by April Henry
“One entering grid!” Jackie called out as she crawled under the yellow tape. Ezra, who was number two, followed a split second later. In a few moments they were all under the tape and creeping forward. The rule was that you never got ahead of the person to your left, so the line they made was slightly diagonal.
Alexis’s breath clouded the air in front of her. Anything in shadow glittered with frost. It was definitely still below freezing, but she was dressed in so many layers she wasn’t cold, except for her hands. The chill even seeped through her leather gloves. At least Alexis had leather gloves now, and painter’s kneelers. On her first evidence search, she hadn’t had either. Afterward, she had to rub her fingers to get the feeling back. But leather gloves and kneelers were too expensive to buy, and neither ever showed up at Goodwill. A week later Jon had slipped her both, claiming he had found extras in the back of the equipment closet. They both had pretended to believe him.
Now, inch by slow inch, the teens crawled forward. Alexis’s eyes scoured the ground. She was careful to brush back the leaves of larger weeds to look under them. She didn’t want to miss something small, like a torn fingernail. Dirt, pebbles, small rocks, slightly bigger rocks, weeds, brown leaves, red leaves, yellow leaves, multicolored leaves. A snail in its shell, which she was careful not to crush as she crawled over it. In Portland, you usually didn’t see snails, just slugs.
Beside her, Ruby sucked in her breath. Before Alexis could ask what was wrong, the other girl bellowed, “Team halt!”
Rubbing her ear and wincing, Alexis echoed “Team halt” with the others, and then straightened up. Her gaze followed Ruby’s pointing finger. It had been drilled into them not to touch anything they spotted. Touch it and they became part of the official chain of custody.
Mitchell hurried up behind them. “Who called team halt?”
Ruby said, “Thirteen. Possible evidence.”
Mitchell leaned down to look as Harriman came up.
“What did you find, Ruby?” Harriman asked.
“A beer bottle cap.” It was upside down, the inside flecked with rust.
“Flag it and keep going.” Harriman sounded disappointed. It was hard to imagine that the rusty cap had anything to do with the dead girl.
Mitchell handed Ruby a small orange plastic flag on a wire, which she poked into the dirt next to the cap. By the time they were done, this lot would be dotted with dozens of flags.
“Team forward!” Jackie called.
“Team forward,” Alexis echoed with the rest.
“Keep the line tight,” Mitchell called out as they started moving forward again. “Shoulder-to-shoulder. We want a high POD.” POD meant probability of detection.
They ended up stopping every fifteen or twenty seconds. Nick found a yellow napkin from McDonald’s. Ruby spotted some broken glass. Alexis called a halt for the lid to a coffee cup.
As she stuck the flag into the ground, Alexis glanced ahead. Her path would soon intersect with a blackberry bush, the one near where the police thought the girl had been initially stabbed. How many times had Mitchell told them, “Go where your grid takes you”? And “If you can’t see through it, you have to go through it”? The saying didn’t apply to tree trunks—even SAR hadn’t figured out how to do that yet—but they had been told it did to blackberry bushes. A bad guy might be counting on you not finding his gun because you weren’t willing to brave thorns.
Right before she reached the clump, Ezra found a cigarette butt and called another halt. While Harriman was looking at it, Alexis was frowning at the blackberry bush. It was a four-foot-tall mass of canes studded with wicked-looking thorns at least a half inch long. How in the heck was she supposed to go through that?
Behind her, Mitchell cleared his throat. “Want some advice?”
“Um, sure.” She turned. Mitchell’s normally pale face had two high spots of color.
He dropped to his knees behind her. “Tuck your chin down and push forward and down.” He demonstrated, butting his head against the air. But he was a little too enthusiastic and ended up bumping his helmet against her butt. Nick giggled. Face flaming, Mitchell got to his feet.
Alexis eyed the canes dubiously. “It still seems like I’m going to get all scratched up.”
