The Body in the Woods

  “Are you cold?” Ruby asked. “I have an extra jacket you could borrow.”

  Of course she did. It was probably some solar-powered thermal item. Ruby was a gear nerd, and her parents bought her REI’s top of the line. Alexis got stuff on Craigslist or at the Army-Navy Surplus store.

  “That’s okay. I’m good.”

  Like Ruby’s clothes would fit her anyway. Alexis was built like an Amazon. Every PE teacher she’d encountered practically drooled when they saw her, imagining her on the basketball court. But Alexis had zero coordination. At most she could manage three of anything: two hands and one foot, two feet and one hand. Add the fourth, especially if it was supposed to do something different from its partner, and she was lost.

  “Bobby!” Alexis shouted again, and Nick joined in after a few more blasts on his whistle. “Bobby!”

  As if in answer, two labs—one black and one yellow—appeared on the trail ahead. They bounded toward the three of them, nosing crotches and putting their muddy paws on knees. Looking at their long yellow teeth, Alexis shrank back. The dogs in her neighborhood would as soon bite you as look at you. Nick laughed and rubbed the black one behind the ears. As she petted the yellow one, Ruby’s grin transformed her narrow, foxlike face.

  “They’re friendly!” came a shout from farther up the trail.

  A guy in his mid-thirties, wearing black shorts and a gray T-shirt, appeared behind the dogs, his hiking boots slapping the sludge. Mud flecked his bare calves. He glanced curiously at their red helmets—Nick’s still wasn’t on his head—but he didn’t slow down. The dogs broke free to run ahead of him.

  Alexis, Ruby, and Nick looked at each other. Somebody had to speak, so Alexis did. “Hey, wait, hold up a sec.”

  He did, jogging in place.

  “So we’re with Portland Search and Rescue.” It was hard not to feel like an impostor. She remembered Mrs. Balog complaining that they were just a bunch of teenagers. “Have you seen a thirty-four-year-old man, kind of heavyset, wearing a navy blue jacket and jeans? He’s lost.”

  “He’s not lost,” Ruby corrected her. “He’s autistic, and he’s probably hiding.”

  “I’ve seen lots of people,” the man answered, “but no one like that.” And then he was sprinting down the trail, calling to his dogs.

  “If you do see him,” Alexis yelled after his back, “tell the people in the main parking lot.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they came to a branch in the trail. After consulting the topo map, Ruby said they should take the path to the left. They passed a curve and saw a heavyset man walking toward them. He looked like he was in his early thirties, with a round, shaved head. Over one shoulder, he had a big blue duffel bag. He glanced at their red helmets and then away. For the millionth time, Alexis wondered if they really needed to be red.

  “Hello,” Ruby said. “We’re with Portland Search and Rescue. Has anyone asked if you’ve seen a thirty-four-year-old man who is five foot eight and two hundred pounds and autistic? He is more than likely hiding.”

  His gaze flicked over each of them. “No. Definitely not.” He was already edging past them. Alexis wondered if Ruby’s stilted way of speaking made him nervous.

  “If you do see him, note his location,” Ruby said. “He probably won’t approach you. There’s a command post set up at the end of the trail, and you could report it there.”

  “Sure.” He threw the last word over his shoulder.

  The next person they met was a homeless guy in his early twenties. His black dreads ended in white and black beads shaped like skulls. He was smoking a cigarette, and his fingernails were outlined in dirt. Ruby’s nose wrinkled, but it was Alexis he watched impassively as she explained about the search for Bobby. He said only two words: “no,” when asked if he’d seen Bobby, and “okay,” when she told him about the command post. Then he walked on.

  While Alexis and Ruby were still speaking to the homeless guy, Nick kept walking. He disappeared around the bend, but they could hear him calling occasionally. Hadn’t Jon told them to stick together? Alexis and Ruby kept moving up the trail, all the while scanning the undergrowth, the ferns and shrubs and saplings, the rocks and fallen trunks.

