The Body in the Woods

  And for a moment, her mother was still. Her eyes widened. “You shouldn’t have had to see that, baby.”

  “Oh, Mom.” Alexis put her arms around her mother and pulled her close. Her mom was so skinny it felt like she was holding nothing, air and hollow bones. She resisted the urge to lean into her, to be comforted, to be a little girl again, crawling into her mother’s lap.

  * * *

  Alexis was dreaming. In her dream, the girl’s eye twitched and then flew open. She sat straight up from her bed of leaves and pulled off her own head. It came away with a bloodless pop, like a doll’s head.

  “Alexis!” The loud whisper was repeated. “Alexis!”

  She opened one eye. “What is it?” she mumbled.

  “Can we make chocolate chip cookies? I want to make chocolate chip cookies!” Her mom was bouncing on her tiptoes. “With nuts. Walnuts.”

  “Mom, slow down. Just slow down. I have school tomorrow. You can make cookies if you want, but I need to sleep.”

  “You’re never any fun!”

  “I’m sorry.” She pulled the pillow over her head.

  Her mom snatched it away.

  “We need ingredients. I’m going to Safeway.”

  Alexis sat up. “No. It’s the middle of the night.” The clock read 2:18. “I don’t want you going out this late. The only people up at this time are drunk or”—she stopped herself from saying crazy—“or on drugs.”

  “But I want to make cookies.” Her mom bounced faster and faster. “And I can’t unless I go to the store. We don’t have the ingredients.”

  There was no use arguing with her. Alexis was so tired that she had lain down in her clothes, so all she needed to do was push her feet into some shoes and grab the food stamps card and her coat.

  The night was cold. Her teeth chattered, while her mother galloped in circles around her and laughed.

  “Look at the moon!”

  The streets were deserted, except for the occasional car. The neighborhood homeless were all curled up on their makeshift beds, flattened pieces of cardboard laid down in doorways. Alexis couldn’t bear to look at them. At times like this, she worried that someday she and her mom might be right next to them.

  At Safeway, the automatic door swung open for them. Everything gleamed under the fluorescent lights, all glass and stainless steel. There were only a few shoppers. People who probably never went out in the daylight. Maybe they were vampires. Or zombies, judging by their slow shambling.

  Not Mom. She pushed the cart fast down the freezer aisle, then leapt on the back and coasted, giggling. When she saw an old couple watching, she laughed a fake laugh, bright and brittle, as if she wanted to show the other shoppers she was just kidding. Just having fun.

  Sometimes Alexis had nightmares that she was with her mom and someone she knew from another part of her life showed up. Someone who thought Alexis was normal. Who didn’t know how much work it could be to make people think you were normal.

  Alexis got in line. There was only one checker, and three people were ahead of them. Her mom danced from foot to foot.

  “This is taking too long,” she stage-whispered. “Come on. We’ll run out the door and they’ll never catch us. We’ll run like the wind.”

  She meant it, too. At this point, her logic was so fractured that she didn’t realize how often they were in this very store, that there were cameras on the walls and a security guard roaming, just looking for trouble. In her mom’s hopped-up mind, it would be easy-peasy and they would be home in no time flat.

  “No, Mom.” Alexis kept a tight grip on the cart until it was time to put things on the belt.

  As he bagged their order, the clerk shot them a narrowed-eyed look. Alexis had bought sliced turkey, eggs, a head of cabbage, a few apples and oranges. But it was the other ingredients that seemed to cause his disdain. Like they shouldn’t be pulling out their food stamp card for butter, chocolate chips, and brown sugar. And walnuts, which cost four dollars for a plastic zippered package that held only a cup. Let him look. Let him judge. Alexis had seen people buy plenty worse stuff with food stamps—Hot Pockets, Doritos, and bottles of mixer. Homemade cookies didn’t seem like too much of a sin.

  Back at home, she tried again to sleep while her mom baked. Tried not to dream of the dead girl, lying alone in the woods, the white edge of her eye showing.

