Leave No Trace

by Mindy Mejia

  The body. A body with long, brown hair. The sack of toys that wasn’t worth turning his father over.

  I glanced at the bed and pretended to think as I searched Lucas’s face where dark bruises began to ring his eye sockets. My stomached pitched. Then I shook my head, meeting the hope and expectation in Dr. Mehta’s face.

  “Nothing obvious. His childhood memories were pleasant—I guess they had a dog at one point—so unless he’s triggered by Scrabble, he must have been waiting for an opportunity. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have attempted it.”

  Dr. Mehta shook her head and motioned for me to come with her. “It was a good instinct. I see why you tried it.”

  She opened the door and held my arm to help me down the hall. Her touch, the warm, dry comfort of it, was hard to accept.

  “If you remember anything else about the session, something that may have upset him . . .”

  I nodded, seeing only the bright red exit sign at the end of the hall. “I know what to do.”

  * * *

  The next morning I got a frantic text from Dad with a link to the video of Lucas, which had aired on all four local news stations and who knew how many more across the state and country. I spent fifteen minutes calming him down and telling him not to cut the Bannockburn expedition short, and I arrived late for my shift at Congdon to find Officer Miller waiting for me. She sized up the brace on my ankle, but didn’t comment on it, handing me a thick manila envelope instead.

  “That was fast.” I unfastened it and peeked inside at the fat stack of paper.

  “I looked the stuff over to see if it might help with the search but didn’t see anything useful.” She crossed her arms. “Arresting officer’s information is on the top, in case you need anything else, and don’t feed me any crap like you don’t know how to make a phone call. I checked on you, too.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was impossible to lie or play it off, but I couldn’t talk about my time in Ely, no more than I could’ve called their police station to request this case file myself. Silently, I re-clasped the envelope and hugged it to my chest.

  When it became clear I wasn’t going to offer any explanations, Officer Miller sighed and straightened her hat, nodding once before leaving. “Happy reading.”

  There was no time to go through it before my shift started. I stored the envelope in my locker and thought about nothing else during my morning sessions. Every hour dragged. I barely heard the jokes about how “shocking” my ankle looked or whether I was going to be the Bride of Frankenstein for Halloween. Even one of my aphasia patients, Greta, had to throw flashcards at me to get my attention. When it was finally noon, followed by what was supposed to be an hour-long session with Lucas, I grabbed the envelope and hobbled to my car, driving to the hospital without a word to anyone.

  The nurses’ station let me into Lucas’s room and gave me an update. He’d been awake all night as the nurses—accompanied by security guards—administered drips, drew blood, and checked his vitals while he watched with a “creepy intensity” that made most of them hand the next round off to someone else. When I arrived he’d finally fallen asleep; he seemed to be dreaming, mumbling and shifting restlessly in bed. I helped myself to the pudding, roll, and juice on his untouched lunch tray, ignoring the meat-product that smelled identical to what we fed our patients, while pulling out the contents of the manila envelope on the other, unoccupied bed. As I chewed and read, the pieces slowly came together.

  Heather Price, a twice divorced dental receptionist in Ely, was reported missing after she didn’t show up for work for two days. Her duplex was empty, but the police found clothes belonging to a man and boy in the side she rented out—my heart rate picked up—when they conducted their search. According to neighbors, she lived alone. While they were searching the home, the police encountered Josiah Blackthorn, who’d just returned from a camping trip in the Boundary Waters. When asked about Ms. Price, Josiah lied. He claimed he hadn’t seen her since he’d last paid rent, a story that was disproved by two neighbors who’d witnessed them fighting. Believing he was somehow connected to the woman’s disappearance, the police arrested Josiah for obstruction of justice.

  And Lucas? I flipped through pages, skimming for any mention of the boy’s location while his father was locked up, but there was nothing. A scared nine-year-old had no place in a criminal report.

