Chapter Eight
On Friday, Bethany woke with a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She picked up her phone and stared at the date, and the black feeling intensified.
One year ago today she was supposed to have stood in front of friends and family and declared her love to Justin Asher, the man she had believed she would spend the rest of her life with.
Instead, she had spent the day in tears, she and her mother packing up wedding gifts to be returned to the well-wishers who would never hear her vows. Her wedding dress had been packed away, never worn, in an archival box now relegated to her parents’ attic.
She allowed herself a few tears in the shower, then headed downstairs. This was just a day, like any other day. She wasn’t going to spend it in mourning.
But when her mother greeted her at the office with a hug, her face solemn, Bethany almost broke down. Dalton and Carter avoided the office altogether, although when she went outside she caught them glancing at her with the same expression they might have worn if a bear had wandered into the office.
I’m fine! she wanted to scream at them. Then again, that might not be very reassuring.
By the time the day ended, she was jumpy and irritable enough that everyone was leaving her alone.
She debated retreating to her apartment for a bubble bath and a bottle of wine—or maybe just a pan of brownies.
When, instead, she received a text from search and rescue, it was like being pricked with a pin, some of the pressure of the wound she had been nursing all day relieved.
The call was for a missing hiker. “Craig Boston is seventy, six feet, one inch tall, with long gray hair and blue eyes.” Deputy Ryker Vernon read off the description from his phone to the volunteers who gathered at a local trail head.
“He left home wearing navy hiking pants and a black T-shirt and carrying a blue daypack. He may also be wearing a red windbreaker and a Houston Astros ball cap. He left home this morning a little after eight a.m. and told his neighbor he intended to hike the Bridle Reins Trail at the base of Mount Wiley. We’ve verified that his car is at the trailhead parking area. ”
“Any history of medical problems or dementia?” Danny asked.
Ryker shook his head. “The neighbor says no. He hikes every week. Her words when I talked to her were, ‘He could out-hike you any day of the week, Deputy.’”
This brought a few laughs from the assembled searchers, but they quickly sobered. Danny spread out a map on the hood of the search and rescue Jeep, and they gathered around him.
“The trail gains eight hundred feet in elevation in the first mile, traveling pretty much straight up the slope,” he said, indicating a highlighted route on the map.
“There’s a split at the one-mile point where the Laughing Johnny Mine Trail comes in from the east. It’s possible to take that trail up, connect with the Silver Chip Trail and make a loop back to a point two miles up the Bridle Reins Trail.
“It’s eight miles round trip,” Danny continued, “but if Mr. Boston is the hiker his neighbor says he is, he might have taken that route. Or he may have continued straight up the Bridle Reins Trail, which ends at an overlook at about the three-mile point. The last section of the trail is less well-defined. It’s possible he got off the main path and ended up somewhere he didn’t want to be.
Maybe even cliffed out.” He raised his head.
“We’ll divide into teams of three and search all the possibilities. ”
Bethany was assigned to a team with Caleb Garrison and Grace Wilcox. “I wonder if Craig Boston is Gerald Boston’s nephew,” she said as they started up the trail. Their assignment was to hike the Laughing Johnny loop from the west. Carter and Dalton were in the group that would hike from the east.
“He might be,” Caleb said. “When you find him, you can ask him.”
“Who is Gerald Boston?” Grace asked.
“He’s one of the people whose skeleton was found in that cave in Humboldt Canyon,” Bethany said.
“He and his wife,” Caleb said. “A sad story.”
“They were murdered, right?” Grace asked. “I remember now.”
“Yes. I’d like to ask Craig about his relative, provided he’s in any shape to talk.”
Caleb led the way, setting a brisk pace up the trail.
Bethany did her best to keep up, though the steep pitch soon had her panting.
She reminded herself that if Craig was injured or ill, they needed to reach him as soon as possible.
Focusing on this idea—and the possibility that he might provide some answers to the mystery of what had happened to Gerald and Abby—kept her going.
After they turned onto the Laughing Johnny Mine Trail the path became less steep, and Bethany was able to catch her breath. They halted for a drink, and she gratefully pulled out her water bottle.
