Summer Searcher

by M K Dymock

  While he stared at the markings, Catherine knelt beside him. “There’s another hidden opening here like the original one.” She pulled at the pile of rocks, revealing a hole. “I think this is an original cave,” her voice echoed back. “Definitely not blasted by a human.” She stuck her head through it.

  Sol ignored her as he focused on the face. The person in the drawing had a pointy nose and ears with hair to his chin. Next to that drawing was a smaller girl, also with pointy ears but long hair to the waist.

  A single Z had been carved next to it.

  Part of the Z drawing had been colored over with thick black charcoal as if someone wanted to erase the drawing but got distracted.

  “Sol.” With her head stuck in the hole, he missed the next muffled words.

  “What?”

  “It opens up.” She pushed her entire body through the rest of the way.

  He dropped down next to her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Her feet disappeared. A second later, she pushed her head back out. “I think you might want to see this.”

  “I’m good.” The main tunnel continued on his right, and he suspected it went to an exit where Hylia had escaped.

  “It looks like there’s a body in here.”

  He didn’t register her comment at first with the bland way she said it. “Wait, what?” He jerked his head back into the tunnel hole, blinding Catherine with the headlamp. “Are you sure?”

  She was sure. It took some more digging to get him back there until he could be certain himself. The smell alone should’ve convinced him. Death left a musty odor that permeated everything around it. A body left in there would decompose at a slower rate.

  The small tunnel opened into a larger cavern—not enough for him to stand up in. In the middle of the space, a tarp covered a large mound.

  With a gloved hand, he pulled back the tarp. The waxy face still held some shape and hadn’t yet disintegrated. His grip on the tarp shook. So unlike Daisy’s body when she’d laid out in the open for a full week before he . . . Stop it, he told himself, focus.

  Long brown hair and a small heart-shaped necklace was all needed for the ID. He replaced the tarp.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he said. He would need to call this in and get everything examined. She stood, as much as she was able, and examined the edges of the cavern.

  One of the pictures on his wall of missing people could come down.

  21

  Jen didn’t want to talk about her family anymore. Every word risked her saying something that could expose them. “What happened to my family’s belongings? I was hoping something, anything might’ve remained.”

  About a hundred questions passed through Sela’s eyes, but she must’ve sensed more answers would not be forthcoming.

  “I’m sorry, Hylia. The police collected a lot and then the lawyer . . . Of course. Jim.”

  “Who’s Jim?”

  “He’s a neighbor, who did their wills. He was also helping your mother with . . .” She faltered. “He’d be the one to talk to.”

  “Helping my mom with what?”

  The baby cried out. Sela went to her despite the cry not being more than a squeal. “I should take care of her. Don’t want to be a neglectful grandmother.”

  Jen followed. “Helping my mom with what?”

  The baby grabbed onto Sela’s long hair as she lifted her up. “It doesn’t matter. Your parents are dead, and you are alive. That is all that matters.”

  Merrell used to say something similar when she’d complain about their vagabond existence. “It’s enough you and Link are alive; the rest doesn’t matter.”

  Except it did.

  The rest shaped everything about her childhood and her adulthood. She had a right to know that. “Sela, please. Everything changed the day my mom died. I need to know.”

  “Did you know about your father’s diagnosis?”

  The statement hit her gut. Jen hadn’t mastered social situations, but she did know how to convince people she knew more than she did about any given subject. “Yeah, but they didn’t like to talk about it.”

  “We did not talk about things like that back then. Charlotte only told me because we were to have custody if something ever happened.” Her voice faded as if remembering the something that did happen. “It was getting worse. She started to talk of maybe a divorce.”

  “My mom wouldn’t leave my dad.” Her sharp tone stopped the conversation, but she couldn’t help it. Her memory of those years being happy ones were all she had.

  Sela looked downcast for a moment before backtracking. “Of course, no. At least not for good. She thought threatening it might force him to get help. And he did, for a time.”

  Help for what? “Did it help?” Jen desperately needed to understand.

  “No, it made it worse. He thought the therapist was watching him, sent by the government. He would be fine for days, months even. Then he would stop showering, stop eating.”

  Of course he’d been acting odd. That would’ve been the time when the threats started coming. She knew better than Sela how he’d acted during that time. The truth was Merrell had started taking over her father even before her mother’s death. He’d pick them up from school but drive them home a new way each time. A game, he’d explain, while he pointed out cars that could be following them. Soon it stopped being a game.

  “My father would never hurt us. He only wanted to keep us safe.” She had a lot of anger toward Merrell, but she’d never doubted that.

  “One time,” Sela’s voice broke. “He ran away with you and Link for two days. Your mother was frantic. She had a friend, a police friend, whom she knew through the hospital and called him. He was able to track his credit cards to a hotel. After a while, she convinced your dad to come home. That was when she talked to the lawyer about something beyond a will.”

  That was when he learned not to use credit cards, Jen added silently. “That’s why you thought he killed her.”