  The problem with looking, Alexis thought, was that you might find someone. Maybe the reason Bobby wasn’t answering wasn’t that he was hiding.

  Maybe he was hurt.

  Maybe he was dead.

  Her breath came shallower.

  There! What was that? Just off the trail. Her heart started to race, but it turned out to be just a small brown spiral-bound notebook. Alexis leaned over and picked it up, flipped through the pages. The first half was filled with tiny crabbed cursive handwriting, the kind she associated with old people, as well as a few line drawings. The back pages hadn’t been used yet. One side of each page was blank, and the other was lined.

  “It’s a birder’s notebook.” Ruby leaned in. “Bird-watchers use it to record what they see.” With one of her chewed-down-to-hamburger fingernails, she pointed at an empty lined page. “You write your observations here—what the bird was doing, what time you saw it, where it was, if there were other birds with it, if it was feeding—and then you draw it on the blank side.”

  Alexis was just thinking that whoever owned it wasn’t a very good illustrator when a man’s voice called out from behind them.

  “Oh, good, you found my notebook.”

  They turned. A white-haired man with silver-framed glasses and a full white beard hurried toward them. Take away his cargo pants, binoculars, and camera, and add a red hat and suit and another fifty pounds, and he’d make a pretty good Santa Claus.

  Alexis put the notebook into his outstretched hand.

  “Thank you so much!” He slipped it into the pocket of his black North Face jacket. “I realized I must have dropped it last night when I was looking for a northern spotted owl. I thought I would try retracing my steps.”

  “A northern spotted owl?” Ruby stopped in her tracks. “Are you serious? It’s been years since one’s been here.”

  “There are rumors one’s been sighted.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Are you sure it wasn’t a barred owl?”

  The older man’s face lit up. “You must be a fellow birder! I’m hoping to put a northern spotted owl on my life list.”

  “I have a strong interest in birds,” Ruby said. “Also in continuity errors, true crime, and gum flavors.”

  Could Ruby get any weirder?

  “There’s a lot I’d like to put on my life list.” The birder patted the pocket with the notebook. “A lot.”

  Here was her chance to get them back on track. “I’m afraid we’re not looking for birds,” Alexis said. “We’re with Portland Search and Rescue, and we’re looking for a missing man.” It was getting easier to say. “His name’s Bobby Balog. He’s thirty-four, about two inches shorter than me, and two hundred pounds. He might be hiding.”

  The man frowned. “Is he a criminal?”

  Alexis shook her head. “No. He’s autistic and afraid of strangers.”

  “I haven’t seen him.” He turned to go back down. “But I’ll keep an eye out.”

  After he was gone, Ruby cupped her hands behind her ears—which made her look even more bizarre—and turned her head from side to side like some kind of bat. “I can’t even hear Nick anymore,” she complained. “Mitchell said we were supposed to stick together.”

  “It’s not like he can get lost as long as he stays on the trail,” Alexis said. This was Forest Park, and while it might be five thousand acres, it was still in the middle of a big city.

  “I think we should catch up,” Ruby said.

  “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. I’m going to keep at this pace.”

  Ruby hesitated for a moment, then hurried past her.

  Two months ago, Alexis and Ruby had been close. Well, as close as Alexis let anyone get. On orientation day, the meeting room had held four girls, twenty-three boys, two women, and three men. Norma
lly Alexis wouldn’t have had anything to do with Ruby, but she had felt lost in an ocean of boys. Alexis and Ruby got tighter after one girl and then a second dropped out.

  But the more Alexis got to know Ruby, and the more Ruby tried to get to know Alexis, the more Alexis had realized she would really rather not be friends. Not when Ruby asked so many questions. She didn’t need Ruby finding out the truth about her life and blurting it out to the next person she came across.

  Alexis rounded a corner and almost got run over by a long-haired guy on a mountain bike.

  “Hey, stop!” she yelled, but he kept going. “We’re looking for a missing man!” she called to his retreating back. Had he even heard her?

  Alexis looked around. She was completely alone. Then her eyes found a shadow that wasn’t quite natural.

