Chapter 15

Valerie Boren-Odell, 1990

Incident commanders, supervisors, commissioned employees, and their coworkers must all be conscious of the potential for critical incident stress when an employee is exposed to incidents that cause them to experience unusually strong emotional reactions which have the potential to interfere with their ability to function.

—National Park Service Law Enforcement Reference Manual.

"Slow up. Watch where you're walking," I call ahead to Roy and Edwin. "Any evidence on this trail probably washed away in all the rain, but if there is something here, we don't want to blow right by it."

Roy shoots the thumbs-up over his shoulder as the two of them make their way up the muddy track ahead of me with the packable litter. Edwin wears the flat, orange backpack that holds the folded sling portion, and Roy totes the center wheel and assembly. Extracting a live victim from a foot-traffic-only location is no small task. Extracting a body is far worse. Even though the prelim interview with the hikers delayed us at the staging area, Curtis and I, along with Roy and Edwin, are the only responders on site so far. Roy and Edwin must've broken the land speed record to grab equipment from the rescue cache and reach the trailhead.

We'll end up working through our grim task with personnel from the sheriff's office. Parallel investigations: NPS investigates the death. The sheriff's office and medical examiner look at the cause. Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation could be called to assist if evidence points to a homicide. Since I don't know how the interface between jurisdictions typically plays out here, I've chosen to come prepared.

Despite the rough terrain and high-water debris from floods along Holson Creek, Roy and Edwin bulldoze their way forward, in a rush to get to their first death investigation. Push into an area too quickly, and you run the risk of contaminating the crime scene or missing something you should have noticed.

Quick equals careless.

Curtis must be thinking the same thing. He has slowed so much that he's disappeared from the trail behind me.

"Roy, Edwin, hold up a minute. I see something down there," I call, because I'm afraid to send them ahead to secure the scene while I slog off-trail toward a drainage area that has morphed into a significant backwater slough. The smells of decaying biological matter, moss, and microscopic life envelop me as I work my way downhill, the muck seeping over my boots. Something blue winks at me from beneath a raft of bubbling slime, and I'm so focused on trying to make out what it might be that I miss a step and almost end up in the mire.

"Need help?" Roy pops off, chuckling like we're having a silly college drunk together.

I want to snap, Hey, you forget why we're out here this afternoon, Roy? Body recovery. Show some respect. But Roy and Edwin are the closest things to allies I have at Horsethief Trail, and even though their inexperience shows, they mean well. I probably made flippant comments like that myself, once upon a time. Joel and I probably both did. The jokes are a defense mechanism, a way of preparing yourself to experience something you haven't before.

"I'm all right." Mud oozes through my clothes, warm on top, cold underneath, tugging me downward like an undertow. I'm up to my knees in it before I can find a piece of driftwood long enough to reach the unnatural hint of blue.

"What're you after in there?" Curtis has caught up with my crew.

"Not sure. I'll let you know once I fish it out."

"Need anything?"

"Nope. Stay on the trail. It reeks down here."

I snag the blue thing, lose it, sling slime, catch the tantalizing wink of color again. Nylon. A strap of some kind…with printing on it. White. Gold. Probably just flood junk, but it could be connected to the deceased. If we move on without retrieving it, it might sink beneath the surface and be gone for good.

My snag finally holds, but the upward heave is an astonishingly heavy lift, the strap either caught on debris or attached to something. With the sludge under my feet slithering downhill toward the water, I feel like I'm wrestling an anaconda and standing on it at the same time.

A guttural growl wrenches from my throat. A wad of moss and dead leaves the size of a volleyball breaks free, my driftwood pole jerks upward, and my quarry sails over my head, showering me with swamp juice on the way. Groaning, I drop my stick, shake the goo off my hands, and wipe my mouth on my shirt.

Curtis and Roy hurry to investigate my find as I trudge toward its landing place.

Squatting down, Curtis clears away moss with a pocketknife. "No wonder this was heavy." He slides the knife blade under a loop of nylon webbing that looks like it could be a dog leash or a…

"Lanyard?" I move in for a closer look. A key ring with a half dozen keys emerges from the moss ball, and then…

"Somebody's shoe?" Roy peers over Curtis's shoulder.

"Looks like it." Curtis pushes the high-top tennis shoe onto its side, emptying rotten water. The laces are still tied in a bow, a double knot. Someone wanted the keys and the shoe to stay together.

"Came off a canoe or johnboat maybe? Somebody out fishing?" Edwin theorizes.

"Or fell off a four-wheeler at a creek crossing." Curtis clears the shoe sole with his knife blade, tracing the diamond-shaped patterns in the tread.

"What kind of a bonehead ties his key ring to a shoe out on the water, though?" Roy scoffs. "You hook your keys to something that floats."

"Unless you wanted to sink it…or you never planned for it to end up in the drink in the first place." Curtis squints toward the water, then at me. "Antlers." He points at the lanyard, smoothing away a smear of mud to reveal white-and-yellow lettering: Go Bearcats! Then he turns over one of the keys, a small, hex-shaped silver one that's symbolic, not meant to unlock anything: Antlers, Senior '91.

