Periodic Journeys & The Mountain Range

A trap is never more perfect than when the prey believes she found the trail on her own.

Monday evening. The Boston night growled with rain against the windowpanes.

Lauren stood under the shower until her skin turned red, trying to wash the solvents and quicklime out of her pores. The hot water couldn't reach what lay under them.

When she came down in her robe, Chloe was curled on the sofa, her face lit from below by her phone and by something very close to happiness.

"Julian and I have coffee tomorrow after class," Chloe said, without looking up. "He's meeting me at the bus stop."

"Somewhere public," Lauren said, keeping her voice light. "And remember what we said about his place."

"I know, Mom. Not a word." Chloe hugged her and went up the stairs two at a time.

Lauren stayed where she was, holding a mug she didn't remember making. On Saturday, the advice about pride had been a kindness. Tonight it was a leash, and she knew it.

Late night. Eleven-thirty PM.

After ensuring Chloe was fast asleep and the front door was triple-locked, Lauren returned to her private study. She turned on her official police laptop connected to the Homicide Division's internal network.

The monthly chemical purchases at Snyder's shop were only half the puzzle. Lauren needed to find anomalies in Julian Frost's travel patterns.

A poor student who didn't own a personal car, saved every penny, used no credit cards... how did he travel whenever he left the city?

Lauren accessed the Interstate Bus Network surveillance database and the Amtrak regional passenger rail system for the Northeast. She typed in his identification code, scanning facial recognition data and online ticket purchase records under Julian's name over the past year.

The computer screen flickered continuously. Data cascaded down in broken lines of green text.

And then, the query results materialized.

Lauren held her breath. Her pupils contracted.

Amidst a flurry of local city bus rides between Boston University and Dorchester, six high-end long-distance bus trips appeared, departing late at night via Peter Pan Bus Lines.

The trips always occurred on the very next night or two days after he purchased his chemical supplies at Snyder's shop!

All of Julian's return tickets were booked for the following afternoon. Meaning he stayed in those remote mountain areas for exactly one night—a window of time between 3:00 AM and 8:00 AM. What was he carrying inside those heavy checked bags? And where was he going deep inside the forest during those brief hours?

Lauren focused on the most recent trip: August 23 – Dense forest near the town of Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. This was a rugged, primitive mountain region with virtually zero population density, covered by thick pine forests.

On the bus line's GPS tracking system, the night bus had dropped its passenger off at an abandoned roadside rest stop along Highway 302 at 2:45 AM.

"Coordinates 44.1833° N, 71.3625° W..." Lauren whispered, her fingers typing rapidly to generate specialized satellite terrain maps.

It was a coordinate completely isolated from human civilization.

Lauren stood up, gazing out the window into the night. Rain was still falling heavily. Her detective instincts urged her forward: she couldn't wait for cumbersome approval from superiors. If she waited for a search warrant or verification procedures from a neighboring state, Chloe might already be in danger.

She needed to reach those coordinates herself tonight.

Two o'clock in the morning.

Lauren's ash-gray sedan tore through the night along Interstate 93 North, heading straight toward the mountains of New Hampshire. The persistent autumn rain trailed her across the hundred-and-fifty-mile drive.

Four-fifteen AM.

The outdoor temperature in New Hampshire plunged to thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Dense mountain fog hung like thick gray cotton walls over the desolate asphalt.

Lauren pulled off to the shoulder, right beside a rusted metal sign with faded lettering: Crawford Notch State Park - 5 Miles.

She shut off the engine and pulled the handbrake. The sound of the motor dissolved into the terrifying silence of the autumn mountain forest. Around her, there was only the wind whistling through ancient pine branches and the faint murmur of an underground stream somewhere nearby.

Lauren opened the trunk. She equipped herself carefully:

She switched on the flashlight, its beam of white light tearing through the pitch-black night. Lauren stepped off the paved shoulder, heading straight onto a trail blanketed in rotting pine needles and jagged stones.

The air here was bone-chilling, biting her lungs like a thousand needles. Lauren tracked the GPS coordinates on her satellite phone. She journeyed nearly a kilometer deep into the forest, crossing a dry creek bed filled with slick cobblestones.

The deeper she went, the more treacherous the terrain became. Patches of thick fog reduced visibility to mere yards.

The coordinates indicated she was extremely close.

Lauren lowered her flashlight, carefully scanning every tree root and brush pile.

Suddenly, her footsteps froze.

Before her, concealed behind a dense thorny thicket and moss-covered boulders the size of houses, lay a clearing about three square meters wide.

Vastness apart from the surrounding forest floor covered in weeds and thick layers of decaying pine needles, this patch of earth had been recently dug up.

The gravel and dark soil here were fresh, not yet packed tight by rainwater. Someone had clearly used a shovel to dig a very deep pit here a few weeks ago, then backfilled it and deliberately scattered a layer of leaves over the top as camouflage.

Lauren felt her heart hammer like a war drum. She unclipped the military folding shovel from her back and knelt onto the damp ground.

Thwack... Thwack...

Lauren began to dig. The earth here was softer than usual. She put her back into shoveling out mouthfuls of dark mud, digging down nearly half a meter.

The scent of damp soil rose, laced with a strange smell... a faint, pungent chemical odor, resembling quicklime that had reacted with water and disinfectant solvents.

Clang!

The blade of Lauren's shovel struck a hard object below.

Her spine went cold. Lauren set the shovel aside, shining her tactical flashlight straight down into the pit. Donning her gloves, she frantically used both hands to clear the muddy earth to either side.

She expected—or feared—to see a fragment of human bone, a rotting hand, or a black plastic body bag.

But... there was no body.

At the bottom of the meter-deep pit, there was only a thick layer of grayish-white powder that had hardened into a solid block from rainwater—the crystallization of Quicklime (Calcium Oxide) mixed with dissolved Calcium.

And lying right in the center of that white powder was a partially melted piece of gray plastic.

Lauren used a pair of pliers to carefully extract the object.

It was a fragment of a 4-liter chemical jug that had been smashed and deliberately burned to erase traces. On the remaining piece of plastic, part of a red label remained visible: ...matic Hydrocarbon Solvent – Industrial Use Only.

A sudden wave of disappointment and bewilderment washed over the detective's mind. She looked at the dirty fragment of plastic in her hand and asked herself: What on earth am I doing?

Was she suffering from extreme paranoia? Julian's late-night bus trips... what if he was simply going hiking, camping, or visiting someone in the countryside? And this pit with chemical waste—what if it was just left behind long ago by road workers or loggers?

Lauren let out a long, deep sigh, exhaustedly wiping away the rainwater on her face. The tension and hyper-sensitive instincts of a mother over the past few days seemed to be turning her into someone who saw crime around every corner.

Lauren stood up, brushing the mud from her pants. Even though she had just taken a wild trip in the middle of the night, the anxiety in her heart hadn't completely dissipated. She would still need to watch Chloe with extreme care until she could personally verify everything about this young man.