She nodded.
“Do you think you can find anyone?” he asked.
“Why not?” she asked with a smile.
He pointed out the window. “We’ve got a million acres of forests, glaciers, lakes, and rivers up here. At least twice a year someone gets lost—I was just out rescuing some ill-equipped rock climbers, as a matter of fact.”
Naomi noticed rows of posters near his desk, flapping in the blare of the small electric heater.
“But if I can help, I’m all ears.”
Naomi knew better. It wasn’t that she was opposed to help—it was that you never knew who could be involved. She had learned the hard way. One of her cases had involved a sex-trafficking ring led by corrupt police.
“I’d like your search reports,” she said politely.
“Of course,” he said, turning brisk. He opened a drawer.
He handed her a file. It was neatly labeled: culver, madison. Inside a picture was clipped to the front page: a blond girl with a huge smile, a pretty sweater for her first school picture.
“Tell me if you find any remains,” he said.
She nodded, sudden tears in her eyes. Images flooded her mind. Thirty kids she had found? Yes.
But not all were alive.
She turned to the missing posters on the wall. Madison was at the beginning, grinning gap-toothed. A hiker missing in a blizzard, a group of visiting rock climbers caught in whiteout conditions, a mushroom forager, and numerous other victims of poor judgment and circumstance followed her. Naomi relaxed slightly. There didn’t seem to be a pattern. Sometimes one missing child led to more—in some cases, several more.
There was one poster set in the middle from ten years before: a young woman with flashing eyes and long dark hair. Sarah is an experienced climber. She went missing during a storm.
At the very end was a faded black-and-white poster. It was a little boy lost in the woods over forty years before. Naomi stopped to read it.
Ranger Dave watched her, his eyes following the soft profile of her face.
“I leave the posters up until the bodies are found,” he said.
She turned. “I’m curious about the people who live up here.”
He seemed startled. “Well, we got some grandfathered homesteads from way back, a few hamlets in the lower reaches. It’s too cold and remote for most to stay.” He laughed. “Except for a few old codgers.”
“I met one. He owns a store not far from where Madison went missing.”
“Earl Strikes? He’s harmless.”
She glanced away. Everyone was harmless until you knew better.
She nodded out the window, which was sheeted with the reflection of millions of white-capped trees. “Can you tell me where they all live?”
“All of them? I don’t know, to tell the truth. There is no census here.”
He was standing too close. She edged away.
Naomi glanced at the ring on his finger, and sent a warning to his face. She never would understand why tragedy brought this out in people. In pain they seemed to want to burrow into each other, completely disregarding the distance that created.
But he was just trying to hand her something from the desk.
It was a locator, strapped on a belt. “I want you to take this if you plan to search.” He gave a wry, pained smile. “I don’t want you getting lost, too.”
She took it from him, examining it suspiciously.
It was the contradiction of her life, Naomi knew, that she was suspicious and trusting, afraid and fearless—and, most importantly, often at the same time.
Ranger Dave sighed. “I won’t know where you are unless you turn it on. And I hope you won’t do that unless you are in an emergency. Because I will come running.”
That evening, comfortably stretched out in her warm motel room, the heater blasting at her side, she read Ranger Dave’s file on Madison. The ranger knew his business. The file was filled with charts and graphs. There was a terrain analysis, field sketching, and more. Naomi had seen such reports dozens of times in her career, usually in the files of detectives and search party leaders. She wondered how much good they did, or if they were just bulwarks against unreason.
She could feel his sadness between the lines:
Madison Culver is a five-year-old girl. Her parents say she likes reading, writing, and going for nature walks. She was excited to get a Christmas tree.
Field Notes: Travel barriers: west crevasse, deep snow, below-freezing temps, dressed poorly (tennis shoes).
Travel Aides: none.
Lost Subject Behavioral Profile: Madison will not wander far. She will become confused and hypothermic, possibly resulting in loss of clothes. She may have engaged in terminal burrowing, and hence is buried under the snow.
In the final stages of hypothermia, Naomi knew, victims often felt blazing hot and shed their clothes, dying naked in the snow or ice. Sometimes, for reasons no one understood—perhaps guided by the last primal part of their brains—they began to dig, and would die tunneled under the snow.
Naomi read to the last page, to the final closing narrative:
Madison most likely perished soon after getting lost last December. We have notified her parents that the cadaver dog search came back empty, but that is to be expected with predation. Sent parents a card. See State Police, Det. Winfield for their investigation.
Naomi turned to look back at the photo: small, neat, precious Madison, with a heart-shaped face, flaxen hair, and, incongruously, adorable long ears that looked stolen off an old man. Her smile beamed from the photo, radiating a sense of magic and joy.
The world could not stand to lose this child.
Naomi was dreaming again, only this time it was the big dream. She called it the big dream because it was a nightmare, actually, about the past—her terrible beginnings. It was like the story in the Bible where God created the earth and what was formless and desolate became green and alive. There was something about the word big that pulled to her with an ache beyond all understanding.
In the dream it was night and she was again a naked child running across a dark field. She was ageless, shedding her name and false self the way she had shed her clothes. The fields were wet and black and sticky. Her feet were churning, her naked knees rising, and she could feel the wind in her hair, on her cheek, and around her helpless, clutching hands.
Terror had bloomed inside her like a night rose, and she was running, running to escape.
Something was wrong. She stopped. The world was born around her, but something was missing.
She turned around and—
Naomi slammed awake, breathing hard. The sheets were tangled around her feet: she had been running again, in her sleep.
Outside a pale dawn threaded the sky with silver.
Naomi lay there, panting, feeling the dream dissipate like the morning mist outside. She had been having the big dream, off and on, ever since she had been found. But in the last few weeks, since she had decided to come back to Oregon for this case, it had been recurring with terrifyingly vivid frequency.
It was as if the closer she returned to her past—and Jerome—the more the dream brought the dark, potentially frightening promise of answers.
She got up to make herself a cup of tea with the motel coffeepot.
She sat by the window, wrapped in the sheets, and watched the sun rise above the mountains. As always, after having the dream, she tried to uncover the truth. What part was reality and what part was fantasy? Are the stories we tell ourselves true or based on what we dream them to be?