A high school kid's keepsake key. Junior class. Graduating next year, the same as Braden Lacey. Same school.

"Roy, grab an evidence bag for this." I force a flat, dispassionate tone, but experience a rush of dread.

"Huh…okay but wh—"

"Just bag it." I'm reluctant to speak the thoughts out loud or even think them, but this shoe could have belonged to someone who set up camp in a low-lying area and was caught off guard when Holson Creek flooded. Someone like Braden.

After leaving behind a scrap of crime tape as a marker, I walk uphill, trying to mentally prepare for the sort of thing you can never really prepare for. "Hey, Roy, take a look around the debris line and make sure there's nothing more. We'll go on ahead. Come meet up with us when you're done here."

I hear the faint swish of Curtis drying his pocketknife on his pants as he rises to follow. Ahead, Edwin moves out, his long-legged strides bouncing the litter as he goes.

"I hope that shoe's unrelated to the body," Curtis mutters grimly. I glance back, and his face has hardened. His eyes, resolute and impenetrable, stay fixed on the way ahead. He bears almost no resemblance to the guy who stood languidly in the noonday sun a short time ago, joking about puppies.

"Same."

We make the rest of the trip in silence. Tainted air announces our destination before we get there. In my early years of rangering, that smell would have put me on the lookout for a mountain lion kill or a place where a poacher had dumped cast-off parts of a carcass. Something big. And dead. Today I only wish the odor came from an animal.

"That's it." Edwin points off-trail toward a tangle of flood detritus deposited in a V shape around the stump of a broken-off tree. He turns his attention to extracting the portable litter from its case.

I take the evidence-collection kit and camera from my backpack, grab a pair of latex gloves, shake off whatever grim conclusions my brain is already drawing about the shoe, and the lanyard, and Braden Lacey. Beyond the shallow canyon, Holson Creek shines through a gap in the trees, aquamarine and gemlike in the sun. Peaceful and pure. Why do people have to come to such beautiful places to die? The question is a mix of memory and gut reaction. Suicides and pristine views are frequent but incongruous companions. "I hope this death was an accident."

"Guess we'll find out," Curtis answers, but he and I both know that we might not be certain of anything until the medical examiner's report comes in. If they're backlogged, that could take a while.

The two of us make our way downhill, leaving Edwin to wait for Roy and finish assembling the litter. Death's stench wells in my nose and mouth, solid, so that I want to spit it out but can't. The hum of flies and bees fills the air, and nearby a throng of crows and buzzards roost in the trees, driven off by our approach. Fortunately, the body, caged in flood debris, hasn't provided easy pickings.

Bile churns in my throat as I squat down, shine my flashlight into the tangle. A leg lies visible about eight inches in, bloated, shoe missing, the foot so swollen as to be almost unrecognizable. The color is a deep, unnatural red, not yet blackening into active decay. Too recent to be Curtis's missing high-water victim. Too heavyset to be Braden. The hair on the leg is thick and dark. This guy's not a redhead.

I'm too nauseated to be properly relieved. I swallow hard, swallow again.

"This shoe over here isn't a match to the one you bagged up the trail," Curtis offers from the other side of the pile. "He was wearing hunting boots."

I circle to Curtis's vantage point, peer in, catch hints of clothing and bloated skin. No shirt. Camo shorts. "It's not Braden. Not your missing driver, either. Too recent. He's been dead four to six days maybe?"

Curtis nods. "Big guy. That's at least a size fourteen boot."

I focus my flashlight on the waffle sole. "You sure?"

"I worked my way through college at my ex-father-in-law's sports store. I know shoes. This was one big dude. It'll take a crew to get him out of here."

"I'm guessing help will be here soon. Lu probably has half the county headed our way by now." I pull out my pad and pencil and take notes on the body and location, then grab the thirty-five-millimeter camera and begin shooting, multiple shots from each angle. Even though I know better—follow facts, not speculation—scenarios run through my mind. Hunter or fisherman traveling alone? Nobody knows he's missing. Motorcycle rider passing through, stopped off for a swim? Not with boots on, though. Intoxicated camper? Random hiker who underestimated a flooded low-water crossing? Suicide? Overdose? Drug deal gone bad?

Something new catches my attention. "I think he's been in prison." I zoom in on a bloated hand. "There's a dot tattooed between the thumb and forefinger."

Curtis takes a look through the camera. "Incarceration badge of honor."

"Doesn't tell us what he was doing here but it's…" The unmistakable rumble of ATVs catches my ear. Curtis and I stand up to listen.

"Sheriff's department, game wardens, or your guys, judging by how fast they're moving." Pointing a finger, Curtis draws an imaginary line toward the noise. "Forest road farther down Holson Creek…less than a mile."

I nod. The arrival of the cavalry guarantees that I'm about to get the boot and am probably wasting time by going through the machinations of processing the scene. I'd be frustrated by the inevitable sidelining, but now that this thing is underway, I'm not willing to fight for it. Even in the most clinical of circumstances, death investigations are hard. After the person you thought you'd spend your life with becomes the subject of one, it's never clinical again. Whoever this man turns out to be, he was some woman's son, maybe somebody's husband or father. Some teacher's student in the first grade. A big kid with big feet.

