Taking a glance at the cabin behind mine, I see the curtains are now open. The red SUV is still sitting in the driveway, but everything is still, like the people inside might still be sleeping.

  The rest of the cabin area has come alive. People are moving in and out of the cabins, children are playing in some of the grassy areas, and cars are open as campers pack them with equipment for the day. A few campfires are burning as people forego their cabin kitchens and opt to make their breakfast on the open flame.

  Wondering if there’s anywhere in the park where I might get some coffee, I get in my car and head for the outpost. I look carefully at the cars parked in the lot, comparing them to what I remember from the night before. Maybe I missed an abandoned car here. But it looks like only one of them is familiar, and by the sticker in the back window and the fact that it is parked at the very front of the lot, I’m guessing it actually belongs to someone who works at the park.

  Making sure my parking permit is still prominently displayed so there’s no question I’m supposed to be here and I’m not, in fact, attempting to break into a car or loitering on state property, I park and walk into the building. There are a couple of people wandering around among the displays, picking up items they either forgot or didn’t realize they needed. There’s also a line of people waiting to register. They have the look of anticipation on their faces, the antsy energy that comes with the beginning of a vacation.

  My attention is immediately drawn to a rough-hewn wood table sitting up against the wall holding a coffee maker and a stack of cups. I make a beeline for it. The little sign hanging above the table welcomes morning visitors to have a cup and advertises a local company that created the custom blend. Bags of the coffee fill a bookshelf beside the table and another sign, this one perched on top of the shelf, advertises that a portion of sales of the beans goes to the general fund for the maintenance and preservation of the park. It’s a welcome touch and brilliant on the part of whoever came up with it. Xavier would absolutely award them a gold star sticker. They’re imaginary, but it’s still nice to earn one.

  I take a sip of the coffee and feel it jolt straight through me.

  “It’s a bit strong.”

  I turn around and see Jennifer standing behind me, laughing at my apparent reaction to the sip. I nod.

  “It’s great, though. I was just wanting a cup of coffee and didn’t have any in my cabin.”

  She gestures toward the bags of beans. “This is the only place that blend is available. The parents of a girl who volunteers here have a bean roasting company. They created it just for the park.”

  “I bet it brings in a lot of money,” I smile, tucking a couple of bills from my wallet into a donation jar on the side of the table.

  She chuckles. “We’ll see. It just showed up a few days ago. But so far people really seem to like it. We’ve gotten quite a few donations from people coming through for cups in the mornings, and we’ve sold through a couple dozen bags already. One person said they were buying it as a souvenir for some family back where they’re from, which I thought was a neat idea. Better than yet another keychain. Anyway, how are things going? Can I help you find something?”

  She looks around the store like she’s gesturing toward everything they offer.

  “Actually, I was hoping I could ask you a few more things,” I tell her.

  “Sure.”

  She nods toward the counter and I follow her, sipping my coffee. Another employee is working with the customers registering and making purchases, but Jennifer leads me behind the counter to a heavy dark wood table pushed up against the wall. There’s a stack of vibrant pink and blue camping permits on one end along with stacks of other paperwork and what looks like a printout of reservations for today and tomorrow.

  Jennifer sits down at the table and pulls the stack of reservations closer to her. She gestures at a chair to her side.

  “Thanks,” I say, sitting down.

  “What can I do for you?” she asks.

  She scans the information on the first page of the reservations and then grabs a thick black permanent marker and one of the camping permits. She jots down information on it and sets it aside, then picks up a map and circles what I assume is the location of their campsite. From my angle, I can see it’s not one of the cabin sites, but on the other side of the park in one of the primitive locations.

  “I wonder where my map is,” I say, not really intending to say it out loud, but not stopping myself.

  She looks at me questioningly out of the corner of her eye. “Do you need a new one?”

  “Oh, no, I found my cabin. I was just noticing you circling the spot and wondered where mine is. Do you put one of those in the packet for everyone checking in as a camper?”

  “Yes,” she nods. “It’s really helpful for the people who get here outside of regular hours. If they aren’t familiar with the park, it can be really confusing finding their site.”

  “Good move. I actually wanted to ask about the reservations for the last week or so. Do you know of anyone who made a reservation and didn’t check out when they were supposed to? Or who never checked in?”

  “Why do you want to know?” she asks.

  I debate how much I’m going to tell her. I know I can’t just say curiosity has gotten the best of me. She’s not going to believe that. But I also don’t want to talk about the Thomas Auden murder and the possible link to the park, or about the unidentified, and so far unsubstantiated, woman.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I finally tell her. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Your memory came back?” she asks.

  I remember I gave her a vague explanation of having some scrambled memories because of my injuries out on the trail. I don’t feel like I need to go into any more detail than that, so I give a noncommittal shrug.

