A Serial Killer’s Daughter

by Kerri Rawson

  “Slow down, you’re going to get a belly ache.”

  Forty-eight hours ago I was bent over by my massive backpack, full of nerves on my shaky legs. So miserable I was contemplating flinging myself off a ledge. Now, after a 4,300-foot descent over thirteen miles, I posed for a picture a foot off the river’s edge, in front of some wicked white-water rapids, standing tall, legs firm, grinning ear to ear. My backpack, flung off yards back, was forgotten.

  After getting my water’s fill, I went back and grabbed my pack, stepping over large river rocks to reach our sandy campsite where I had big plans to plant my rear for the remainder of the day. We passed by a few tents and were soon greeted by a handful of hikers.

  One of the men, in his early twenties, said, “You must be the man hiking with his two young sons and the large winter-weight packs we heard about!”

  How had they heard of us? It was like our legend (of stupidity) preceded us.

  I took off my sunglasses and looked the guy hard in the eyes. “I’m a girl,” I said with a smirk.

  “Oh, that you are! Nice to meet you!”

  “What do you mean, ‘winter-weight packs’?” I asked, although I thought I already knew the answer.

  The group of seasoned hikers explained. In the warm months in the canyon, you can manage well with lightweight clothing and basic necessities—you want to keep your pack weight down as much as possible so you can carry more water.

  I ran through a mental list of unnecessary items I’d lugged around for two days and had yet to use, including jeans, my purple KSU jacket, and a large KSU plastic mug. And not enough water, not nearly enough.

  Dad was still talking to the group, but I moved on, setting my pack up against a tamarisk, a small cedar tree set back in a long, narrow grove along the river. I tossed my mat down on the sand and took off my boots and socks. A. D. and Dad joined me; A. D. pulled his Chicago Bulls cap over his eyes and quickly fell asleep, and Dad soon followed. I picked up the red-and-black paperback, heavy on crime, that I’d thrown last minute into my pack but drifted off to sleep too.

  A few hours later, we were woken by a party of a dozen or so loud, happy men and women in three rafts. They rammed their rubber boats on the sandy shore, and the guides were nimbly jumping out, grabbing ropes, tying the boats off to the trees. I was quite taken with these odd specimens, wearing bright-colored life vests, some in hard helmets, most scantily clad.

  The guides inquired after us, and we told them about the last two grueling days. After looking over Dad, they mentioned he looked pale and offered him a salt pill to help stave off growing dehydration, then offered us cold pineapple juice in cans and some of the fish tacos they cooked for their dinner. We gladly accepted.

  As the sun lowered for the third night, its remaining light falling on the massive brown-and-red walls surrounding us, I lay on the sand, happy, my belly full of water and food, thankful for this day.

  My faith had been built with a firm foundation by my parents and my grandparents, Sunday after Sunday at church as a child. It had taken terrible hits over the past five years, but now it was beginning to show me some hope.

  I’d been sure God had forsaken me. Yet my pleas in this canyon—for water, for shelter, for safety—had all been answered.

  Had God not forsaken me? Was he hearing my prayers? Had he been with me this entire time?

  Maybe, just maybe, there was something to this whole God thing.

  With lots of living things scurrying around us due to the abundant water, I decided crashing in my tent sounded best for the night. I quickly set it up under the low-lying trees and snapped a glow stick so I could have some light to read by.

  Huge mistake.

  A gazillion bugs hit my tent in a flash. I heard Dad chuckling loudly outside, and I yelled to him through the flap I now refused to open. “What’s so funny?”

  “Your tent. It’s glowin’ like a gigantic lightnin’ bug. And every insect for miles likes you a whole lot.”

  Oh heck. I quickly finished using the light and tucked it into my shoe, stewing at the man who was contently lying out on the sand in the cool air, watching the stars.

  DAY FOUR

  The next morning, Dad told me sleeping out on the sand was one of the more magical nights of his life, watching bats swoop above his head, catching bugs. I’d slept in fits, my tent too warm—but unwilling to sleep outside among the many river critters.