He shook his head. “I know we always say ‘go through,’ but when you’ve got an established clump like this, you don’t want to try to wade through it. If you do, it will take you forever and you probably will get scratched. What you want to do is go over or under. And since we’re looking for a knife, it’s much more likely it is going to be on the ground. So you need to go under, where the evidence will be. You don’t want to just push vegetation down onto your evidence and hide it more.” He flattened the air with his hands. “I once saw a guy literally step on a shotgun and not realize it because of everything he was pushing down on top of it.”
“So I go under,” Alexis repeated doubtfully. She imagined the thorns raking her back, ripping through her Gore-Tex jacket. Which hadn’t been cheap, even at a thrift store.
“Once you get under, there’s more space than you might expect. Just think of the helmet as your battle armor. It actually does a pretty good job of getting you in there. Use it to shove yourself in as far as you can physically go. Then you literally just lift the whole mass of vines across your back.” Mitchell lifted his open hands and pushed them over his shoulders. “There’s a reason we’ve been called the ‘forest eradication team.’” He let out a laugh that squeaked at the end.
“Since you already know how to do it, maybe you should be the one.” Alexis liked this idea so much that she started to get to her feet so they could trade places.
Mitchell tugged her back down. “You’ve got to learn sometime.”
Before she could think of a way to get out of it, Jackie was yelling “Team forward!” again and Alexis was echoing it.
Shoulders hunched, using her helmet like a battering ram, she started to push her way into the vines. A thorn scratched her cheek, reminding her to tuck her chin and to hunker even closer to the ground. She wasn’t really on her hands and knees, but in nearly a fetal position on her forearms and shins, the ground just inches from her face. It felt too close, as if she were smothering. Alexis resisted the urge to stand and instead inched her way forward until she could go no farther. Then she reached up the way Mitchell had said to—silently thanking Jon for her gloves—and pushed at the mass of vines, scraping them farther down her back.
She had created a little hollow space, a kind of tunnel, below the fresh growth. Was this how a rabbit felt when it hid from a dog or a coyote? The sound of her own breath echoed in her ears, and the smell of dirt filled her nostrils. Light leaked in, and to ease her sense of claustrophobia, Alexis risked tilting her face up toward the patchwork of blue.
And then she saw it. Snagged on the vines about two feet off the ground.
A woman’s mitten. Hand-knit, purple-and-white-striped. Turned half inside out. As if a bramble had snagged it and yanked it off.
But why would anyone get so close to a blackberry bush in winter, when there were no berries to make the risk worth it? And why hadn’t the mitten’s owner noticed it had been pulled off and retrieved it?
Unless it had been night. Night and she had been running through this vacant lot. Trying to get away.
Trying—and failing.
CHAPTER 20
NICK
MONDAY
NOT SOME RANDOM GUY
Nick watched the wrinkles in Harriman’s face get even deeper after Alexis pointed at the mitten. Judging by his expression, it had to have been the victim’s. If Nick had just been two feet farther over, it would have been him who found it. Not Alexis.
In a low voice, Harriman conferred with Mitchell and Jon, then Mitchell clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone, we’re going to break for lunch. You can eat between the two crime scene tapes, but don’t talk to the media unless I’m there.”
Harriman cleared his throat. “And I know s
ome of you will be calling home or texting or whatever on your break. Remember that this is an active investigation. You can’t say anything about who the victim was, you can’t say she was alive when she was first found, you can’t say she was stabbed. You can’t even say she was a she. You know the rules. Even once it’s been officially released to the media, you can only talk about what they’ve already reported. Nothing more.” His hand cut through the air. “No further details.”
By the time Nick got to the sack lunches, all the ones with “ham” scribbled on them were gone. He reached for the last turkey, but Colton snatched it up with a triumphant grin. Great. All that was left was vegetarian. Nick did not see the point in refusing to eat meat. Prey and predator. It was a fact of life.
