February 2

"Hey, Ben. You're back."

"Yeah."

"Did you make sure everyone followed the agreement?"

"Yes, I did. Somehow, I feel like I know less about Ryan now than I did last week."

"Good." A pause. "How was Alaska?"

"Cold. And dark."

"It's not so bad in the summer. Go far enough to the north and the sun never sets."

"We've got a lot to discuss, Ana. We'd better get started."

~~~

January 25

Ben

I shiver despite the parka I'm wearing. The locals say it's warm today, but the ice fog hanging in the air says something different. My hastily-arranged team of FBI agents and local investigators tromps through the snow, making me wonder how on Earth Ana managed to hike several miles through this place. It's miserable and dark out here. We spent most of the daylight hours getting from Fairbanks to here, the woods in the middle of nowhere. The sun is up for less than six hours today. I'm about to regress into childhood and ask our local guide if we're there yet. Then I see something - a clearing. There are two buildings dimly visible inside the clearing. We've finally made it.

After all of our tents had been pitched, the floodlights attached to portable generators were set up. Soon, unnaturally white light illuminated the little cabin and the yard surrounding it. A vegetable garden lies fallow, blanketed in snow. A lump next to the side of the cabin is revealed to be a snow-covered woodpile. A hazy shape that reflected flashlights as an eerie, ghostly glow turned into a small greenhouse filled with dead, ice-encrusted plants. The buildings were revealed: a detached workshop and the all-important cabin. That cabin is now a looming, dominating presence.

The front door and several windows are boarded up, which is unexpected. It takes a crowbar and a lot of elbow grease to finally allow entrance into the cabin.

~~~

"Someone had been there since you left."

"What do you mean?"

"There were boards nailed in place over the broken windows. The door too. Someone came back and secured the cabin. The crime scene had been disturbed as well."

"What? Disturbed how?"

~~~

In the dim light, nothing looks exceptionally out of place. Not at first. I turn on my flashlight and shine it around, noticing a few bullet casings on the floor. Investigators place little numbered, yellow markers near them and a camera flashes. In the sudden burst of light, I notice the large, dark stain by the far side of the couch.

I follow it around the couch and find a puddle of dried, frozen blood. I don't have to ask the crime scene investigators to know that's a fatal amount of blood loss. Someone died here, but the body is gone.

More light reveals drag marks. They lead to the front entrance, growing fainter as the distance to the door closes. This body was moved postmortem. I walk carefully around the bloodstain, noticing the desk in the corner that Ana demanded we leave untouched. I step over a pile of splintered wood that looks like it might have been a table once. Then I notice the second bloodstain.

~~~

"What do you mean, there weren't any bodies in the cabin? Where did they take Ryan?"

"I'm getting to that. Sort of."

"What do you mean, sort of?"

"We found evidence of at least two people sustaining serious blood loss in the cabin. Two different blood types. But we didn't find two bodies."

~~~

January 28

The cadaver dogs finally arrived today. They shiver as they scour the area, apparently as tired of this weather as I am. The cold is pervasive. The darkness for so many hours of the day is dispiriting. This cabin has been a gold mine of evidence. But it's also an icy tomb.

The handlers tell us that the cold conditions are to blame for lack of progress. The cold, dry air is hard on the dogs and the permafrost might be locking in the stench of death and decay. After the sun sets, the handlers call the search off for today. They reluctantly agree to try again when the sun rises.

January 29

After another short day without success, the handlers tell us that the dogs will be leaving tomorrow. We don't have strong enough evidence that the bodies were buried here. While the handlers can't say for certain that the dogs aren't missing something, they refuse to continue working the dogs in this weather. It's about to take a turn for the worse.

~~~

"Investigators on the scene were able to determine that one had sustained a fatal amount of blood loss. There was evidence that this victim had been dragged from the cabin and we suspected that he'd been buried somewhere nearby."

"What about the other one?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said they determined that one of them had fatal blood loss. What about the other one?"

"Results were inconclusive."

~~~

January 30

Before sunrise, I beg them for one more day. The lead handler, Boris, tells me that the area is too large. If I could narrow the search down to a specific location, he'll let the dogs search it.

Dismayed, I head out into the yard. It's about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. I trudge around the frozen yard, trying my best to think like a criminal. Where would I bury a dead body out here? I rule out the woods, not because it's an unlikely place, but because it's too large an area. That leaves somewhere in the clearing. I look around at the slowly lightening yard. If I had to bury someone here, in this clearing, where would I do it?

Then the answer comes to me and I almost smack my palm to my forehead. It's so obvious. I can't believe I didn't think of it before.

"Boris!" I cough out as I race back to the cabin, the cold air stabbing my lungs like a million tiny shards of ice. "Have the dogs search the vegetable garden."

~~~

"The FBI found a loophole in your agreement and exploited it."

"What?!"

"There was a body found on the property, buried under the garden. Your agreement stated that the FBI could not pursue the identity of Ryan. We had reason to believe that it might not be Ryan, so they went ahead and identified the body."