  Two days after the arrest Heather’s body was found. She’d died behind a house in the nearby town of Virginia and the medical examiner put her date of death within the time frame Josiah’s camping permit said he was in the Boundary Waters. Heroin was found in her body, the death was ruled an accidental overdose, and within a week the Blackthorns disappeared.

  At the bottom of the pile of papers were a series of photographs, mostly shots of the corpse and the townhouse, but the last one looked like a print of an ID badge from her job. The woman smiled at the camera with gaunt cheekbones and too-white teeth, her face framed by perfectly styled, flowing brown hair.

  I stared at the picture and then jumped when a nurse and the security guard strode into the room. She glanced at the empty food containers on top of my stacks of papers and raised an eyebrow as she adjusted monitors and changed the IV drip.

  “Has he woken up since you’ve been here?” she asked.

  “No, just a lot of that.” I motioned to his twitching hands as he unconsciously pulled against the restraints.

  “You could try talking to him, but I’d stay on that side of the room if I were you. Chocolate pudding isn’t worth an assault.”

  “Depends on the pudding.”

  “Not that pudding.” After tucking the sheet in and recording his vitals, the two of them left me staring at Lucas’s form, wishing I could take her advice.

  I needed to talk to someone and I wished—for maybe the first time since I’d been committed—that I had a friend, someone I could trust. The street kids I ran with before Congdon had all heard what happened and avoided me like the plague after I got out. I started taking college classes in high school, with no time for pep rallies or clubs, and by the time I officially started at the university I was already a sophomore. Then it was all about getting accepted into the speech pathology Master’s program, and the few friends I made there were largely study partners. We bonded over anatomy and assistive technology, and we hugged each other goodbye after graduation. Dr. Mehta called my lack of social support an attachment disorder. I never really cared about it until now.

  Lucas’s head lolled toward me on his pillow. A dusting of beard colored his cheeks, which looked more sunken than yesterday. His wrists were raw from unconscious fights with the handcuffs. Grabbing a bottle from a side table, I picked up his hand and carefully rubbed some lotion over the red welts, feeling his pulse thrum in time to the blips on the monitor. As I finished one side, his fingers twitched and closed over mine.

  “Lucas?” I leaned closer. “Can you hear me?”

  His head flopped away, but his fingers tightened.

  “I need you to wake up. Do you know the name Heather Price?” I said it again, studying his face for any reaction. Another head jerk and a few mumbled words. Nothing I could decipher. I moved to his other wrist, trying to figure out why I was playing nursemaid to an unconscious, difficult patient who only gave me injuries and riddles. His wrists were warm, though, and for a second I tried to remember the last time I’d reached out and voluntarily touched another person outside of work. No memory came to mind. I glanced at the door to make sure we were alone before carefully closing my hand around his and drawing it to my coat.

  “I’m here, see? I’m right here, but you’ve got to wake your lazy ass up.” Then I dropped my voice even further and admitted what I would never say to anyone conscious. The reason I was standing here with lotion-covered hands.

  “I miss talking to you.”

  My time was up; I had to get back to Congdon before the afternoon sessions began. Capping the bottle, I limped over to scoop up the police papers
and stuff them away, then—on an impulse—I left the picture of Heather Price on Lucas’s bedside table, writing a note on top of it in thick black marker.

  Her?

  —Maya

  Eight hours later I pulled up to the house and forced myself to get out of the car. In my first afternoon session one of the female patients stomped on my ankle, laying me out flat and all I could think as I gasped and clutched it was that I should have known better than to wear the brace; some people looked at Achilles and only saw a heel. I used a crutch from Nurse Valerie for the rest of the day, refused the ibuprofen she tried to give me, and spent the drive home counting the number of incident reports I’d had to file in the last two weeks. My phone buzzed with an incoming call from Dr. Mehta, but I let it go to voicemail and pulled up in front of the house. At least the day was over. All I had to do now was get myself from the car to my bed. No problem.

  I kept up the silent pep talk as I hobbled through the gate toward the house, where Jasper barked with manic excitement. As soon as I opened the door he shot out to pee without even a sniff or a lick hello.