  After breakfast, we walked down to the boulder-strewn beach to watch the rafters as they shot the rapids. They paddled hard as soon as they put in, and I held my breath as each boat hit the churning water and lifted with a good number of yee-haws coming from the boats. Each made it over with reasonable ease and was quickly sent downstream and soon out of sight. Dad and I determined right then we would take a rafting trip through the canyon before he got any older.

  Dad wanted to make it up to Monument Creek before it got any warmer, concerned about the heat in the creek bed. A. D. and I wanted to stay at the river for the day and head up to our campsite at dusk. But Dad reminded us that if Brian were to come down, he would expect to find us there on day four.

  It didn’t seem worth the argument with Dad—or the likely fallout—so we packed up and trekked one and a half miles back through the same creek bed as yesterday.

  You could make out the rim from this camp—thousands of feet above us, way off in the distance. There were likely people up there right now, sightseeing from the top of the Abyss.

  It was hot on the platform, and I quickly sought shade. Dad told me before I wandered off that I needed to secure my pack. We had seen ground squirrels down at the river and here. Dad helped me rig up a rope over a tree branch, and we hung my pack high.

  Dad was pale, uptight, and peeved; he seemed to want to spend the rest of his day in the awfully hot and smelly outhouse that was at camp. I’d stepped foot in it once but turned right back around and went back to using the desert with the lizards.

  Trying to avoid colliding up against Dad, who was becoming more and more irritable, A. D. and I found refuge in a narrow slickrock canyon. I intended to spend hours reading and napping, with my feet in a cold stream, my back up against smooth rock. I was going to enjoy my day whether Dad wanted to or not.

  When I got back to camp late in the afternoon, I found a two-inch hole in the side of my pack and the remains of my trail mix scattered on the ground. Dang rodents.

  At dinner, A. D. and I were trying to help, and I accidentally spilled a small amount of cooking fuel. Dad snapped at us both, “Now look what you’ve done!”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t that much—”

  “You need to be more careful!” Dad interrupted, overriding what I was trying to say, telling us how priceless the fuel was. It was common to have his mood switch on one of us kids, but I’d never seen him do that to any of my cousins.

  Dad always fought hard to be in control. Not just his emotions or demeanor, but his whole body. He was careful about who got to see what side of him. He was almost always on excellent behavior in front of anyone who wasn’t Mom, Brian, or me, but now he was losing a little bit of control and quickly boiling over.

  We somehow managed dinner under tight conditions and a darkening sky. Not long after, Dad and I laid out plastic to sleep on; it was way too hot for a tent, even with rodents around. A. D. set up a spot near some young hikers who had come into camp that afternoon—I think he’d had enough of Dad and likely me too.

  Not long after lying down, I saw a flashlight bouncing around off in the distance, up above the steep switchbacks that led down to Monument Creek.

  My heart caught in my throat—Brian!

  I sat up and nudged Dad, pointing out the light to him. “Look up there! Do you think it could be Brian? Can we go see? Help whoever it is?”

  Dad looked out into the distance, but with his face and voice set firm, said, “No. It’s not safe. It’s farther than you think. It would be suicide to go up there in the dark. Stay put.�
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  I got my small electric-blue Maglite out, stood up, and signaled S-O-S as best I could, three shorts, three longs, three shorts, twisting it to turn on, off, on, off. I didn’t know how to signal anything else, and I thought it might catch the attention of whoever held the light. I thought maybe they were signaling back, but Dad said it was the person moving the light around.

  It was Brian. I knew it. My whole body knew it.

  I argued with my dad, almost in a panic.

  He wouldn’t budge. It was like coming up against a stone wall. And I hated him for it. He didn’t need to be so cautious, so dang protective. That person might need help. But I knew it was Brian.

  The light faded and Dad thought maybe the person had headed down toward the river.

  I lay down and rolled over in a huff. Tears came forth and I wept as quietly as I could.

  God? Brian needs your help. Please keep him safe, please deliver him to us!

