At the far end of the building is a large wooden counter with postcards and brochure racks on either corner. To both sides of the desk are further displays with t-shirts, hats, plush bears, toy binoculars, and other souvenirs. A large sign hanging on the front of the counter reminds campers of the danger of bringing their own firewood to burn at their campsites and offers bundles of wood safely harvested from the park itself.

  Amid all of it is a woman in khaki shorts with a matching shirt tucked in. Her honey blonde hair is pulled back in a braid, but I can’t see the rest of her face because she’s leaned over the counter reading a book spread out in front of her. I imagine it can get kind of slow working in a place like this. There are likely times when it’s busy and chaotic, and others when no one walks through the doors for hours at a time.

  She notices I’m there when I get to within a few feet of the counter. Dropping her eyes to catch a few more words on the page, she straightens and offers me a welcoming smile.

  “What can I do for you?” she asks. I flick my eyes down at the nametag on her shirt, which proudly proclaims her to be named Jennifer.

  “Hi, Jennifer. I’m Dean. Honestly, I’m not completely sure what you can do for me. But I have some questions.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best to answer them for you,” she says.

  “Thanks. Were you here yesterday?”

  “I was,” she says.

  “So, you know an ambulance came.”

  “Yes. Someone passed out on the trails and looked like they were injured. Unfortunately, especially in the summer, people get out on the trails and can’t handle the strain. We usually don’t have to call in an ambulance, the medic does just fine, but I heard this situation was more serious,” she says.

  I nod. “I was the one they had to come pick up.”

  Her face goes brick red and she stumbles over words that don’t come together enough for me to understand what she’s trying to say.

  “I had no idea,” she finally manages. “I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head. “No worries. I’m fine. I’m just having a bit of trouble piecing things together.”

  “Piecing things together?” she frowns.

  “Yeah. My memory is a bit foggy and I‘m trying to figure out exactly what happened out there. How late are the trails accessible?“ I ask.

  “Technically, the non-camping areas of the park are only open from sunup to sundown,” she explains. After dark, the only people authorized to still be in the park are those with camping reservations. They are not supposed to be out on the trails during those hours, but it’s impossible to fully prevent people from wandering around if they want to. There are only two full-time rangers in the park, so they can’t patrol all the time.”

  “But the entrances to the park aren’t open during the night?” I ask.

  “The main entrance gate closes a little after sundown to let people who are dawdling get out. The smaller entrances are chained earlier than that.”

  “How about the campers? What if someone shows up for their reservation after the sun goes down?” I ask.

  She looks at me with a hesitant expression. I can tell she’s debating with herself. I’ll admit it’s a somewhat suspicious question, but at the same time, she knows something happened to me out in the park during a time when, ostensibly, it should have been closed off. Finally, she relents.

  “People with reservations get a code in their confirmation email. They can then put that into a keypad that’s near the front gate and it will open. Their campsite information and registration paperwork is put in an envelope and is waiting for them at the guard station just beyond the entrance to the park,” she tells me.

  I nod and think this through for a second. “What kind of registration paperwork?“

  “Release forms, campsite rules, basic information, that sort of thing. Reserving a campsite or a cabin is pretty much like reserving a hotel room. You have to officially check in when you get here.”

  “So, they have to show ID?”

  “Yes,” she nods. “And they fill out and sign the contract. The only ones who don’t have to submit a contract are those who participate in our loyalty program. Once they’ve camped here three times, they can have a set contract on their account and don’t have to fill it out and sign it again for the rest of the calendar year.”

  “But if someone shows up after hours and hasn’t filled out their contract, they can do it later?” I ask.

  “Yes. They pick up their paperwork at the guard station and have until noon the day after their reserved check-in day to bring the completed contract to the station. If they don’t, a ranger goes to their campsite or cabin to get it.”

  “And if they refuse or can’t show identification that proves they are who they say they are?” I ask.

  “They’re removed from the park.”

  I nod, taking another few seconds to think. “Has anyone checked in recently or come in to shop or anything that seemed strange? Suspicious or stood out to you at all?”

  I really want to ask if she saw anyone spattered with blood or perhaps carrying a weapon of some kind, but I feel that might put more on her than she really needs to have.

  “Not really,” she shrugs. She gives a little laugh and tilts her head toward me like she’s telling me a secret. “But to tell you the truth, we get a lot of weird people through here just on a regular basis. There are people who were a bit late to the Into the Wild bandwagon and have decided to take venturing out into a survivalist life in baby steps by coming to the park. Or the ones who want to commune with nature and we’re always having to warn them to keep their clothes on in public areas. And even just some people doing long-haul hikes that go through several states. I enjoy a good hike and I admire the hell out of them, but there’s got to be a few things off about anyone willing to strap on a backpack and walk a thousand miles.”

