The River by Mary Jane Beaufrand Page B

thighs, Ranger Dave was a good guy and I hated lying to him but I was about to do it. “Hey, coach,” I said, trying to appear breezy.
    “Ready to go?” he said without looking up. “Why don’t you warm up with an easy fifteen hundred? Then we’ll do some wind sprints.”
    “Sure. A bunch of us wanted to know if we could do our fifteen hundred cross-country. We’re getting tired of the track.”
    He smiled to himself. “I hope not. The season’s just started.”
    I said nothing, just stood there waiting.
    He sighed. “In a group?”
    “Just Allison and Nolan and me.” I pointed to where Nolan Chapman and Allison Lehman and some other fast twitch guys were still lunging and pushing against walls.
    “All right. To the Tiki Hut and back. Okay? Stay to-gether and whatever you do, don’t stop for cocktails.” I half laughed with him. I’d seen what people looked like after Tiki Hut Scorpion Bowls. They were usually puky. And handcuffed if they tried to get into a car, thanks to Sheriff McGarry.
    “Got it. No cocktails,” I said.
    I jogged around the track, trying to make it look as though I was headed toward Nolan Chapman and Allison Lehman while I was actually running past them. When I was on the opposite corner of the field, and Ranger Dave had his head down studying a stopwatch, I ducked out the gate and onto the Santiam River Road. And then I sprinted like a buck till I was out of sight.
    At least there was no danger of my getting tanked, because the Tiki Hut was not my destination.
    Much as I hated to admit it, Gretchen was right about one thing: I had no method. I was just stumbling along, hoping I’d trip over something. So today I thought I’d try a different approach. I began at the mouth of the river, where the blue-white water churned and frothed before becoming the placid oily surface of Detroit Lake. I’d found Karen upstream from here, so I didn’t expect to find anything. I just wanted to have something to chart, proof of where I’d been. See, Gretchen? I’ve covered this. I can be systematic.
    Combing this part of the river was much slower than above the inn, because this stretch had houses along it. Not many, but enough that I didn’t feel comfortable tramping through backyards. Sometimes I did it anyway.
    I’ll know what I’m looking for when I find it. Maybe there was something of Karen’s still ensnared, circling the current. Did she have shoes on when I pulled her out of the river? A hair bow? I couldn’t remember. I just wanted something that the river had kept, something that left a trace. Here. Karen was here. But it wasn’t just traces of Karen I was looking for—it had to be Karen combined with something else, a larger footprint, a casually dropped match. Something that would ignite the whole town and light the way to what really happened.
    Alas, as the sky went from gray to indigo, I came to the sad conclusion that the river was still harboring its secrets. I found traces of pollution but nothing to light the way. Just empty cold medicine wrappers, one Happy Meal toy, a smashed and rusted can of Bud Light, and something that looked like a purple plastic zucchini.
    I was between yards, in a section of land that was huge and weepy with old growth, when I heard thrashing in the bushes and caught sight of something large and brown that looked like Tomás’ poncho.
    “How did you find me?” I called.
    No response from the bushes. Just more thrashing.
    A cold current of fear shot through me. “Tomás?” I tried again.
    That brought about a noise. Not speech. This was low and rumbly and sent tremors to the ground under my feet. Definitely not Tomás. Tomás didn’t growl.
    I froze. Out from tall grass and horsetail ferns stepped the biggest hellhound I had ever seen in my life. It was the color of mud and its head was the size of a watermelon. It curled its lips back in a snarl.
    Some of my friends love big dogs, always saying what was there to be afraid of, that most of