The Bodies Left Behind

Then confessed: “National Guard. Never saw the big show, though.” He shrugged with astoic grin and asked, “But there was that ranger station on the map. You saw it? The one near Apex Lake. Why wouldn’t she make for that?”
    “Might have. I’m not saying I’m certain. But I think Brynn’ll take the harder route, like I was saying. It’ll equalize them, the women and those men after ’em. On a trail, the men can move faster. In the woods she’ll have the advantage. And Brynn won’t let anybody get an edge over her.”
    “Woman must be hell to play cards with.”
    “We don’t play cards,” Graham said absently, staring at the map.
    He then looked over the dark woods. One car whizzed past. The highway was otherwise empty.
    “You’d be a good cop, Graham.”
    “Me?” He laughed grimly. “No, sir.” He tapped the map. “Here’s the Joliet Trail. She’ll leave the path about there.” He touched a spot. “Then make for the Snake River and follow it right up here to the interstate.”
    Munce looked at the steep hill vanishing below them into a morass of woods. “That’s a tough climb. You ever been here?”
    “To the park? Yeah, but not here. Hiking when I was younger.” Graham recalled asking Joey to come with him several times in the past year. The boy had always declined, with a look on his face that said, And I’d want to do that why ? Graham had regretted that he hadn’t insisted. He believed he could’ve made Joey enjoy himself.
    Thinking, Should’ve listened to my instincts.
    Then: What does it matter?
    Munce told him he was familiar with this area. Heand Brynn had been involved in a search-and-recovery mission that had ended about a mile from here.
    Graham noted the word “recovery,” as in “body recovery.” Not a successful rescue. The deputy continued, “I remember some paths. Hikers and rock climbers made them. There’re some level areas but we’re going to see mostly drop-offs, twenty, thirty feet, some of them. Even more. You’ll come on them real sudden. Watch where you walk.”
    Graham nodded. He said, “I’m guessing they’ll stick close enough to hear the river, to guide them. That means they’ll be somewhere in a strip fifty, a hundred yards wide, from the edge of the gorge. That’s where we should make our way down. We can’t call to ’em loud, give ourselves away. . . . We’ll just have to stop every so often and look around us. We could probably whisper. The sheriff said it’s two men are after them, right?”
    “Yeah, what the footprints show.”
    Graham looked at the deputy’s car, the shotgun locked in the front seat.
    “I don’t have a gun here, Eric.”
    “I can’t do that, Graham. That’s a lose-your-job thing.”
    “Ah.”
    “Stay close. I scored second in the department shooting competition.”
    “Well, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to have two at least.”
    Munce considered this. He returned to the car, unlocked the shotgun, pocketed a half dozen shells. He locked the car door and returned to Graham. Togetherthey walked to the edge of the forest and peered down the slope of boulders and trees. To their left the river, a hundred feet down the sheer gorge walls, roared as it broke over boulders and tree trunks and a small dam, at the bottom of which was an eerie sinkhole where leaves and trash spiraled into a foul broth and disappeared.
    “Looks like the waterway to hell.”
    “Thanks for this, Eric. You going to get into trouble?”
    “Sheriff sent us out to search. I said I was checking some roads north. I just didn’t say how far I was going.”
    “Tom’s a good man but I have a feeling he’s wrong on this one. I know my wife.”
    For a few minutes they wound, or muscled, their way through stands of thick brush, then over a soft bed of pine needles, which was a pleasure after the ornery forsythia, vinca and other viney and stalky plants that seemed unnaturally attracted to their boots. The hussssh of the water from the Snake River grew louder.
    “Time to get serious here.” Munce bent down, spat in the dirt and made mud. He smeared it on his face and cheekbones. Graham hesitated, feeling foolish, then did the same.
    “Okay. Well, let’s do it.” Munce racked the shotgun, put the safety on and led the way. They started downward into an impossible tangle of trees and branches and rocks and shadow.
    Graham whispered, “Eric, curious. Was it Brynn who beat you?”
    “Beat me?”
    “In the shooting