  “Quite possible,” I nod. “When you heard about the ambulance and that whole situation, did you hear anything else from the hikers who called it in? I don’t know who they were and haven’t had a chance to talk to them. Did you hear that they said anything about when they found me? If they saw any other people, heard anything odd, anything?”

  That hesitant look comes back. She’s wondering if there’s more to me asking all these questions than just the basic reality of my situation. Like I held back the detail of Thomas Auden’s murder when talking to Harris and Jones, I don’t immediately offer up my career. Unlike my cousin Emma who has a knack for making virtually any situation feel like an interrogation, I like to err on the side of not making people instantly feel like they are getting swept up into a case. Particularly one involving corpses.

  “I don’t know who they were, either,” she admits. “But I haven’t heard anything else about it. No one mentioned that they saw or heard anything. Just that they were hiking and saw you on the ground so they called for help.”

  “Okay. Thank you for your help.”

  I take another glance around the room just to give it a chance to trigger something in my brain if it’s going to, but it doesn’t. Tossing another slight smile toward Jennifer, I walk out of the building and back into the parking lot.

  Officer Harris’s car has long since left the spot where it dropped me off, but I didn’t expect it to be here. I’m not out here hoping to flag down the ride I already dismissed. I’m in search of how I got here in the first place.

  Unless someone else drove me out there, got me to walk with them out into the woods, and then attacked, or had me unconscious and dumped me out there, I drove here myself. Since I feel the chances of the former are fairly low—though, again, not entirely impossible—and I do have those memory flashes of driving in the pre-dawn darkness, I think it’s a safe bet that I drove here on my own accord. I still don’t know why, but right now, what I’m focused on is getting the big pieces back in place so I can focus on scooping up all the little dusty fragments and sticking them all back together. And that means finding my phone, my wallet, and all my other personal belongings.

  I know for a fact I didn’t fly to this area with nothing. I might generally pack light, but that means a backpack and a duffel bag, not a glorified flip phone and the underwear I have on. Not to mention I have to have my wallet somewhere. Like they discovered in the hospital, the only identification I had on me was my private investigator identification card. It’s essentially a badge, not a legally recognized form of ID. Which means I wouldn’t have been able to use it to get on a plane, rent a car, or do any of the various other things I would have done when I got here.

  Going out into this lot in search of a car that looks familiar is part whim and part logic. There are several entrances to the park, and I’m sure the check-in locations Jennifer mentioned all have their own parking lots as well. This might be the one closest to where I woke up, but that doesn’t mean I parked here. Chances are good that it wasn’t a straight shot when I arrived here. No matter what brought me to the park, I highly doubt I got out of the car and wandered straight to the spot where I ended up lying for a dozen or so hours.

  The park is a pretty big place, which means I could have spent some time wandering, which means the car I was driving could be anywhere. I can only hope it’s here and that I’ll recognize it. It’s not a huge lot so it takes me only a couple of minutes to go through and look at each of the cars, waiting for that flash of memory to pop up when I see something through a window that would tell me it’s mine.

  Hope doesn’t play out for me this time though. None of the handful of cars parked in the lot looks at all like the small amount of the car I remembered, and all of them look comfortably worn in and very much owned. I go back inside and Jennifer lifts her head to smile at me.

  “Hi, again,“ she says. “Everything alright?“

  “Just another question.“ I turn and point toward the parking lot. “The cars parked out there. Is there some kind of registration or parking permit or something that people have to have to park there? Some way to tell whose cars they are?“ I hurry to specify I‘m not asking her to divulge the park records to me. Though, if I need them, I‘m not above finding out how to get my hands on them myself. “I am experiencing some memory loss and I… can’t remember where my car is.”

  It’s the truth. I’m just not going into detail to ensure she knows the loss isn’t just a result of what is being seen as an accident on the trails. But even with that reassurance, she gives me a regretful look that doesn’t inspire a lot of hope that she’s going to give me the information I need.

  “No,” she tells me. “There are parking fees for the park, but it’s an honor system. There aren’t any permits or anything. The only permits are for the cars of registered campers because they don’t have to pay the parking fee and have access to recreational areas. But those aren’t recorded. They’re just part of the paperwork that’s given to campers when they arrive. It has where they are camping and the dates, but not a name or anything.”

  I make a disappointed sound. It would have been fantastic if she’d been able to just pull up a handy-dandy system that kept track of everyone with parking privileges and where they were located. Of course, that would necessitate me coming into the park during regular hours and getting one of those permits, which I can’t really guarantee I did. But things are rarely that simple. Never hurts to take a shot, though.

  “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  Jennifer nods. “Go ahead.”

  “You mentioned the chains across the smaller entrances to the park.”

  “Yes. There are entrances that are old access roads or places that used to be private property, as well as some entrances that go to the back of the park that are more convenient because they are so far from the main entrance.”

  “But they don’t have the same locking gate or keypad technology as the main gate?” I ask.

