“Yeah, will do,” I replied before crashing into bed.
“Everything alright over there? How’s your standoff with the raccoon going?” she asked.
It was nice to talk to someone who didn’t know about my diagnosis. Normal, even. I spoke with Mom, Dad, and Bobby regularly, of course, but it grew tedious to feel like I had to reassure them all the time that I was fine.
Janine didn’t know about any of that, and it was freeing.
“Just tired, it’s been a long few days. And I can’t figure out what the damn thing wants from me. It’s not defecating, and I’ve never fed it. Hell, most of my food is down in the utility shed, anyway. Why would it climb all the way up here?”
She laughed. “Maybe it just wants to be friends.”
I rolled my eyes. “I get the impression it wants me toleave.”
We also had an unspoken agreement to avoid the topic of the disappearances as much as possible. At least for now, anyway. Until we were told otherwise, it genuinely didn’t help to worry and stress over it.
It lingered, though. Every day that passed without a lost hiker turning up safe and sound, it grew harder and harder to ignore.
“Alright,” she said. “I’m exhausted. Time to get some shut-eye.”
I looked at the time. It was nearly midnight. “Same here. You have a good night. Over.”
“Oh, hey, before you go,” she cut in just after my transmission went through, “someone’s been driving an ATV along the trail near my lookout the last few days. I’ve reportedit, but you should keep an eye out, too. I’m here for peace and quiet, not to hear some jackwagon drive around at all hours of the night. They need a big, fat,stay-the-fuck-awayfine.”
Suddenly, I remembered the tracks I’d noticed down by the lake. “I saw tracks, too,” I told her. “On my hike in. Completely forgot about it until now. Probably just idiot teenagers with nothing better to do.”
“I hate kids,” she grumbled.
“I hate raccoons,” I grumbled back.
She laughed again. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
Janine didn’t report for roll call the next morning.
It was the eighth day since Charlie disappeared, and I spent hours cycling through radio channels, trying to reach her, the way she’d done for me at the start of the season.
Empty static was the only response.
I’d just finished my midday smoke sweep, jotted down the weather collection data on the daily observation log, and hooked the radio to my belt before I headed down to the storage building to grab a few things for lunch.
There’d been chatter about her absence all morning. The ranger station called the police right away, and as far as I knew, they were on their way to her lookout for a wellness check.
While we waited for news, people offered up perfectly valid reasons as to why she wouldn’t have checked in.
Maybe her radio died.
She could’ve left for an early morning hike and fallen.
A family member might’ve called and needed help.
I hoped it was simply a case of a family emergency that she’d rushed to respond to without alerting us to her absence, but I had a sick gut feeling it was much worse than that.
She wasn’t the type to just up and leave.
I sorted through my quickly dwindling supply of food—I’d need to plan my groceries better next time—and thought about the horrifying conclusion I’d dwelled on almost obsessively over the last week.
If I believed Charlie was innocent, then his death had somehow, by manipulation or happenstance, allowed a serial killer to get away with murder for almost forty years. Three more people had disappeared in the last month.
And now, Janine was missing.