  The curve of a back. Lying motionless in the ferns.

  CHAPTER 4

  TUESDAY

  UNIMAGINABLE FEATS OF BRAVERY

  Nick had lost sight of Ruby. Lost sight of everyone, really. Occasionally he remembered to blow his whistle and call out Bobby’s name, but he did it with less and less enthusiasm.

  What was the point of even pretending to look for the guy? They had been given the least likely section of the park to search. Basically, this was a training exercise, and not a very interesting one. How could you find someone if there was no one to be found? There was zero challenge. It wasn’t like having to build a fire and keep it going throughout the night, or being told to fashion a shelter with only the materials you had at hand. There was no chance that they would be the ones to find Bobby.

  Nick had joined SAR to prove himself. People at school saw a skinny kid who couldn’t sit still, a kid who couldn’t stop talking, a kid who didn’t fit in anyplace, but Nick knew that, just like his dad, he was capable of unimaginable feats of bravery.

  If only he was given the opportunity.

  Which was where SAR came in. Boy Scouts? Please. He did not want to earn little cloth badges. He wanted to do something real. In SAR you not only learned skills, you also saved lives.

  Except not today.

  Nick’s mind kept starting to wander, and after a while, he let it. His body might be in Forest Park, but instead he imagined he was in Iraq. Back where his dad had been.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw piles of gray rubble. A car burnt down to its blackened bones. A bleating goat. White buildings, sand-colored roads, oily smoke. A woman all dressed in black, not even her eyes visible. A world without color. Certainly nothing green.

  His red climbing helmet, which he had finally strapped on after Ruby wouldn’t shut up about it, became a combat helmet. His SAR backpack was now military issue.

  He whirled around and aimed an imaginary rifle. Blam!

  His mother never mentioned his dad, but Nick had seen the medal, snug in its case, in his mom’s dresser drawer. A Bronze Star on a red, white, and blue ribbon. He had looked it up on Wikipedia. “Awarded for bravery, acts of merit, or meritorious service.”

  But his mom never talked about the medal or the man. His dad had died in combat—that was all Nick had been able to piece together from cryptic comments made over the years. Sacrificed himself to save others.

  Nick had been four when his dad died. Were his few memories even his? Or did they come from movies? From his imagination? A deep voice, big hands lifting him up under his armpits, a scratchy cheek against his own.

  All his mom ever said was, “The army destroyed your father. You’ll join up over my dead body.”

  When joining up was the only thing Nick wanted.

  In the army, he was sure he would feel like he belonged. He had a weird pale Afro and was too light skinned to be black, too dark skinned to be white. Nick had grown up in a white world, but he didn’t really fit there. That world didn’t really want him. He’d seen people from his mom’s work clutch their purses until they realized he was her kid.

  Portland was segregated, not in ways that anyone talked about or even admitted, but it was still unusual for him to see another black person on the streets of Southwest Portland. In a lot of his classes at Wilson, there were white kids, Hispanic kids, Asian kids—and Nick.

  But in the army, what mattered was being fast and strong and brave. And Nick was all those things.

  Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!

  He was so lost in his daydream that for a minute, he didn’t know what the sound was, or even where he was exactly.

  Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!

  And then he did.

  It sounded like someone had found Bobby.

  And it hadn’t been him.

  Nick set out in a long-legged lope, running back down the trail toward the sound. Was it Ruby or Alexis? It didn’t seem fair that he might have walked right past something important, something they had spotted and he hadn’t.

  Maybe Nick hadn’t been the one to find Bobby, but he still might be able to help. Bobby was a big guy. He could be injured. He could be unable to walk, and he might need to put his arm over Nick’s shoulder so that Nick could walk for both of them. Or maybe Nick would have to make a travois the way they had learned on a training weekend. He could drag Bobby to a clearing where they would wait for a helicopter to set down, the rotor wash whipping up dirt that would sting their eyes.

  In another minute, Nick would realize his fantasies were exactly that.

