When She Flew (7 page)

I don’t remember a lot about driving here from Colorado, only that I was happy when it quit snowing and the car quit slipping and sliding on all those ice-packed curves in the dark. We ate white powdered doughnuts from 7-Eleven for breakfast, and then I slept for a long, long time in the backseat, and when I woke up again, the radio was on, playing a song I liked, and Pater seemed calmer. I sat up and tapped my fingers on the armrest, and he said into the mirror, You like Green Day? I nodded, and he smiled. Daddy’s girl, all right, he said; then he told me about the job in Oregon, said it didn’t matter if Crystal didn’t come with us. We’d make a new life without her. We’d get a house; I’d go to school regular for once and make friends. And I would never have to see all those things I’d seen ever again.

We pulled off the road into a rest area so I could use the ladies’ room and brush my teeth and Pater could stretch his back, and when I returned to the car, he looked at me all serious. I have to ask you a question, he said, and I’ll only ask you once. Did any of those people ever do anything to you they shouldn’t have? Did anyone hurt you?

His eyes were all sad and crazy again, and I felt sad inside, too, but now that I was safe with him, I could forget the past. Nothing had happened that was worth him feeling so awful.

I shook my head no. We got back in the car, neither one of us talking, and headed west, driving for what seemed like forever. I was asleep again when we hit Columbia.

7

O
nce they left the hiking path, there were no trails. Somehow, Jess had envisioned trails. They’d gotten nothing other than a general direction from the bird-watchers. There were no consistent clusters of broken plants beyond where the bird-watcher had crushed them with his hiking boots. The forest became thicker and more tangled. Ever-larger spiderwebs stretched between ever-larger trees. As they left civilization behind, muffled quiet surrounded them, except for the sounds of six heavily armed, booted police officers and a dog crashing through waist-high foliage, and the occasional deafening fly-over of the helicopter.

“Anybody would hear us coming a mile away,” Jenkins said softly so only Jess could hear.

They didn’t spread out as widely as they would have if it were a standard search for a missing person. If they were walking into a hostile situation, which Sergeant Everett obviously assumed they were, they tried to stay within a few yards of one another, each scanning the dense growth for any signs of human activity. Jess knew Everett fancied himself a great outdoorsman—he had a twenty-six-foot fishing boat and an RV the size of a locomotive—but none of them was prepared for these conditions, boots slipping off fern-obscured logs, having to grab spindly trees for handholds on steep inclines and declines, falling into foliage-covered holes and through rotten logs, tripping over god knew what. Up one steep embankment they’d go, then down, up another, down. Everett checked his compass and GPS unit every few minutes. It was worse than the stair-stepper machine at the gym, but Jess wasn’t going to complain, not after she’d asked for the assignment.

“Do you think we know where we’re going?” Jenkins murmured when they crested the next hill. Everett decided to scout ahead, telling everyone to hold. He looked again at his compass, his GPS—For what? Jess wondered—then walked along a ridge until he was out of sight. She took off her shotgun to ease the twinge in her neck, cradling it in her arm, barrel down. Jenkins did the same, but Takei and Greiner kept their firearms firmly in place.

No matter their fitness levels, everyone huffed and puffed, even the dog. Larry seemed amiable, happy, and steadfast—qualities she’d always admired in animals and humans.

“You can pet him,” Zoo said. He crouched beside the dog, scratching his ears. “He’s a good boy. He’ll stay focused. Won’t you, Larry?” He buried his face in the ruff of fur around the dog’s neck.

Jess walked over. “You don’t really want us to call you Zoo, do you?”

“Doesn’t bother me,” he said. “Some people call me Z. Some people call me Stupid. And some people actually call me Chris.”

“Z is good,” she said, stooping in the small clearing Larry had found to lie in. “Better than Zoo.” She ran her hand down the thick fur of the dog’s back, giving a good scratch on his flank. He swung his head around in appreciation, panting, mouth dripping with drool. What fascinated Jess about search dogs was their intense work ethic. When they smelled their target, they pointed like a laser beam at the spot. Even in the inevitable maelstrom of human craziness when police officers confronted perpetrators, they held their ground.

“So,” Z said, “what do people call you when they’re not calling you Villareel? J-Lo? You kind of look like her, you know. Your eyes, I mean.”

Jess shook her head. What a line. The only thing she had in common with J-Lo was the big behind, but on Jess it was not an asset. Why did so many cops—male and female—assume it was okay to hit on one another, to engage in late-night trysts while on duty and bored? It happened more than the public would ever guess, even to Jess, and she tried to shut down any invitation as quickly as she could. She set herself apart from her comrades in most ways. Jenkins was her only friend on the force because he embodied more of the cop spirit than anyone Jess had ever known, next to her dad. And he’d never once been inappropriate or made a suggestive remark.

“Vee-ah-ray-ALL,” she said, rolling the R. “Or Grandma.” She stood and walked in the direction Sergeant Everett had taken.

She came upon him standing on the other side of an upright dead cedar, and it was only after she said, “Hey, Sarge,” that she realized he was urinating.

“Sorry. God.” She turned back the way she’d come.

