Journal of the Dead Read Free Page A

in because they were experts at excavating shallow graves.
    Spread out in front of the team over a quarter acre were forty-some-odd items, including David Coughlin’s buried body. All of the disarray that Mattson and Maciha had noticed the day before—the food wrappers, the socks, the ripped-up tent—had now become much more than a random scattering of gear cast off in what appeared to have been a struggle for survival. Even the smallest item was potential evidence, its nature and placement a cipher that, when unraveled, could either support or refute Kodikian’s sparsely detailed claim about what had happened.
    To preserve the crime scene, the sheriff’s office had closed down the entire canyon the night before. Deputies had been posted at every entrance and exit, guarding them in shifts. Even now, tantalizingly close to the evidence, none of the investigators ventured in too far. They still needed a search warrant, and so the team stood on the island, making a list of everything in view. As the team called off the items, Eddy Carrasco radioed them to a deputy a mile away at the trailhead. The deputy, in turn, radioed everything back to the sheriff’s office in Carlsbad, where Gary McCandless typed them up on the warrant. This is exactly what Carrasco and his men saw:
    1 pair of men’s plaid underwear
    1 pair white socks 1 black knapsack
    1 dark brown T-shirt with white lettering
    Black nylon straps of various sizes
    2 red multipurpose knives, one with an open blade
    Assorted writing pens and color markers
    1 black-and-turquoise knapsack
    1 red leather camera case
    1 black nylon camera case
    1 green-and-maroon nylon tent
    2 pairs brown hiking boots
    1 blue-red-and-white-plaid shirt
    1 small green pillow
    1 black pocketknife, single blade, with what appears to be blood on it
    1 Leatherman-type multipurpose tool/knife
    2 black nylon Leatherman tool carriers
    1 cassette case with cassette inside
    2 boxes of poker cards
    Several small boxes of matches
    3 stainless steel pans
    1 clear Tupperware-type container
    2 dark green plastic plates
    2 dark green plastic bowls
    1 purple vinyl case
    1 yellow net
    2 plastic water bottles
    1 plastic grocery bag with unknown contents
    2 hard plastic containers
    1 carabiner—rock climbing equipment—rope guide
    1 black-and-gray article and 1 black plastic article (appears to be camera attachments)
    1 purple-green-and-tan nylon canvas
    1 blue sleeping bag
    1 gray plastic tarp
    2 purple nylon tent cases
    1 green sponge
    2 blue foam sleeping-bag pads
    1 pair sunglasses
    1 small butane burner
    Logging the items in the heat was tedious work, but the sheer number of objects that could potentially be evidence was promising. This did not include the items—such as the knapsacks—with hidden contents. While they reeled the list off into the radio, Carrasco’s second in command, Jim Ballard, panned a video camera over the site. A standard crime scene procedure; later on they would get an unwanted lesson as to why.
    After logging everything, there was nothing for the investigators to do but seek shade in the saltbush and wait for the warrant. Once that arrived, they could study the scene more closely and bag everything. As the team sat quietly in the heat, they couldn’t avoid looking at the cowboy grave. It was right in front of them, the tragic anchor of all that clutter, and a reminder of the worst part of the job still ahead. They knew that later in the afternoon they would lift the stones one by one and see a young man who they suspected had literally been a knife’s edge away from being the kind of person that cops, rescue workers, and rangers like to encounter more than any other: a survivor.
    Eddie Carrasco, who’d been a cop for twenty-five years and had come from a family rooted in the region since the Mexican era, wondered just how close to death Coughlin had been before Kodikian expedited his demise. He’d once worked with a thirty-three-year-oldwoman who’d been kidnapped,