  With tears streaming down my face, I prayed for my brother or whomever the light belonged to. Broken inside, my hard, stubborn heart cracking in two, my soul splitting open. I rolled back over and looked up at the Milky Way laid out so perfectly, even better than it was two nights ago.

  All is calm. All is bright.

  God? You made this, didn’t you? All of this—the stars, the rocks, the river—they belong to you, don’t they? And I think they are as old as folks say. Because I think you’re infinite—like this immense place but way, way beyond.

  At Michelle’s funeral, it was spoken of many rooms and Jesus going to prepare a place for us and coming back to take us to be with him. Where in the heavens above was his home? Was there still room for me? Were Michelle and Grandpa, who believed in him, who loved his Son, home?

  They knew God as their Father.

  God had promised to never leave me nor forsake me. And he hadn’t forsaken me. I had forsaken him. That cut right through me, leaving gaping agony to the bottom of my being.

  Would God want to talk to me after I’d walked away? Would God want anything to do with me after the way I had treated him?

  God, forgive me for my doubts and all my wrong steps over the past years.

  I looked up at the stars overhead and made a deal with him: if he could get us out of this mess my dad had gotten us into, I would come back to the faith I’d lost and accept his Son, Jesus Christ, as my savior. I loved him—loved God. I would make it right.

  God, please help us get out of here. I will come back. I will do whatever it takes. Just get us out.

  A peace like I’d never known washed over me.

  I wiped my wet face on my sleeping bag and closed my eyes.

  Hope—it was beginning to spring forth.

  CHAPTER 14

  If It’s Good Enough for Tadpoles, It’s Good Enough for You

  DAY FIVE

  MONUMENT CREEK

  How much longer do you think we should wait?” I asked Dad, who was poking around last night’s campsite.

  “Don’t know. Guess we better get moving. Have our longest hike of the trip ahead of us,” he replied.

  We were stalling, both hoping Brian was the person behind the flashlight the night before, both hoping he would come walking into camp any moment. Whatever odds Dad and I were at yesterday had been forgiven with a solid night of rest and a growing concern for my brother.

  Maybe Brian would meet us back at the rim tomorrow.

  A. D. left a while ago, asking if it would be okay for him to hike on with the small group he met yesterday. Dad agreed and said we’d meet him at Horn Creek, our campsite for the night, eight miles east.

  Dad and I finally decided we couldn’t wait any longer due to the rising heat and headed out after topping off our bottles. We needed to be careful with our water supply today; there was no reliable water till Indian Garden tomorrow. Dad’s trail guide said not to count on water at Cedar Spring, and not to drink it at Salt Creek due to mineralization, or at Horn Creek due to radiation from an old mine above it. Fantastic!

  The switchbacks out of Monument Creek were steep and taxing, but the trail soon leveled off. We would be broadly contouring around and through the three steep drainages today; other times we would be jutting up against thousand-foot drop-offs.

  The trail cut between the river and massive red buttes rising off the distant South Rim, weaving through dense brown sagebrush and endless cacti. It was as if we had been dropped into an old western movie, and now all we needed were some proper hats and a pair of painted horses. I’d even settle for a stubborn burro, I thought.

  My pack was no longer a burden; it had grown much lighter thanks to a chubby rodent and my own consumption. I felt like a different person from the one who’d begun this trip five days before. My legs held strong, and I was no longer fearful for myself. But I was growing more worried about Brian—if he was behind us, he would have an immense distance to cover. We shouldn’t have ever told him to come down on his own and meet us.

  There was no shade and the sun was already striking us hard by midmorning. The distance we needed to cover in the heat was going to be the battle today. Dad pointed out a large group of vultures riding the thermals and circling on the north side, joking maybe a hiker had fallen.

  I didn’t think it was funny.

  About a mile down the trail, Dad said he needed a bathroom break and went back behind a ridge. He was gone for what felt like an eternity, and I was left stewing, stuck in the middle of the forsaken nowhere, waiting on what he could have taken care of back in our shaded camp.

  When Dad finally came back, he sat down, pale and discouraged, his face turned down. “Just leave me here to die.”

