Endangered (9781101559017) (6 page)

Sam was unsure of how to respond. “I'll keep my eyes and mind open.”

“You do that.” Tanner gave her a slap on the shoulder that sent her staggering from the campsite.

The scouts from Rescue 504 fanned out onto the hillsides. Their singsong calls chimed across the valley as they worked through their assigned sectors. From the western rise, a female voice yelled “Zachary!” A male voice echoed from the east: “Zack!”

She started her own search with the trail where she'd last seen Zack. Taking the left fork, she walked to the river, across from where Kent had sighted Apollo's prints. The muddy soil was crisscrossed by hundreds of prints from boots and dog feet. There was no way to tell where little boys or cougars had walked. She studied the rippling river for a long while, pacing its banks, looking for anything out of place caught in the rocks at the bottom of the shallow water.

Around her neck she wore a yellow Explorer Scout bandanna, and her right arm was encircled by an armband with the troop's insignia and the words SEARCH PARTY. In spite of the official paraphernalia, she received a lot of dirty looks as she peered into cars and tents. The scowls softened when she handed posters to the park visitors, asking them if they'd seen a blond two-year-old in a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt and red pants. Even a Mexican woman who spoke little English quickly understood the gist of the poster.

“Ay, Madre de Dios,” she sighed, crossing herself.

Sam had swapped her heavy backpack for the smaller knapsack she used for day trips. In it, she carried notepad and digital camera just in case she ran across something worth capturing. The two-way radio was zipped into the outside pocket, the volume tuned to its lowest setting. She heard the scoutmaster report in now and then, as well as the rangers talking. A fender-bender backed up traffic at the north gate. Another theft had been reported at Miller Bend Campground. Normal park activity didn't stop just because a little boy was missing.

During her stint as a seasonal ranger, Sam had participated in two wilderness searches. She was not accustomed to inspecting places where hundreds of people tramped every day. Tracks were impossible to sort out. She scrutinized cars, peeked into each stall in the restrooms, including the men's, much to the surprise of one gentleman who hadn't answered when she knocked on the door. She lifted the lid on each garbage can, climbed into two Dumpsters, examined and collected litter from beneath cars, picnic tables, and ditches beside the road.

By noon, she'd decided that people were pigs. No, she corrected herself. That was an insult to porkers everywhere. No pig left a wake of debris like your average
Homo sapiens
.

Children were everywhere in the campgrounds. A good percentage of them appeared to be less than four years old, and at least half of those were blond. They ran up the paths, rode tricycles on the loop road: how could an observer tell which child belonged to which parents? She'd certainly never questioned whether the man at the end of the path was Zack's father.

“Miz Ranger.” A middle-aged camper motioned her over. He gestured at his picnic table. “I had everything right here last night.”

“What?”

“Someone stole my grapes. And a half wheel of Camembert and a fresh loaf of French bread.” Folding his arms, he glared at her. “Now what am I supposed to do for food?” His foot tapped impatiently on the ground.

A kid was missing and this loser wanted to know what he was going to eat for lunch? It was no wonder she hadn't made the cut for a permanent job in the park service. She didn't have the patience for this.

“Keep an eye out for this missing boy.” She slapped a poster down on his picnic table. “And I'm not a ranger.”

Another visitor quizzed her about howling noises. Just coyotes, she told him; no wolves in this part of the country. No point in mentioning Coyote Charlie: tourists might not think he was the comic-book figure the rangers did. Odds were that nobody in the valley campground could hear him up on the plateau, anyway.

She was on her hands and knees peering beneath a big RV when the door suddenly swung open. The sharp aluminum corner gouged her back before clanking to a stop against her knapsack. A big man hastily jumped down onto the cement block that served as a step. He grabbed the door, swung it shut. “Sorry,” he said breathlessly. “The dang closer thing's broken.”

By the time she stood up, his tone had changed from apologetic to irritated. He thrust his belly forward, distorting the image of Mickey Mouse on his tight blue T-shirt. “What the heck you doin' down there, anyway?”