From his sack lunch, Nick pulled out the bag of chips—plain, which was more bad luck, because he saw other people with Doritos—and began to chomp away. While they had been searching, the crowd of onlookers had grown. They watched intently as Harriman photographed the mitten, first close up and then from a distance.
Nick spotted a familiar face at the far end of the crime scene tape. Kyle. He walked over, conscious of the stares and holding his head a little higher because of them. For once, he didn’t even mind the helmet.
“Hey, Kyle, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” He ducked under the tape and they moved off to one side. Heads turned in their direction. A barrel-chested guy in his midthirties was making a show of not listening.
Kyle kept his eyes on Harriman. “We’ve never had a murder in our neighborhood before. I decided to come over on my lunch break.”
“You won’t have much of a break, getting here and back.” It was at least a ten-minute drive one-way.
Shrugging, his brother took off his cap and smoothed back his hair before replacing it. His curls were darker and looser than Nick’s. People sometimes thought he was Italian. Not like Nick, with his light Afro that mostly just confused people. Sometimes they even asked, “What are you exactly?” with a tone that implied he was a different species.
Wilson, where Nick went to school, was mostly white, with some Hispanic and Asian kids thrown in. He and Kyle had gone to grade school in a poorer but more diverse part of town, while their mom had saved every spare penny. Finally, the summer before Nick entered sixth grade, she had been able to buy a tiny house in Southwest Portland, which had better schools and less crime.
At his new middle school, Nick started day one knowing nobody, since all his friends were across the river in a different school. He was skinny, he couldn’t sit still, and he didn’t look like everyone else. The other kids, who wanted to prove that they did fit in, made him a target. That first year, he was called names, spit on, pushed around. One kid stuck gum in his hair. His mom ended up just cutting it out, so his crazy curls looked even crazier. Another kid shot staples at him with a rubber band. Nick never knew if it was because of the color of his skin or because he was a stranger or because of who he was underneath those superficial things. Maybe for all those reasons.
During his time at Wilson, Kyle seemed to fit in far better than Nick ever would. He was a pretty good athlete, and he always had a girlfriend or two. He didn’t worry, didn’t get upset, didn’t seem to care that much about anything. Maybe that was why even though he was new, too, he never seemed to get picked on. No fun in teasing someone who didn’t care.
When trying to keep his head down didn’t work, Nick had started getting louder. He looked for ways to gain attention. He clowned around, imitated teachers, and made jokes and faces in class. He wrote stories set in Iraq about heroic soldiers battling overwhelming odds. In his notebooks, he drew battle scenes and bits from horror movies and showed them around, heartened by any reaction, good or grossed out.
But nothing Nick had ever done had gotten Kyle’s attention. Not until now, anyway.
Leaning in, Kyle said in a low voice, “So have you guys found anything interesting besides that mitten? Any clues? I tried asking one of the cops, but he wouldn’t say anything.”
“You know I can’t tell you that.” Nick took a bite of his cheese sandwich, which suddenly tasted better. In the weeks since he had joined SAR, how many times had he told Kyle he wasn’t allowed to talk about anything they did that was crime-related? And how many times had Kyle not even asked him a single question, seemed to not even be paying attention? When Nick had been itching to talk—after, of course, swearing him to secrecy? But now he really wasn’t going to say a thing.
Kyle was undeterred. “Do they have any suspects? Do they know where she was before she ended up here?”
“If they know that stuff, they’re not telling us.” Nick rewound the conversation. “How come you know it was a she?”
Kyle shrugged. “I just guessed. Besides, that’s a striped mitten. And no guy is going to wear a striped mitten.”
This was his brother. Not a reporter. Not some random guy. Nick pulled Kyle even farther away from the crowd, then leaned closer. “You can’t tell anyone, okay?”
“I won’t.”
“It was a girl. She was stabbed once in the back and then hit on the head, but she was alive when she was found. She died on the way to the hospital.”
“Are you serious?” Kyle was finally looking at him, not the cops. “Did she say who did it?”