  “I mean, I never forgot that I’m a private investigator,” I chuckle.

  She purses her lips to give me a scolding look, then laughs and shakes her head.

  “That wasn’t exactly what I meant. I mean, you remember coming here.”

  “I’m still kind of working out the kinks. But what I do know is I’ve been working on a case and that case is the reason I came to this area. Now it has taken some pretty complicated turns and I need to figure out what exactly got me to this park when it did and why. And I think a lot of those answers could be found in the reservations.”

  Jennifer’s eyebrows tighten against each other and she cringes slightly at my suggestion.

  “I can’t give you information about who made reservations or anything like that,” she says. “If you had a warrant…”

  “Police get warrants. I’m a private investigator. We don’t have that luxury,” I tell her. “All we can do is ask.”

  “I’m sorry,” she shrugs. “It would be an invasion of privacy.”

  “I understand,” I say. I do. It’s frustrating as hell, but I do. “I’m not trying to put you in an awkward position or get you in trouble. But it would really help my investigation to find out who else was staying here, or at least had made a reservation here, in the last few days. Maybe you could still give me some information. I won’t ask about any particular names or people or anything, but if I ask some questions, can you answer them?”

  She seems hesitant, but also like she doesn’t want to just turn me away. She reaches for the other stacks of paper to compile the entire welcome packet for that particular reservation, folds the papers, and puts them in an envelope.

  “Alright,” she says.

  “I did my best to pay attention to all the cars in the lots and it didn’t look like there were any others that had been sitting around like mine,” I say.

  “Is that supposed to be a question?” Jennifer asks.

  “Consider it a leading statement,” I state.

  “Cars without permits are towed after twenty-four hours,” she says. “But the tow truck hasn’t been out here in the last month. And none of the cars in any of the lots had the same color parking permit as yours.” She gives me a hint of a smile when she finishes her careful response. “Did that help?”

  “Maybe. It’s something. Alright, let’s try another one. We both know that the park and the trails are closed after dark.”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright. Do you have a way of knowing if anyone accessed the after-hours entrance point the night before the ambulance had to come get me? And, if so, is there any way of knowing who it was?” I ask.

  “Yes, there is a way of knowing if someone accessed that entrance. Every time it’s opened, it’s recorded on the computer. Remember I mentioned that everyone who makes their reservation ahead of time gets a code in their confirmation email.”

  “Right. And they put it into the keypad on the front gate and that’s what gives them access,” I nod. “I’m assuming it’s not just a standard passcode that anyone could hand out, right? If it has to be in their email, each code should be unique.”

  Jennifer hesitates, then nods in confirmation. Each individual campsite and staff member has an assigned unique code. So when the guest types in that code, we know which specific reservation is being accessed. It’s another layer of confirmation and security of who’s in the park at what time.“

  “So, if I was still unconscious when they got me to the hospital, and nobody knew anything about me, they would have been able to ask here, and you could check the computer and see if I checked in using my code,” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  “Does asking about my own reservation count as something you can’t tell me?” I ask.

  Her eyes slide over to me, then back to the permit in front of her. She finishes it and sets it aside like she did the others.

  “No, I think that’s acceptable. Do you want me to find out if you used your code to get in through the gate?” she asks.

  “That would be fantastic.”

  Jennifer puts her marker down and walks back over to the counter. I subtly turn my head so I can watch her out of the corner of my eye. I already know the drawer at the back of the counter has a key lock on it, but in the times I’ve seen it opened, I’ve never seen anyone use a key. It’s possible the drawer is unlocked at the beginning of the day or of each shift and then locked at night, but it’s also possible it’s never locked. From this angle, I can also see that there’s an open area under the center of the counter where a printer and scanner have been set up.

  She goes to the computer sitting on the desk and touches the mouse to wake up the screen. A password bar appears and I watch the movement of her fingers to try to discern the code. They move over the number grid on the keyboard and I tap my fingers against the side of my thigh in as close to the same pattern as I can. I repeat the movement over and over, creating a sensory memory of the taps.

  The main screen pulls up and Jennifer clicks through a few commands. The font is small so I can’t read what’s on the screen from this distance, but I can see that there are columns of text. The sorted entries are likely a list of the codes and what time each accessed the gate. I see her scroll through, then jot something down on a bright pink sticky note beside her. She closes out the document and comes back to the table.

  “Here,” she says. “It looks like you did quite a bit of coming and going.” She points out a series of numbers across the top of the note. “And these are all the times it was used at the front gate. It looks like you registered in person, but then you used your code to get through the gate during off-hours at least four times over the next two nights. The last time it was used was very early in the morning the day you were brought to the hospital.”

  “What time?” I ask.

  “Two-thirty AM.”

