Green Spaces and High Places:

He’s dead. Boo barked once. Paused. Then another, signaling a cadaver find. With live finds, he returned and led Nate to the subject. With cadavers, he barked.

Nate picked up his pace and soon broke out of the tree line and into the open grass. At the crest of the hill, the deputy saw his dog sitting at attention next to the body. Three days of frantic searching concluded with this peaceful scene. The undisturbed remains of the old man lay in the grass, his back against a large, black rock, facing east, head bowed. He was dressed as a gentleman, in a green and dark blue plaid fine wool shirt, grey wool pants, a suede jacket, and new hiking boots. His hat was tilted over his eyes, and his hands were in his lap. In his left hand, he clutched a small, black leather cover Moleskine notebook, like the kind Nate used for his investigation notes.

When training, Nate praised Boo lavishly. But with a real find like this, Boo was genuinely sad and needed comfort. Nate put his hand in the soft fur below his chin and cradled his head. The air had lost its heavy afternoon heat and was turning crisp. The breeze had stilled. Down in the trees, the evening bird band was tuning up and getting ready to sing. Nate scanned half-light foothills and the still snowy peaks made orange in the setting sun. It was a scene that made you think of eternity. “You couldn’t pick a more beautiful place to die,” he said in a soft voice, knowing the dog would be comforted by the sound of his voice.

After a long period of reverence, Nate pulled his radio off his belt and pressed the talk button. “CP this is 1J745. Stand by to copy GRS coordinates for a package.” Nate’s radio call disappointed 150 plus searchers scattered across 50 square miles, hoping to find the old man. Nate’s experience and skilled golden retriever made his chances of a find better than all the searchers combined.

The sheriff answered and said, “Hold the crime scene till the helicopter arrives.” But Nate could see no evidence of a crime. It was death by the disease ravaging his body, or a self-inflicted drug overdose, aggravated by a broken heart. When the old man had lost his wife of 55 years just three years ago, his children had moved him into a care center and forgotten him. At the care center, he had “learned to live online.” He played chess in a club with Russians, Ukrainians, and Israelis. He had day traded in the stock market, commented in news chat rooms, and ordered anonymous gifts for needy care center residents. He also walked three miles every day - rain or shine. But when the terminal diagnosis came, he began brooding. In three months, his health and spirits had declined dramatically.

A week ago, a large package arrived at the care center from an outdoor clothing outfitter. At the same time, his caregivers reported that the old man had requested ten blank envelopes. He had also made trips to the bank and his lawyer’s office.

Four days ago, just before his primary attendant quit to “follow his dream of going to college,” the old man slipped out of the care center. That same day two servers in the cafeteria also quit because they “wanted to be home with their kids and no longer needed to work.” The Uber driver who picked him up was also difficult to find. He had sold his car that afternoon and retired to Florida. He said he had picked up the old man and taken him to his wife’s grave, to the post office, a school, the church, and then dropped him to the trailhead six miles out of town.

“I asked him if he wanted me to wait or come back for him. But he just said, ‘someone is coming for me,’ so I left,” the Uber driver told the sheriff in a phone call from Florida.

After marking the landing zone for the helicopter, an exhausted deputy and his dog sat on a rock, twenty feet from the body, and watched the light slowly leave the day. This three-day search had cut a hole in his family life at a difficult time. The trouble at home was about what the trouble at home was always about. Money. But duty-driven, when the call came, Nate and Boo were the first to respond. For three days the search grew from a few volunteers to pretty much every able-bodied person in the county. Rumors about envelopes of money ran through the little town like a flash flood. Nine of the ten envelopes were accounted for. Each night when Nate reported into the command center, the sheriff told him about the crazy behavior of a growing number of people hoping to find a small treasure in a white envelope in this vast search area.

Gradually, the sacred scene was violated by the sound of the approaching AW119 Agusta helicopter contoured the treetops below, then rose like a loud floating angel over the grassy ridgeline and settled into the flat landing zone that Nate had marked with high visibility tape. The sheriff jumped out of the back door before the helicopter engine shut down. “We better search the area before the crowd gets here,” he yelled into Nate’s ear. For twenty minutes, as the medics packaged and loaded the body, Nate and his boss did a grid search but found nothing.