  CHAPTER 14

  TUESDAY

  DEATH IN THE WOODS

  Her parents might believe that they could make her stop thinking about what happened today, but that was impossible. Long after they were asleep, Ruby sat hunched over her laptop computer, searching for more information.

  All the local sites had the basic story of the girl’s body being found in Forest Park, and that homicide was suspected. No one had her name or her age or even her cause of death. Only two of the websites mentioned Search and Rescue. If the rule was you could only talk about something that had already been covered by the media, there was little that Ruby was going to be able to say.

  Rather than look for other recent crime stories, she went searching for a story she remembered seeing about a month earlier. It took some clicking, but she finally found it.

  WOMAN’S BODY FOUND IN WASHINGTON PARK

  PORTLAND—Police are investigating the death of a woman whose body was found Tuesday afternoon in Washington Park, near City of Portland Reservoir No. 4. Reservoir No. 4 is the lower of the two reservoirs in the park. Both are just east of the Washington Park Rose Garden.

  According to Sgt. Gene Paulson, spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau, authorities were called to the scene about 2 p.m. by a park ranger who had found the body in a wooded area, just south of the reservoir. A park ranger said the body was not found on one of the park’s many established trails but instead along a footpath used by “locals.”

  The ranger was walking through the area as part of regular patrol duties. The rangers patrol the parks looking for homeless camps and illegal drug activity.

  By 4:30 p.m., several police vehicles and the state medical examiner’s truck were parked along Jefferson Street, near where it connects with US 26. Homicide detectives were also on hand, as were criminalists from the Forensic Evidence Division.

  Then, at about 6 p.m., staff from the medical examiner’s office began bringing the woman’s body down the hillside. It was covered by a blue tarp and placed in the back of the medical examiner’s truck. Investigators also carried evidence bags away from the scene.

  The follow-up story had been posted a week later.

  POLICE SEEK HELP IN IDENTIFYING DEAD WOMAN

  PORTLAND—Police are hoping the public can help them figure out the identity of the woman who was found dead last Tuesday in Washington Park.

  A park ranger found the body in a wooded area just off SW Jefferson Street, west of the Vista Bridge. Police said an autopsy showed that the cause of death was strangulation. They also released a description of the woman. They said she was African American, 5'3" tall, 100 pounds, with black short hair worn unstraightened. She had no scars, marks, or tattoos. She was wearing a sweatshirt like the one pictured in the photo at left. Investigators said no recent missing persons cases match the woman’s description. They believe she may have been homeless.

  Ruby zoomed in on the sweatshirt until it filled up the screen of her laptop. Nobody she knew would have called it a sweatshirt. Instead, it was a hoodie. Black, it had white angel wings drawn on the back, overlaid with pink sparkly curlicues that spelled out the name of a manufacturer of skateboard clothing.

  She had seen girls at her school wear that brand of hoodie before. Not because they were skaters, but because their boyfriends were. Sometimes Ruby observed what the other girls wore, trying to make sense of their choices. Like magpies, they collected shiny, eye-catching things. They wore clothes that showed dirt, that were see-through, that wouldn’t keep you warm, that had to be hand washed or dry-cleaned, that had flounces and beading and other useless decoration. Sometimes they boaste
d to each other about the brand, or how much something cost, or dressed in clothes with huge logos that did their talking for them.

  Ruby could have happily worn the same thing every day as long as it didn’t itch and was more or less clean.

  Reading the article, she was certain of one thing. The person who had worn that sweatshirt hadn’t been a grown woman, no matter what the police thought. Not a real adult. She knew that determining the age of a body wasn’t an exact science. One way was to use X-rays to look at the teeth. If the dead girl had gotten her wisdom teeth in early, they might have decided that she was older than she was.

  But while the medical examiner might have made his best guess, he didn’t know anything about teenage fashion. Because the person who had worn that sweatshirt probably wasn’t any older than twenty.

