in her sinking tent with a wet sleeping bag wrapped around her and lightning jumping from one peak to the other.
Come morning, the faint trail that led to her family and home had vanished. She waited another two days at their original camp after food had completely ran out before admitting that they weren’t coming back.
In the ten or so years since, she’d wandered the world alone, every connection fleeting because to connect to someone was to be vulnerable and honest. And the secret of her family’s whereabouts was something she would never tell—even if she couldn’t pinpoint them exactly.
She got as far away from these mountains as she could get. If her family wanted to banish her, she would banish herself. The more of the world she explored, the more she knew she couldn’t fit her life back into the confines of a cave. But the loneliness never abated. She tried to form connections, but always at that crossroads between casual and intimate, she bailed.
Then one morning she woke up in Costa Rica, where she worked as a jungle guide, with an instinctive need to return home.
Nothing could convince her something wasn’t wrong with her brother. Link needed her.
A few months later, she found herself at a gas station in the mountains of her childhood, wondering what to do, when Link walked in.
And behind him walked a strange woman.
After finding the body, Jen abandoned the mine in a blind panic.
Avoiding the campsite and search parties completely, she took another trail down until it met the dirt road to the highway. It took all day, but she didn’t stop until her feet hit pavement. Hitchhiking got her the rest of the way to town.
She sat in a booth at Beth’s Café clutching a hot chocolate. The tremor in her hand made coffee the wrong choice, but she needed something to warm up her insides, something to unclench her soul.
How long had the body been there? A year? Two? It wasn’t . . . fresh. Her hand trembled, and the brown liquid splashed out of the mug as she remembered the only other body she’d found. Stop. She focused her attention on the current day—not the past, never the past.
The mummy, yes, that was a better word, a more detached word. The mummy had long brownish hair, probably a woman or a girl. Definitely not her brother, definitely not Merrell, and please God not . . .
“Stop it.” This time the words came out aloud in a desperate attempt to slow her spiraling. A waitress, filling up a water glass a few tables over, shot her a confused look.
Jen tried to smile to ease the awkwardness. The need to blend in, to not be noticed, never faded.
What about the other woman? Guilt rose up at the negative emotion she’d extended to a woman, barely more than a child, whom she’d never met, never seen more than a few times. How could Jen have been jealous?
Maybe it wasn’t her. They couldn’t be the only ones who’d wandered the mines. Merrell had claimed to be the only person alive with knowledge of that particular one, but she’d long stopped believing he knew everything—only most things. Maybe a tunnel they never found connected it to the worm holes of other mines. Maybe someone found the entrance.
“Sol found the kid in some cave.” The loud voice carried over from two tables away.
She held still, willing everyone in the noisy café to do the same so she could hear.
“A mine? Somebody needs to plug all those entrances with concrete.” The entire café went silent to listen to the new gossip, and everyone offered an opinion about the feasibility of such an endeavor.
The waitress added her own two cents. “I don’t think a mine. I heard it looked like someone was living there.”
Jen stood abruptly, and all eyes turned to her. She ignored them as she threw down a few dollars and made her way out.
Before long her former home would be swarming with officials, and she would lose the chance to find any clues to where her family was—let alone the child she still searched for.
Because if it was the woman entombed there, then where was her kid?
9
Sol took the toy and wrapped it in a plastic evidence bag out of sight of the latest sheriff.
Pride kept him from showing Clint the toy right away. He would think Sol was grasping at straws, searching for a child who didn’t exist. Not to mention the fact that the current sheriff had trained with the FBI and carried a by-the-book mentality that could drive Sol crazy. Sol couldn’t be sure the stuffed bear was the same as the one in the picture. The missing child had been his last case, the one he’d messed up by trusting the wrong person.
During Sol’s ten-plus years as SAR chief, he’d outlasted four sheriffs—five if he counted himself. Their small town had bred some good sheriffs, one fairly bad one, and a few mediocre. The pay was crap, the hours hellish, and the gratefulness of the town sporadic. Such was the life of a cop, and Sol gladly walked away from the bureaucratic nonsense that kept him from doing his real job—finding the injured and lost.
Clint was better than most, and, with time, would be better than all, a knowledge Sol took some pride in, considering he’d groomed him for the job. Sol never wanted it, only took it after the town council begged him to. The one bad sheriff had left a lot of destruction in his wake. Sol, having worked with much of the town or helped them at some point, provided a steadying hand.
He saw himself as a placeholder until Clint was ready and had the trust of the community. At least that’s what he told himself and Clint when he quit. The truth was far more embarrassing. He’d screwed up big time in a way that proved how inept he was in the office.
But the presence of that toy in a cave proved that maybe, just maybe, he’d been right all along.
The rescue had started off relatively common, as common as those searches could be. A four-year-old girl had disappeared on a hike with her mother.
Sol had been loading gear into his van at a trailhead that led to a beehive of hiking and biking trails, going on for hundreds of miles. A woman, only a few inches shorter than his six feet, stumbled out of the woods. Her limp drew his attention more than she did, and he strode up to her. “Do you need help?”
She looked wildly at Sol as if unable to comprehend his presence. “No?” She said it almost as a question.
He wanted to grab her arm to keep her from falling, but he sensed that would scare her off completely. “What’s wrong?” he asked as gently as he could.
“I can’t find them—my family.” Confusion reigned over her face. “I’ve looked everywhere.” She pushed her hair back, revealing a series of bruises and dried blood along her forehead. An injury must’ve addled her mind.<
br />
Adrenaline sped through him. A missing family? That was a problem he could solve. “I can find them. Where are they?” He usually wouldn’t promise on something he might not be able to deliver, but he needed to reach through her haze and pull out the information.
It worked. Clarity overtook the crazed look. “Yes, you can find anyone.” She stood straighter. “It’s my daughter. I can’t find her.”
“What’s your name?”
She hesitated for a second. He didn’t notice at the time, but later he would wonder about it. He would wonder about every word she said. “My name is Hylia Hayes.” A strange name, for sure. Even she seemed to trip on it.
“Tell me about your daughter.”
She explained that they’d stopped for a rest and the girl wandered away to pick some wildflowers and vanished. The story itself made sense, but the woman never did.
Hylia only had the one picture on her of the little girl and her Care Bear and didn’t have a cell phone. Basic questions about the child stumped her. Her daughter’s age went from four to five and back to four when Sol called Hylia out on the discrepancy.
Sol called in the cavalry within a minute of hearing Hylia’s story. The town came out in force, as it always did when a child went missing. For three days they searched, but they found only questions.
On day three, Clint, tired of his boss not questioning the woman, ran her identity. It didn’t take long to discover she’d stolen the name of a dead person. Sol made the decision to charge the woman with a false police report, but she vanished as thoroughly as the nonexistent child.
Clint had seen through her on the first day, but Sol hadn’t heeded his advice. He spent two days walking side by side with the woman, who rarely spoke but never stopped moving. Clint’s professional opinion was that the woman was unhinged. Maybe she’d had a child die and couldn’t cope. Maybe she wanted attention. Maybe something bad happened out there, but she couldn’t find the words for it.