  “No. Just chains.”

  I smile. “Thank you.” I glance at the rack beside me. “Is there a trail map I could take a quick look at? I need to get to the other parking lots and see if I can find my car.”

  She laughs slightly and when I look up at her, her cheeks flush. “Sorry. It just sounded silly the way it came out. Like the plot of a bad ‘90s comedy.”

  “I think I’ve lived in a lot of genres,” I tell her.

  Jennifer picks up a brochure and hands it to me. “This has maps of the entire park with the lots designated on them. But they’re pretty far away.” She reaches over to where a phone is sitting on the counter and squeezes the buttons on either side so the time glows on the screen. “I tell you what. It’s almost time for me to take a break for dinner. I can lock up around here and give you a lift in one of the park vehicles.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I protest.

  “It’s fine. I could use the break from this place. And as far as I know, there aren’t any new campers checking in today. Even if there are, I’ll leave the notice on the door to go to one of the other locations to register. And if there is a sudden emergency need for a bag of corn chips or a can of bug spray, the guy who comes in for the evening will probably be here in the next ten minutes or so.”

  “You’re sure it’s not too much trouble?” I ask.

  “Absolutely not,” she insists. “Besides, I can’t have you falling out on the trail again. I don’t know if the ambulance would take too kindly to having to come out here twice in twenty-four hours for the same person.”

  I let out a short laugh. “Probably a pretty safe bet.”

  “Give me just a second.”

  Jennifer takes a laminated sign out of a drawer in front of her and walks out from behind the counter. She hangs the sign on a hook and then locks the door. She then scribbles a note, I’m assuming to the coworker she mentioned, and leaves it on the counter. I follow her through the building to a short hallway I didn’t notice at the very back of the store. She guides me through a door that leads outside and gestures to a small fleet of modified golf carts lined up near the building.

  “I see your motivation now. You just want to drive one of these things around for a while,” I chuckle.

  “It is pretty glamorous,” she smiles. She nods toward them. “Hop in the second one.“ I get in and she slides in behind the wheel. There‘s already a key in the ignition. “They look kind of ridiculous, but they’re actually really efficient. When one of us needs to get somewhere in the park, especially the rangers, these can be a lot better than using one of the full trucks.”

  “And the keys are always in them?” I ask.

  “Makes it easier to keep track of them.”

  “And no one is concerned someone is going to take off with one?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “Most guests don’t know about this area,” she says. “And even if they did, it would be easy enough to chase down a cart. It’s not like they can get out of the park without being noticed.”

  As she takes hold of the steering wheel I notice the thick golden band on her hand. I gesture to it.

  “Does your husband work at the park, too?”

  She glances at her hand and shakes her head. “No. He’s not much of the outdoor type. We met studying at the library.” She laughs. “He’s an accountant. I handle the woods, he ventures into the untamed wilderness of taxes and investment agreements.”

  “Wow,” I note. “I bet the two of you have some interesting conversations over dinner.”

  Jennifer chuckles and pulls away from the building, bouncing out of the gravel area behind the building and toward one of the access roads.

  The next parking lot is the same as the first. I walk around looking at each of the cars, but none of them is my rental. Jennifer seems confused as I examine each car. I realize to her it must look like I’m casing them. When I’m finished looking at each car and am satisfied none of them is the one I’m looking for, I get back into the cart beside her. She looks at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Having trouble remembering what your car looks like?”

  “Actually, yes. Like I said, I’m having some memory issues. And, it’s a rental. I flew into the area, so I’m not as familiar with this vehicle as I would be with my regular one. I’m hoping that when I see it, it’ll stand out to me,” I tell her.

  This is enough to satisfy her, and she starts up the cart again, heading towards the next parking area serving another campground. There are only a few cars here, but one of them stands out to me. Something about it draws me toward it and when I peer in through the driver’s side window, I see the center console I remember from my flash of memory. On the dashboard, pointing up toward the windshield, is a vibrant yellow piece of paper.

  Pressing my hands to the hood, I lean over and tilt my head so I can read what it says. Jennifer comes up beside me.

  “It’s a camping permit,” she says. “Remember, I told you about them.”

  I nod. “D. Steele. That’s me.”

  “I guess we should have started by looking your name up in the reservation system,” Jennifer says with a chuckle. “It would have saved us the adventure.”

  “Yeah, that might have been a good move.”

  It didn’t even occur to me to have her check the reservations. I didn’t think there was any way I would have planned on staying here in the park. It’s not that I don’t camp. I enjoy getting out into the quiet and spending time outdoors, especially after the time I spent near Arrow Lake with Xavier, Emma, and Sam. Before that trip, I never wanted to go back to that place. I never wanted to see any of it again. But going back, forcing myself to face my past, and finally clearing my name completely by discovering the truth of what happened there gave me peace. It gave me back that part of myself.