As the helicopter engine began winding up, the sheriff put his hand on Nate’s shoulder and yelled, “You flying?” “Walking,” Nate shouted over the growing noise. His truck was at the trailhead a mile away, and Boo hated flying.

The bird rose, turned into the wind, then dropped its nose to gain airspeed and headed towards town. The silence restored peace to the darkening ridge. Nate turned walked towards home in the shadows, already thinking about the upcoming difficult conversation about needs, wants, and the bottom line. Then Boo barked. He was at the rock where the body had been, pointing with his nose. Nate saw the half-size black book with a soft leather cover lying now open on the ground.

He picked it up where it had opened and read:

$345 k:

Lawyer

Attendant

Server #1

Server #2

George (oldest)

Cynthia (middle)

Alex (youngest)

Church

School

Finder

On the last page were three words: “inventions, playful, fanfare.”

“Probably delusional,” he thought putting the book in his pocket and heading down the trail. Before he reached his truck, a dozen frenzied treasure hunters passed him going up the mountain with flashlights and GPS devices in hand. None of these people were prepared to be out of sight of the parking lot, he thought. There was a media ambush by reporters more comfortable in the parking lot than in the pines. Nate was a lousy interview, but he knew how to say “no comment” with authority. Boo was the consolation prize. He obliged with the reporters who shot video of the dog who had “found the eccentric millionaire.” “He wasn’t a millionaire,” thought Nate. “And he was not eccentric.”

Nate was greeted by the smell of homecooked food. The first real dinner in three days with his wife and son. Nothing fancy. They had cut the food budget to save for his son Mike’s college tuition. They were going to sell the truck and maybe borrow money on the house. The boy had worked hard and deserved a better launch. But four years in the Army and eighteen years as a first responder did not leave much room in a tight budget about to get tighter.

Dinner talk turned to the search. Neighbors were planning to go to the mountains in hopes of finding the envelope whose contents were now rumored to be in the millions. Nate laughed. “There are not millions,” he said as he pulled the leather notebook out of his pocket and read the last two pages.

“My guess is you are the finder,” Nate’s wife said hopefully. “But what do those three words mean?” she asked. Nate shrugged, “The ramblings of a drugged and dying man.” Then Mike piped in. “Why three words? Why three periods? And why those words?” he said, like one of those television detectives trying to focus the audience on the obvious. He began typing furiously on his smartphone while uttering “inventions.playful.fanfare.” After a few minutes of intensive searching, he said, “I’m downloading the app now.” Then before Nate could finish screwing his face into a puzzled look, Mike said, “Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“The cemetery.” He was already partly out the door.

Nate took two more big bites of his wife’s casserole, swallowed, kissed her on the cheek, grabbed a roll, and followed his son out the door. An exhausted Boo did not move from his curled-up position on the rug. He was trying to look invisible.

“How do you get cemetery with those words?” Nate asked as he climbed into the passenger side of the truck.

“With the whatthreewords app,” said the college-bound son. “It’s an app that uses words for GPS coordinates. They are easier to remember. Any 3-meter square in the world can be described by three unassociated words. It’s mostly used in Europe.”

It was dark now, but the iron gate to the cemetery was still open, and a few tired old streetlamps stood night guard over well-maintained long rows of lonely granite monuments that stretched across the green grass overlooking the small town. Nate could see the markers for his own parents and recognized names from his childhood, high school, and from his years with search and rescue.

“Over here,” Mike’s cell phone guided them to the spot.

The massive withered four-day-old bouquet stood on a grave Nate identified as the old man’s wife. Her name was Maurine. Among the flowers was a white envelope with Nate’s name on it. He opened and read:

Nate,

Thank you for finding me. I read about you and Boo online, and figured you were the only ones who could find me at my rock. I counted on your curiosity to take you one more step and come here.

Fifty-eight years ago, I put on my best outfit, and took Maurine on a picnic to that rock. After dessert, we sat holding hands and watching the sun go down. As we were looking at the horizon turn pink, I asked Maurine to marry me. In our years together, she gave me blessings I never deserved.

Thank you for your service. Please accept this token of appreciation. Use it as you see fit.

With appreciation…

Nate pulled a cashier’s check with his name on it for 20 thousand dollars out of the white envelope.

“What’s that?” Mike asked.

“Your scholarship.”