Cold River Resurrection by Enes Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

out of the boyfriend?”
    “No, he might still be good for it, but we sweat ed him pretty good, setting up a polygraph for him today. She’s probably lost, not a homicide.”
    “Either way, she’s dead if we don’t find her soon.”
    “You got that right,” Nathan said. “You got that right, Boss.”
     
    Whitewater River
     
    Jennifer spent the day sitting, but on occasion she would wander, mostly downhill, but often just take a few steps and then sit down again. She talked, mumbled, talked to Nanna, and wondered why she cried so much.
    I need to get Nanna some new clothes, and paint her nails again, the paint is fading. Maybe I will peel the fingernail paint off while we wait to shop. Give her a bath.
    Jennifer wandered down to the river to bathe Nanna. She really didn’t smell so good.
     
    That night, the animals came, following the ancient preferred tracking method, the smell of decay. Jennifer Kruger had a lucid thought, or as close as she got to clarity.
    Please someone, come soon.
    You better come soon.

C hapter 9
     
    Biddle Pass
    SAR Base Camp
     
    As Jennifer was praying for help, Smokey leaned against the side of the incident command trailer and watched the Blackhawks land in the meadow, the flashing red and green navigation lights reminding him of similar landings in a land across the world. The first one flared, followed by the second, the crew s looking like aliens in their green helmets.
    This would be their last general briefing. Many of the teams would be going to their respective homes tomorrow. A woman with the Portland Mountain Rescue Team limped up, stepping quickly on her right foot, her face streaked and twisted with pain.
    The pilots and crew from the Blackhawks were walking across the road.
    We must have over a hundred people here, Smokey thought. Three young members of the Cold River SAR carried a cooler into the lighted area in front of the trailer and were passing out water bottles and soda.
    “We will hear from everyone, starting with the report from the officers who walked to the camp with Jennifer Kruger’s boyfriend. Sergeant Nathan Green, you have the floor.”
    “We walked from the jumping -off place, at Hole-in-the-Wall Park, just off the rez, here.” He pointed to the map on the wall of the trailer.
    “We walked uphill to the Northwest, t oward Whitewater Glacier, near Parker Creek. About three miles. Plenty of track on the trail of Mr. Robbins going in and out, track of Jennifer Kruger just going in. We went in about three miles and he showed us their camp.”
    “Do you think he killed her?” a member of the Blackhawk crew asked.
    “I could be wrong,” Green said, “but we spent a long day with Robbins, he didn’t appear to be trying to hide anything, he talked about her in real time, not in past tense, showed us the camp.”
    Smokey knew what Green was talking about. Sergeant Green continued.
    “Often when a suspect kills someone, they refer to them in past tense, because they know that they are already dead, they killed the victim. A slip that people often make. He didn’t at any time today. Showed us the camp, said that he thought she was kidding, she had been saying for a day that she was tired of looking for Bigfoot, was leaving. Thought she would be back within a few minutes. When she didn’t show up within two hours, he went looking for her on the back trail.”
    “You track her from the camp?”
    “Back about a quarter mile, then she left the trail and crossed a large slide area. It will take some time to do some perimeter cutting around that large slide area. If she went across it.”
    “What do you think?” Smokey asked as he stepped forward. The searchers were quiet.
    “I think, and I may be wrong, that she is lost, that the boyfriend didn’t hurt her. Two reasons.” Sergeant Green held up his hand.
    “One, we tracked her out of the camp for a ways, and he didn’t follow her. Secondly, he passed a polygraph this afternoon. He doesn’t know where