Thoughts like those can't be allowed to show, so I say, "How about we move to where the air's clearer, see who else we've got coming in…besides Roy." I nod toward our summer ranger, now jogging down the hill, ready for action. By contrast, Edwin has seen…or smelled…all he wants. He's purposely diddling with ratcheting the wheel onto the litter.

"Easy there, hoss," Curtis scolds as Roy passes. "You're not going to need to do CPR on this one."

"Better check," Roy answers eagerly.

I let him go. A look at what's in that debris pile should sober him up. "Hands off and watch where you're walking," I yell after him.

"Boy Scout," Curtis mutters, looking back at Roy as we climb the slope. "He's a good kid, though. Learned CPR in middle school gym class, actually pulled a five-year-old girl off the bottom of a hotel swimming pool that summer and saved her life. Been Captain America ever since."

"You know everybody around here?" The random chitchat is necessary when the job turns brutal. Without it, you start to feel not human.

"Roy's a cousin."

"There anybody around here you don't know?"

"Well…that guy." A shrug indicates the body. "Been trying to think of someone with feet that big. Can't. Nobody who'd have a prison tattoo, anyway."

A clean breeze wafts by, a welcome relief as we return to the litter, where Edwin looks pale around the gills. Picking up Roy's discarded evidence bag, I study the sneaker so Edwin won't think I'm scrutinizing him.

"Sorry, Val," he says anyway.

"Everybody has a hard go of it the first time." Considering his short experience and the parks he worked at as a seasonal during college, he's probably seen a heat prostration or two, maybe a heart attack, lacerations, broken bones, but nothing like this. "You get used to…well, not used to it, but it doesn't sneak up on you the next time. Everyone's that way."

But below us on the hillside, Roy is like Colombo, here and there around the pile, getting as close in as he can without physically disturbing anything.

"Thanks." Edwin swipes a sunburned arm across his forehead, then shakes out his ball cap. Sweat spray flicks through the air.

"Go ahead and make your way down Holson Creek," I tell him, trying not to be too obvious about the reprieve. "We've got ATVs coming in on a forest road less than a mile away. Figure out whether we can get the litter from here to there. It might be easier to do the body carryout that way."

"I'm okay," he insists. "I can stay and…" But when I give him the look, he's all too happy to depart.

"Well done," Curtis comments after Edwin is out of earshot. "Worst that can happen to a new guy is ending up laid out on the sod in front of everyone. Reputations don't recover from a thing like that."

"The walk will be good for him." I lift the plastic evidence bag into the sunlight. "Looks like I got my feet wet for no good reason. Just unrelated flood junk." Even while I'm speaking the words, I can't get past the feeling that I'm missing something. What else should I be picking up on?

"Unless our guy down there and whoever the tennis shoe belonged to got pulled into the water together," Curtis says.

The idea twists into my brain like a corkscrew. It's sharp and painful. "You mean Braden?"

"Maybe." A grimace tightens the muscles around Curtis's mouth. "I don't know what Braden would be doing with a guy like that, and way out here. Partying? Drugs? I never heard of Braden being that kind of kid."

"That's if the tennis shoe and keys were Braden's." I squish the mossy mess around inside the bag to get a closer look. "These seem like house keys and…maybe a key to a padlock, or a locker somewhere. No car key."

"Braden's car had the keys still in it." Curtis leans in. Our shoulders rub. I can only imagine what I smell like right now. "He could've taken the car key off the lanyard before he tied it to the shoe…or maybe the quick link came loose when he grabbed the lanyard from the car, and he never even noticed he'd left one ring behind."

"That would explain keys being in the car." I let out a long sigh, set the shoe beside the portable litter. "I'll drop by Myrna Wambles's place on my way to pick up Charlie this evening, ask Sydney what kind of key ring and shoes Braden had."

"Let me know if you find out anything new."

We stand waiting after that, until finally Edwin appears, trailing the incomers behind him. Three from the sheriff's office, one of us. Chief Ranger Arrington has come himself. An incident commander for this death investigation has probably been selected already. I'm surprised Arrington doesn't have the designee with him to take over.

"You're a little ways from home." The chief ranger addresses Curtis first, leaving me standing there like a tourist.

Curtis shrugs. "Caught the dispatch. Thought it might be my missing high-water driver from a couple weeks ago. Not him, though. This fella's all yours." Folding his arms over his chest, he retreats a step and angles my way, silently indicating that whatever else they want to know, they should ask me.

I'm inwardly grateful, but outwardly I keep a lid on it and give the CliffsNotes version of what we know, which isn't much. I barely mention the sneaker and keys. The audience is already getting restless anyway. They want to make their own judgments rather than trusting mine. Every time I say something, they look over at Curtis for confirmation, even though he hasn't answered them once.

I finally decide I might as well let them take the tour. The sooner they do, the sooner we can get this poor guy out of the woods and figure out how he ended up dead in our park.