Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [91]
“Yes, the body won’t be removed until the crime scene investigation is complete.”
With gasping breaths, I said, “I . . . I don’t want to see it again.”
The officer understood, and he instructed me to approach the summit while staying on the phone with him, and to call up to the pavilion when I was within earshot. He would instruct an officer to come down and meet me.
Within a few minutes, two officers were standing beside me. Gently and informally, they began to ask me questions—first for my sake, then for their own.
They asked me where I was hiking from, who I was hiking with, and if I had any friends or family in the area that they could contact.
Then they eased into the mandatory questions: whether I knew the victim, if I had seen anyone else this morning, whether I had noticed anything unusual the night before, and when I had first arrived at the scene.
Then one of the officers asked, “Do you have any questions for us?”
I looked up and sputtered, “Wa–was it a suicide?”
“We won’t know for sure until after the investigation, but all initial signs point to suicide.”
“Why were his hands tied?” I asked.
“Sometimes when people hang themselves, they’ll tie their hands behind their back. That prevents them from struggling and pulling at the rope.”
The answer gave me a pain in my chest and I suddenly felt nauseated. Why would a person try to kill himself if he knew that he would struggle against it? What the officer was saying, what I was hearing—it sounded so unnatural.
When the officer continued to explain the details of asphyxiation, I quickly asked him to stop. He did. Then he asked, “Is this your first stiff?”
At sunrise, this young man had had a story, a family, a lifetime of contributions and interactions. And now, only a few short hours later, he was simply a “stiff”?
My disgust must have been apparent, because without waiting for a response, the other officer quickly changed the subject.
“We can take you into the station to talk to a counselor if you want.”
“Yeah,” said the first one, “or we could help you find a motel room if you want to spend a night off the trail.”
“If you want us to contact friends or family for you, we will.”
The cops were trying to be helpful, but none of the options they presented seemed like the right choice. I was having a hard time making decisions. I didn’t want to speak with a counselor, a hotel room would be too expensive, and I definitely didn’t want to tell my parents. My mom would never let me keep hiking after this.
“You don’t have to decide right now. Why don’t you just think about it?” suggested the first officer.
Then the second officer tried to change the subject again.
“Have you seen a bear yet?” he said.
“Um . . . no, but I want to.”
“Oh, you’re bound to see a bear here. This is New Jersey. we have bears everywhere, around every turn. Trust me, you’re not going to leave the state without seeing one.”
Bears were a point of common interest that kept me from crying. And not knowing how else to comfort me, the officers mumbled about bears for ten minutes until the chief officer walked down the hill and asked me: “Have you decided what you want to do?”
“I want to hike,” I said.
He silently looked at me and nodded his head.
It was the hardest day of my life.
The only hiker I saw after leaving the pavilion was Neon, and I was in no mood to answer his questions about why the trail had been rerouted and what all the police were doing at Sunrise Mountain.
I had tears in my eyes for most of the day. I wanted to call someone, but I didn’t want my parents to find out what had happened, and I didn’t know what to say to my friends. At one point, I wasn’t paying attention to the trail and I became lost on a spur. It took almost an hour for me to find my way back.
Despite my sadness and confusion, I was glad that I was hiking. I felt like if I had gone into town with the officers, I wouldn’t have wanted to get back on the trail. It would have been good to talk to a counselor about what had happened, but the trail provided its own sort