I go down hard, face first, the toe of my hiking boot catching on a gnarled outcropping of cedar root. I land with an oomph amid poplar and oak leaves, evergreen needles, candy wrappers, and cigarette butts. I heave for breath and inhale the odor of decomposition. I cough to keep from gagging. I know this smell too well but I never get used to it. I know I'm right again. Sadness grips my gut, and I grimace.
I ease myself up, taking care not to dislodge the detritus covering the shallow grave. There hasn't been rain in Western Washington for nearly two months. The little mound looks fresh. The decomp odor tells me a week old, maybe two.
Here's just one more thing I wish I didn't know anything about. Experience is a two-edged sword. Sometimes it’s edifying. Right now it sucks a root.
The search and rescue volunteers and deputies gather behind me as I right myself, situate my hoodie, and look around. Their eyes are all focused on me, then upon the grave. I feel their collective gaze and try to get a grip on my anxiety. My skin prickles and I begin to shiver. I clear my throat and pull myself together, arms crossed beneath my breasts.
“Get Deputy Shepherd,” I say, restraining my urge to run away.
We're in a dense forest, slightly north of Shelton, Washington. On any other day, for any other reason, the hike through this wooded terrain would be beautiful. The oak and poplar leaves telegraphing the wind, cedar, and pine needles crunching under our feet. The breeze rustles the tops of the evergreens, their needles whispering as they move together. However, the weather is far too dry for this part of the Olympic peninsula this time of year. Record low rainfall reminds me there’s a burn-ban in effect for most of Washington state. One positive about that. No rain to wash away evidence.
The rest of the forest is a lush pallet of greens despite the lack of rain. Nothing but fern-clotted shade from so many old evergreens and deciduous trees. We're in the thickest part of the forest with no sunny spots to be found.
It can't be more than seventy degrees here. Still, I have soaked through both t-shirt and purple and gold University of Washington hoodie. Like a lathered horse, I feel the wetness in my pits and rivulets trickling down my back. I understand it's all part of my anxiety, but I fidget in embarrassment. I swipe my palm across my soaked upper lip and chin.
No one wants to find a child’s grave, especially not like this. In these cases, my sole responsibility is to do just that. My visions of what the victim went through are unspeakable. Left arm missing below the shoulder, genitals mutilated and the wound…violated. All antimortem—before death. I shudder and close my eyes but the images are all-pervasive.
And somehow, when I get it right, it’s bad and my fault. Just like when I get it wrong. Funny that. Do I like having bad news all the time? Hell no. I wish little Timmy so-and-so would be found alive and skipping around a park somewhere before he takes the candy from that strange man. We all do. It’s never enough for a grieving family, though. I don’t really blame them. What I can do even embarrasses me.
Five-year-old Noah Nixon went missing from the front yard of his parents’ Olympia home, just shy of a month ago. Disappearing into thin air, the press trumpet, and not the first child to do so in the region. Rumors of a child killer circulate—fanned by the press—and people are scared. These types of killings have been going on in Western Washington since the nineties. Still no suspects. The FBI dubbed the suspect the Knife and Hatchet Man, because of his M.O. Using the hatchet to sever the left arm of his victims just below the shoulder. He uses the knife to do the rest of it.
Is it just me, or do we have more than our share of serial killers here?
This psychopath knows what he’s doing and is getting better at this shit than we are. Welcome to the age of television true crime. And such perps don’t joke around. They are serious about their work, and will not be caught unless they want to be.
When posters and tearful TV pleas from his parents for Noah’s safe return fail, and even cadaver dogs came up empty, Mason County’s Sheriff, Pete Cody, suggested another tactic.
I’m Ruth Anne O'Neill and I was called into the case to see if I could find the boy. I’m a forensic psychic medium—not a tarot-card-toting, crystal-ball-gazing charlatan—the real deal. It’s not really my job, but it is what I do. I always try to convince myself my gift was bestowed for the betterment of all mankind, or some such high-brow shit. Oh, and I cuss like a sailor. My Dad was Navy, as is my wasband. I come by it naturally. Fuck is my favorite verb, adverb, pronoun, and adjective. As you come to know me better, you might understand why. Police humor is extremely dark and so is mine. Sometimes, in this line of work, fuck is the only word that suits.
Mostly though, my psychic gifts get me labeled as a witch by the elderly, small town Dutch folk where I live on Whidbey Island. That’s the largest island in the continental US, in the middle of Puget Sound. An otherwise neighborly, rural paradise, the folks point, stare, whisper, and generally shun me in the checkout lanes at Safeway. They say my pale green eyes are eerie and my short, sandy blonde hair makes me look like a dyke. I dress the part just to get a rise out of them. A gender non-conforming psychic is easier to swallow than a witchy, hippie psychic, right?
Hell, if I’m really honest, this is no gift. It’s a curse I can’t escape even in sleep. I mostly have the respect of the law enforcement personnel I work with, but get lampooned by the press and other non-believers.
I have this…thing…in my head, forced on me since I was six years old. All I really want to do is bake cakes and take care of the guests at the Hummingbird’s Nest bed and breakfast. I’m the chef and half-owner there in Oak Harbor, the largest small town on the island only by benefit of its two Navy bases.
The gift or curse argument aside, I’ve found twenty-eight children—three of them alive—with my visions and dreams. Out of two hundred and ten cases, perhaps it’s not the greatest track record, but it is something.
