The Body in the Woods: A Point Last Seen Mystery

On Thursday morning, Nick tells his mom and his older brother Kyle, that he and the SAR team are in the Oregonian newspaper. Nick hopes this impresses Kyle, but Nick’s mom and brother don’t seem interested. Kyle says nobody reads the newspaper anymore, while his mom says that since he’s only 16 years old, maybe he shouldn’t be involved in something like this. He tells her SAR is easing his ADHD. Nick’s mother asks why they and not the police are doing the work; Nick explains that volunteers don’t cost anything.

At school, everyone is talking about quarterback Jericho Jones. He and a friend robbed a man at gunpoint at a bus stop using Airsoft guns. Kylie Milani thinks it’s unfair what happened to Jericho. When Nick tries to discuss the girl in Forest Park with Kylie, she is only interested in the fate of their football team without Jericho. At lunch, Nick asks Sasha Madigan if she saw the newspaper article about Miranda Wyatt. Sasha is disturbed that Nick was crawling over the ground where the body was found.

During Biology class, Nick is called to the office: Detective Harriman wants him at the station to identify a suspect. Nick is excited to be a key witness.

Ruby parks near the Portland Police Central Precinct and thinks about the people she met on the trail. She’s busy thinking about the two kinds of lineups investigators use when a man asks her for money on the street. She tells him no and apologizes before entering the police lobby. The Central Precinct’s circular architecture is impressive with its granite directory and curved staircases. Ruby is there to see Detective Harriman.

As she remembers a continuity error from an episode of 30 Rock the night before, Ruby gets a visitor’s badge. Detective Harriman steps out and asks Ruby to look at some photos, one at a time. When the fifth photograph is turned over Ruby tells Detective Harriman that it’s him—the man with the blue duffel bag and a nose that looked like it had been broken in the past.

Ruby asks Detective Harriman if he contacted the other people they had seen; they talked to the birdwatcher and the mountain biker, but they couldn’t locate the guy with the dogs or the unhoused man. Ruby offers to look at shoe prints, promising the detective she can identify the one she saw next to the body, but Detective Harriman tells her she may have already given them everything they need.

On Friday, the killer is bored. He is irritated that people act as if they don’t see him. He imagines how fearful they would be to know who and what he is. When he feels invisible, he remembers the first time he killed. He convinced a hungry unhoused girl to eat food he bought her from McDonald’s in a nearby park. The girl inhaled the food and told him about her life and how she had run away from home. He told her about some of his interests, but when she wasn’t really listening, he grew irritated. He attacked her and strangled her. She shrieked and her eyes widened as she clawed at her throat. When she was still, he placed her on the ground and felt like she had given him a gift—the power to take away life.

On Saturday, Alexis gets up in the middle of the night and calls for her mom, but Tanya isn’t home. It’s been two days since she ran out. Alexis worries about her mother getting picked up and taken to a mental hospital; Alexis is scared that she would then be sent to foster care. Alexis heads for the coffee shop down the block.

Mara, the owner of the café, hasn’t seen Tanya. Alexis checks the park and then calls the nearest hospital. She thinks about calling a morgue, but decides she can’t handle that. Alexis decides to check downtown Portland. She takes the bus to the library and watches a few unhoused people waiting for it to open. Alexis worries she’ll be in their shoes someday.

Inside, Alexis races to a computer to check the link Ruby sent her on Facebook messenger about the man with the duffel bag: a weed dealer named Jay Adams. He has been charged with Miranda’s murder. The police confiscated a handgun, two knives, and 56 marijuana plants from a spot in Forrest Park. Police believe Miranda Wyatt stumbled across Jay Adams’s grow spot and he strangled her to keep quiet.

Alexis prints out a photo of Miranda Wyatt to show her mom, if she finds her. She also prints a photograph of her mother. Young people without homes pretend to read, but actually sleep, throughout the library. Alexis is wearing a hat, gloves, and coat, and is still shivering. She’s worried about her mom being cold. Alexis shows an unhoused man a photograph of Miranda. The man says that he’s seen her around.

The man knows Miranda as an “oogle,” a rich kid who pretends to be a part of the homeless scene. It’s a fad for kids from Beaverton or West Hills: They get drunk or vandalize stuff and then actual people who don’t have homes are blamed for it. He is irritated by the thought that the teenagers who do this get to sleep in their warm beds at night. This fits what Alexis has seen on Miranda’s Facebook page.

Alexis gives the man a dollar even though she can’t spare it and moves down the street to ask other people if they’ve seen her mom. No one has. At the bus, Alexis sees a young girl and a man arguing. The man tries to grab the girl by her wrists, but she breaks free and runs off. Alexis immediately recognizes him: “It was the guy they had seen running along the trail the day they found the dead girl,” (136).

On Saturday, George Hines, an overweight man, is jogging to get back in shape. As he huffs, he realizes the trail is steeper than he remembers. He tries to focus on his feet, telling himself it’s only a mile. George thinks about how seven years ago, he was fifty pounds lighter. It’s getting dark and George has no idea how close he is to the end of the trail. He checks his backpack for a flashlight, knowing he doesn’t have one, and sees only his water bottle, cigarettes, and a lighter. He’s lost and it’s starting to snow. He calls Doreen and then an emergency dispatcher. He’s freezing and the sun has set. George is afraid that he could die.

Nick receives a text about a lost hiker in Columbia Gorge. He asks his mom to borrow the car. When she asks if it’s safe, Kyle comes into the kitchen and tells his mom to let Nick go. Nick feels supported by his brother.

Inside the SAR van, Jon reminds the volunteers to stay focused and not give in to short tempers or distractions. Jon tells them about the lost George Hines. They will be broken up into three groups for each trail in case George tries to run away from them, as people sometimes do when they’re panicking.

Two hours later, Nick spots a small fire and yells out that he’s found George. George embraces Jon in a tight hug. He’s burned everything, even his hat, to keep the fire going. Max gives George an energy bar and George lifts him up in a hug. Jon radios their position to base camp. Nick gives George a large fleece and receives a hug. He tries to keep a poker face, but he loves the embrace.

It takes them hours to get past a small landslide on the trail. George Hines rests before driving himself home. In the SAR van, Nick is grinning, imagining how proud his father would be that he spotted George.

Tiffany Yee wakes up in the middle of the night and takes a moment to remember where she is: the guest room of the man’s house, the only place she can actually get some sleep. She thinks he’s a nice enough guy: He hasn’t put his hands on her yet. Wondering what time it is, she reaches for her phone and realizes it’s gone. Tiffany panics as her phone is her life-line to her brother and caseworker; she’d rather skip a meal than not pay for the phone.

Her head feels slushy. She gets out of bed and holds onto the bedpost until her balance returns. She looks under the bed despite how dizzy she is but finds nothing. Her phone is definitely gone. She wonders if the man took it—but why would a rich guy like him want such an old, heavy, outdated phone?

Two days prior, three of her brother’s friends caught Tiffany looking for food in the Safeway dumpster. She was humiliated. It was obvious she was living on the streets by her smell; she spent her days using heroin and stealing Xanax or Valium. She’s thought about killing herself.

Tiffany wonders if she left her phone in the bathroom. She peers downstairs and sees the man—Mr. Smith—sitting at his dining room table looking through her phone. Tiffany’s phone is more personal than her own body: It holds all of her notes. She asks him to give it back and notices something new on it. Mr. Smith says it’s just a little tracker. She is confused as she realizes he’s been monitoring her location, but he tells her not to worry—he’s just deleted it. He hands her the phone and with his other hand slips a cord around her neck. She has no time to react.