“How is Ian?” Caleb asked.
“He’s okay. Busy with construction.”
“Have you seen it yet? The via ferrata?”
“Not yet.” She didn’t elaborate.
They continued up the trail. “Craig!” Caleb shouted. “Mr. Boston!”
“Mr. Boston!” Bethany echoed. But no answer came.
They had been hiking about an hour when the trail was blocked by the massive trunk of a fallen fir. The trunk was almost as wide as Bethany was tall, and dozens of branches poked up from it like porcupine quills.
“We’ll have to go around,” Grace said.
“Which is probably what Craig Boston did,” Caleb said.
“He might have lost the trail and been unable to get back,” Bethany said, remembering their training on the behavior of lost persons.
“Let’s look for any sign he came this way.
” Caleb moved to one side of the tree, while Grace and Bethany moved around the other side.
Bethany studied the ground, looked for a crushed branch or a foot impression in the leaves or even a thread from a piece of clothing caught on a branch.
Grace walked ahead of her, doing the same.
“Over here.” Grace stopped and pointed to the low-hanging branch of a young spruce that had been broken off. “It was probably hanging down in his way. He’s pretty tall, right? So he broke it off.” She raised her voice. “Caleb, we’ve found something.”
He examined the broken branch and agreed it might be an indication that Craig had headed this way. They moved more carefully through the underbrush now, watching for signs that Craig had passed this way and for hazards such as holes, uneven rocks or sudden drop-offs.
“How far have we walked?” Bethany asked after they had been walking a while.
Caleb checked his handheld GPS. “About one and a half miles.”
“Would he have come this far off course?” she asked. “Wouldn’t he head back toward the trail? He was just trying to detour around the tree.”
“He might think he was heading toward the trail,” Caleb said. “It’s easy to get turned around out here.”
“We’ve found people who were miles away from where they were supposed to be,” Grace said. “And some of them we’ve never found, even though it seemed impossible that they could have disappeared so quickly.”
“Let’s hope this isn’t one of those cases,” Caleb said.
They continued through the woods, stopping to call Craig Boston’s name, listening for a response. After another twenty minutes had passed, Grace halted and said, “I thought I heard something.”
Bethany held her breath, straining to hear anything besides her own pounding heart. Then a new sound cut the stillness, a distant voice that might have been crying, “Help!”
“This way,” Caleb said and struck out to their left. “Craig! Craig Boston!”
“I’m here!” came a stronger shout.
They were nearly on top of him before they saw him. He was lying behind another downed tree, almost hidden by its still-green foliage.
“Am I glad to see you,” he said when they clambered over the trunk to join him.
“Are you Craig Boston?” Caleb asked.
“Yes.” He grimaced and gripped his calf. “I got caught up trying to climb over this tree and fell. I think my ankle is broken.”
“We’re with Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue,” Grace said. She knelt beside his head. “We’re going to take care of you.”
Caleb radioed that they had found Craig and gave the rest of the team the GPS coordinates for their location.
Meanwhile, Grace and Bethany gave the injured man water and cut away some of the tree limbs so he could rest more comfortably.
“We’re going to have some people here soon with a splint for your ankle and a litter to get you down to an ambulance,” Caleb said.
“I feel so stupid,” Craig said. “I’ve been hiking these trails for years, and I know better than to put my foot down anywhere I can’t see clearly.”
“Accidents happen to even the most experienced, prepared people,” Grace said.
“How did you know to look for me?” he asked.
“Your neighbor called 911 when you were late getting home,” Caleb said.
“She worries about me, hiking alone at my age. I guess this time her worries were justified.”
“I’m going to put some cold packs on your ankle to help bring down the swelling,” Caleb said. “When the nurse gets here he’ll fix you up with a proper splint and something for the pain. That will help you feel a lot better. Are you having any other pain? Any trouble breathing or chest pains?”
“No, it’s just the leg that’s bothering me.”
Bethany had learned that it could be helpful to distract alert patients with conversation while they waited for help to arrive. “Mr. Boston, are you related to Gerald Boston?” she asked.
