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Bitter Souvenirs

Wes Blalock

    Birdie hustled up the hiking trail, uttering polite apologies and occasionally stopping to answer questions as people recognized her uniform and ranger’s hat. As she passed families, couples, and tour groups, an older man, huffing and puffing, jokingly asked how much it cost for the park helicopter to pick him up and return him to the Village. She answered in haste - “About $3000” - then paused.
    “Do you need an emergency evacuation, sir?”
    Chagrined, he shook his head. She excused herself, letting the visitors know that she was on her way to a call. Tightening the straps on her backpack, adjusting her Stetson, and hiking up her gun belt, she set off again up the mountain toward Sturdevant Overlook.
    She was fortunate; Lonnie had offered to drop her off at the trailhead, even though they had been fighting. Her own motorcycle was down again and Katie was already at work; if Lonnie hadn’t offered, she would have been short on options. In the midst of their squabble, Lonnie had handed her the phone and as she spoke to her supervisor, she saw the rigidness leave his face. He understood the nature of the call. A Sheriff’s deputy for a decade, he was currently assigned to robbery/homicide and could tell by Birdie’s expression that someone had died.
    Two hours later, the crowd slowed and swelled as she reached the warning signs at the end of the trail. Pushing through the rubbernecking tourists, Birdie gently maneuvered herself up to the yellow, crime scene tape, and ducked beneath it. Ranger Boyce Hanley waved her over to the shade of a ponderosa pine where he had set up an impromptu command post.
    “Hey, Boyce,” Birdie said. “Wow, it’s hot. So terrible that death happens in the most beautiful places.” She wanted to look out over the valley below, however, her attention was drawn elsewhere. Sitting silently at the edge of the overlook, were two adult backpacks, two bright pink children’s backpacks-one with puppies and one with owls-and a single camera, resting in the dirt.
    “Yeah,” Boyce said, looking at the same sad remnants. “At first glance it looks like a murder-suicide, but I didn’t want to touch anything until you got here to take a look. Just in case you can tell me something that changes the story.”
    “What do you have so far?” Birdie asked, taking off her backpack and searching through it. She grabbed her camera and threw the strap around her neck.
    Boyce glanced over at the people lining the caution tape, some curious, some sad, some upset that they had hiked all this way and couldn’t get to the overlook. Additional rangers and park aids kept people behind the barrier. He shook his head. “A hiker got here early this morning, hoping to get the sunrise. He found the stuff there at the cliff, then looked down and saw what appears to be a family of four. Mom, dad, two kids, in the wash at the bottom of the overlook. About 600 feet down.”
    Birdie looked at the two small pink backpacks. A tear threatened to well up in her right eye, but she blinked it away. “Anyone else walk on the overlook?”
    Shaking his head, Boyce pulled a Polaroid photograph of the bottom of a shoe for Birdie. “Nope. Not as far as we know. The hiker and then me. I’ll show you my boots in a second. Aiden tells me that you’re the best tracker in the world and I’m hoping you can tell me what happened.”
    Birdie rolled her eyes and made an exaggerated frown. “Aiden tells everybody that. You have to filter him sometimes. You understand that tracking is more art than science, right? I can find people but it isn’t like the movies where I can tell you what kind of gum they were chewing.”
    His head lowered, and he nodded. “Just hoping for a miracle.”
    After examining the photo and the bottom of Boyce’s boots, Birdie slowly approached the belongings on the stone. The two children’s backpacks drew her eye but she tried to avoid them. The adult backpacks were set down haphazardly, one open and tilted to the side. Somewhere behind the tape, someone’s cell phone rang.

*            *            *

    It was her own fault, ultimately. Lonnie had only brought her cell phone into the shower because it had “dinged” a text message. Birdie gave Lonnie the code so that he could read it to her, but he remained silent as she rinsed under the hot water.
    “So? What was it?” Birdie asked.
    “It’s Chuck,” he paused. “I thought you were done with him.” His voice a little more distant.
    “I am.” Birdie felt butterflies in her stomach and lied unconvincingly. “What did he want?”
    There was another pause. Then Lonnie’s voice came back like stone. “He says it was nice to see you again. He wants to know if you are available for dinner.”
    Birdie opened the shower door and saw Lonnie sitting back against the counter, his arms crossed, his eyes accusing. “No,” she said, forcefully. “I bumped into him in town. You know how small this town is. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone you know.”
    “You should have told me,” Lonnie said, then added, “if that was the case.”
    Turning off the water, Birdie grabbed a towel from the rod and wrapped it around herself. Lonnie followed her with his eyes as she stormed out of the bathroom and into her bedroom, slamming the door.
    “Why can’t you just talk to me?” Lonnie demanded. “Why do you feel like you have to hide stuff from me?”
    “Why can’t you just trust me?” Birdie shouted through the door.
    Her cell phone rang in Lonnie’s hand. His voice carried through the door. The timber had changed, less angry and more concerned. “It’s your boss.”

