Missing: The Body of Evidence (17 page)

Flashing coloured lights appeared above
the hill on the far side of the lake. Even at that distance, she could hear the
unmistakable sound of rotor blades whooshing, which told her what she saw was
other than an alien invasion. It was hard to discern how many helicopters there
were. Through tear-blurred eyes, she estimated possibly three or more. They
were hardly likely to be on a pleasure flight, they had to be search and
rescue, or at least that is what she hoped.

With the flashlight still in the backpack
at the bottom of the lake, all she could do was pray they had heat-imaging
cameras. At a higher altitude, more lights appeared from the same direction,
but the objects were moving faster and overtook the choppers. Two objects
moving at speed, she could now see were aircraft, silhouetted against the sky.
The air tankers swooped over her position, low and fast and for an instant, she
felt as though she could almost reach out and touch them. Her head vibrated
with an explosion of noise from the engines and her neck twisted to follow the
flight path behind her.

First one and then the other released a
cloud that she assumed was water. The noise was deafening as they found their
target, with a mixture of thuds and hissing as the streams hit the terrain,
followed by a dense plume of vapour.

Hang in there, Kyle.

She turned to see a lightshow over the lake
as the helicopters skimmed the surface of the lake and headed for her position.
Two of them peeled off left and right. The central chopper shone its
searchlight directly into her eyes. Temporarily blinded, and with a newfound
surge of energy, she waved her arms in the air.

The whole scene resembled a war zone as she
glanced right and then left as teams of fire fighters poured from the choppers
as if they were Special Forces arriving for a mission. The central chopper was
now above and to the left of her position. The combination of the thunder
engines and the rotor blades cutting through the air, took her sense of hearing
to the limit of endurance. The downdraft whipped up dirt and grit from the
shale and pebbles, biting into her skin. Nancy hunched over Kyle and put her
hands over her ears in an attempt to afford them both some protection.

Something covered her body and she opened
her eyes to a paramedic holding her shoulders. He leaned with his face close to
her and she felt the warmth of his breath on her ear. Nancy gripped the aluminium
foil blanket that he had thrown over her.

‘Are you in any pain? Do you have any
injuries?’

She could just make out what he had asked
and tried to answer, but the only response that escaped her lips were her teeth
chattering. She shook her head. He gripped her shoulders and lifted her to her
feet and then into his arms. Another paramedic knelt at Kyle’s side, checking
his pulse. She wanted to scream out for them to let her stay with Kyle, but
even if she could have screamed, it was too late, as he bundled her into the
chopper. He set her down on a chair and fastened the safety belt.

‘I’m going back to help my partner.’

The pilot turned to her.

‘You’ll be fine, lady. We’ll have you both
at the hospital in no time.’

Nancy could not even raise a smile, before
he turned back to face his instrument panel. Nancy buried her head in the
blanket and breathed heavily, to speed up gaining body warmth. Her fingers were
still numb and she could not feel her toes. She heard shouting and peeked from
under the cover of the blanket. The pilot jumped from his seat and helped the
paramedics lift and drag Kyle into the chopper on a stretcher, until he was
safely onboard. They had Kyle’s neck in a brace. One of them checked his blood
pressure and pulse. The other paramedic slipped a mask over Kyle’s face, turned
the regulator on a gas cylinder and then turned his attention to Nancy. The
engine speeded up and they lifted off the shore. As the chopper rose, it banked
and turned left. Out of the window, she could see another chopper dropping a
Bambi bucket into the lake to fill it with water. The paramedic shouted at her.

‘How are you?’

‘Fr… freezing. How’s…K… Kyle?’

‘He’s unconscious, but stable.’ His partner
finished with the pressure equipment and passed it over. ‘I’m just going to
check your vital signs.’

Nancy nodded and poked an arm out if the
blanket, keen to save her modesty. He put the wrap around her arm and began
pumping the attached plastic ball, until she felt the wrap become taut on her
arm, then he released the pressure.

‘How is it?’ Nancy asked.

‘What you’d expect… high.’ He placed a
thermometer under her arm, followed by probing her ear with another instrument.
‘The body’s natural reaction to fight hypothermia is to speed up the heartbeat
to warm your organs, which is the opposite of how it fights the onset. That’s
why you experience numbness in your extremities when it first kicks in. Your
arm is lacerated, but I don’t want to dress it, it looks like you have some
glass in there.’

