WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 1:02 P.M.
The girl was a blood-spattered wood nymph, a tiny figure dwarfed by tall pine trees, splash of sunlight filtering through the boughs above, dappling her slight shoulders and dark cap of hair with white-gold. Blood had dried on her pale arms in a lattice pattern—dark-crimson, elbow-length lace gloves. Gore and particulate speckled her face and neck. Her T-shirt—a six-inch-long rip near the hem—jeans, and tennis shoes were coated with a chalky substance, like ghastly fairy dust. She was perched on one of three giant rocks placed in a line across the trailhead, feet on the boulder, wrists resting on her bent knees, gaze fixed on the ambulance.
Behind her, a weathered wooden sign sported a sun-faded, lacquered map, an uninspiring masthead, detailing the hiking paths in the dense forest beyond. Next to the trail sign sat a steel box, holding the emergency phone she’d called from an hour ago. Her voice was hoarse and halting, giving only the most pertinent information: My name is Amelie Desmarais. We’re at the White River National Forest, staging area number fourteen. Come quickly.
She’d been mute since the first responders arrived, answering the paramedic’s questions—does this hurt? How about this?—with a head shake, outright ignoring the deputies. Uninjured, the paramedics had confirmed, everything intact, fully conscious, and space in the ambulance was tight, so …
So she was now the temporary charge of two deputies, dispatched from Meeker.
Vargas ended her call and tucked the phone away. “Cheyenne got her mother,” she said to Draker. “We’ll take her with us, meet them at the station.”
Draker jerked his head toward the dusty red Toyota Echo sitting at the far end of the parking lot.
Vargas shook her head, raked three fingers along her scalp to smooth the wispy curls that were escaping her bun. “No keys and not her car, apparently. I mean, even if it was—”
“Parents are coming from where?” Draker had a bad habit of cutting her off when he knew what she was going to say. In this case: Even if it was her car, there’s no way she could drive after this.
“Some retreat facility in Colorado Springs? Didn’t catch the name. They were halfway to Denver.” Vargas had offered the girl her phone to call her parents herself. The girl had keyed in the number, handed the phone back. The call, plagued with static, had dropped twice. Vargas finally radioed the station, had their clerk call.
Halfway to Denver meant hours away. “We’ve got time. We should get her talking,” Vargas said.
“Here?” Draker slapped a mosquito on his arm, looking impatient. Probably because it was hot and buggy. Or maybe because Cheyenne was collecting for the next round of Powerball drawings—the station had a lottery group—and if they weren’t back by four, he’d wouldn’t get his twenty-six bucks in.
“I don’t want to miss something.”
“Search and rescue can handle it.”
“Handle what, Dray?” They had no idea what had gone on here. This scene was hardly procedure. “Hey.” Vargas peered at him. “You okay? You look a little green.” She shaded her eyes against the sun to peer at him.
Truthfully, she wasn’t feeling great herself. Not because of the amount of blood everywhere, the barely coherent babble of the one wild-eyed girl, and the ashen color of the other, who’d been drifting in and out of consciousness. Vargas hadn’t attended a ton of accident scenes—she’d only been with the Rio Blanco County Sheriff’s office two years, and Meeker wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime—but she’d seen enough accidents to know how to compartmentalize, shut the horror into a corner of her mind and focus.
It wasn’t that. It was this place.
There were spots in the wilds of Colorado where law enforcement didn’t fit, places that operated foremost on the laws of nature and second on their own, self-made law. Locals out this way never requested police presence.
Draker straightened up. “I’m good.”
“Okay.” She let him go first and lingered, falling several steps behind as they approached the girl. No good appearing as though they had an agenda, better to look casual.
“Your parents are on their way,” Draker announced. Vargas stopped several feet away, giving the girl space, but Draker moved in close. “They’ll be a little while.” Like she’d gotten a flat tire on her bike and needed a ride.
Behind them, the paramedics sealed the back of the ambulance, hopped in, and peeled out. The light flashed eerily without the siren as they turned onto the highway and disappeared behind a row of tall pines, leaving the white-and-black patrol car and the Echo the only vehicles in the parking lot.
The girl’s gaze had followed the ambulance to the highway. She stared at the spot it had been, a strange expression on her face. Not relief. Not fear.
Haunted was the word Vargas would’ve used. She shifted her stance, moving into the girl’s line of vision. “They’ll take good care of them, don’t you worry.”
“We’ve got some time,” Draker added, like it was his idea. “We’d like to talk a bit”—he glanced at his phone, the transcription of the SOS call, like he hadn’t already memorized her name—“Amelie. If you don’t mind? Get a handle on what happened here.”
The girl nodded wordlessly but didn’t shift her attention.
“You might be feeling a bit out of it,” Vargas said. “That’s okay. We’re here to help. And when you don’t want to talk anymore, you say.”
Another silent nod. A dragonfly landed on the girl’s shin, its iridescent wings and jeweled body an incongruent bit of sparkle on her filth-crusted jeans. She took no notice.
“You want to sit somewhere more comfortable?”
The staging area wasn’t a campground; there were no picnic tables or benches. That left the back of the patrol car. The girl straightened her legs, displacing the dragonfly, which whizzed off over the trees and into the cloudless sky. She shook her head.
“No problem.” Draker settled himself on the rock nearest her, affecting a casual lean, one hand on his knee. “Can you walk me back a bit? Tell me why you’re out here?”
“Where are they taking them?” First words since they’d arrived twenty minutes ago. Her voice was a rasp.
“The hospital in Rifle,” Vargas said. “Their parents are on the way. Like I said, they’ll take good care of them.”
“Amelie,” Draker said again. “Can you tell us what you were doing out here?”
The girl pulled her gaze several feet closer, to the middle of the parking lot, her brow knitting. It was like she was trying to figure that out.
“Or a bit about you?”
Her brow furrowed deeper. She looked up at the cops.
“You wouldn’t tell the paramedics that one girl’s name,” Draker pressed. “The one with no ID.”
She glanced up. “I don’t know it.” She sounded surprised—as though she’d just realized this.
Draker exchanged a look with Vargas. “You mean you can’t remember?” Vargas clarified.
“I mean that I don’t know it.”
“Because you met on the trails?”
“No. We came together.”
Draker looked at the red Echo, shared another glance with Vargas. “But you don’t know one another.”
“We just met.”
“At school or something?”
“Dissent.” Pause. “It was a … meetup. For thrill seekers. In Denver.”
“And you came out here for a … hike?” Draker glanced at the girl’s dirty tennis shoes—hardly adequate footwear for the backcountry.
Now she was looking at her feet as though they were a new addition to her body.
Draker leaned in. “Amelie, you on something?” Vargas shifted, put her hand to her side—a go-easy signal. Draker ignored her. “Molly? Weed?”
“I…” The girl seemed at a loss.
“You’ve been through something,” Vargas interjected. “So how about you start at the beginning. Maybe … in Denver. Is that where you’re from? You could start—”
“One of your friends had a bad wound,” Draker persisted. “A laceration on her thigh—”
“I didn’t stab her.”
Copyright © 2022 by Kate A. Boorman
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