  “Sorry, Jazz. I know it was a long day.” Guilt wormed its way through the pain as I waited for him to take care of business, until a voice too close to me said—

  “Long, but interesting.”

  I whipped around, peering through the shadows to see Lucas standing by my front steps.

  10

  * * *

  WHAT THE—” was all I got out before Jasper flew across the lawn.

  Lucas sprang backward and almost cleared the fence, but Jasper caught him by the foot and held on fast. Kicking, Lucas tried to shake the dog while straddling precariously on top of the chain link.

  “Jasper! Heel!”

  He dropped Lucas’s foot immediately and ran across the yard to stand guard between me and our trespasser, a low growl still trembling in his throat.

  “Good boy.” I scratched behind his ears.

  “Good boy?” Lucas echoed, squatting on the other side of the fence, holding his foot. Jasper barked.

  I stared at his huddled form, trying to wrap my head around the fact that he was somehow here and not unconscious in his hospital bed. How did he get out? How could he have walked all this way without being spotted by his “Free Lucas Blackthorn” fans? Three of them were stationed outside Congdon right now, holding signs as I’d driven through the gate. Smoothing Jasper’s fur, I checked both directions, finding no signs of life on the cracked pavement or behind the drawn shades lining either side of the street. Maybe it was the throb in my ankle, or the darkness, or the nervous rumbles vibrating under my hand, but long seconds passed where everything felt like I’d crossed into some alternate world in which cause and effect had simply drifted away from each other, disappearing as effortlessly as balloons in the night. I gave up. Turning in slow motion, I pulled Jasper inside.

  I took him to his kennel and paused to nuzzle the warmth of his bristly neck, to breathe in his earthiness until I felt grounded again. When I latched the door shut and turned around, Lucas was standing inside the front door watching me.

  He wore a long, tan coat with one sleeve hanging loose because of the sling couching his fractured shoulder. His face looked even more drawn than when he’d been sleeping, shadowed with beard and eclipsed by those blue eyes. They followed me now as I slowly rose and faced him.

  I opened my mouth, torn between a dozen burning questions, before finally settling on a simple demand.

  “Explain.”

  “Okay,” he agreed but said nothing else, instead peering inside the kitchen doorway. Then he moved along the hallway and looked in each room as if he’d never seen a house before. I supposed he hadn’t, at least not in the last ten years. He disappeared into my room and I limped down the hall to find him staring at the bed. He startled when he heard me and ran a hand along the wall, stopping at a bookshelf full of rock guides and speech pathology textbooks.

  “This is where you sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned at the dark blue walls and took a few halting steps into the room before edging back around me, so close I could smell alcohol swabs and the bleached cotton of his hospital scrubs. “And the other door?”

  “Where my father sleeps, when he’s not on the boat.”

  As he turned on Dad’s bedroom light and surveyed the room, I flexed my foot, testing it, putting weight on it. If it came down to my sprained ankle vs. his broken shoulder, my ankle would win. Lucas barely seemed aware of my presence, though, instead inspecting the minutia of the bedroom—an end table cluttered with work gloves, drill bits, and creased maps, rows of weatherproof jackets in various stages of succumbing to the weather, hanging in the closet, and a dark wood jewelry box, set back in the corner away from everything else.

  “What are you doing?”

  Skirting past me again, he opened the linen closet and then went into the bathroom. When I followed he was standing next to the toilet, staring at the piece of driftwood I’d found on the shore last summer. I’d cleaned, sealed, and mounted the gnarled branch on one of the leftover slate tiles, and when Dad first saw it his mouth had dropped open. It’s beautiful, Maya, he said. I can’t believe you took garbage and made it into this. Running a hand over the wood, Lucas turned, shaking his head at the space I’d worked so hard to transform.

  “Lucas.” I squared off, blocking the door.

  “I don’t know this house.” His wrists were still raw from the handcuffs he’d somehow escaped.

  I took a step forward and braced my weight. “Of course you don’t. You’ve never been here before.”

