The Body in the Woods (2 page)

Leaving nothing for Alexis. She had tried her best to fit in, but maybe Jon could see right through her.

SAR was her ticket to college. She wasn't going to be like the other girls in her neighborhood, getting pregnant or dropping out or settling for a minimum-wage job. But even a state school would be expensive, and her guidance counselor had told Alexis that her B average was not enough to win her any scholarships. To make herself stand out, the counselor had said, she needed to add an eye-catching extracurricular. But Alexis was too uncoordinated for sports, she couldn't read music, and yearbook had been too competitive.

It had either been this or the Mathletes.

Mitchell handed the topo map to Ruby, and the four of them leaned in close. His long finger traced the way they were supposed to go. “Follow this section of the trail.”

“But that's nowhere near where you said he was found the last two times,” Nick protested.

Mitchell's jaw clenched. “We need to cover ground, and figuring out where he isn't is almost as important as figuring out where he is. So you guys had better get going.”

Suddenly Mrs. Balog grabbed the arm of the the blue Gore-Tex jacket Alexis had scored a few weeks ago at Goodwill. “Do you think you'll find him?” Her breath was hot and stale. Alexis couldn't look away from her brown eyes, the whites threaded with red.

What should she say?

“We're going to try.”

CHAPTER 3

TUESDAY

LONG YELLOW TEETH

“We need to get going before it gets too dark,” Ruby called back to Alexis. Ruby was already twenty feet down the trail, buckling the dark red climbing helmet over her crimson hair. Nick wasn't far behind. Alexis gently pulled her arm away from Bobby's mom and followed. For the first few hundred yards, the trail was paved and ran parallel to a stream.

As soon as they were out of sight of the adults, Nick clambered up on a huge fallen log half covered with pale green, velvety moss. He was still carrying his helmet by its strap.

“You're supposed to stay on the trail,” Ruby said.

Only when he came to the end of the log did he jump down, landing in a puddle with a splash. Alexis rolled her eyes. Nick was like a big kid sometimes. All he wanted was attention, any kind of attention.

Tweet! Tweet!
She jumped at the sound of his whistle. The blast jolted her back to the reality of their search.

“Bobby!” Nick called out. “Bobby!”

“It's not logical to be calling his name,” Ruby said. “His mother said he would hide.”

“What difference does it make?” Nick shrugged. “You saw where he went before. We're not going to be the ones to find him.”

Even though he was probably right, Alexis was still careful not to hurry as she called his name and blew her whistle. Remembering their training, she looked up, down, and sideways to be certain they didn't miss either Bobby or a piece of clothing he might have discarded. She even turned around to look back. In her head, she heard Jon's voice.
Lots of evidence gets missed because it's on the back side of a tree or a rock, and people forget to look behind them.
Knowing they were looking for a real person made Alexis's breath come a little faster. It was like walking into a haunted house and waiting for a bloody man to jump out brandishing a rubber ax.

In this part of the park, the trees grew straight as pencils and the branches didn't begin until many feet over their heads. Beams of light slid between the trunks, looking as if they should be illuminating a miracle instead of a patch of undergrowth. The shadowed ground was carpeted with yellow-green grasses and bright emerald ferns. They were surrounded by a million shades of green: khaki and jade, olive and lime and avocado.

Tiny waterfalls silvered the stream, and birds trilled in the trees. It was all like a fairy tale. And bad things happened in fairy tale forests. Witches and wolves lay in wait. Alexis shivered.

“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 after 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 only said 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. Normally 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 yelled at 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.