  So the victim was more than likely a teenage girl who had been strangled to death in the woods.

  Just like the girl they had found.

  CHAPTER 15

  WEDNESDAY

  ANYTHING GOD DIDN’T PUT THERE

  “Feeling okay today?” Alexis asked Nick as they all set down their SAR backpacks a hundred yards from where they had found the girl’s body.

  Nick felt his face get hot. “My mom’s been sick with the stomach flu all week. I must have caught it from her.” One minute he had been talking to that counselor girl, Kelsey, the one with teeth like a rabbit, and then suddenly he had been doubled over.

  But Nick didn’t need trauma counseling, not even from a girl who could be kind of cute if she just closed her mouth. He wasn’t some little kid who was going to get all weepy or jump at shadows. So yeah, they had seen a dead body. But there hadn’t been any blood.

  “You looked pretty upset.” Alexis didn’t sound like she believed him.

  “I’m fine. My dad was in Iraq. He’s told me some stuff.” Now, where had that come from? Although it wasn’t exactly a lie. His dad had been in Iraq, and he would have told Nick stuff if he had lived. Instead Nick had to read about Iraq on the Internet when his mom wasn’t home.

  “Okay, you two lovebirds,” Dimitri called out in his accented English. He was eighteen and one of the certifieds, which meant he had completed the nearly three hundred hours of training. “Please to knock off all those whisperings and get over here for the briefing.”

  Did everyone think there was something going on between him and Alexis? Nick snuck a quick glance at her, but her face was impassive. Was something going on? Maybe she was interested in him. His face felt like it was on fire. He hadn’t noticed that everyone was lining up, but now they were all standing with their backs to the crime scene tape that marked out a large rough square about a hundred feet across. Alexis and Nick hurried to join them, standing next to Ruby.

  “As most of you already know, a girl’s body was found yesterday in this location when we were out conducting a hasty search.” Mitchell pointed, and everyone turned. “The body was found roughly in the middle of this square.”

  As Nick listened, he bounced in place, trying to keep his blood circulating. Per SAR protocol, he was dressed in three layers, top and bottom, starting with long underwear, then a fleece layer, and finally a rainproof layer. Still when he ran his tongue over his front teeth, the inside of his upper lip was disconcertingly cold. He wished he still had his grande mocha, but he had had to gulp it in the van since he wasn’t allowed to bring it on-site. Even their lunches would be eaten well away from the search area. They didn’t want something of theirs to be erroneously labeled as evidence. In the van, Ruby had gone on and on about the local principle, or something like that.

  Before the team had arrived this morning, the cops had marked off the area to be searched for evidence. One end of the square was cut by the trail, and in the middle was the spot where they had found the girl’s body. On the way in, they had passed one of the cops who were stationed on both ends of the trail to keep anyone from blundering in.

  Detective Harriman stood next to Mitchell. Today he was dressed in a mountain parka and a black floppy nylon hat with a wide brim. When he had first seen it, Nick had decided the hat looked stupid, like something an old man would wear. Now in the slow, drizzly rain, he would have given every dollar in his wallet to buy one. His own wool hat lacked a brim, and even with his jacket hood pulled over his hat and helmet, the rain was still flecking his face.

  “Today we will be looking for anything that will help the police solve this crime,” Mitchell continued in that super-serious way he had that set Nick’s teeth on edge. “It could be as small as a fingernail or a tooth. If you find anything, don’t touch it. Instead, call a halt. It’s not your responsibility to determine how long it’s been there. It’s not up to you to decide if it’s evidence. Your only job is to find it. Basically, we’re looking for anything God didn’t put there. Call it and let your team leader decide if the detective needs to check it out.”

  His gaze swept over the group. People nodded or mumbled in assent.

  “And don’t get distracted by something far away. Focus on what’s in front of you. You don’t want to miss something small, like a hyoid bone or drops of blood. But don’t just look down. Sometimes evidence might be higher than your head.” Mitchell’s coat was unzipped as if he didn’t feel the cold. He had a million pouches and holsters suspended from his belt, even more than Detective Harriman.