He shone a light in both eyes and then
removed the thermometer and made notes. Nancy gave him both her and Kyle’s
details, which he added to his notes.

‘Both detectives, we are honoured. Lucky we
spotted you,’ he said. ‘Good job you had the sense and the strength to wave
your arms. It was hard to make you out with all the critters on the shoreline.’

‘Critters? There was stag and some deer,
but that’s all I saw.’

‘Hell, you were surrounded. The heat
imaging camera wouldn’t pick up the snakes though, no body heat.’

She was not sure what the psychology was
behind what he said. Meant to lift her spirits, his words had no effect. He
made his way to sit next to the pilot. Nancy watched him put on headphones and
read aloud from his notes. She assumed he was radioing ahead to the hospital.
Intently, she listened to what he had to say about Kyle.

‘Second one has head injuries, and a
suspected broken rib. He’s suffering hypothermia and unconscious. Vital signs
are stable with a temperature of eighty-seven degrees and rising. He’s
responded to the thermal blanket, we just need to get him out of his wet jeans
to help things along. ETA fifteen minutes.’

Nancy emptied her mind of all thoughts and
stared at Kyle’s monitor. She listened to the reassuring beeps coming from the
speaker. Kyle looked at peace. Wires led from the monitor and disappeared under
the thermal blanket. Nancy watched as the paramedic cut away his jeans and
emptied the contents of his pockets into a plastic bag. Sealing the bag, she
thought, was as if her future was on hold in some kind of limbo, but as long as
she could hear that beep, she knew there was hope.

The helicopter banked mid-flight. It was a
welcome relief to see the lights of LA, but more especially, the letter ‘H’ for
the helipad, marked out on the roof of the hospital. A jolt and the chopper
landed. A sense of urgency speeded up all sense of time. A glance at Kyle
showed her his ashen face and blue lips, before they bundled her out of her
chair and onto a waiting gurney. A voice called out, barely audible over the
sound of the engine winding down.

‘His body is ninety-one degrees and rising,
but his circulation and temperature is still low at the extremities.’

A lump caught in her throat at her enforced
separation, but she knew he was in safe hands and in the realms of fate.

Her toes were still numb, but her fingers
started having a pins and needles sensation. The gurney rumbled over the
asphalt, and with a bump, they entered an elevator. Whoever was guiding the
gurney did not utter a word. The silence gave her some relief. She had more on
her mind than engaging in small talk. Her eyes closed, in the hope that
blanking out her surroundings would somehow speed up the journey. The events of
the evening rolled through her mind as if she was watching a horror movie.
Above all, the ghostly face of Kyle as she left the helicopter, dominated her
minds-eye. Nancy began to sob. A hand touched her shoulder and she heard a
soothing male voice.

‘There, there, you’ll be fine and the
doctor will fix you up in no time.’

She heard a ping, followed by the elevator
doors sliding open and they were on the move. Her eyes opened. Through the blur
of moist eyes, she watched the fluorescents as they sped by above her, until
they came to an abrupt halt.

‘Where do you want her?’

‘In this cubicle, here,’ said a female
voice.

Nancy lifted her head to see the nurse
drawing the curtain. A foul odour reminded her of the smell of Kyle’s fishing
equipment.

‘The smell!’

The nurse came up beside her, reading her
notes on a clipboard.

‘Don’t worry; we’ll clean you up as soon as
you’ve been checked. At least it shows your senses are returning. How are we
feeling?’

We? I’m feeling crap, I don’t know about
you.

‘Fine, I think, it’s just my feet that are
feeling numb. Could you massage them?’

‘It’s not recommended. Nature will take its
course. The feeling will soon return.’

‘My left arm has started to sting.’

‘Let’s take a look.’

The nurse parted the thermal blanket and she
winced.

‘We need to clean up that arm. If you’re
starting to feel pain, it’s a good sign that your circulation is returning to
normal. The feet are always last.’

The nurse re-checked all her vital signs.

‘Your body temperature is almost normal.’
She twitched her nose. ‘Once we’ve cleaned up that arm of yours, I think a
shower will be in order, but first let’s get you out of that wet underwear and
into a dry gown.’

