“What if they assume we’re kids who skip school to smoke in the woods, and they chase us off?” he says.
“We’ll leave if they make us,” I say.
Kellan falls back into his seat and is still for a minute. Liv sits erect, holding her breath. He checks his side mirror and pulls out, tires squealing in the mud, and makes a sudden turn in the opposite direction. My bag spills onto the floor. Liv tumbles across the seat into me.
I look down at my lap and soften my voice. “Donald Jessup is dead. There’s nothing in the woods to be afraid of anymore.” She scrambles off my lap as though it’s on fire. Smoothing her hair behind her ears, she settles in her seat, her eyes sharp as she works her jaw, tight and angry.
Kellan guns the gas with a low growl. “If this thing will get above forty miles an hour without falling apart, we might actually beat the reporters there.”
*
We roll up to the main entrance in our truck plastered in Chieftains Hockey stickers. Police cars and detective sedans overload the parking lot. Kellan creeps a quarter mile down the main drag and pulls over.
“This is smarter than parking in the lot,” he mutters to himself, jumping down from the truck and stuffing his hands into his front pockets. “We say we just happened to stumble upon the scene.”
It’s like a sick-humored Mother Nature served up a diametrically different tableau for my first visit back. That day, everything felt alive with possibility. Today, everything feels dead. The hard rains have washed away the scents of living things, along with the debris that hid Ana Alvarez. Cops talk into headsets and phones and two-way radios. The news vans haven’t arrived. Liv walks a step behind Kellan and me, her pale hair knotted in the back now, jamming on oversized sunglasses. We come to the entrance gate where my sneaker slipped before our run almost a year ago. Electricity thrums my spine as I realize that some of these guys may recognize me, never mind Kellan. I calm myself by remembering Mom was strict about not letting the cops near me more than necessary. If they recognize Kellan, well, the jig’s up.
A husky detective approaches, tucking his shirt into chinos cinched by a belt with three weathered holes. I angle to read the ID trailing over his belly bump, but it’s impossible. Kellan does the same. The detective points to a strip of yellow tape stretched between two trees at the top of the stairs, the ones Liv sprinted up first. I look to Liv, wondering if she’s remembering the same thing. She catches my eye and looks away, hugging her elbows.
The detective holds up his palm. “Can’t go into the woods today. Police business.”
“What’s going on, detective?” Kellan says.
“Nothing for you kids to worry about.” The man dips his head to read the embroidered arm of Kellan’s sweatshirt, hairs combed over his scalp. “You a Chieftain? What position you play?”
Kellan runs his hand over his mouth. Finally, he says, “I’m Joe Mac—”
“Offense, sir!” I blurt. “Right wing, mostly.” Kellan sneaks me a look of surprise that I should know this.
“Nice! I played defense myself, back in the day. Kept going in an old men’s league.” He holds his back and twists at the waist. “Before sciatica started giving me trouble.”
Liv steps forward. “Did they take it out yet?” she asks.
The detective lifts his chin at Liv, wary.
“The body. Did they take it out yet?” she says.
“Now, I can’t comment on a crime scene. They’re still working up there. It’s going to be a while. The woods is no place for you kids today.” He leans close to Liv and sniffs; she pulls away from his attempt to smell weed.
A second detective, stern-faced with a brush cut, approaches, and they leave together, knuckles on hips. I strain to hear over the workmanlike buzz among the other cops and the traffic hum on the border road.
“Not … a print?” the first detective says.
“… even a fiber,” the second detective says.
The first detective shakes his head. “… miss a hole in the ground?”
The second detective raises his voice defensively. “You ever been up there? The trails only circle the perimeter. Deep inside, it’s like it was back in the Indian days. Twenty-five hundred acres of nothing but trees and swamp. So unless she got dragged up there, she was running off trail.”
“Wasn’t saying anyone’s at fault. They gonna put out a statement?”
“No way. Too gruesome.”
“Let’s hope the news doesn’t get it.”
Liv is at my side, dragging her nails down her cheeks. “What did they say? You heard, I can tell.”
“It sounds like they didn’t get any evidence off the body.”
“That means Donald Jessup might not have done it,” she says.
“Or that more than a year has gone by and weather has advanced decomposition and erased evidence,” I say.