I&#39ll Be There (28 page)

Debbie saw her daughter’s eyes fill with tears, and then Emily turned abruptly and headed back down the narrow hallway to her room.

The dinosaur hunters had everything.

They had a location system, and they had a satellite phone that worked even in the national forest. They had food, and they had extra clothing, and they were scientists who knew how to spring
into action.

With darkness now upon them, they made an emergency call and reported to law enforcement that they’d found a boy. Or that the boy had found them. They weren’t sure of his name. Or
age. He seemed to be in shock and was lacking in verbal skills.

The decision was made to spend the night and then leave the next day. A good night’s sleep would clear things up.

But when Riddle didn’t want to communicate, he didn’t communicate. So while he answered a few questions, he didn’t answer the big question: Who was he and what was he doing out
in the middle of nowhere?

It was Crawford Luttrell who decided to film a lot of the next twenty-four hours. He was rolling when they’d discovered Riddle and he kept recording. He rationalised this by telling
himself that there were potential legal issues. Their discovery, after all, was an only partially clothed, lost minor.

And so Julian Mickelson gave Riddle his sleeping bag (since he’d already climbed into it once that day). Dina gave Riddle another pair of pants and new socks. Crawford had a sweater and
T-shirt for him to wear.

They arranged the sleeping pads in the opposite direction and then positioned themselves in a row. Julian put on extra clothes and got in the middle of the group under a sheet of plastic. He was
the toughest of the three scientists.

Riddle couldn’t remember ever sleeping without Sam. Just the thought of his brother rendered him mute. But after he’d had three servings of Backpacker’s Pantry chicken Saigon
noodles with a sweet Thai chilli sauce, he was snoring.

It was the deepest, most sound sleep of his life. He slept without dreams and without even turning over for the first six hours.

Because he was lost, and now he was found.

The paleontologists were met by the Emery County sheriff’s department thirty-six hours after Riddle appeared in their lives.

There had been severe thunderstorms in the southern portion of the state that night, and the next day the entire central computer system that connected all of Utah’s law enforcement was
down.

So when Sheriff Lamar Wennstrom finally went out to investigate the incident, he hadn’t yet spoken to Cedar City, and he hadn’t connected Riddle to the missing-person report first
filed in Oregon.

Lamar wasn’t happy when one of the egghead professors insisted on pointing his video camera in his face. This wasn’t, after all, some episode of
COPS
. He had some experience
with these academic types before, and the best thing to do was to ignore them.

But in this case, he couldn’t.

There was a minor involved, and that meant he needed everyone to go back to the station and file reports. Because according to subsection (8) of the Utah state 102-56 legal code,
When a minor
is found unharmed but with any person other than his parent or guardian, all reasonable means need to be taken to delay the exit of that person or people who found the child until all circumstances
of the situation have been determined.

That was a shame, because he was understaffed in the office.

Lamar finished his chilli-bacon cheeseburger and wiped his mouth with his already-dirty paper napkin. This was shaping up to be a helluva mess.

The recovered kid was odd.

Who knew if he was odd before he crawled into someone else’s sleeping bag without his trousers, but he was odd now.

He didn’t answer questions. He took quick, short breaths that were gasps, and the only thing that could get him to come out of the hall and into the interrogation room was a bowl of hard
rock candy.

Dr Hardart was going to come down to the station and give the boy a physical examination, but there was a car accident out on the old Red Bluff highway, and she’d been called off to that.
And Dr Wallent was out on tribal land doing a two-day women’s health clinic.

It was just a big mess.

And all of this was thrown at Lamar at the same time as the news that his brother Clyde had accidentally-on-purpose fired three shots at their first cousin Pinky after an all-night game of poker
at Boomer Heap’s place. Fortunately, none of the shots had landed.

But investigating his own family drama would have to wait.

For now, he’d called in a member of the Utah health services trauma team. They happened to have a big muckety-muck out in the field. Maybe he could get something out of the boy. Because,
so far, they’d gotten little more than that the kid wanted a bowl of cereal with very cold milk.