Nick thought back to what Harriman had said. “It doesn’t sound like she said anything.”
“Did you see her?”
“She was gone before we got here.” He could see Kyle already losing interest, so he added, “I saw her picture, though.” He looked over his shoulder to make sure Harriman was still busy. “The detective told me she lives around here, but she didn’t look familiar to me.”
“What did she look like?”
“Pretty. Twenty-two or so. White with dark curly hair. High cheekbones and her chin kind of came to a point.”
Kyle went still. “Wait—what was her name?”
“He didn’t say. Why? Do you know her?” She did sort of sound like Kyle’s type. Pretty was a given, but most of his girlfriends had also been white with dark hair.
His brother started to open his mouth. But before he could say anything, a wail cut through the air.
They turned. A cop grabbed the arm of a woman with frizzy, graying hair just as she tried to go through the crime scene tape. Even as they struggled, she didn’t stop screaming. A second cop hurried over and grabbed her other arm, and she fell to her knees. She was wearing jeans and a purple ski jacket. Her lips were pulled back, her mouth open, her eyes slitted from the force of her screams.
She looked crazy.
But the words coming out of her mouth made perfect sense.
“My baby! Oh my God, my baby died here!”
CHAPTER 21
NICK
MONDAY
PINNED IN PLACE
The only person Nick could see moving was the TV cameraman. He was filming the grieving mother. The other onlookers had frozen at the sound of the woman’s anguished screams. Some watched her helplessly, while others looked away, wincing. Even the cops restraining her looked like they had no idea what to do now.
Nick wanted to run over and kick the TV guy in the crotch and then break his camera. But like everyone else, he was pinned in place as shriek followed shriek with barely a pause for breath. It was like listening to someone being tortured. Kyle was biting his lip so hard that it had turned white.
Alexis was the one who broke the terrible spell. She hurried up to the woman and dropped to her knees in front of her. Speaking in a low but urgent voice, she wrapped her arms around the older woman.
Nick couldn’t believe it. Alexis always held herself back. Even though she was friends with him and Ruby, she never shared anything personal. She didn’t even like getting her hands dirty, which was pretty ironic for a SAR volunteer. But here she was, calmly beholding naked grief and pain. And unlike the rest of them, she had moved toward it. Embraced it.
What kind of girl wa
s Alexis Frost that she could do that? Take the agony of an adult and let it fall on her own slender shoulders?
Whatever Alexis was murmuring in the older woman’s ear, it was enough that the woman was able to pull herself together. First the screams were replaced by ragged breaths. Then the woman wiped her face on her sleeve. Finally, Alexis and one of the cops helped her get to her feet. She was quiet now, her face red and wet and raw. Half supporting her, the cop led her away.
The onlookers who had gathered along the crime scene tape began to talk again, but their voices were subdued now, their expressions more serious. It was no longer such a spectator sport.
Mitchell broke the quiet by clapping his hands and calling the searchers back in.
“I’ve got to go, Kyle.”
Pulling his phone from his pocket, his brother checked the time and swore. “And I’ve got to bounce.”
Nick ducked back under the two crime scene tapes and joined the others. Mitchell got them all lined up in their places again, just past the blackberry bush where Alexis had found the mitten. Mitchell worked from behind the line, not ahead, so that he wouldn’t leave footprints or disturb evidence.
As he took his spot, Nick eyed the area they would be searching next. It sloped down toward the spot where the girl’s body had been found. At the bottom was a small creek, about six inches wide. Parallel marks on either side showed how the width varied with the weather. This week had been mostly dry.
As he knelt, waiting for everyone to get into position, Nick looked up at the sky. It was bright blue except for a single white contrail. Portland didn’t have many clear, cold days. If he had gone to school today, he might have been tempted to wear shorts, flip-flops, and sunglasses, just for the double takes and the laughs. It was doable if you topped it with a down jacket (which you stuffed in your locker as soon as you got to school) and didn’t have to wait too long for the bus.