  “Did anyone else access the gate near that time?” I ask. I can immediately see the hesitation on her face and I’m quick with the follow-up. “I’m not asking who it was or where they were staying. I’m just asking if anyone else accessed that gate that night.”

  “Not that night,” she tells me. “It was only you. We didn’t even have anyone show up needing to register.”

  I nod. “Alright. How about security footage? Are there cameras that cover the park?”

  “The only people who have access to anything like that would be the security staff,” Jennifer says. “And I have a good feeling they would only give any footage over to the police.”

  I can work around that. It’s not unusual for places to have very specific policies about not handing over security footage to anyone but the police. Sometimes even with the specification that there must be a warrant. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to still view the footage and get the answers I need. There might be rules about who can actually take possession of the footage and remove it from the property, but that doesn’t always mean the security staff won’t be willing to give a little preview showing.

  “So, there are cameras,” I note.

  “In some places,” she clarifies. “But not over the entire park.”

  That’s more of an obstacle.

  “Not over the entire park?”

  “Other than trail cams to track wildlife, there are only a couple of places in the park that have coverage, but systems weren’t ever installed in places like the entrances, the trails, or the campsites,” Jennifer tells me. “People come out here to escape all the technology and the feeling that people are watching them all the time. They want to feel unplugged and away from the pressures of the outside world.”

  “But lord help you if they can’t find a reliable spot of Wi-Fi,” I crack.

  She laughs. “Definitely for some of them.”

  I let out a sigh. “Alright, so you said there are some areas of the park that do have cameras. Parking lots? Laundry facilities?”

  “No. Mainly the restricted areas that have dangerous equipment or utilities, the areas that border private land within the park, and the rangers’ residences. There’s no coverage in the majority of the park. We don‘t have many problems around here that would necessitate the use of the cameras, so it seems like they would be an expensive invasive feature that wouldn‘t really have any benefit. People don‘t want to go out into nature and see cameras watching them at every turn.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a security concern?” I ask.

  Jennifer shrugs. “It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be worth it out here. And it definitely wouldn’t be feasible with our operating budget. Our security staff is already stretched pretty thin and with security like that, you have to have staff watching the stream all the time, which means adding payroll. Plus the cost of the equipment and the operating costs as well as extra utility costs. It’s not a priority when we have very little wiggle room in our budget each year.”

  “Yeah, I was kind of afraid you would say that, but I was hoping maybe even nature had gone Big Brother, too. Alright. Well, thank you for your help. I really appreciate it,” I tell her.

  “Sorry I couldn‘t give you more,“ Jennifer says. “Let me know if you think of anything else.“

  I nod and give her a wave before starting for the door. The display of coffee catches my eye again and I stop to grab a bag. Jennifer smiles as I buy the beans.

  “Fuel for me and for the cart you drove me around in,“ I say, returning her smile.

  Waving once more, I leave and get in my car. Pulling out the key card to the hotel again, I call the number on the front and ask for directions from the park. It seems like that‘s a question they get fairly often because the man who answered the phone rattles off directions like he doesn‘t even have to think about them. And like he doesn‘t think the person on the other end actually needs to follow them, they just wanted to check in with him and test his geographic knowledge of the area.

  Fortunately for me and my actual need to arrive at the hotel somewhat soon, I‘m good with directions and am able to process them quickly. They aren‘t complex, so I‘m comfortable I can handle them as I head out of the parking lot and toward the next step in figuring out what happened in all those hours that I lost.

  I’m aware I’m following my own footsteps back to the hotel. It’s a strange sensation to feel like I’m passing through a lingering impression of myself still there, going the other direction, like that moment and this one are superimposed and for a brief second I am in both times, in both states of mind.

  I wish I could hear the thoughts I know were rushing through my head. This wasn’t a casual drive to the campground. I wasn’t looking forward to kicking back and relaxing in the fresh air. The times I drove this way were tense, filled with thoughts of my client and the job he sent me to do.

  From my reservation and the items left in the cabin when I got there, I know at least one of the times I made this drive was simply to go from the hotel to check into the campground. I registered for my cabin reservation well before Thomas Auden‘s death but after I’d already taken the hotel room. Which means something brought me not just to the area, but specifically to the park before he was murdered, and then something brought me back afterward. The question is whether they are the same.

  When I get to the hotel, I’m glad to see it doesn’t share a lot of features with the Good Knight Inn. It’s not fancy by any means, just a basic middle-of-the-pack chain hotel, but it looks clean, well-maintained, and safe, and that’s all that really matters to me in a hotel. Walking into the lobby confirms it all for me. There’s no personal concierge with a surgically augmented smile rushing to greet me and find out anything they can possibly do to make my stay better, but it’s cheerful, neat, and well-appointed with all kinds of furniture no one will ever sit in. This is that kind of hotel that just makes you immediately crave waffles and orange juice out of a machine. A good morning in my eyes.