  Toward the far end of the line, someone’s teeth were audibly chattering. “You might as well get used to the temp,” Mitchell said. “It’s not going to get any warmer. Especially not when you’re down on your hands and knees.” His tone of voice implied this was a good thing, a secret test of their ability and will. “Okay, line up and count off!” He sounded like a drill sergeant.

  “One,” yelled Ezra, who was standing next to the place where the tape made a corner.

  “Two,” Dimitri called out. And so on down the line. All of them fast and loud. You were supposed to project when you were looking for someone who was lost, in case it could help them find you. And if the line was spread out, yelling made it possible for either end to still hear each other. But this was an evidence search, which Nick knew from a training weekend meant they would be shoulder-to-shoulder on their hands and knees.

  Waiting for his turn to shout, he felt nervous. Which was stupid. It wasn’t like you could blow saying your number. It reminded him of calling out numbers to choose teams in grade school. The kind of thing teachers did so that no one felt left out. As if there weren’t a million other ways to be excluded.

  “Seven,” he yelled out. And so on. At the end of the line was a certified named Max. He shouted, “Fourteen!”

  Max was wearing the string pack on his back. It buckled in front, and on the back was a giant roll of string, so much string you could probably fly a kite to the moon. Since there weren’t nearly enough people to cover the whole marked-off square in one pass, Max would tie the string to the point where they ended so it could serve as a guideline for the next pass.

  “Team forward!” Mitchell called out.

  “Team forward,” they echoed raggedly. Then they turned, dropped to their knees, and began to crawl slowly under the yellow tape.

  “One entering grid!” Ezra called out.

  “Two entering grid!” Dimitri yelled a second later. The rule was that you never got ahead of the person on your left.

  “Three entering grid!”

  Nick’s heart started to beat faster. This was the real deal. He could be the one who found something important. Finally it was his turn. “Seven entering grid!”

  In a few seconds, they were all under the line and crawling forward. The cold seeped through his leather gloves. He glanced over at Alexis, but her eyes were focused on the ground. Unlike the rest of them, Alexis wasn’t wearing padded painter’s kneelers. On her hands were regular red fleece gloves, not the leather SAR recommended for evidence work. Her hands and knees must already be wet. He wondered why she hadn’t bought better stuff.

  Inch by slow inch
, they moved forward. Nick’s eyes scoured the ground. Dirt, pine needles, pebbles, more dirt, decaying leaves, small plants, slightly bigger plants. At least there weren’t any big bushes directly in front of him. The SAR rule was that if you couldn’t see through something, you had to go through it, even if that meant tunneling through a blackberry bush. A bad guy might be counting on you not finding his gun because you weren’t willing to brave the thorns.

  A certified named Jackie was the first to find something. “Team halt!”

  The team echoed her. “Team halt!” One by one, everyone straightened up until they were kneeling, all of them looking at Jackie.

  Mitchell hurried up behind them. “Who called team halt?”

  Jackie, who was a senior, said crisply, “Twelve. Possible evidence.” She pointed, but didn’t touch. They had been lectured about this several times. If they didn’t touch or disturb the evidence, they didn’t enter the official chain of custody.

  Mitchell leaned over Jackie’s shoulder.

  “Whatcha got?” Detective Harriman asked, coming up behind him.

  Mitchell turned toward him. “A piece of gum, sir.”

  On the other side of Alexis, Ruby said something about DNA. Nick hadn’t thought about it before, but gum must have spit on it.

  “Flag it and keep going,” Detective Harriman said. Mitchell handed Jackie a small orange plastic flag on a wire, which she poked into the dirt. On their first training weekend, Nick had been a little disappointed to find out that evidence flags looked exactly like survey flags at a construction site. They had been told it was better to flag everything than to stop to collect each item. It made it less likely that they would miss a spot. Only the important finds were worth pulling everyone off the search.