No, that’s not right. Noah Nixon makes that twenty-nine totaling two hundred and eleven in the past ten years. At any roads, the press will lambaste the family and law enforcement for involving a flake like me in what is a serious matter; a missing, and now presumed dead, little boy.
More than just presumed, my intrusive inner voice tells me.
With so many days gone by and zero leads, Sheriff Cody knows we’re looking for a corpse. The smell rising from the debris-covered ground will prove he and I are both right.
“Please, please,” I whisper to myself, “just let it be a dead animal. Don’t let it be Noah.”
My gift-curse tells me better, of course, but it’s my mantra every time I find a grave. Don’t let it be little so-and-so. But it always is.
I try to picture a deer killed out of season and quickly buried after its antlers are removed as trophies. I want to think of the blue-eyed, brunette, cherub-faced Noah, running and playing, going to school, tucked in for a night’s sleep. Anything other than tortured and stuffed into the ground like so much garbage.
Of course, with the gift-curse thing, I’m not wrong once I see the final location of the missing person. I saw the grave in my mind before I fell onto it. It’s more than simply tripping on a root. I was in one of my absence seizures again. Goddamned things make me go all wonky and sometimes even blackout. As if seeing the horrors isn’t bad enough.
Deputy Hal Shepherd makes his way through the overgrown ferns and saplings to the grave at my feet. His olive green uniform jumpsuit has large rings of perspiration beneath his armpits. This makes me feel less self-conscious about my own horse sweat. He squats, ink pen in hand, and considers the scene for about five minutes. After that, he silently paces like a caged leopard around the small burial. He stops at the far side of the grave, glaring at me. He gazes icily at the mound, then pulls out his cellphone, hitting speed dial.
“Send in the forensics team.”
The crime scene investigation team is slow to reach our location, two miles in from the end of the fire trail. I chew my inner lip as they cordon off the scene with yellow and black police tape. I found the scene. Hooray for me, my inner voice ruthlessly teases me.
My visions led us here, otherwise, Noah might’ve never been found. The killer probably thinks he’s clever, picking such an isolated spot for his body dumps. Who would think to look in these woods other than some freak psychic like me?
The next hour crawls by with the click-flash-whir of cameras, and CSIs taking measurements. I watch from behind the crime scene tape as they use tweezers to pick up all the candy wrappers and cigarette butts for DNA and fingerprints. A handful of leaves and needles appear to have blood on them. They go carefully into evidence bags, too.
Shepherd keeps himself busy walking the perimeter while speaking to Sheriff Cody on his cell. He lifts the crime scene tape and walks under it leaving the cordoned area. He spares me a hard look before walking father into the forest.
Those involved in evidence collection speak little beyond whispered instructions to the newbie on their team. The rest of us stand outside the perimeter, silent as the grave. No pun intended. Our busy presence has scared off the wildlife, even the birds. I shift from one foot to the other, my right boot feeling a little tight. I think the seam on my sock is rubbing a blister on my big toe. I think of all this to keep my mind off what's going to be dug up any moment.
Finally, one of the CSIs carefully brushes aside debris and dirt to reveal a greenish, naked, and bloated body. Those of us watching collectively gasp. I’d been right about the mutilation.
Then there’s a little girl's voice just behind me.
I look around like I’m crazy. I know the voice calling my name isn’t among the gathering. It’s a voice I haven’t heard since I was six years old. I put my hands over my ears to muffle the plaintive calling. Nope, it doesn’t help.
I think I only say it in my mind. Then, my voice ricochets off tree trunks and echoes eerily around us. I hear the crackling sound of the white paper Tyvek suits worn by the CSIs, and nothing else as all eyes turn on me.
“Stop what, Ms. O'Neill?”
A tall, painfully lanky volunteer searcher in a red and black checkered flannel shirt looks expectantly at me.
“Huh,” I grunt, looking from his man-bun to his long beard, stalling for time to think up a good lie.
Ma'am? I’m not that old you damned hipster! Keep Portland weird I guess, man-bun.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Was just thinking out loud. It’s nothing.”
“Are you sure,” Man-bun asks.
I wonder hysterically for a moment if he’s coming onto me. I’m not on enough anxiety meds for that.
“I said it was nothing, okay,” I snap and turn awkwardly away.
My right boot squeaks like a fart and I close my eyes on my renewed embarrassment. To say I don’t want to be here now is a vast understatement. I quick march through the overgrown ferns the two miles back to the fire trail and police and CSI vehicles.
The plaintive voice of my late sister keeps resonating in my head.
Ruthie! Ruthie don’t go. You’re not finished yet.
My brain feels like the Vegas Strip. The number twenty-five is flashing there. That’s when I U-turn and drag myself back to find Shepherd.
Twenty-six if you count Noah, my sister’s voice chides.
I look around for her, knowing I’m not going to find her. A wave of torrential sweat hits me again when I get back to the scene. I can smell my stink and want to be anywhere but here. I need a shower, more coffee, well maybe not coffee. I want to be in my kitchen making my famous everything bagels, not helping find dead kids.
I aim myself unsteadily toward Shepherd. He’s all business and seems done with me now that I located Noah. I’m brassy enough, though, I’m rarely ignored.
“You should call Sheriff Cody. You’re going to need more CSI people out of Olympia. There are twenty-five other bodies here.”
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