He said he was sorry for getting into the sleeping bag without asking.

He asked for a ballpoint pen and a phone book.

He said he’d seen a bear stand up on two legs.

He said he’d eaten a salamander with an orange belly and that he’d thrown up right after.

He said that the trousers they gave him itched. He said that he was all alone in the world.

Lamar had a headache. After two days of interrogation, it wasn’t a lot of information.

Buzz Nast picked up his fresh supplies once a week.

He’d drive the cattle down into a low meadow that was protected on three sides by steep terrain, knowing that when he got back he’d still have his work cut out for himself rounding
them all back up.

Sam had rested for three and a half days, eating nearly all of Buzz’s food. He hadn’t done much talking, because he was too confused to have much to say.

Did everything stop making sense when his head hit the log? Or did the icy water freeze some vital part of his brain?

He was a blank.

The only thing Sam knew, really knew, was that he’d done something wrong. Deeply, horribly wrong.

It was possible, no, it was probable, that he’d killed someone. That’s what he felt. The loss. Complete and total emptiness.

And so it was clear that he had done something very, very bad. Because how else had he ended up here – in the middle of nowhere? Where were the people he cared about in his life? But an
even bigger question was
who
were the people he cared about?

He had no answers. Fortunately, Buzz Nast wasn’t the kind of person to ask a lot of questions.

Buzz thought Sam was between hay and grass, not yet a real man but not a kid any more. The boy had obviously been through a hell of a rough time. He sometimes called out in his sleep, and his
legs twitched like dogs’ do when they’re dreaming.

So on Tuesday, Buzz left earlier than usual, knowing that his palomino, Maska, who was no longer honey-coloured but bleached out light from working outdoors in the sun, would need to go slower
carrying them both.

Julio Cortez didn’t like surprises.

And Buzz Nast showing up with a busted-up teenage boy qualified as a big surprise. Julio was paid by the ranchers to do drop-offs, and there were always special requests. Cowhands needed help
with snakebites, bad cases of poison oak, and even the delivery of love letters, but he’d never had a cowboy try to stick him with a six-foot-two teenager.

It presented all kinds of problems.

Buzz wanted Julio to drive Sam into town and let the authorities sort it all out. Buzz had a job to do and his cattle to tend.

So Buzz loaded up his cans of extra-spicy chilli, his packages of Western Cut teriyaki-style beef jerky and the bottle of Tullamore Dew whiskey. He put a new bag of coffee in his coat pocket
along with a sack of dried apple pieces. And then, after barely more than a nod to Sam, he and the sunbleached palomino were gone.

Sam was still wearing the worn jean jacket with the fleece lining that Buzz had given him. He still had on the beat-up blue shirt and the thick wool socks. Sam called out to try to give the
clothes back, but Buzz didn’t even look over his shoulder.

Buzz wanted to wish the kid good luck and all.

But he wasn’t the kind of person who could say those things.

So now Sam was Julio’s problem. He stood in the hard light sizing up the teenager.

‘You feel good enough to walk out of here?’

Sam nodded.

Julio continued, ‘’Cause I parked my pickup truck about two miles down.’

‘I can do it . . .’

This was all making Julio very uncomfortable. He turned towards the trail and started walking, mumbling, ‘Okay then. We’ll just go easy . . .’

After five minutes, Julio knew he wasn’t going to have to carry him or anything. Granted, Julio was going slower than regular, but the tall guy behind him was steady enough on his feet to
keep moving.

As they walked down the rocky trail, Julio tried to figure out a plan.

He knew that what he should do was take the boy to the sheriff ’s station. Somebody had to be out looking for him. Buzz, in his ten-word explanation, had said that the kid’s memory
was off.

But Julio didn’t want to be questioned by the sheriff. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help. He already liked the young guy. But he had his own problems.

Julio had lived in Utah for twenty-two years, and even though he had a son and a daughter both in junior high school in town, and even though he worked as a volunteer firefighter and had a
brother who had joined the army and died over in Baghdad, Julio was illegal in the United States.