The nurse wrote up her notes and scurried
out of the cubicle. Nancy heard the nurse call out.

‘She’s in here, Doctor.’

The curtains swept aside and in walked the
doctor. There was no greeting, he simply picked up the clipboard and studied
the notes. The nurse entered, holding a gown over her arm. They both stared at
her as if they were inspecting a specimen in the lab and discussed her as if
she were not there. It all seemed so matter of fact. The nurse opened Nancy’s
blanket and the doctor placed the probe of his stethoscope on various parts of
her chest.

‘Clean up her arm and check for any embedded
glass. Shower her and then get her onto an observation ward.’

‘Doctor, how’s my partner?’

‘Just worry about yourself. We're taking
care of him... trust me. Try and rest when the nurse gets you onto a ward.’

‘But how is he?’

‘Responding. We have him down at X-ray.’

He handed the clipboard to the nurse,
hurried through the curtains and out of the cubicle.

‘Busy night,’ said the nurse. ‘Try not to
worry.’

Try not to worry! No clothes… no money…
no phone. I stink to high hell, and besides the doctor treating him, I have a
boyfriend whose life is in the hands of God.

Nancy cast a blurry stare around the
ward. Light from a window stung her eyes. The first thing she could remember
was lying on the hospital bed after the nurse had helped her shower, and then
she had bandaged her arm. She recalled the nurse leaving her, saying that she
would call back with news of Kyle. However, what she could not recall was the
nurse returning with news, before she must have succumbed to exhaustion and
fallen asleep. Her vision grew accustomed to the light. The ward clock on the
wall told her it was nine-fourteen. She raised her head. A different nurse was
holding a clipboard and talking with a patient on the bed opposite. A picture
of Kyle hanging onto life and laying on the stretcher in the helicopter,
circled in her mind. Using her elbows for leverage, Nancy sat up, her vision
still blurred, with her head throbbing and her body aching. Nancy called out.

‘Nurse?’

‘Be with you in a minute, Miss Roberts.’

Nancy bit her lip as the minute turned to
four minutes. The nurse hung the clipboard on the bottom of the patient’s bed
and walked over to the foot of Nancy’s bed.

‘What can I do for you?’ The nurse picked
her notes from the bottom of the bed.

‘I need to find out how my partner is
doing? He came here in the helicopter with me last night. Kyle... Kyle
Claymore. The last I heard he was down at X-ray.’

‘He’s not on this ward. I’ll check with
admissions after I’ve checked your pulse.’

‘My pulse can wait. Please.’ Her eyes
moistened and she gripped the bedcover with both hands.

‘Okay, just try and relax, or by the look
of you, your pulse rate will hit the ceiling.’

The nurse walked away and through the ward
swing doors. Nancy kept her gaze firmly planted on the ward doors. It was now
nine-twenty five and yet it was as though the nurse had been away for hours.
Finally, the ward doors opened and the nurse approached her at the side of the
bed.

‘He’s conscious and responding. His mother
is with him now. She’s left a message with the ward sister that she has your
house and car keys with her.’

‘Can I see him?’

‘Not yet, the doctor will be on the ward at
ten o’ clock. Looking at your notes, I think he’ll discharge you.’

‘Clothes! I don’t have any clothes, or
money. I don’t even have a cell phone.’

‘Is there someone I can call? You have your
dad down as next of kin, but there’s a note saying, ‘No contact.’’

Nancy thought for a second, but there was
no ‘plan B.’

‘Yes, please phone Dad. Tell him my
predicament.’

In the circumstances, Nancy was just
relieved that she had left the keys for her car with Kyle’s mom. The nurse took
her pulse, noted it, and placed the clipboard back at the bottom of the bed,
before moving onto the next patient.

With the time at nine fifty-five, the nurse
returned and drew the curtains around her bed.

‘The doctor is delayed, but you have a
visitor.’

‘My dad?’

‘No, it’s someone from the fire department.
Your dad says he will get here as soon as he can.’

The curtain parted and in walked Rob, the
LA fire department’s chief investigator.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘The forestry fire department asked me to
come along to ask some questions. I used to work for them many years ago. It
saves them a journey.’

