Chapter 2 - The Fisherman Who Saw Too Much
At 7:10 the next morning, Thomas and I returned to the river and started asking questions. Most campers had seen nothing. Then farther downstream we found an older man in a folding chair beside a tripod and tackle box, his line moving lazily across the current. His name was Robert, a retired teacher, and he recorded his fishing trips because, as he put it, “old men need hobbies that prove time still passes.” When I showed him Noah’s picture, his face changed. He unlocked his phone and said, “Yesterday, I recorded something else.”
The first frame showed Noah near the bank, clutching his plastic dinosaur. Emily stood behind him. In the next, her hands were on his shoulders. Then Patricia stepped into view and shoved my son’s head underwater while saying, in a voice so casual I almost vomited, “This is training. You have to become strong.” Thomas made a sound beside me that I had never heard from him before. Robert paused, then showed us more. James pulled Noah out downstream, very much alive, wrapped him in a blanket, and carried him toward a dark SUV. Emily crouched at the rock and hooked Noah’s swim trunks high onto the stone while Patricia pointed to the exact place rescuers would later find them. “There’s more,” Robert said quietly. “A man pulled your boy out. Your son was alive when they carried him away.” My knees almost gave out. Alive. Robert enlarged the frame showing a turnoff sign and an old service road. “I know where that road leads,” he said. “There’s an abandoned ranger cabin past the upper ridge.” I looked at Thomas, then at the phone, and the helpless grief from the night before hardened into something colder. I wasn’t going to mourn my son. I was going to get him back.