  CHAPTER 5

  TUESDAY

  SOMETHING AWFUL LURKING

  No, Alexis thought. No, please. I’m not seeing this.

  But she was. It was a back. A human back, clad in a black jacket. The hump of a shoulder, a dip, the smaller hill of a hip.

  From this angle, she could not see the legs or the face. All she could see was the back.

  Unmoving. Half curled around a bush.

  Her blood chilled.

  It was him. Right there. The missing man. For a minute, Alexis couldn’t even remember his name. Everything inside her was blank. Holding its breath. As if as long as she didn’t remember, time wouldn’t heave itself forward. Because if he was there, right there, and not moving, then Alexis would have to do something.

  And she was all alone. She looked around to make sure this was true. No one on the trail before or behind her. The only sounds were the wind sighing through the trees and the birds calling.

  She forced herself to open her mouth. It was so dry, her lips made a smacking sound as they parted. And as they did, his name came to her.

  “Bobby?” The sound was lighter than a whisper.

  Alexis forced a swallow past the lump in her throat and tried again. “Bobby?”

  A little louder. Shaky.

  The back did not stir.

  Alexis tried again, putting some steel into it. “Bobby?” It was still not quite a shout, but it was loud enough—it had to have reached him. After all, he was only about thirty feet away.

  He didn’t move.

  Her heart hammered in her chest, in her ears. Alexis fought off a wave of nausea as her stomach rose up and crammed into the back of her throat.

  Maybe he was unconscious. Maybe he had hit his head on a tree limb, or broken his ankle and passed out from the pain.

  Maybe.

  Bobby’s parents had said he had no medical problems. And it wasn’t like there was anything out here that could kill him. Just trees and small streams, trails and undergrowth. But he was a big guy. Maybe he had had a heart attack. Maybe it was even possible that he had gotten tired from his big adventure and lain down for a nap.

  Alexis was going to have to go up to him. Lean over. See what was wrong. The feeling that gripped her now was the same one she had had as a little kid, the one that told her something awful was lurking underneath the bed, just waiting to reach out and grab her ankle as soon as she was within reach.

  Alexis was going to have to get close enough to touch him.

  No matter how afraid she was.

  And then she remembered the whistle in her hand.

  Three blasts, wasn’t that what
they had said in class? Three blasts, pause, and then three more. And anyone in SAR who heard it would come running.

  Alexis put the whistle to her lips and blew. It came out breathy and light, no louder than the birdsong above her.

  Deciding that first one didn’t count, she tried again, putting all her fear behind it. And again. And again.

  Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!

  If Bobby was conscious, shouldn’t he have moved at the shriek of the whistle? But he lay still.

  Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!

  Nick would know what to do. He was always talking about how his dad had been in the army. On one of the training weekends, he had been the first to figure out how to use a branch as a splint. And Ruby’s parents were doctors.

  But Alexis couldn’t just stand here until Nick and Ruby showed up. She forced her feet to start moving. Toward that curved-away back.

  Shouldn’t she be able to see the ribs expanding with each breath?

  If he wasn’t breathing, did that mean he was …

  Her stomach bottomed out. Her steps were so small she was nearly walking in place.

  And that jacket—why was it black, not navy blue as Bobby’s mother had said?

  Although, according to their instructors, civilians frequently got important details wrong. Clothing colors, shoe size, medical conditions—all things that were vital to search and rescue personnel, and all of them likely to be muddled, confused by the very people who were so anxious that you find their missing loved ones.

  Alexis was now only fifteen feet away. She couldn’t bring herself to call out Bobby’s name again, as if he were a sleeper she was trying not to wake.

  The thing was, as she got closer, she could see the top of the head. And the hair on that head.

  It wasn’t brown and short. It was blond and longer. At least shoulder length.

  And that dip in the waist? Why would Bobby have a dip in the waist? Not at more than two hundred pounds on a five-foot-eight frame. He should be built like a fireplug.

  Portland SAR might be looking for Bobby, Alexis realized, her stomach doing another tidal heave, but what she had found wasn’t Bobby at all.