She rubbed her back. Scraped but not bleeding. “I'm looking for a missing kid.” Peeling a crumpled poster from the roll, she held it out to him. “He disappeared last night.”

An odd expression lingered in the man's eyes as he examined the photo. The hair on the top of his head was a thick and unvarying brown, but the thinning sides showed multiple threads of gray. Didn't the guy know how silly a cheap toupee looked?

His fingers moved on the edges of the page, caressing the paper. His tongue flicked out, swiped wetly over thick lips. A warning prickle crawled across the back of Sam's neck.

“Have you seen Zachary?” she asked.

“That his name?”

Clearly printed at the bottom
, she thought with annoyance, taking a step closer to point it out. Something crunched under her foot. A blue plastic block. Two red ones and a yellow lurked nearby. She scooped them up. “These yours?”

He stared at them for a long moment. “LEGOs,” he finally said.

He took the colored cubes from her, his fingers clammy against her palm. Holding the blocks to his chest, he gave her a tentative smile. “For the grandkids.”

Did that also explain the Mickey Mouse T-shirt? “Where are they?”

“Who?” He looked around him.

“The grandkids?”

“They're not with me today.” He turned to go back into the camper. “But thanks for asking.”

A very strange man. She placed her hand on the door beneath his. “Could I trouble you for some water, sir?”

He turned, one foot on the camper threshold, one on the makeshift step. “What?”

She smiled. “A glass of water? It's a long way to a drinking fountain. You do have water inside your camper, don't you?”

“Inside?” The man's pale eyes darted nervously to her face and then down to his own hand on the door handle. “Well, I mean, it's just that it's really messy.”

“No problem.” She pulled the door out of his hand. “I'm not the housekeeping police. I'd really appreciate it, Mr.—?”

The man stepped up and turned toward her. “Wilson, the name's Wilson.” He gestured for her to enter.

It was no easy task to squeeze past Wilson. The fleshy roll of his belly brushed against her back like a soft warm pillow. Was he actually leaning
into
her? She stifled an urge to flinch.

In the kitchen, freshly washed pans and a couple of plates were set out to dry on a kitchen towel. Wilson opened a cabinet door and reached for a glass. Sam spotted familiar yellow and blue boxes on the upper shelf.

“Ah, animal crackers,” she said.

A rush of color flooded the man's face. “For the grandkids,” he mumbled. He filled the plastic tumbler with water from the tap and handed it to her, swiped with a dish towel at the few drops that had splashed onto the counter. “But the kids aren't here.

“I'm all by my lonesome this trip.” That tentative smile again. His large hands fiddled with the dish towel, wringing it into a twisted rope.

Sam sipped her water slowly as she surveyed the camper. More LEGOs were spilled across a Formica tabletop. Toys. Animal crackers. Mickey Mouse. But no kids in sight.

Near the door, a blue jogging suit—nylon-knit pants and hooded jacket—hung from a hook. Dried dirt darkened the elastic cuffs of the pants, and another patch of the crusty material speckled a sleeve. River mud? She suddenly found it difficult to swallow. She felt Wilson's gaze on her, but when she raised her eyes, his quickly flitted away.

A calendar adorned the wall over the table.
Miranda, 5:00, VFW
was scribbled into the square for today's date. At the rear of the camper was a double bed, neatly made, its cotton cover tight with corners tucked under, institution-style. Hardly messy.

Wilson pulled open the undersink cabinet, stretched out the dish towel, and hung it on a peg to dry. From another peg hung a small red baseball cap.

Sam felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room. “That cap. Is it yours?”

Wilson studied it as if unsure of how it had gotten there. “No,” he finally said. “I found it down by the river, when I went for a walk this morning. Why?”

“The missing child was wearing a red baseball cap.” Could the search parties have missed Zack's cap down by the river? She doubted it. She tried to breathe normally. Wilson, in his blue jogging suit, could easily be the man she'd seen at the end of the path. The bulge she'd noticed in silhouette could have been the hood pushed down behind his neck.

