The Body in the Woods (7 page)

“I'm not a baby,” Ruby said. “You can't hide the world from me. Stuff like murder really happens.”

He heaved a sigh. “So does war and torture, but that doesn't mean you need your nose rubbed in it. Finding bodies, looking for evidence, that just reinforces your obsession with the darker side of life.”

“But someone has to help people,” Ruby said. “Even if it's after they're dead.” None of their arguments were logical.

“But the person from the sheriff's office said that tomorrow your team will be doing an evidence search where you found that person's”—her voice caught on the word—“body. You'll miss school to spend eight hours on your hands and knees looking for—what? Drops of blood and cigarette butts and bits of garbage? We don't want you to do anything like that. Especially when you'd miss school.” Her Mom set the owl back in its place.

“I've got a 3.97 grade average. It's not like I'm failing.”

“I'm sorry, Ruby, but we're not going to allow it.”

Everything seemed to go still. “What do you mean?”

Her dad looked at her and then away. “I mean it's over.”

Ruby's mouth fell open even as her hands balled into fists.

“You're going to have to drop out of SAR,” her mom said. “We didn't say anything to the sheriff's office because we wanted to discuss it with you first.”

“Discuss?” How could her mom even say that with a straight face? “This isn't a discussion. It's an ultimatum.”

Her dad shook his head. “Call it whatever you want, but it's our job to make sure you grow up to be a normal human being.”

“In case you guys haven't noticed, I'm not normal!”

“Oh, honey,” her mom said, and tried to touch her again, but Ruby stepped back and her mom let her hand fall.

“It's settled.” He braced his hands on his knees and got to his feet. “You'll go to school tomorrow, not the sheriff's office. And you'll contact SAR and tell them you're going to have to withdraw from the group.” He started to go up the stairs, but turned after only taking a few steps. “We're only doing this because we love you.”

Anger made Ruby rigid, locked her rebuttal in her throat.

“I'm sorry, honey,” her mom said in a low voice and followed him up.

Ruby waited several minutes before she went upstairs. Her parents were wrong to think that Search and Rescue was making her any weirder than she already was. If anything, it gave her a place where she finally fit.

But now it would be gone. And she would be back to being the kind of girl who edited Wikipedia for fun.

CHAPTER 13

TUESDAY

OPEN INTO DARKNESS

When Alexis put her key into the lock of the apartment, it was already unlocked. The door swung open into darkness. A shiver ran over her skin. “Mom?” Her voice came out as soft as a sigh.

Silence.

Was her mom asleep? Gone? With someone? Dead?

All of these things were possible.

Anything was possible. Alexis wanted to run. Instead she flipped on the light.

The room showed evidence of her mom's newest obsession. She called them her scrapbooks, but they were more like crazy collages or maybe something there wasn't a word for.

“Hello, my child!”

Alexis turned at the sound of her mother's voice behind her.

Her mom made an elaborate sort of bow, her hands flying into the air like birds, as she crossed one leg in front of the other and gracefully curtsied, keeping her back as straight as a yardstick. She was wearing black pants, a cherry-red sweater buttoned up crookedly, and a new addition: a wine-red velvet shawl that Alexis thought might once have been a curtain. She was barefoot, the bottoms of her feet black with dirt.

Mom was up. Had been since she stopped taking her medication. Alexis wasn't sure how long that had been. Two weeks? Three? Despite the light in her eyes, her cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken.

“Mom. Where were you?”

“I was blessing people in the park.”

So it had turned into one of those days. Her mom hadn't been home when Alexis stopped by to get her SAR backpack. The TV had been on, as well as the battered old radio, but at least then the door had been locked. When she was in the grip of one of her delusions, her mom gave little heed to what others thought was normal and necessary.

Take her “blessings.” Muttering prayers, her mom would approach anyone. Men walking dogs. Women running. A kid walking to school. A few souls—those too slow or too old or too polite to get away—would end up with her mom marking their foreheads with an invisible cross, using the back of her thick yellow thumbnail.

“Mom. I really wish you wouldn't do that.” Why was Alexis even bothering? “You need to get back on your medication.”

“But then I can't hear God's voice. He has called me, and I must answer.” Her mother's face was serene, but her eyes burned with the urgency of her mission.

“At least don't go out alone at night. It's not safe.” The last few weeks, Alexis had tried to emphasize survival. Life and death.

“God watches over me.”

“Can you at least please lock the door when you go out?” The grimy string that should have had a key at the bottom was still around her mom's slender neck. She and Alexis shared the same height, the same long hair, the same triangular shaped face. Only her mom had twenty more years and twenty fewer pounds.

“Have you eaten anything?” Alexis asked, wondering what there was to eat. No answer. She moved into the kitchen. On the counter, there was still half a loaf of bread. “Let me make you some toast.” Her mother had followed her in, but she didn't answer. “Come on, you've got to eat something,” she said as she slipped two slices into the toaster and pushed the lever. “Please. For me.”

“Of course, child. For my one and only Alexis.” She reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of her hand. “You are so beautiful.”

“Did you even notice I was late?” Alexis said as she went to the front door and locked it. “Did you wonder where I was?”

“God watches over you as well.” Her mom nodded as she spoke, agreeing with herself.

“Well, he wasn't watching over this girl we found,” Alexis said, and suddenly her head felt liquid. She bit her lip, fighting the tears. The toast popped up. She opened the fridge, but there wasn't any butter or margarine. There wasn't much of anything. Alexis needed to go shopping. Taking one piece of toast, she handed the other to her mom.

“I got sent out with Search and Rescue to look for a guy lost in Forest Park. We didn't find him, but we did find a girl. A dead girl. That's what I was trying to tell you.” And suddenly the tears pushed their way through, stinging her nose, burning her eyes. Tears for the dead girl, for herself, for her mother who could someday be a body in the park, if she chose to bless the wrong person. “Somebody murdered her. They strangled her.”

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. On 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 sometimes 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 could also be seen carrying 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 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.