“I’m done, Villareal. Get back over here,” he said, and she heard the sound of a zipper; then he stepped out from behind the tree. “I might have got us good and lost,” he said, waving the compass uselessly at the quiet vastness before them: the trees, the deep ferns and sticker bushes, the steep inclines and downed trunks that blocked their every step. The light suddenly dimmed to green-gray. Jess hoped it was a cloud drifting over the sun. She looked at her watch. It was still only 18:20. They’d been hiking nearly an hour and a half. They had at least three hours of daylight.

“Nah, we’re not lost,” she said. “We can always find our way back with your GPS.”

“We’re not going back. Not till we find her.”

“Yeah.” Jess pulled her lips tight. “I know.”

In spite of the heat and the sweat-soaked flak vest encircling her torso, Jess felt a chill run up her sternum. Maybe it was the dimming light, the unearthly silence, the sergeant admitting he didn’t know what he was doing, but everything had taken on an eerie, surreal quality, as if they’d left the real world behind. As if they were in a movie or docudrama, only there was no director yelling cut, no one telling them what to do next.

“This doesn’t feel like any other case I’ve ever been on,” she said. Her pulse pattered nervously in her neck—she rarely talked so personally with him.

Everett sighed. “No,” he agreed, “it doesn’t.”

“All we can do is keep going.”

“Right,” he said, then again more firmly, “Right,” and they walked back toward the group.

They set out again, crossing the small creek that wound its way from where they’d started, through gullies and ravines, ever higher. When the forest opened up, they’d spread out more, some going straight up hillsides while the others traversed them, reuniting as they tried to pick their way carefully through without falling, but everyone fell, multiple times. It was gruel ing work made worse by the fact that they were searching blind. The girl could be anywhere. She could be out of the woods by now, for all they knew. She might have been with a group of other kids, partying, getting high, and afraid of getting caught, or she could be a runaway, running blind herself. But Jess didn’t think so. No one would come to this part of the forest for no good reason; it was too much work.

As it approached 19:00 hours, Jess felt tension building in her jaw, and tried to relax her bite. Her shift ended at 02:00, but not if they didn’t find this girl, soon. At their next rest break, Jenkins pulled out his cell phone to call his wife, Maggie. Z and Larry lay on the ground, Z’s head on the dog’s torso. Takei stood at attention, surveying the creek ahead. Even though she’d worked with him for over a year, Takei was not forthcoming about personal details and she had no idea if he had a family, a wife, kids. Did Z? she wondered.

Jess wished she had someone at home who would worry. She could call her mother, just in case something should go awry. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was so different about this day, this place. Of course, she would first have to figure out how to tell Clara what was going on without causing her to freak out. Her mother had few other responses to anything in life.

On the final day of Jess’s marriage, she’d made the mistake of calling her mother. Jess had never been more certain that her marriage was over, but her mother cried, worrying that Jess and Nina would end up broke and on the streets, imploring her to give Rick another chance, even after Jess told her what happened. He’d gone out drinking after work, even after he’d agreed to pick up Nina and her friend Blaine from the cineplex at the mall.

Jess had been on duty that night. She called Rick to make sure he didn’t forget to go get them. She heard voices and the sounds of a public place in the background and assumed he was already there.

“Oh, good, you remembered,” she’d said, and she could tell by his silence that he hadn’t.

“Remembered—” he tried.

“You’re not at the mall?” she asked, shaking her head. “Where are you then?”

“I just needed to pull over and get some gas, hon. That’s all.”

Jess took a deep breath. He never called her “hon.”

“Those girls have been out of the movie for ten minutes. You need to get over there now.”

In retrospect, what still killed her was that she knew he wasn’t at the gas station. The sounds were convivial, social. But she said, “You need to get over there now” instead of “Are you out drinking?”

It sank in a half hour later, when the radio dispatcher requested a patrol car to respond to a bar fight out of her jurisdiction. A chill descended upon her, almost as if from above, and she radioed her commanding officer, told him she had an emergency at home, and could she take the cruiser? Of course, he said, but let me get someone out on the street to replace you first. She called Rick while she waited, parked behind a Safeway store.

“Hello?” he answered, his voice rising too grandly at the end, and she knew. He was drunk.

“Are the girls with you?” she asked.

He laughed. “Yeah, of course they are. Geez, give a guy a break.” She knew he was mugging it up for Nina and Blaine, who probably weren’t in seat belts.

“Where are you?”

“We stopped for ice cream at the Dairy Queen by the high school. Neenie’s having a twist.”

“Stay right there,” Jess said. “I’m going to take a break and meet you, okay? It’ll be fifteen minutes.”

She didn’t want to tip her hand. He’d get angry and his driving would be even worse.

“Really? Hey, Neen, Mom’s coming to meet us!”

It finally hit her that the only time her husband ever sounded happy was when he drank.

Her CO radioed back that she was clear to go, and she arrived at Dairy Queen within ten minutes. Nina and Blaine watched wide-eyed from their outdoor table as Jess got out of the car in her uniform, slammed the door, and strode over to Rick. He was the only one who didn’t see her anger.

She leaned down and he thought she wanted to kiss him. He grabbed at her playfully, the reek of alcohol so strong she shuddered. She pushed him away and straightened up, finally accepting that she never should have married him in the first place.

“You just lost your family,” she said.

Nina looked like she’d been hit, her eyes wide and awful.

“Come on, girls,” Jess said. “Let’s go for a ride in a police car.”