  I’d never seen my dad so lost.

  “You need to drink more water. Come on. We can’t stop here—we’ll roast. We need to find some shade. Cedar Spring? Can you make it there?”

  Resigned, he stood up gingerly, looked me in the eye with more clarity, and said, “Yeah. I can do it.”

  I helped him put his pack on, feeling bad about what I was asking him to do.

  We set out with a short third of a mile to go to get to a stopping point. We were both quiet; it felt like an immense shift had happened between us. He’d rallied me the first few days, kept me moving, kept me alive.

  Now I was doing the same thing.

  Dad never, ever showed weakness. He was the toughest person I knew, so it scared me to see him sink so low.

  11:00 A.M.

  CEDAR SPRING

  We dropped down into a chalky, narrow drainage, hoping to find water to fill our bottles back up, but all we found was a tiny waterhole with black tadpoles swimming in it. I figured if life was able to live in the water, then it couldn’t be that bad, so we set to work, filtering part of what was sustaining the spawn.

  What doesn’t kill you . . . makes you stronger?

  Dad was wiped out and I was suddenly tired, feeling oddly weighed down, as if someone had placed a heavy, warm blanket on me. We decided to hole up there for a few hours, setting plastic and our mats down under small rock alcoves. We took off our boots and I settled in for a rest, with a bag of snacks and my book near me.

  Around one o’clock, Dad woke me up to tell me, with a chuckle, that a raven had stolen my bag of snacks, scattering food all over the creek bed and was now munching happily.

  In my bare feet, I went after the bird. It took off, flying low over a steep drop-off, landing far out of my reach. It looked mighty pleased with itself. I was able to salvage some unpecked, wrapped items the thief left behind—I wasn’t going to waste anything down here if I could help it.

  Dad thought we should pack up and head on, but something in me was telling me to wait. “Shouldn’t we stay here through the worst of the heat and go on near dusk?”

  “If we do that, we’re going to get stuck with no campsite and too far to travel tomorrow.”

  “I really think we should stay a few more hours at least. It’s so awfully hot on the trail.”

  Dad decided we could s
tay, and we went back to lounging, chatting off and on, our voices bouncing around the creek bed.

  “Help! Help!” a man’s voice shouted overhead.

  I sat up and hastily put my boots on, not tying my laces.

  “Where are you? Are you hurt?” I called.

  “No, bring water!”

  I knew that voice! “Brian?”

  “Kerri? Dad?” His voice echoed. I couldn’t tell which side of the creek bed he was on.

  “It’s us! Where are you? I’m coming—Dad and I are coming, keep talking. Tell me where you are!” I was seized with fear and adrenaline; I could tell from Brian’s voice he was in bad shape. Scared.

  I grabbed my first-aid kit and water bottles and ran, fast as I could, right past Dad, who was still working on his boots.

  “Slow down! We don’t need you getting hurt.”

  Brian was likely on the path we had come down and I raced up it, finding him quickly. He was sitting down with his pack on, planted directly above our heads. He was bent over like he had come to the end of all ability.

  Thank you, God! Oh! Thank you, thank you!

  He was exhausted, dehydrated, sunburned—but otherwise seemed okay.

  I hugged him and handed him my water as Dad came up right behind me on the path.

  Dad hugged him tightly, holding on for a while, and the three of us cried, so happy to be reunited.

  “We need to get you into shade. Can you make it down the path? We’ve got water and food and a place to rest.” I was speaking rapidly.

  “Yeah, I can get down there, but something is wrong with my eyes. Can’t see very well,” my brother said.

  We took off my brother’s pack and Dad helped lift Brian up.

  Dad reached out and held Brian’s belt from behind as Brian took a few steps forward. I grabbed his green pack and almost threw it, it was so light.

  “Where’s your gear?”

  “Chucked it, almost all of it. Too heavy, couldn’t go on any farther. Tossed my tent, sleeping bag, clothes, back a ways. All I’ve got is some food and water, but my water is contaminated. I didn’t want to drink it. Was afraid it would make me sick.”