— Niko navigates a torrent of tough questions from Sheriff Reynolds. —
Still about three years ago …
Niko and Reynolds sat in silence, weighing the death of a child, the account of Niko’s attacks, and the fact that Bernard and Andrea had relayed a different story altogether. Reynolds stood up. “You want some coffee or something?”
“Sure. I drink it black,” Niko said.
Reynolds was gone for a half hour, and he returned to the office empty-handed.
“Usually if you are pretending to get coffee while you verify a story, you return with some coffee to keep up appearances,” Niko said as Reynolds closed the blinds that he had opened before he left Niko alone in the office.
He laughed, “you caught me Niko.” He poked his head out of the door. “Can someone grab me two coffees?”
Reynolds sat back down. Smiling like he was catching up with an old friend. “Alright, so by my count, we got thirty-four days unaccounted for from the day Richard died to the day Tracey dragged you out of the woods.”
“So my story checked out so far?”
“Still waiting to see,” Reynolds replied and then looked up to the officer delivering two paper cups of coffee into the office. Niko leaned forward and grabbed one from the desk. The smell alone was intoxicating.
“I apologize in advance for the coffee. It sucks,” Reynolds nodded at the cup in Niko’s hand.
“I haven’t had any since the day Richard went in the water,” Niko lied. His last cup of coffee was with the bearded man.
“Long time.”
“Yea.”
“Well, I have two seriously different accounts of how a boy died and how you were left out there alone.” Reynolds sipped his coffee. “Add that to this big ass question mark of what happened to you out there over all the other days. I need to hear the rest.”
“It really isn’t that interesting.” Niko shrugged.
“Thirty-four days out there. Something must have happened. What took so long to get back otherwise?” Reynold’s face was firm now, and his voice had deepened. The smile was gone.
Niko was pulling the cup to his face, and he stopped and looked up. “Jesus man. You want to go traverse that country?”
“I don’t. That’s why I want to hear it from you. The miles and the days don’t match. With all due respect, you weren’t thirty-four days away from here.”
Was it really thirty-four days? I must have lost count somewhere in the early twenties.
“Well, first I waited by the log jam. I was pretty messed up from getting hit with the oar. Did Bernard say anything about that?”
“He didn’t.”
“Well, I think this speaks for itself,” Niko pointed at nearly healed wound on his face.
“Injuries happen in all sorts of ways.” Reynolds, cold and impartial now, didn’t even look at the wound.
“So, I was concussed after getting hit by an oar,” Niko paused for emphasis, “and I just waited. I was throwing up and dizzy and all that, but I could think enough to figure someone might come looking for me, and they would probably start where I was last seen. I guess I didn’t want to think that Bernard would leave me for dead and lie about it.”
“What makes you think that now?”
“Word gets around. It’s not hard to describe where the hell I was. If they had told the truth, someone would have found me.”
“Big search area.”
“Not when you have the location of what you are looking for.” Niko sat up straight, his back rigid now.
“So you waited?”
“I guess I was hoping there was a reasonable explanation for why I was alone. Maybe they got caught up in the current, or couldn’t get me in the boat or something. I didn’t really think Bernard would do the right thing, but I hoped maybe Andrea would. So, I just waited. I drank river water and sat there for three days.”
“Okay, so there is three of thirty-four.”
Damn, he’s counting?
Niko scrambled through his mind, trying to count the days, trying to piece the math together in seconds as Reynolds watched.
“Then what?”
Niko sighed. “I don’t remember every second of it, you know? There was no real adventure. It was monotonous. Just days and days of suffering and boredom with a flashes of terror. Mostly it just sucked.”
“Tell me as much as you can.”
“After the third day, I knew I would have to get myself out of there. I didn’t have anything. I mean nothing. I take a survival pack, even on short hikes from the house, but it was all in the boat. I just had my clothes.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Just my clothes and my river shoes.”
Reynolds nodded, and Niko thought he saw a look of respect for a moment, a brief glimpse of humanity had snuck by the mask of the interrogator.
