Chapter 23

Valerie Boren-Odell, 1990

All victims and witnesses of Federal crime…shall receive the assistance and protection to which they are entitled under the law. The type of assistance provided will vary according to the individual's needs and circumstances. Sound judgment will, therefore, be required to make appropriate decisions as to the range and length of victim services and assistance given.

—National Park Service Law Enforcement Reference Manual.

I down another swig of soda. At four in the morning, I need caffeine to generate the acuity required for separating fact from fiction, but I dare not leave the couch to make coffee. For the third time, I say, "Now listen, Sydney. I want you to go through the story again and tell me only the parts that are true. Otherwise I have no way to figure out how to help you."

"I already did." Her face fills with earnest desperation as she tosses aside the ice bag I gave her an hour ago when she staggered into my cabin banged up and begging for help. "You gotta call the Feds. The FBI. Somebody that's not from here."

If my alleged victim weren't a frantic adolescent who's just contradicted almost everything she told me in earlier conversations, I would've been on the phone already, requesting a special agent from our NPS Investigative Services Branch, as well as contacting the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations, DHS, and local jurisdictions.

Instead, I motion to Sydney's bruised elbow and swollen wrist and say, "Keep the ice on that." I don't think anything is broken, or I'd insist on a trip to the emergency room. She's vehemently opposed to the idea. The people at the hospital are local, she says, and they'll tell Alton Parker. If I try to take her anywhere, she'll run.

I'm not intimidated by a twelve-year-old, even an athletic, cunning one, but right now the primary task is to sort out where this fantastical tale meets reality. We don't have much longer. I'm not up on all the particulars of the related state law, but within a few hours—maybe three to six depending on interim custody standards—I'm compelled to notify Child Protective Services, whether her story seems plausible or not. My fear is that, if she's inventing these events or embellishing them, she'll end up in a deeper hole than she's already in.

On the other hand, if even half of it is true, it's big. And dangerous.

"It's all true." She seems to read my thoughts. "And you can't tell anybody from around here or else they'll tell Parker and he'll get Braden. You gotta come with me. We gotta hurry!"

The uptick in volume causes me to glance toward Charlie's door. Good thing he's a deep sleeper. "All right, Sydney, just for instance, you've given me three different versions of what happened to your arm." I look down at my notepad. "You said Alton Parker grabbed your arm and twisted it. You said you hitched a ride to my cabin with some partying high school kids and tripped getting out of their truck, landing on your arm. You said you got in a fight with one of the boys at Mrs. Wambles's place yesterday morning, and the boy hit your arm with a broken-off branch. Which is it?"

"All three. And I landed on my arm when I climbed out the window at Parker's warehouse, too." Pressing the ice bag against her elbow, she winces.

I sift through my notes again. "You're saying that the night your Grandma Budgie disappeared, your mother, Jade Potter, actually was living with the rest of you in the house. And Jade took Budgie Blackwell to get treatment after a medical emergency came up?"

"That's right. That's what happened."

"But the other day I asked you if anyone else was at the house when your grandmother left, and your answer was no."

"Braden said to keep my mouth shut till he could find Grandma Budgie and figure it all out."

"So it was your mother, Jade, who told you she was taking Budgie to Tulsa, to this City of Faith place…in the middle of the night?"

"That's what the note said."

"Note?" This is new.

"Braden was…he sneaked out to meet his girlfriend, okay? And I was asleep. I didn't hear anything when Mama and Grandma Budgie left."

My thoughts crumple like a paper wad in a tight fist. I unfold them again. The story is morphing so fast I can't keep up. "All right, so…Braden's gone. You're home but asleep. When you wake up, your mother and your Grandma Budgie are both gone, and you find a note explaining what happened?"

"Braden found it first."

"The note?"

"Mm-hmm."

"So, Braden returns sometime in the early morning hours and finds the note, then wakes you up and tells you about it?" Myriad scenarios roll through my mind, none of them reassuringly benign.

What if this really is a murder case?

Family fight? Jade's ongoing drug issues? Inheritance?

Maybe someone wanted Budgie Blackwell out of the way. Maybe Braden didn't go into the park for recreational purposes, but to dispose of a body…or to search for one. Could he have been helping his mother with a cover-up, or conversely, trying to uncover the truth about Budgie's disappearance?

In Sydney's scenario, Alton Parker is the villain and Braden the target. She insists that after taking her from Mrs. Wambles's house, Parker searched her belongings, found a secret book in which she kept drawings, notes only she understood, and handmade maps of hiding places she and her brother knew from spending time in the mountains. When she wouldn't tell Parker where Braden was, he twisted her arm until she heard something pop, then he locked her in a room and said he'd deal with her later. She's terrified that given enough time, Parker and his guys will decipher the notebook's contents and get Braden. And for that reason we need the FBI. Pronto.

You cannot listen to a word that one says. She is very manipulativecycles through my mind in Myrna Wambles's phlegmy voice.

What if every bit of this is fabrication? Sydney climbed out a window of Parker's warehouse apartment because she didn't relish being there, banged up her arm in the process, and sought out the person she thought was most likely to buy into her story.

Me.

Braden, she says, is still hiding in the park and the thousands of acres of adjacent state land—he has been the whole time. All of this has to do with the strange family relationship with Alton Parker. After Budgie's disappearance, Braden went to work for Parker because Parker had, over the past few months, insinuated himself at the Blackwells' ranch in Antlers. Parker was ostensibly monitoring his construction crews working on Budgie's ranch roads, barn, and a pond dam. Braden's feeling was that Parker showed up too often, offered too many favors, and, for a man with a business located an hour's drive away in Talihina, was oddly available to chat with Budgie over afternoon coffee. Jade, having recently moved back home to get her life on track, told the kids to leave it be.

After Budgie disappeared, Braden got it in his head that Parker knew something about it. While working for Parker, he'd been surveilling the business, trying to figure out what the man might be up to. Braden had also been to Tulsa looking for Budgie, but with no luck.

And that cave with the three little skeletons? It is part of the story, too. According to Sydney, there were indigenous funerary artifacts at the site, including clay eating pots, a river cane basket, blankets, sewing needles and thread, handmade wooden dolls—belongings that would have been buried with female children, which explains why the local rumor mill dubbed the remains as being those of little girls. When word of the cave got to Parker, he sent a man there to steal the artifacts and bag up the bones so no one would know, but the man chickened out when it came to handling the skeletons.

Parker then told Braden to go finish the job—a test of loyalty, or possibly a trap. By the time Braden went to the cave, the area was crawling with park personnel.

That's when Braden decided it was a setup—that Parker was on to him—and so Braden took to the woods.

It's all very…extraordinary.

Unbelievably so.

The story, if even remotely accurate, is a political grenade, especially in a park already plagued with local opposition, an unmarked burial site, a massive rockfall, and a dead body. The first thing you learn, working for a public-facing government agency: Controversy is enemy number one, bad press is number two, litigation is number three.

You're not some twenty-four-year-old kid anymore, Val. You're a grown-up with a son to support. That comes first.The thought injects a dose of bitter medicine. I stare at the wall. An eternity seems to pass. My eyes and everything in me go dry.

You've worked hard for this career.

Charlie deserves stability, a home.

"I need to call someone." The words echo past my ear, a strange out-of-body experience.

"Finally! The FBI, right?" Sydney gasps.

"No."

There's a wary shift at the other end of the sofa. I move, preparing to block the door if she tries to bolt. The problem is, the phone is attached to the wall in the kitchen.

"I knew not to come here. I knew you wouldn't care. You're just like stupid Granny Wambles and all of them."

"No. I'm not." Am I?

My stomach roils, churning a mix of soda, bile, and adrenaline. Acid upon acid.

"I shouldn't've told you anything." The words grind out through clenched teeth, the two in front still slightly overlarge for the face they're in.

Like Charlie's.

Stop it. Stop.

"She's got a big leather paddle she whips people with. Granny Wambles. You know that? She sticks a tube sock over it so it won't leave marks, but it hurts just fine."

The accusation snaps me around. Our gazes collide. Sydney's left eye narrows, gauging my reaction. I suspect there is no leather paddle in a tube sock. I have no way of knowing for sure.

"You don't have much choice but to trust me, Sydney." I stand up slowly, watching her in my periphery as I move to the kitchen. "And if you make a run for that door, I'll get there before you're through it."

"Pppfff!"

"Count on it."

"Mommy?" Charlie's sleepy voice startles me half out of my wits. He's standing at the bedroom door, rubbing his eyes.

"Go back to bed, Charlie."

"I heard the"—a huge yawn stalls the rest—"…bear…was…in my dumpster…closet…"

"Everything's all right."

"No, it's not," Sydney grinds out.

Charlie looks her way. "Hey," he says, as if an adolescent girl on our sofa is completely normal.

"Hey, kid." She repositions to the barest perch on the cushion, the crouch of a cat about to jettison from its hiding place.

"Charlie! Bed. Now."

He vanishes, the door rattling behind him.

I make it to the phone. "Calm down, Sydney. Everything's going to be all right."

"No, it won't! They'll read my notebook and getBraden!" Sobs wrench the last few words from her mouth.

I barely realize I've dialed Curtis's house before he answers the phone.

"I need you to come over here." There's no time for niceties.

"Valerie?" He's clearly awake. Either up early or just home from work.

"Yes."

"Where are you?"

"My cabin at Lost Pines. First one on the right. I've got a…" situation. "I just need you to come over here. I'm sorry. Can you?"

"I'll be there in fifteen," he answers, then hangs up.

