I called the U.S. Embassy in San José, worried it might be closed. A recording said, “Push two for life and death.”

I pushed two. A voice answered and said something about a duty officer, then gave me a Mr. Zagursky’s email. I scribbled it in my notebook, then emailed the photo, map, and information to him. I found an email address for the Puerto Jiménez police and sent them the same content, adding Gordy’s suggestion to access Roman’s bank records. I told them all that I was coming down.

My body crawled with anxiety and a sense of panic held barely at bay. I wanted to be down there right now. Every minute counted. While the tropics might seem hot and idyllic, the rains are cold and the chance of rapid infection is real.

I called my boss at work: “Roman’s missing.”

Her response was immediate, empathetic. “Oh, Roman,” she said genuinely, “I am so sorry,” as if he were already dead, that I’d already lost him.

Hurt and angry, I told her, “I’m going down to find him and am not sure when I’ll be back.” What I meant was that he wasn’t dead, that she didn’t need to be sorry because I would bring him home alive.

THAT EVENING I packed jungle gear. Shoes and shirts and pants and a pack. Compass and head lamp. Stove and a cookpot. Dehydrated food. Bug-net tent and tarp. Sleeping pad and sheet. We would have to move fast. Bring only necessities.

My feelings of shock ebbed, exposing a reef of guilt. He’d written that he’d be out on the fifteenth. I was home then. I should have read his email.

I should have given him twenty-four hours, then called Costa Rica on the sixteenth to say he was twenty-four hours overdue, then flown there on the seventeenth. I could have done that.

But I didn’t. A full week had passed since I could have flown down. It was impossible not to see him suffering, waiting, wondering, Dad, where are you? I told you where I went. I said I’d be out in five days. Dad, come get me!

Hoping for the best, I emailed him: i am coming down to look for you. The subject read email please!

My flight left for Atlanta at eight-thirty at night on Thursday, July 24. All day I switched from phone to computer, scrambling to put things together. My brain struggled to function as if nothing were wrong while my heart wrested to take control and panic. Peggy, too, called and emailed friends and family, sounding the alarm. