Chapter 25

Valerie Boren-Odell, 1990

That girl was a wild one. She'd ride by whistling like a boy.

—Mrs. Chas. McWilliams, 1937. Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection, interview by Effie S. Jackson.

I fidget with a pen under the table, trying to keep myself in my chair as the weekly sit-down meeting drones its way through the usual paces. Washouts on trails, flood flotsam, graffiti cleanup, a hazardous material spill from an overturned Parker Construction truck carrying a tank of glyphosate herbicide, an ATV enthusiast flipped a four-wheeler and had to be airlifted, a teenager was rescued from Cedar Lake. Fortunately, he didn't become the second water fatality of the season, following our John Doe, whose autopsy report has finally come in. Cause of death: unwitnessed drowning.

The man is still unidentified and the drive to change that is underwhelming. Enough of a local stir has been created by Sydney Potter's claims, plus the herbicide spill three days later. By happenstance of proximity, I ended up coming upon the overturned spray-tank truck first. The vehicle was unmarked, and the driver was too shaken up to tell me immediately what was leaking into the nearby creek, or to whom the truck belonged. When I called it in, I had no way of knowing Parker Construction would be implicated, or that they hadn't had the truck inspected in years, and the license plate on it belonged to a different vehicle owned by the company. Technically, that is a felony in Oklahoma, but no one has owned up to swapping the tags, and nothing serious is likely to come of it.

Regardless, word is all over the area that I am out to get Alton Parker any way I can. I'm abusing the authority of the federal government to blacken Parker's reputation and bring down one of the biggest employers in the area. I'm responsible for an NPS Investigative Services Branch special agent having shown up to look into Sydney Potter's outlandish story, for Parker having to endure the humiliation of being questioned, and for raising the likelihood of trouble between the park and the Choctaw Nation as soon as the new federal laws on indigenous remains and grave goods go into effect.

I am guilty, but only of doing my job. While Sydney didn't have the best reputation for truth telling, her story was bound to leak out, and if Braden was somewhere on state or federal land injured, or became injured trying to hide in the woods alone, we would be responsible for not having done everything we could to find an endangered minor. Chief Ranger Arrington understood that on some level, but he had all he could deal with, trying to lay the blame for the mishandling of the burial site on Frank Ferrell, who agreed to quietly opt for retirement rather than returning from his medical leave.

I knew I was teetering on the edge of becoming an even bigger public relations liability than Ferrell, but I thought the Braden Lacey case would end up proving me right, so I pushed it as far as I could.

Unfortunately, a full seven days and one ISB special agent visit later, we have almost no new information. Even with air, surface, sonar, and canine unit assistance from cooperating departments, we've turned up nothing. The dogs found the campsite Sydney described, under a rock overhang where a stacked-stone wall had once been built to form a rudimentary dugout. Someone had holed up there recently, but the ashes in the fire pit were days old. Search dogs picked up scent trails, Braden's, only to eventually lose them at water crossings. One ended at the debris line above Holson Creek. In two days of gridwork along the banks, the dogs were unable to pick up the trail again.

When someone enters a waterway but doesn't exit, it's not good. Given the extensive wetlands acreage downstream, and then the Fourche Maline River and Wister Lake, a body could stay hidden for months or years.

There's still hope, but Braden hasn't shown up anywhere, nor has his mother, Jade.

Budgie's financial accounts are untouched. Nothing at her home is out of order. Her Medicare account shows no activity. No hits from medical facilities on a woman matching her description. Her credit cards are dormant.

Three people from the same family have vanished without a trace.

No matter how I try to explain it, I can't. Even sitting in the weekly meeting while all manner of bizarre human behavior is bandied about, any scenario I come up with seems far-fetched.

Sydney, at least, is in protective custody with people who can be trusted; however, it's a temporary solution, and unless proof of something nefarious is found, it's her word against Parker's. He'll win that battle. He has no black marks on his record, not even so much as a traffic ticket. He vehemently insists that he would never manhandle Sydney or lock her in a room. He consented to a search of his facilities. No evidence of Sydney's imprisonment, escape, or mysterious notebook was found. The place was clean, with new bedding and curtains in two of the bedrooms. Sydney's suitcase sat empty on a chair, her belongings having been neatly unpacked into the closet.

All of this is driving me to the point of madness. I can't sleep. My stomach is a constant whirlpool. My career may be on the line. I'm on the wrong side of some sketchy elements in town, underscored by another weird middle-of-the-night incident at the cabin court. The manager saw someone creeping around outside my place.

I called my mother the next morning and told her Charlie wanted to come visit for a couple of weeks—that work was a little out of control right now. She and my grandmother made plans to meet me halfway on my day off to pick up Charlie.

"Are you okay?" Mom asked as we stood in a grocery store parking lot in the fading evening light. "Why don't you take some time off and come home for a while?"

"I'm fine, Mom. I've just got a couple busy weeks ahead and Charlie's spending way too much time with babysitters. He'll have a lot more fun visiting with you and Gram and the cousins."

"You're sure?" Worry lines fanned around her eyes.

I insisted I was, of course. Fine.

While Mom loaded the car, Gram whispered in my ear, "Rip up that postcard I sent to you after you moved, Valerie. I was being emotional. You're a grown woman, and you get to make your own decisions. If this is what you want, don't let anybody stop you." Leaning back, she held my face in her hands like she used to when I was a child. "But call if you need me. I'll be on your doorstep in a New York minute."

I hugged all three of them, then watched my mother's car roll off. When it was gone from view, I felt lost.

Less than forty-eight hours later, after a lonely supper at the Sardis Shores Café, I found a place mat with Pine Pigs Die scrawled on it, stuck in the driver's side door of my vehicle. I dropped it into a Ziploc and stuffed it into my pocket.

It's been riding around with me for a day and a half.

Sitting in the staff meeting, I can't decide whether to show the note to everybody or dismiss it as idle harassment from one of the resident grousers.

Across the table, Edwin, Roy, and Chief Ranger Arrington discuss plans for Edwin and Roy to do a horseback patrol now that things have dried out enough. They'll ride to the blocked hiking trail from the back side to assess the rockfall area, and to scour for any further evidence that the trail damage was not a natural occurrence.

Mindy, the clerk typist, slips in the door and hands me a sheet of printer paper. The information on it makes for a paltry report when the meeting cycles my way.

"No new state, local, or tribal hits on anyone matching Budgie, Jade, or Braden," I say. "We got a hit on Braden's girlfriend, at a motel in Poteau. She's gone now, though. She had the room for four days and hung the Do Not Disturb sign, so no cleaning people entered. The manager didn't see who came and went, because the room was around back. He did remember checking Rachel in on the first day. Tall, blond, athletic. So was she there looking for Braden, or coming to pick him up and they're miles from here by now?"

Rachel's driver's license and a still frame from the hotel surveillance video are included on the printout. In the photo, she wears a ball cap. A silky ponytail trails over her camo tank top and cargo shorts. Her combat boots seem too heavy for her long, toned legs. "Looks more like she's dressed for a camping trip than a hotel stay," I add before sliding the page to the center of the table so everyone can take a look.

"How come I never see hikers like that?" the maintenance supervisor wants to know.

"Dang." Roy leans in with interest. "If that was my girlfriend, I wouldn't be runnin' off into the woods."

The men around the table chuckle in the way of high school boys spreading testosterone on the football bus.

I roll my eyes and sit back, think, Really?

"All right, all right. That'll be enough. There's a lady present," Arrington says, underscoring the point that he's decided the Blackwell case is nothing more than Sydney making up stories to escape foster care. He thinks I've been played by a kid. I'm soft. I'm a woman, with female emotions, overreacting.

Every face in the room silently supports that conclusion. It infuriates me. Blood rises hot in my chest, up my neck, into my cheeks, all the way to the tips of my ears.

Roy glances my way and blanches. His college-kid grin falls slack. "But if the girlfriend came here to look for him and she couldn't find him…I mean, if she thought he was lost or drowned, she would've reported it, right? She'd be worried." Fingers interlaced, thumbs up, he affects a serious posture.

Before I can answer, Ranger Arrington moves to close the meeting. "Well, who knows. Young people. Spats. Things happen. Maybe they ran off to Vegas together. Fact is, we've more than looked into it. Turned up nothing. Thanks to some adolescent girl with issues, I've got the tribe breathing down my neck, the state ticked off about the manpower we ate up, plus the superintendent and the NPS Intermountain Region Office on my back. Unless something new comes up, it's past time we cool the temperature and move on."

My jaw tightens until my head hurts. This is normally the kind of dressing down that would at least be done in private. Arrington wants everyone to get his message, and my standing among my co-workers is a mere casualty of the usual go along, get along.

"We'd better tell that to whoever left this." I slap the Pine Pigs Die sign on the table before my brain catches up with my mouth.

A pall of silence falls over the room. Hands move to laps, backs straighten, eyes glance at the paper, then fasten forward.

My pulse beats so hard I barely hear Arrington say, "Where'd this come from?"

"Someone stuck it on my windshield yesterday while I was at the Sardis Shores Café. I didn't see who."

His pen hammers the table as he squints at the baggie. Tap, tap, tap, tap. "You just now remembering to turn it in?"

"I didn't think it was serious."

"You bagged it."

"Like I said, I wasn't sure."

His gaze circles the table, silently nailing each person to the wall. "Anybody else get one of these?"

Eyes focus downward. Heads shake. I twist in the wind alone.

Edwin finally breaks the silence. "So…then, it's true about somebody being outside your cabin the other night?" He adds that Charlie blabbed the information when Shellie was babysitting him at their place.

Arrington directs a frown my way. "That true?"

I'm forced to admit that it is.

"Stay close to the station for a few days," the chief ranger orders. "Check with me before you head out anywhere." Then he gets up and leaves the room.

"Geez, Edwin," I snap. "You could've asked me that in private." Pushing up from my chair, I proceed to my desk, which I can now expect to be strapped to indefinitely. If I'm lucky, I'll get permit patrol in the campgrounds.

I've calmed down a little by the time I walk outside to scrounge up some Tylenol from my glove compartment. Nearby, Roy and Edwin blithely load their gear into a vehicle at the maintenance yard. As soon as they see me coming, Roy hides behind the truck and Edwin ducks under the brim of his ball cap. "Man, I'm sorry, Val. I didn't mean to set off a kerfuffle."

The term kerfuffle cools my jets a bit more. Who uses words like that? Edwin is the tall, skinny, idealistic, full-grown wilderness geek Charlie will someday be.

"It's okay, Edwin. I'm over it." My tone is unconvincing, especially considering that I'd give anything to be out in the woods today. "Okay, I'm not over it, but I'll get there. Meantime, I'm wondering if I can call in a favor, just between us?" I glance across to Roy, think, Is this a good idea? I'm already in trouble and neither one of these two can keep their mouths shut. I've heard more than once that Arrington would like to ship Edwin out—too yappy with the guests, too forthcoming about the kind of stuff that makes tourists wonder if they should head for Disney World instead.

"Anything." Edwin exhales desperately, his kind heart and thin skin painfully evident. He's wounded that I'm upset with him. "Since you'll be out that way on horseback today, could you guys make a little foray up that slope across the valley from the rockfall, get a view from the top?"

"How come?" Roy injects.

"It's just a hunch…sort of…but I swear I heard something…or someone out there the day Charlie and I found the blasting cap." That carefree hike seems like six months ago, but it's only been a matter of weeks. "It's probably nothing, but maybe somebody's hiding a setup back there. Growing weed, boiling meth, or…who knows? Just take a look from the ridge, see if you spot anything beyond."

Edwin and Roy quickly agree to the side trip, eager to be on good terms with me again.

"Keep it between us, all right?" I step back from the truck to let them go. "And be a little careful…just in case someone really is out there."

"You can count on us." Roy clicks his bootheels together and effects a goofy salute. If anybody inside the ranger station is watching, that gesture will definitely raise questions.

After they drive off with the horse trailer in tow, I engage in my own parking lot pity party, which devolves into a self-doubt session. Everything about this case has a benign explanation. Why can't I accept that?

Because I want it to be more? Because I need it to be more?

Because I can't stand being looked at as the token female?

Or because I am the product of a father who refused to leave wounded comrades on the battlefield in Vietnam, a mother who works tirelessly to get veterans the care they deserve, and a grandmother who fought school boards, delinquent parents, and the state legislature to defend the best interests of her students? We Borens have never bowed to bullies, politics, public pressure, embarrassment, name calling, or threats. Not that I ever saw.

The right thing is hardly ever the easy thing, Val.That was one of the last pieces of advice my dad offered before he died. I was home on military leave, wondering about my life decisions. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. At the end of the day, you have to look at yourself in the mirror. Don't do anything you can't stand to see looking back at you.

I won't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I let this go without exhausting all means of uncovering the truth about Braden and Sydney…and figuring out what happened to Budgie Blackwell.

I can't do that from my desk, which is where I end up the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, as daily chatter hums along on the station radio, reminding me of my uselessness while I feed forms into a persnickety typewriter that looks like it came from a middle school surplus sale.

I'm opening a lunch I thought I'd be eating somewhere more interesting when a shadow falls across my desk. By the faint scent of the aftershave and creases in the trousers, I know it's Arrington.

I look up hopefully. "Reports done. After lunch, I thought I'd go—"

"Why don't you head out of town for a few days?" he says, preempting me. "Take a little time off with your son. I checked your annual leave. You have plenty."

I'm momentarily dumbstruck. "What? I just got here. No. I'm fine. In fact, Charlie is visiting his cousins right now. I've got extra time to keep digging into—"

"That's what I don't want." As is his habit, the chief ranger interrupts. He's to the point, but the point is his point. "I don't like this ‘pine pigs' thing. You're under somebody's skin. I need to sort out how serious that is, exactly."

I push up from my chair, not in a confrontational manner, but by way of leveling the playing field. At five-eight, I meet him almost eye to eye. "I know how to watch my back. This isn't my first—"

"It's your first here." I expect his gaze to cut right through me, but instead, he has the stern look of a professor schooling an overeager student. "You're an outsider. You haven't had time to form a network locally, to build trust. You've gotten on the wrong side of a man who's well thought of in this county. Horsethief Trail needs a net-positive entry into the local ecosystem. It's our job to give it that. Your job, too. This unit operates as a team. Team players only. No Lone Rangers here in the Winding Stairs. Understand?"

Swallowing what I want to say, I briefly entertain the image of John Wayne as Marshal Rooster Cogburn, charging horseback across a valley with the reins in his teeth, guns blazing in both hands as he confronts Lucky Ned Pepper's outlaw gang.

I'm not possessed of such romantic notions, but leave town? Run away until things settle down?

I stare at the wall, try to get my head right. "I understand the issue. But I don't need a vacation, okay? I'm…saving up my time."

"Suit yourself." He chews on that for a moment, not fully satisfied with the taste. "But stay…"

The sentence hangs unfinished. Both of us swivel toward the station radio as a barely audible call to dispatch interrupts the drone of daily duty traffic. The codes are rushed, obscured by static: "700–5-7-9, 10-18…700–5-7-9, 10-18…"

"Five-seven-nine. That's Roy," I gasp, and Arrington and I hurry across the room to turn up the volume. Ten-eighteen is an urgent call.

Mama Lu's response comes in, and radio protocol immediately goes out the window. "You're ten-one, though, hon, pretty bad. Your radio hittin' the right repeater? Check your settings. Was that a ten-eighteen? Go ahead, five-seven-nine."

A pause and then Roy comes back clearer. He's off firing codes so quickly they're hard to discern, but nothing in the ten-fifty range is good. "Holson Valley Road, at forest road number…road number…uhhh…he's…red tag. Red tag. I need that ambulance, quick."

"Okay, hon, slow down a minute." Mama Lu is both maternal and efficient. "I'm hearin' emergency, you've got an accident with injuries out there on HVR, victim is critical, and you're requesting assistance and an ambulance. What's your ten-twenty, over?"

Roy tries again to pinpoint his location. I picture Roy and Edwin, giddy with the novelty of a horseback day, chatting, joking, both so caught up they failed to pay attention to exactly where they left the blacktop for the forest roads. But they should be deep into the park on horseback right now. Why would they be back on Holson Valley Road at all? Edwin is senior, too. Why wouldn't he be the one calling in the emergency, and…

The thought freezes.

Because Edwin is the emergency.

Within moments, Mama Lu nails down a firm location based on landmarks.

I rush to strap on my duty belt, holster my radio, and grab my keys, then follow Chief Ranger Arrington out the door.

The afternoon becomes a patchwork of blurred and sharp-focus moments—arriving at the scene, watching EMTs stabilize Edwin, his uniform shredded and blood soaked, his face swollen, one boot twisted at an unnatural angle, blood and saliva dripping down his cheek, his body going into convulsions as medical personnel load him for transport.

I radio Mama Lu and make sure Edwin's wife has been notified, and the ambulance rushes away, a grim chief ranger following behind it.

Roy, suddenly painfully young, the bravado of this morning burned away, babbles as the sirens fade. "I don't know. I don't know. Edwin went on ahead upslope. I thought I heard something…so I cut off down the creek to check. There's no trails open out here, but…I…I swear there was…somebody was…"

Responders from multiple agencies, standing in a circle of helpless concern, fire off questions almost in unison. "What, Roy? What did you hear? What did you see?"

"Somebody whispered, and just in the corner of my eye, I saw something white…" He scrubs his forehead, leaves a smear of Edwin's blood. "Then Edwin yelled my name, and I heard a rock hit hard, and a slide…falling, and by the time I got back to where he was…"

Doubling over, he heaves and sobs, describing the catastrophic scene as Edwin tumbled halfway down the slope, out cold, the horse rolling over him repeatedly before wobbling to its feet and staggering into the woods. "It was the only time…the only time I didn't take the lead all day. I know the mountains more. It should've been me…"

It should've been me…

Those words catapult my mind to another place. The change is so sudden everything around me fades. I'm at the top of a shapeless wall of rock, where the rescue of a stranded hiker has gone terribly wrong. Somewhere below lies the wreckage of gear, medical supplies, equipment…of Joel, of our life, of everything that was good and right.

It should've been me. It should've been me. It should've been me.I remember sobbing it over and over.

Just like Roy.

My mind staggers through the thin places between that moment and this one as various emergency vehicles throw off a cavalcade of noise and flashing lights up and down the roadside.

Roy tells his story again. It's slightly more coherent.

"Now, Roy, you can't go blaming yourself," someone offers—a sheriff's deputy, I think, but my mind falls through one of the thin places again.

You can't blame yourself, Val. It was an accident…the weather.

"That boy was new here. These mountains'll get you if you don't know what you're doing." A volunteer fireman pats Roy on the shoulder, offering absolution.

I bristle at the insinuation that Edwin somehow brought this on himself.

"What the heck were y'all doin' out there by the park boundary anyhow?" someone asks.

"Kind of far afield," another deputy agrees. "That's rough country."

"Just…just looking," Roy mutters. "To see from the top and…"

The barest hint of a glance flicks my way. I'm sickened by the realization it was my request that took Edwin to the ridge where the accident happened. This is somebody's fault. Mine.

"I'll go find the other horse," I mutter, and step out of the circle. No one responds until I've crossed to the trailer and shortened the stirrups on Roy's blood-spattered saddle.

"That loose horse'll make its way to the barn on its own," someone yells. "Probably halfway there already."

The sticky warmth of half-dried blood adheres my hands to the reins as I gather them and swing into the saddle, then point Roy's mount toward the trail he and Edwin rode in on this morning. "Not if it's injured," I fire back.

Pushing the horse into a trot, I end the discussion, but a final warning follows me anyway. Through the noise of hooves and wind, I catch only the part that echoes against the Winding Stair. "…stay off that mountain."