"I swear to God, if you let them-"

"Let me finish."

~~~

The body was quickly bagged and tagged after being recovered from the frozen vegetable garden. Boris gave me a new look of respect before he and the other handler left, taking the dogs back to someplace with real heat and running water. With the evidence-gathering complete, the rest of us packed up our gear in preparation for the trek back to civilization. This time, we had the luxury of taking a helicopter back to Fairbanks.

January 31

"Ben, I need to show you something," says Jessica, one of the FBI agents at the Fairbanks office. "We made an ID on that body you found. This might be the break in the case you've been looking for."

~~~

"The permafrost preserved the body well enough that they were able to run facial recognition. A photo matched and they positively ID'd the body. I've got the photo here, taken a few years ago. This is Emilio Vasquez."

"Oh."

"To be clear, this is not Ryan?"

"No, it's not. Ryan shot this man." A pause. "In self-defense."

~~~

"This man has ties to the Alvarez family going back for years," says Jessica. "If you wanted physical evidence that the Alvarez family has been pursuing Anastasia Clarence, you've got it."

"What about the second victim?"

"We have samples of the blood, but the agreement prevents us from running DNA analysis on it. Technically, we shouldn't have run the blood-typing analysis."

"So this could be another gang member?"

"Or it could be this John Doe we're tiptoeing around. What's the deal with that guy anyway?"

I sigh and rub a hand across my tired eyes. I haven't gotten decent sleep for a week. "It's complicated. Anything else I need to know before I fly back to Phoenix?"

"That you cheechakos really ought to count yourselves lucky. The weather was great for this time of year."

"You think this is good weather? I don't know how you sourdoughs survive up here."

"Look at you, showing off your knowledge of the local slang. Have a safe flight back to the Lower 48."

~~~

Ana

"You didn't find a dog anywhere, did you?" I ask, knowing it's probably a dumb question.

"Uh... no. Was there supposed to be a dog?"

"Yes. And no, I guess. He probably wouldn't have survived very long on his own. In the cold. With no food." I don't want to think too much about what happened to poor, sweet little Casper.

"Well, we didn't find any... canine remains. Maybe he found food somewhere else? Or found some people to take care of him? Dogs have pretty impressive instincts, I think."

I appreciate Ben's efforts to fabricate the plausibility of Casper's survival. "Thanks for trying, I guess." I sit back in my chair, the nasty shivering anxiety I've had throughout this conversation finally beginning to subside. "So is that it? That's all you found?"

"They're still processing evidence up in Fairbanks and they'll be shipping it to us over the next week, but yes. That's pretty much everything."

"I don't understand. It doesn't make sense. Why would they bury their own guy, but take Ryan's body with them? Unless they buried him somewhere else in the woods?"

"That seems unlikely. Why would they spend the time digging an additional grave?"

"I just - I can't understand. Does this make any sense to you?"

He doesn't say anything, just stares somewhere over my left shoulder, his jaw tightening slightly.

"Ben?"

"I have," he pauses for a moment, "an idea. A theory. It's not a good one." Then he's quiet again.

"Well, are you going to share it?"

"I don't want to give you false hope. I'd hate for you to suffer through all this again."

This is making me annoyed and anxious, which combine to sap my patience. "Just spit it out."

"How certain are you that Ryan died that day?"

I roll my eyes and try to focus on my exasperation. Being angry is better than being sad. "We've been over this before. His body was still recovering from an almost fatal illness. They shot him. They beat him. He stopped breathing. He bled out. He died." My tone is patronizing, but I don't really care.

"But we don't know for sure that he bled out."

"And you're basing that on what, the inconclusive results?" Now I'm actually pissed off. It's like what he just did with Casper - spouting ludicrous, wild theories to make me feel better. It was acceptable when it was a dog. Not when it's a person.

"You don't need to raise your voice. I'm not challenging what you saw that day. It was just a theory. A very, very weak theory. But it might explain some things."

"You saw how remote that cabin was. You think someone stumbled across it and rescued him?"

"You know what, maybe I shouldn't have said anything." Ben's anger flares, though not as brightly or bitingly as mine. "I think we should take a break. I'll be outside."

He leaves the room, this awful little FBI interview room, and I try to keep myself from fracturing into tiny pieces all over again. As awful as Ryan's death was, I took some comfort in knowing that his body was safe up there in his little hideaway. Surrounded by the memories living in that place where we fell in love. Maybe at peace, finally.

But to know now that he's not there, that his body is missing and that those horrible people who killed my family might have done something with it...

I shove my fist over my mouth to hold back the urge to sob. Or scream.

If Ryan is alive, there is one person who might be able to find him. Not that I think Ryan's alive. I just need the closure. I have to know for sure.

I open the door and find no one waiting outside. I walk briskly to the break room. The lights are off, but in the dim glow of the vending machine, I can see Ben hunched over in a chair.

"Get Agent Givens. I need to talk to his buddy at the Marshals."

Ben looks up at me, his face awash with red light. "Why?"

"It's time to call in that favor. Also, I'm sorry for being a jerk. Again."