The base of Bowman Summit is a hardscrabble of debris sloughed off by the mountain over generations, centuries, and millennia, mostly the result of slides and erosion. The castoff is eight to ten feet deep about the base and inclines sharply from the valley floor beginning some twenty feet out from the cliff wall.
A legion of trees populates the valley, fed by a network of small streams and creeks that no doubt empty into Henry Hagg Lake several miles away. The largest of the streams passes within a hundred feet of the summit base, providing clear, cool water to splash upon sweating faces. The forest is quiet today. The birds are about, but there’s little singing and even the river’s murmur seems muted.
She’s waiting for us there, broken and quiet, sprawled upon the ground, empty eyes looking skyward, legs contorted unnaturally behind her: Ann Buerger. Two hours of hard trails, guided by GPS, and this is our trophy.
I’m tired of collecting the dead.
Their faces look back at me from the slideshow in my mind, as if to ask: Why didn’t you save me? Even though they were dead long before I knew their names.
I feel Jimmy’s hand on my shoulder as I kneel near the body. “We save the ones we can,” he says quietly. Our words. After years of doing this they’re almost a catchphrase. Their original intent was to remind us that we have a job to do, to get us back on task even under the most grisly of circumstances.
We save the ones we can.
Then his hand is gone and it’s down to business. He begins to document the scene: photographs, GPS coordinates, measurements. It’s murder. Everything has to be in the report … or most everything. What won’t be in the official report are photographs of the places on her right forearm and right upper back where he shoved her. There’s no way of capturing that information, no camera or film that sees what I see. My head hurts as I look and my eyes feel tight and full, like grapes on a vine ready to split from too much rain.
The signs are there like a beacon, a light in the darkness, a neon billboard. So clear they might as well be words on a page. I can almost feel the force of the hit, Ann flying through the air, the emptiness of falling.
From the pocket of my Windbreaker I retrieve the leather case and the glasses within. Unfolding the earpieces, I slide them onto my face. The relief is instantaneous as the crushing tightness in my head lets go and washes away. I can almost feel it draining out the bottom of my feet as I wiggle my toes.
It’s a strange sensation. I’ve never gotten used to it.
My eyesight is twenty-twenty; the glasses have more to do with my sanity than my vision. They’re very special glasses with thin lead-crystal lenses. I had them custom-made in Seattle, which wasn’t cheap. I also have a pair with tinted lenses that pass for sunglasses, but I left them at home this trip.
The Canon PowerShot S95 is buried at the bottom of my backpack and I have to dig past an extra pair of socks, an Oregon map, some bottled water, a box of granola bars, a thermal blanket, and my toothbrush before I find it. Powering up the camera, I go through the ritual. This photo isn’t for the report. I click the button just once, and then check to make sure the image isn’t blurred or washed out by the sun. I stare at Ann for a moment.
She won’t leave me be.
Like the others, she’ll haunt my memories. In one month I deal with more murders than most cops see in a decade. It’s starting to take its toll.
“We gotta find the guy who did this,” Sergeant Anderson says, breaking my trance. I didn’t hear him come up, but he’s standing next to me, just staring up the side of the cliff, his eyes searching for … what? A clue? An explanation?
I watch him a moment. I’ve seen that look before: anger, anguish, a sense of helplessness. I’ve seen it on thousands of faces at hundreds of crime scenes. I’ve seen it in the mirror.
My hand finds his shoulder; I don’t know why. “We save the ones we can,” I hear myself say. The words don’t mean a thing to him. How could they? I just don’t know what else to say.
I’m not good with people, not really.
Dropping my hand, I say, “Don’t worry, I already know who did it.” Stowing the camera, I take one last look at Ann Buerger and walk away.
*
The door is dandelion-yellow, with frosted glass inserts and a brushed-nickel handle. The doorbell chimes for the second time—a cheerful five-note chorus that’s out of sync with the dreadful news about to be delivered.
Footsteps pad to the front of the house and a blur pauses motionless on the other side of the frosted glass. A dead bolt slides open, a door handle turns, and then there’s a face pressed through the narrow door opening: red eyes, a red nose, a downcast, twitchy mouth—all the bitter qualities of sorrow. Seeing Sergeant Anderson, Jimmy, and myself, Matt Buerger opens the door wide and takes a step forward.
As I pull my glasses down an inch and peer over the top, my eyes consume Matt in an instant, telling me all I need to know. In the world of man-tracking the term shine refers to a hard-to-see impression left in vegetation or on a difficult surface, usually caused by crushing or pressing, such as a foot on a leaf. The only way to bring the track out is illumination. You can use sunlight, but most trackers pack a flashlight so they can get close and control the angle of the light.
That’s not me.
I don’t use man-tracking methods because I don’t have to. Though we’re in the shadow of the porch and I have no flashlight, I see the shine: it’s on the door, on the floor, everywhere Matt Buerger walks and on everything he touches.
The shine.
It’s the only track I need, and it’s abundant and everywhere; overpowering. It can’t be hidden or washed away. It can’t be disguised and it can’t be confused with another. It’s not the same shine used by man-trackers, though. This shine is exclusively mine, or at least I think it’s exclusive. Maybe God blessed someone else with this curse.
“Did you find anything?” Buerger chokes.