The tension seeps out through my feet as I hang up the phone. Hopefully Curtis will have a greater grasp of the nuances of the situation than I do. More importantly, I trust him.

I think.

From the living room, Sydney demands to know who I've called. "A friend" is all I tell her. "Just stay put. We'll sort this out."

"We're wasting time." She paces the room, hugging herself and shivering as she passes by the window air unit. I offer her a blanket, but she shakes her head and peers through the gap in the ancient plaid curtains.

"Soon as Parker knows I'm gone, he'll come hunting me," she warns. "He got on the phone with some of his guys after he took my stuff and locked me in the room. If they can't figure out Braden's map on their own, they'll come to get me out of that room and make me tell. I shouldn't have saved the map. Braden told me to learn it by heart, then get rid of it. Burn it."

"Burn it?"

"Yeah, but how you gonna do that at Granny Wambles's house?" A narrow look flicks my way. "I had to sleep with it in my underpants at night. Myrna looked through all my stuff. She oughta get arrested. She's working for Parker. Him and her are in on it. He handed her a wad of cash when he stuck me in that place. I saw him."

"One thing at a time." Parker could have been legitimately paying for Sydney's care, since she wasn't officially in the foster system. It's possible.

"I told you, there's not any time." Sydney presses against the wall, a banged-up, stranded creature, trapped, lost, scared. "You don't cross Parker. Not around here. He'll get rid of you. He'll come here when he sees that I got away. He knows you been over at Granny Wambles's talkin' to me. She tells him stuff. That's what she gets paid for."

"I doubt he has any idea where to find me."

"He can find anybody. And you got your little boy in there."

We look toward Charlie's room in unison. A lump rises in my throat. This is exactly the reason home life and law enforcement work should never mix.

I walk to Charlie's door, peek inside, pull the door closed again. A shudder runs beneath the hiking shirt I yanked over my filmy tank top and gym shorts after letting Sydney in the door.

Glancing at the clock, I think, Hurry up.

An eternity seems to pass before headlights strafe the curtains. Sydney leans close to peer around the edge. "Crap! It's the Choctaw Police. They can't take me outta here. I'm not in the tribe. Don't tell them you saw me. Parker knows all of them, too." She flees to the other side of the room and tries to hide behind the recliner.

"It's okay." Leaving her where she is, I cross to the door and tug it open.

Curtis is alert, slightly guarded. One hand resting near his service weapon, he eyes me quizzically, taking in the unevenly buttoned shirt, gym shorts, bare feet. "Val?" He searches my face, then looks past me to the lamplit cabin interior. "What's up?"

The answer emerges from behind the recliner. "You called him?"

Curtis visibly deflates, rubbing his forehead as he crosses the threshold. "This is your situation?" He levels a stern look at Sydney, who has already grabbed the back of the chair and turned the seat in his direction as a barricade. "People are looking for you, Sydney. Let's go."

"You can't let him take me!" She sprints to a defensive position behind me, clutches my shirt in handfuls. "I'm her prisoner. She called the Feds already."

"No, I haven't," I interject. "Everybody just calm down."

"Come on, Sydney." Curtis is clearly too tired for the drama. "Enough of the fun and games. Granny Wambles reported you missing at least a couple hours ago now. People have been out looking for you." He reaches wearily for his handheld radio to put out the call that Sydney Potter has been found.

A flurry of protests issue forth from Sydney and me.

"Curtis, wait!"

"I wasn't even over there! Parker took me. He locked me up!"

"Curtis, just a minute." My hand is over his before he can push the PTT switch and put out the call.

He looks down at my fingers, then slowly up at me, his readable emotions ranging from shock, to indignance, to bewilderment, to a flash of something else that I feel but can't categorize.

"Curtis…just…Listen before you make that call, okay? Hear her out first."

His thumb brushes over mine as he lets off the switch. "That's asking a lot, Val."

"I know. Give us fifteen minutes, all right?" I back away to allow him into the room, and he obliges, closing the door behind himself.

"I hope you know what you're doing here, Val," he mutters close to my ear.

"Playing on a hunch," I admit, and we move across the room, Sydney clinging to my shirt until we're positioned side by side on the sofa. Curtis takes the recliner, knees set in a wide stance, elbows braced, as if he must hold himself in place to do what I have asked of him.

I grab a blanket, throw it over Sydney, say to Curtis, "For one thing, Myrna Wambles shouldn't be reporting this girl missing. When I went by there earlier, I was told that Parker had picked Sydney up hours ago, intending for her to stay at his warehouse with him…or out at his hunting cabin."

"Who said that?" Curtis is incredulous.

"Mrs. Wambles herself. If she was lying, she was pretty convincing. My guess is that when Sydney went missing from Parker's place, he didn't want anyone to know he'd ever had custody of her." Leaning back, I turn to Sydney and say, "You'd better tell the short version of the story you came here with…but only whatever part is true."