*            *            *

    Birdie finished photographing the scene: the backpacks and the camera, its lens shattered, and an impact scar on the front corner. While the wind had been fairly strong earlier in the morning, there had been no rain for weeks, leaving a layer of soil gathering atop the granite outcropping. Before inspecting the tracks, she took pictures from multiple angles as reference for later, when she would need them to write her report. Replacing the camera in her backpack, Birdie sat just outside her imaginary boundary of the crime scene, scanning the tracks.
    The soil revealed the shoeprints, marks, and tracks left by the early morning hiker, Ranger Hanley, and the doomed family of four. There were others, but they were older, less defined, and covered by more current prints. Birdie surveyed and assessed the ridges and valleys in the dirt, walking in circles around the area. The tracks always told a story, but not always in the right order, and in her experience, it was seldom a story with a happy ending. There was no potential for a happy ending, at this place, on this day.
    The children’s prints were everywhere, especially the smaller one. Birdie guessed about four years old and six years old, and rambunctious. Mom’s boots were on top of them, clearly keeping close control. Dad was standing by their stuff. Mom’s boot prints took the children on either side of her, facing away from the drop into the valley and they stood still for a moment, the prints deeper there. The smaller one was on Mom’s right, the shape of the print showing that she was pulling against Mom, pushing with the balls of her feet. Birdie leaned over the edge and cautiously glanced down the rocks. A tiny, pink, stuffed owl stared up from its perch in a broken crag on the cliff face, about two feet down. Birdie felt the chill of dread in the pit of her stomach. The child had dropped it. The tracks then revealed a quick slide to the edge and into nothing.
    Dad was the photographer, perhaps giving instructions to stand at the overlook, putting the best view in the background. Dad’s footprints were deep and steady from when he stood still, but then they launched him forward at speed, only the balls of his feet touching the ground until he skidded to a stop inches from the edge where his family had disappeared. The toes here were deep and slightly smeared, although the heels were clear and flat.

*            *            *

    Lonnie had immediately offered to drive her in and she rode beside him in silence, her backpack on the floor between her feet and her ranger hat on her lap. He glanced over at her but she refused to acknowledge him. Her guilt and anger played against one another and neither would allow her to admit that she’d screwed up. Lonnie wanted to have this out, to make her admit something that wasn’t true. That she was hiding an affair from him. She couldn’t even bring herself to thank him for the ride as they neared the trailhead.
    “You don’t have anything to say?” he asked.
    “I’m not the one who’s suddenly all possessive,” she snapped back.
    Lonnie rolled his eyes. “So that’s how you want to play this? I’m the bad guy because I’m calling you on your shit?”
    “What shit? What do you think is going on? What do you think I’m doing behind your back?”
    “I have no idea what’s going on. You won’t talk to me. You never want to talk about what’s going on with you.”
    “We’re here,” Birdie said, flatly, her eyes looking anywhere but at him.
    As Lonnie stopped the car, Birdie escaped out the passenger door, backpack in one hand, hat in the other. She stalked away, feeling his eyes on her back through the open door that she had failed to close.

*            *            *

    Kneeling in front of the camera, Birdie waved Boyce over to join her.
    “What do you have? Did he push the others over and then kill himself?”
    “I don’t think so,” Birdie said, softly. She realized that she had been gritting her teeth, and stopped, trying to relax her jaw. “I’ve taken photos of everything. Are you okay going into the camera? I think it will help explain what happened.”
    Boyce nodded and Birdie took the SD card from the family’s camera, then slipped it into her own. They watched as she clicked through the photos. They reached one of Mom with two little girls, standing on the overlook, just as Birdie expected.
    Mom was Asian but the two little girls appeared mixed, almost blond, with freckles. They were attached to Mom by tethers, clipped to her belt by carabiners. Another photo showed them standing at the overlook, smiling at Dad as he took the photo. The next caught them in mid-motion, with the youngest slipping over the edge, reaching for something beyond the frame of the camera. Mom was in motion as well, lunging toward the cliff. The last photo was of the ground as the camera struck the stone.
    “It was an accident,” Boyce said, as though he were in pain.
    “It was an accident,” Birdie confirmed, feeling her own chest constrict.
    “But that doesn’t explain what happened to the Dad,” Boyce said, almost a question. “Did he rush to the edge and fall, trying to catch them?”
    Birdie sat back on her heels, pointing to the prints in the dirt and let out a long sigh. She fought the constriction in her throat and tried to keep her voice steady and professional. She walked Boyce through the story of the tracks, as if reading off a list. “Dad ran to the bluff and looked down. His whole life had just fallen off the cliff. Dad looked at his family down at the bottom of the ravine, broken and silent. He stood there for a few minutes.” Birdie walked Boyce back to the cliff and pointed. “He leaned forward, slowly, until his weight just took him over the edge.”
    Boyce’s breath caught in his throat. “Oh my God,” he said quietly. “He just lost it.”
    The two rangers stayed in that place for a silent moment, then picked themselves up and began gathering up the property, bagging and marking it. Once it was all collected, she lay flat on the stone and slid forward until her face was over the gorge below. She could see the four bodies-two tiny, two big. A team of rangers below were bushwacking their way to the family, prepared to carry them out through the thickets of whiteleaf manzanita; they would all be home by tomorrow.
    Birdie and the other park staff each grabbed something of the family’s and began their trek down the mountain. Tourists saw the children’s backpacks and the ranger’s somber faces. It was not a time for questions and they mercifully left the entourage alone in their procession. Nearing the trailhead, where she would get a ride to the station, Birdie hung back. She pulled her cell phone from her breast pocket and chose Lonnie’s name from her favorites. A mechanical version of his voice answered followed by the tone.
    “Lonnie, I’m sorry,” Birdie said, recording her message. “Could you please pick me up at the station? I’ve had a bad day...” Her voice quivered and she stopped, mid-sentence. “You were right. I really need to talk.”
    Birdie took a deep breath and blinked back tears as she hustled to catch up to the others.

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