  “I remember . . .” He swiveled around, searching the walls. “I remember a mountain of salt.”

  A mountain of salt? I shook my head, trying to make sense of what he was saying. There were giant sand and taconite piles in the commercial zones near the harbor, but salt? Where would he have seen something that looked like a mountain of salt?

  “I only have a little salt shaker here. Do you want to see it?”

  He didn’t reply, sinking instead into a crouch on the floor and holding his head. The doctor had warned about a possible concussion. Then I noticed one of his slippers—the kind they gave patients to use the bathroom or go to the cafeteria—was turning red.

  “Come on. You’re bleeding.”

  I helped him back to his feet and checked his pupils, which looked normal, then grabbed a first aid kit out of the cabinet. Jasper whined when we passed through the living room.

  “So this was your grand plan?” I couldn’t help the dazed laugh that bubbled out of my mouth when we got to the kitchen. “You wanted to escape Congdon to visit my house? I should have just bought some cookies and gone home instead of killing myself trying to stop you.”

  He frowned at his foot, looking calmer now. “Maybe you could’ve locked up your dog, too.”

  “I think whoever trespasses in a yard with a sign that says, ATTACK DOG ON SITE. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. deserves whatever they get.”

  “Why do you have an attack dog?”

  I dropped into a chair, exhaling gratefully at the relief of pressure on my ankle. “My dad got him as sort of a welcome home present after I’d been gone once. He’s a sailor, so he lives on the lake for a good part of the year, and he worries. He thinks . . . he thinks I need protection.”

  Now it was Lucas’s turn to laugh and I couldn’t help grinning. “I know, right? Dad trained him as a guard dog, but he’s a big softie underneath and it’s nice to have the company. The nights can get pretty long in the winter.”

  “Yes, they can.” His smile faded. After a moment he seemed to forget about Jasper and dropped into a chair, studying the kitchen as if looking for something he’d misplaced. I watched him carefully, trying to gauge his mental state and how to approach whatever came next.

  “What about your mom?” he asked after an awkward pause.

  I shrugged, dousing some cotton balls in iodine. “She didn’t stick around. Take off your
slipper and put your foot on the table.”

  He did, letting me examine it. There were two shallow scrapes from Jasper’s incisors with some abrasions on either side. I swabbed the worst of it, ignoring his hiss of pain. The longer I wiped the blood off and applied bandages, the more surreal the situation became. Lucas Blackthorn was sitting at my kitchen table like he’d just dropped by to hang out. I should have called Congdon the minute I saw him. Or I should’ve let Jasper hold him while I phoned the police. As if it knew what I was thinking, my cell phone bleeped to tell me I had another message from Dr. Mehta and it finally occurred to me why she’d been calling.

  “There’s probably a manhunt out for you now.”

  “Why?”

  “You tend to attack people, haven’t you noticed?”

  “So does your dog. Why isn’t he chased down and locked up?”

  Raising an eyebrow, I swung a hand toward the living room where Jasper could clearly be heard scratching at the kennel door.

  Lucas smiled with chagrin. “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “Any minute now.” I stuffed the bloody slipper back on his foot, trying not to think about why I was postponing the inevitable. He’d assaulted the couple who’d found him robbing the outfitter store; he’d choked, fought, and shoved me; and his file at Congdon clearly labeled him dangerous. But he was also injured and there was something different about him in the dull light of my kitchen, the way he was still inspecting the house even now, drinking in the details of the spice rack and coffeepot with an intrusiveness that was almost endearing, a boy who’d never learned manners, who’d never been told not to stare.

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  He ran a hand over the coat. “It aches a little. Not bad.”

  So, the pain meds were still working. He hadn’t been loose long.

  “Did you strangle anyone to get out this time?”

  “Didn’t need to.” His face split into an unexpected grin and he began chatting freely. “I pretended to be sleeping until they took my handcuffs off to change my clothes. When they left to get something, I slipped out the window, took a jacket from an unlocked truck, and headed toward the lake. From there it was easy to find your house.”