“A hat like this one? Really? Oh my.” He wrung his hands.

“Can I have it? I'll take it to the rangers.”

He reached for it reluctantly. “Well, sure, of course, if you think it might help.”

She took it from him. The red fabric was damp.

“I washed it. It was dirty, and I thought, you know, maybe one of my grandkids would like it, so I rinsed it off.”

Again the grandkids.

His gaze fell on the glass in her hands. “Well, if you're done—”

She handed him the empty tumbler. “Thank you, Mr. Wilson. If you see Zachary Fischer, please tell a ranger.”

After he closed the door behind her, she tucked the baseball cap into her knapsack, then walked to the rear of the RV. A blue Volkswagen Beetle was attached to a tow bar behind the rig. She wrote down the license on the car's back plate along with the RV's number. As she walked away, she caught a flicker of movement as the curtain at the kitchen window dropped back into place.

She stopped outside the campground and used her cell phone to call the ranger station about Wilson. The woman who answered didn't seem too excited. “Yes, ma'am,” she responded in a honey-coated Southern drawl. “Thank you for the tip.”

“Look,” Sam urged, “Ranger—”

“This is Ranger Gates, ma'am.”

“Ranger Gates, did you really get what I told you? The toys, the animal crackers, the mud, the
red baseball cap
? I'm holding that cap right now; do you want me to bring it in?”

“I'm sure later will be fine, Miss Westin. Please continue to search until your area is complete.”

Sam gritted her teeth. “Can you forward me to Ranger Castillo?”

“Ranger Castillo is in the field and can't be reached at present, ma'am.”

“You will treat this as important, right?” Sam asked, exasperated. “You will have a law enforcement ranger check out Wilson?”

“You saw no trace of Zachary Fischer in Mr. Wilson's camper?”

“Well, not of him specifically. Just the cap.”

“And Mr. Wilson stated he'd found that by the river this morning.”

“Yes.”

“Is there a name on the cap?”

She pulled it out to check. “No.”

“And Mr. Wilson said that he had not seen the child?”

“That's right, but Zack could be hidden in that camper.”

“And no one in the vicinity has actually seen the child?”

The phrase
circumstantial evidence
came to mind. “That's correct,” Sam responded dismally.

“I'll pass your information along. A ranger will speak to Mr. Wilson as soon as possible. We will not allow him to leave the park before then. Please complete your search area.”

Sam hung up, feeling as though she'd failed to impress a robot. She started to call Kent, then remembered that he was sleeping. Stuffing phone and baseball cap back into her knapsack, she cursed Ranger Gates and continued her search.

The last parking lot on Sam's map was at the base of a cliff called Red Wall. A dozen rock climbers rappelled down the sheer surface. The climbers were mostly teenage boys and girls in identical turquoise T-shirts and khaki shorts.

A dark-skinned boy stood backward on the edge of the cliff above, glancing over his shoulder to the canyon floor a hundred feet below.

“Sheeeyiiit,” he screeched, clutching the ropes fastened at the waist of his harness.

From above, a male voice answered. “We've got you. This is all about trust, man.”

Sam recognized the efforts of Outward Bound, an organization that used outdoor activities to turn around the lives of juvenile delinquents. They'd used the park for a decade or more.

A handful of teens had reached the bottom and were removing their harnesses under the watchful eyes of adult supervisors. A week ago the kids had probably belonged to six different gangs hell-bent on shooting each other.

The new climber stepped over the edge and braced his legs against the rock wall, testing the rope. He made the mistake of glancing down again. “Oh shit!”

Even from the base of the cliff, Sam could see that the kid's knees were shaking.

The counselor's voice from above was calm. “Keep going.”

The boy pushed off from the wall and let out the rope. He swung back in a few feet lower. “Hey, it works!” He pushed off again, this time with more confidence.
“Eee-haaa!”

The yell reminded Sam of Max Garay and his rampaging sprites. She dug the camera out of her knapsack, switched it to video mode, and focused as a red-headed girl stepped over the edge.