The idea of law enforcement interviewing him, asking to see papers confirming where he worked, looking at his driver’s license, checking his social security number and his address, these
were very bad things.

And Julio knew what could happen. It could be the beginning of the end for him, and twenty-two years of a life might suddenly be gone. So Julio decided to just tell Sam.

‘I got a problem, you know, dropping you off at the sheriff ’s. I can take you into town. But I can’t do no more than that.’

Sam didn’t say anything. Julio mistook his silence for judgment. ‘Don’t worry. I done nothing wrong. But it’s immigration. You understand what I’m
saying?’

Sam didn’t understand the system, even when he was of the mind-set to understand something. And so now the idea of going to it for help was as frightening to him, in many ways, as it was
to Julio.

Buzz had asked Sam about his parents. He couldn’t remember a mother. And when he thought of a father, his mind started playing tricks on him. He only saw a shotgun, pointed at his own
chest.

So Sam said, ‘It’s okay, because I don’t want to go to the sheriff.’ Sam took his time as he chose his words. ‘I want to go back . . .’ But Sam couldn’t
say to where.

Julio took a moment before he said, ‘But you should see a doctor – don’t you think?’

Sam considered that notion. ‘I don’t have any money for that . . .’

Sam closed his eyes. He remembered the inside of a hospital. He could see the waiting room. And an emergency room. He remembered the green colour of the walls and a sign that said not to use
cell phones.

And then the thought of the cell phone made him anxious. Did he have a cell phone? He remembered one. Sam suddenly said, ‘I want to get on a bus . . .’

Julio continued walking. A bus? Was the tall kid hiding something big? Something dangerous or illegal? Julio glanced back over his shoulder. Maybe he was part of a drug deal gone wrong?

Julio tried a different approach. ‘What about if I take you into town and you call your parents. Or your friends. What if they help you figure it all out?’

The brainstorm was back. What parents? What friends? He didn’t know family or friends. Sam wanted a bus. Now if he could just figure out where to go.

‘No. I’m going to take a bus. I’ve ridden on buses before.’

Julio mulled it over. This could be some kind of solution.

He could put the boy on a Greyhound bus and get him away from the small town where he lived and the many questions that would follow if he left him there.

So Julio nodded. ‘Okay . . . We can do that.’

And then, satisfied that they had a plan, they continued down the fire trail that led out of the wilderness.

Walking down the single-track fire trail, Sam’s mind, now a blender with broken blades, flashed memories of sounds. Small, damp towns with arguments coming from low-rent
apartments. Trailer parks. Cramped rooms next to alleys and businesses. He could hear the past. Music had come out of bars late at night. He heard sirens and freeways. Dogs were barking, and pots
and pans were clanging. He heard car horns and low-flying airplanes.

And then, walking behind Julio, he suddenly heard waves crashing and, this time, the sound had an image. Mexico. He remembered being there. Hadn’t he gone in an ocean? He believed that he
liked the place. Baja. That would be the plan. He would start over there.

But he didn’t have any money. And he had nothing on him to sell. Would the man walking in front of him pay for a bus ticket to Mexico?

When they stopped to drink some water, minutes later, Julio brought out a candy bar. He split it in two, handing Sam one part as he said, ‘Where do you plan on going . . . on the
bus?’

Sam waited. ‘I was thinking to Mexico.’

Julio shot him a look. That was ironic. Was the kid trying to provoke him? Sam looked too earnest, too hesitant, for that. Julio asked, ‘Do you have any money?’

Sam shook his head.

Julio considered his options and decided upon, ‘I’ll get you a ticket.’

Sam looked at him, overcome with gratitude. ‘I’ll pay you back. I promise. I’ll send you the money. I can do jobs, you know, when I’m feeling better and
—’

But Julio interrupted him. ‘We’ll figure things out. I’ll get you to a Greyhound bus depot. There isn’t a station in town, but we’ll head west on 138 till we find
one.’

Julio was doing the right thing – for the lanky teenager and for himself. If he could wash his hands of the mess, it was worth it. He’d pay to have trouble go away.

Sam stood at the ticket window in Price, Utah.