Niko continued. “So, I grabbed the biggest log I could find and pushed off into the river. It didn’t take long before I started shivering uncontrollably and my legs locked up. I almost smashed my head in some real easy rapids. That was when I knew I was in serious trouble.”
“Not when you got hit with the oar, or no one showed up after three days?”
“That worried me. But that was all other people, things out of my hands. This was the first time I considered I might not be able to cover ground out there like I needed to. I realized that the river had more control over this than I did.”
“Bet that was humbling.”
“It was, so I left the river.”
“And went where?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I just got away from the river. Stupid as hell, I know.”
“I know that you know a river is your best bet in that type of situation. Why did you leave it?”
Niko’s hands activated. He placed the coffee on the desk and began to twirl the wisps of hair that curled out behind his ears.
“You look nervous,” Reynolds said.
“Is this a damn therapy session or an interview?
“I just need to know why you left the river.”
“That was my panic moment. When I considered that I might not be enough to survive out there. I just wanted to get away from that spot. It made no sense. Stupid mistake.”
“Yea?”
“The woods are so thick there, deadfall like I’ve never seen. There was nothing to follow. I walked an entire day, tried to sleep in a godawful bog, got devoured by bugs, and then finally came to my senses and walked back to the river the next day. Wasted two days and returned to the river a little upstream of where I left it.”
“There’s five days.” Reynolds was scratching notes, and the pen was audible as his heavy hand moved over the paper.
“I figured I would take my chances on the river. As uncertain as it seemed, it was better than walking circles in the bogs. So, I floated short stretches when I had to and walked the stretches that were navigable on foot. It made for slow going.”
“Also takes lots of energy. That cold, that much hard walking.”
“I got better at the cold. I got so I could slow my breathing and keep my body warm for longer stretches in the water. It was never more than a few minutes at a time though. I ate what I could find. I’m a guide — I do know how to survive out there.” Niko was still fidgeting with his hair.
“It seems.” Reynold’s head was still down in his notes. “What did you eat?”
“Bugs, any plants I was sure of. One night I had dead fish. It tasted worse than it smelled, and I found it by its smell. I drank the river water. It was too wet to get fires going, so I couldn’t boil the water, and I spent a good number of days shitting my guts out. You can add a few of those into your count.”
“How many?” Reynolds asked. He would periodically and unexpectedly look up and right into Niko’s eyes.
“Not sure, maybe four or five to the shits.”
“That’s a lot of time to be sick.”
“I know it. Got pretty lean out there.” Niko patted his midsection. “The worst was the rain. That’s where most of the days went. If it rained, I had to stay put and wait for water to go down. Each storm just made it colder and churned up debris to catch on. So, there were a few times where I just sat and waited for days for the river to calm down. When I could travel, it was only short distances at a time. I just kept floating and waiting and floating and waiting.”
“How many days would you say?”
Niko shook his head. “I don’t know how many days to be honest. Shit got real bad. I was just wearing down from the sickness and lack of food. I was close to giving up when I finally got to the landing area where Tracey found me. I guess that’s how it takes thirty-four days to cover what you call such a short distance.” Niko looked at Reynolds.
“I see.”
“Not sure if all the days add up.” Niko pointed at the note pad. “But, that’s how it happened. You know the rest from there.”
“Well, there’s a lot of vague timing. You said you were close to giving up?”
“After leaving the river, I was so delirious that I didn’t really know where I was. Thought it was a hallucination when I heard Tracey calling my name. I stumbled along the ATV track and then fell down. I knew I wouldn’t get myself up. I didn’t think it was over. I knew it to be true. I had lain down to die on that trail.”
Niko’s eyes were down at the floor, and the coffee was finished, and he was spinning the hair behind his ear. “I don’t remember anything after that, but that’s where Tracey found me. So I guess I was actually following her voice. I’d be gone without her.”
“So that’s it?”
Niko looked up and forced a smile. “I’m sorry it isn’t more interesting. No bears, no mountain lions. Just slow hard travel, hypothermia, hunger, diarrhea, and Tracey refusing to give up.”
Reynolds put his pen down and nodded his head. “You’re a lucky man.”
“I’ve run into more dumb luck in this lifetime than anyone deserves.”