  “That and I couldn’t believe your mother would commit suicide.” She cooed at the baby before setting her back down and returning to the kitchen.

  “What was he running from?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When he took us for the two days, what did he say he was running from?”

  “He’d done some work with satellites, I think, moving them. Charlotte said he thought the government was watching.”

  All these years, and his voice would not leave her: “They are always watching.” One bright cloudless night had brought the two of them and a telescope out to their backyard. “They see all; they see us.”

  “Who, Dad? God?”

  “No, God is content to let the world alone. Bad people want to control everything, so they watch, waiting for our guard to be down, to take control.”

  Jen should’ve been scared or concerned or something besides curious. This was not the first of these kinds of conversations. They felt like a game to her. “When? What will we do?”

  “We will go to where the satellites can’t see us.”

  Apparently, her mother and everyone else had thought her father was going crazy. Jen knew he was not. Someone had been in that room holding a gun to her mother’s head; someone had stolen her mother’s life and made it look like a suicide.

  Sela took their empty mugs and placed them in the dishwasher. “The police called me every week with more questions until they found the blood. They said your father killed you . . .” she pressed her eyes closed “. . . and threw you over the edge. Then he jumped. I thought David finally went crazy.” Her eyes widened. “Hylia, where is Link?”

  Jen’s head shot up. She’d forgotten the very thing that had brought her here. “Do you have the lawyer’s name? I need to find my family’s belongings.”

  22

  Sol never knew how to classify the missing girl—or even if she was missing at all. She belonged to the Fergusons, a family of misfits who kept to themselves. They hated the entire w
orld but only disliked each other. They beat their dogs and children in equal measure, but every time he tried to call the state or investigate them himself, that particular branch of the family would disappear.

  One branch of about ten lived in the lava rock fields outside the mountain valley of Lost Gorge. The girl, Amy, age seventeen, had stopped going to school. Any other Ferguson had long pulled out before that age to be “home schooled,” but Amy persisted in coming, albeit sporadically. It was her teachers who called in the missing report as her family had reacted with a bit of a shrug at her unknown whereabouts.

  “She went hiking,” the mother had said before spitting next to Sol’s shoes.

  “Hiking?” The Fergusons weren’t known for their physical endurance.

  “Yeah, she’s always been a bit odd.”

  Not believing the story, they searched for Amy and investigated the parents, who promptly disappeared. One teacher had come up with the detail of a heart-shaped necklace. A month before Amy had disappeared, the teacher had asked the very shy girl if a boy had given it to her. Her blushing shrug was enough of an answer.

  Amy turned eighteen a few weeks after the initial report, making her less of a priority. With no evidence she hadn’t left on her own accord and no family clamoring for her return, not much could be done.

  Sol had hoped she’d found a better life, even as he hung on his closet door one of the few photos the parents had.

  Sol called Clint about the body, who in turn called the state. More than a few people and their badges descended on the remote spot, which became a lot more crowded.

  It took almost a full day to extract the body, a job Sol was glad belonged to someone else. He kept busy following Catherine around as she joyfully mapped out new tunnels—or at least new to her.

  It also kept him distracted from his building frustration. The location put them on Forest Service land, which meant federal jurisdiction. The FBI would hold onto the case until the girl’s identity could be proved to be of no interest to the larger government. Sol would be forced to wait for that release to begin an official investigation.

  At least that’s what he would tell Clint—to prevent his old friend from getting into any trouble. A sheriff had to maintain relationships with the feds; Sol did not.

  The next morning, Sol and Clint sat over coffee in Clint’s office. Though it had at one time been Sol’s, he had no trouble sitting on the guest side of the desk, though he braced for the reprimand that was coming for going off on his own without offering a heads-up.

  “You doing okay?” Clint asked before he settled his solid frame into the creaky office chair.

  The lecture wasn’t forthcoming, and he relaxed a degree. “I’m okay. Why?”

  “Wasn’t sure if the body would bring back bad memories.”

  How many more years would he have to wait for everyone to stop treating him like some broken fool. “I don’t need to be coddled.” Yes, he went a little off after Daisy, but that was more than two years ago. People needed to move on.

  The sheriff stared at him a moment before changing the subject. “A preliminary report came in on the body. Female, but the age is harder to pin down. She was quite petite, and could be fifteen or twenty-five. No sign of trauma, though. No bullet holes, stab wounds, nothing. Could be Amy, but knowing for sure will take some time.”

  “People that age don’t usually die of natural causes,” Sol said.

  “Women sometimes do.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “She was pregnant, late first trimester or early second. They can’t say for sure if a complication is what killed her.” He squinted at the printed report. “And she’s been there for at least two years. The cold and airless cave slowed down decomposition.”

  “Why go to all that trouble to dump her there? Why not in the forest? One winter would do enough to destroy any evidence.”

  “I don’t think her only reason for being in that cave was to be hidden, Sol. She was placed with care.” Clint handed him a photo of a little blanket with pink edges. “That was nestled under her head.”