“Call me Craig. Why do you want to know?”
“I’m one of the people who found his, um, remains. In the cave in Humboldt Canyon.”
He studied her more closely. “What is your name again?”
“Bethany. Bethany Ames.”
He looked lost in thought.
“Are you Gerald’s nephew?” she asked.
“I am,” he said. “Gerald Boston was my uncle, but he was only a few years older than me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bethany said. “That must have been hard, learning what happened to him all those years ago.”
“It was, and it wasn’t,” Craig said. “The family story was that he and Abby had run away, but I never believed he would vanish like that without saying anything. He and my dad were close.”
“Do you mind telling me something about him and Abby?” she asked. “I’ve been really curious.”
“I didn’t know Abby all that well. But Gerald was head-over-heels in love with her. She was a pretty thing, very sweet.”
“I read that he had been married before.”
“Where did you hear that?” His voice was sharp.
She drew back. “I visited the historical society, trying to find out more information about them. I wanted to know them as more than bones in a cave.”
He calmed a little. “Yes, Gerald was married before. His first wife, Katherine, never forgave him for divorcing her. But they’d known each other only a short time before eloping.
Then he learned how unstable she was. She drank to excess almost every day, lied about everything and flew into jealous rages over imagined slights.
” He shook his head. “Gerald thought they would both be happier divorced. He met and married Abby, but Katherine continued to plague him. We thought that was the reason he and Abby supposedly left town—to get away from Katherine.”
“Do you think she would have been angry enough to kill them and hide them in that cave?” Bethany asked.
Craig sighed. “I can’t help thinking she had something to do with it.
Except Katherine had a disability, and it prevented her from walking very far.
Gerald always said that was why she was so bitter.
She blamed him for the accident that injured her leg, but Gerald said she was drunk and fell out of a car she was riding in with another man.
The car tire crushed her leg,” he explained.
“The other man—we had no idea who he was, though there were rumors about Katherine being seen around town with a man who wasn’t her husband—drove off and left Katherine lying by the side of the road.
After that, she used a crutch even to walk across the room.
“I can’t see how she would ever have gotten up to that cave or overpowered Gerald and Abby, who were both young and fit,” he said, “but maybe she and the other man—whoever he was—were in it together.”
“Such a sad story,” Grace said.
“It is,” Craig said. “The sheriff’s department said they would investigate the murder, but I don’t see how they’re going to find out anything after all this time.”
A shout from a short distance away distracted them all. “Here comes the rest of the team,” Caleb said.
Bethany moved over to make room for Danny, who quickly assessed Craig’s condition.
“You’ll need X-rays to confirm, but I don’t think the ankle is broken,” he said.
“Probably just a bad sprain. I’m going to splint the ankle and give you something for the pain, then we’ll get you down off the mountain. ”
While Danny tended to Craig, the others assembled the wheeled litter, then moved their patient into it. “Are you ready for your ride down the mountain?” Carter asked.
“More than ready,” he said, a little drowsily. His features had relaxed and some of the color had returned to his face as the pain medication did its work.
The litter had one large wheel in the center, which made it easier to navigate the narrow hiking trail but required volunteers at each corner to support it and guide it over rough spots.
Volunteers took turns on litter duty, which was more tiring than Bethany would have expected, since it required supporting part of the patient’s weight as well as maneuvering over rough terrain without a clear view of the ground.
But they had all practiced the job, and the trip down the mountain went smoothly.
An ambulance was waiting when they arrived at the trail head, and paramedics transferred Craig into it and drove away.
“Another job well done,” Carter said as he and Dalton caught up with Bethany in the parking lot at search and rescue headquarters. “I’m starved.”
“Let’s get pizza,” Dalton said. “You want to come, Betty?”
She glared at him for using the nickname she despised. “No, thanks.” She clicked her key fob to unlock her Subaru.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Carter asked.
“None of your business,” she said, then got into the car and started it before they could quiz her further.
Yes, she had promised to stay away from Humboldt Canyon, but she wanted to see Ian’s face when she told him what she had learned from Craig Boston.