“Seems like you found some bad luck along the way too.”
“You don’t realize one without the other.”
Reynolds paused and opened both of hands to Niko. He leaned back in his chair and relaxed his shoulders. “You didn’t come across anyone else out there?”
How the hell does he know?
Niko laughed aloud. “Holy hell. You think if I came across someone out there I would have just kept running the river? I was praying to come across someone, looking all day and night.”
“That makes sense.”
“Good.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you were looking and praying for someone. But you didn’t say if you ran into anyone out there.”
“No. I didn’t run into anyone,” Niko lied. “What are you getting at?”
“Well. There were food wrappers in your pocket, and while you were under at the clinic you kept muttering something about ‘thanking Baptiste.’”
Niko’s pace quickened, but he smiled and relaxed his shoulders, showing no outwards signs of his stress.
“Come on man. I was delirious. Baptiste? Maybe my Catholic roots were surfacing or something.”
“No, you seemed pretty specific. Mentioning a bearded man named Baptiste. You kept thanking him.”
“I was all kinds of messed up. I don’t know what I was saying. You think Rip Van Winkle saved me out there, and I’m hiding it?”
“What about the food wrappers? You didn’t mention those.” Niko saw the trick now. Reynolds maintained an imposing demeanor for the straightforward questions. He probably knew those answers already or could at least glean them. He wasn’t dumb. Then he adopted this relaxed tone for the riddles he was most curious about. As if these last questions were just an afterthought.
“Oh, I found a few things out there. Wrappers that had some crumbs, one day I even found an unopened Lara bar. That might have been the best meal of my life.”
“Best meal of your life. Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“I forgot. A lot of crap happened out there. Cut me some slack.”
“I want to Niko, but some of this stuff doesn’t add up. The food wrappers weren’t Lara bars. They weren’t in English or any brand I knew of. We looked into it, and they don’t sell them in the North America.”
“I guess a foreign person lost some food out there. Maine is a popular place for tourists.” Niko was quick in his reply.
“Don’t get angry with me Niko. And that part of Maine is not popular with tourists. Plus the company on the wrapper went out of business years ago.”
“Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Why does this even matter?” Niko placed his cup on the desk, sat up, and crossed his arms.
“Well, I have a dead child, and conflicting reports of how it happened. There have also always been rumors of some crazy woodsman living out there where you were.”
“Tough place to make a life.”
“There are a lot of stories, but most say it is mountain man type running from some bad people, just hiding out. When I saw the old wrapper and heard you talking about the bearded man, I just thought you might know something about that. I’m prone to be skeptical of coincidences.”
“If I met someone like that out there, I’d tell you. No reason to lie about that.”
Reynolds laughed. “Well, the nature of a lie is usually to hide the reason you’re lying.”
“Very philosophical. But, I’m telling you the truth.”
“Maybe, but I think you know more than you’re saying.”
“Well, that’s a first,” Niko laughed trying to steer the conversation away from Baptiste. “I’ll have to tell Tracey you said that next time she is complaining that I am waxing philosophical.”
“Yea, I’ve heard you can tell a story or two.”
“I’ve been known to exaggerate a fish-tale occasionally, but a Chamonix never lies. I’ve told you everything I can remember.”
Reynolds looked at Niko without acknowledging the last statement.
“Can I go?” Niko asked.
“Sure, sure.” Reynolds stood. “You’re not under arrest or anything like that. You did claim that Bernard hit you with an oar. You want to make an official report?”
“No. I want to forget all of that as soon as possible.”
“Well. I have a lot of digest, but I’ll let you know what comes of all of this. Stay close though. No big trips or anything like that.”
“Is that legally binding?”
“Not yet. Just a suggestion.”
“Okay.”
“You have any questions for me?” Reynolds asked.
“Yea actually. Where’s my boat?”
Reynolds smiled. “Of course. It’s in our garage. I’ll have someone trailer it up to your place tomorrow.”
Niko let out a sigh when he walked from the station into the bright afternoon sun. That was too close.
…
Thanks for reading, and I am sorry for the delay on this episode — I was out in the mountains chasing fish myself. Check in next week for episode 8!