‘Of course.’

‘Anyway, the main thing is how are you doing?’

‘I’m fine. I’m just worried about Kyle.
Have you interviewed him?’

‘Not yet. The doctor was with him when I
tried to see him.’

He sat on the chair at the side of the bed
and placed a large brown envelope on the bedside stand.

‘Tell me what happened from the first time
you were alerted to the fire.’

Nancy relayed all that she could recall and
he took notes.

‘That’s one hell of an experience. What was
the weather like? Did you notice anything unusual?’

‘Yeah, it was snowing. Only it was snowing
ash.’ Nancy laughed, more out of nervousness at having to recall the nightmare.
‘The temperature was high during the day and there was only a gentle breeze. As
soon as night fell, the temperature dropped.’

‘Was there any wind, or a breeze, when you
first saw the fire?’

‘That was the strange thing about the whole
event. The flames on the slope down to the creek travelled fast in our
direction, but there again, when I drove over the top of the hill, behind the
cabin and down to the lake, the fire was spreading in the opposite direction
toward us. But where we stood at the cabin, it was like how I imagined it would
be in the eye of a storm. I didn’t feel much of a breeze.’

‘So are you saying it felt like you were in
the middle of a tornado?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I mean, I know we have
them, but not like in other states.’

He reached for the brown envelopes and took
out some photographs.

‘These were taken on the night of the fire.
I printed them off on my computer, but I’m running out of ink so they’re a
little blurred.’

He handed the first one to her. All she
could see was a black background with a light coloured circular band in the
middle. He passed the rest to her one at a time. On each photo, the band of
light widened until on the last photograph, it resembled the sun.

‘I assume that’s the progression of the
fire taken with a thermal camera from a helicopter. It looks like a perfect
circle.’

‘Yup. That’s what’s strange, considering
the terrain. It seems odd events are following us around.’

‘You mean like, the spontaneous combustion
at the professor’s apartment.’

‘Yeah, the fire at the CSI lab, and now
this.’

Nancy felt a shiver wash through her body
at his remark.

‘What was strange about the CSI laboratory,
I thought someone said it was a power surge after an outage.’

‘We still haven’t figured it out yet. There
was no outage on the night, and in any case the laboratory has its own
regulator system to even out any power surge.’

Nancy tapped a finger on her lips.

‘Strange, and as I said, now this, a forest
fire that burned in a perfect circle.’

‘There’s an explanation for everything, we
just haven’t fathomed it yet. Fires can create their own weather systems in the
immediate vicinity. Just be thankful you and Kyle have survived. We haven’t
received any information from the weather people yet; maybe they can tell us if
some sort of downdraught twister was likely. But that wouldn’t explain how the
fire started, only how it may have spread.’

‘Who called in the fire? I thought at the
time it was weird that they sent a search and rescue team out so quickly.’

He shuffled his notes.

‘David Summers alerted them that there was
someone staying at the cabin. It says here, the cabin rental company employs
him as a repairperson. He lives in a cabin on the hillside facing your cabin.
His description of what he saw from his position on his veranda, and I quote ‘I
was looking out over the creek and it started as a central flame. The flames
ran in a circle left and right as if a circus hoop was being set on fire.’ He
couldn’t see behind the cabin on the hillside, but he said shortly after, there
was a glow from behind the cabin. He saw car lights try to run through the fire
wall and then saw the vehicle turn back to the cabin.’

Summers statement jogged her memory of the
encounter with his dog. Nancy relayed the details of when she had seen rustling
in the dense undergrowth on the hillside.

‘Maybe it wasn’t the dog I saw in the
bushes moving in an arc? Perhaps someone was laying down a chemical trail, and
we were their targets?’

‘They would have had to be pretty damn
clever to do it in a perfect circle considering the landscape and dense bushes.
Besides that, they haven’t found any traces of accelerant near where Summers
says he saw the fire start. Nor did they find any tracks. We can only assume a
spark drifted in from somewhere. If someone did start it deliberately, they’ve
covered their tracks and left us with the fire department’s equivalent of a
crop circle to investigate.’

Nancy scoffed and shrugged her shoulders.
Stupid,
girl. Who would want to kill Kyle and me anyway? It must’ve been a spark from a
campfire... surely.