  Sol took the image. Clint was right—nothing about this said she’d been dumped. “Could you tell if she’d ever given birth before?”

  “I’m hoping they’ll figure that out at the state lab. I’m also hoping to get some idea of her lifestyle, what she ate, how she lived. I think she died in the summer, going by the shorts she was wearing. Do you think the family had anything to do with it? You know them better than me.”

  “No,” Sol said, but Clint looked incredulous. “Don’t get me wrong; they’re more than capable of killing her. But they wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of carrying her up there. Her being placed with care is not an action I’d attribute to those people.”

  “Her shorts were frayed and her boot tread worn down. How long ago did she disappear?”

  “Almost five years.”

  Clint stood and opened the blinds and the window, letting in light, air, and a view of the mountains. “Where has she been all this time?”

  Sol thought of the boot print. “I’m more concerned about who she’s been with.”

  23

  Jen had, like any teenager, questioned her father and the narrative that drove their very existence. Link, who was only six when they escaped, had much more of her father’s paranoid personality, and never did.

  Her motive in questioning wasn’t out of distrust but a teenager’s need to experience the world—or at least more than the mountains. She rebelled for the first time at age sixteen.

  They’d settled into a pattern of life in the rugged land. Every spring and fall they’d go into town on a supply run, but never the same town in the same year. A few times they even boarded a bus from one area to another to do their shopping. Link, so unused to any kind of vehicle, promptly threw up.

  The town visits would put Merrell on edge for days before and after each trip. The period of anxiety grew in length until one autumn she proposed a new method—she and Link would go by themselves. After all, no one paid attention to kids, she’d argued. Merrell came up with a hundred reasons why not, but with a strong degree of stubbornness she whittled that down to zero.

  They entered the town limits of Lost Gorge on a running path along the highway with Link complaining the entire way. He was almost ten, and his feet had grown much faster than his maturity. Jen, being sixteen and fresh out of puberty, had no memory of being anything but a joy to her family and had zero patience for her brother’s moods.

  “Pick up your freaking feet.”

  “I’m tired of walking.” The drag of his feet on the pavement was nails on a chalkboard.

  “We’ve walked more miles in one day before.” Truth was they’d gotten a little soft lately, staying in one place longer than usual. That, coupled with Merrell’s willingness to let them go alone, stopped her short.

  Link bumped into her from behind. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She continued walking. The leaves crunched beneath them, signaling another interminable winter. Something was up with Merrell; that was what. He’d always promised an end to their lifeless existence. Maybe enough time had passed he was finally willing to let them leave. They could get new identities and a new life across the border. A smile spread across Jen’s face as she imagined crossing the mountains to Canada like in The Sound of Music and having a normal life.

  Jennifer strode into the outdoor supply store with all the confidence a teenage girl could fake. She’d learned that looking like you knew where you were going and had every right to be there was far more effective than downcast eyes and mumbles. Link stuck with the downcast eyes and mumbles, but he could get away with that, being a tween and a twerp.

  They carried the dirt of a few months despite occasional dips in a creek. Lost Gorge, which served as a way station for hikers, bikers, and campers, never noticed.

  “Where’s your tarps?” she asked the sales woman who stood bent over an advertisement laid out on the counter.r />
  The woman looked up, and Jen recognized her blonde hair and smile immediately from a previous trip. Her smile held no hint of recognition, and Jen felt a flash of disappointment she tried to squash. There was no reason this strange woman would remember them out of years of customers. But for Jennifer this woman had been the longest conversation she’d had with a mother type since losing her own mom.

  The woman smiled. “I’ll show you; sometimes they get a bit buried.”

  As they walked away, a girl younger than Link called out. “Mom, can I sort the screws?”

  “Okay.”

  The flash of disappointment grew into a knot of pain and anger. How come that girl had her mother and Jen didn’t? She longed to be a child again who could stomp her feet and scream her indignation. At sixteen, she had to be an adult and had been one for years. She swallowed the pain and followed Elizabeth, whose name she remembered, to the back of the store.

  “Do you live around here?” Elizabeth asked as she rang up their few items.

  “No,” she said, her voice sharp and suspicious like Merrell’s. She took a beat and tried again, only softer. “No, we’re staying at a cabin for a few weeks.”

  “Oh really, where at?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. This is our first trip to the area. I let my parents do the driving.” She gestured to Link to pick up some of the bags. “We actually have to go meet them.”

  They were only a few feet from the door when the woman called out. “If you’re still around tonight, they’re doing a showing of Shrek at the community center. We don’t have a theater, so we do it there. It’s free, and there’ll be popcorn and cookies and such.”

  “What’s Shrek?” Link blurted out. A confused look crossed Elizabeth’s face. Before Jen could kick her brother for his error, he rectified it. “Oh, Shrek. I didn’t hear you the first time.” They had really honed their ability to lie.

  “Can we go?” Link asked as they paused in a vacant lot to pack their new purchases into backpacks.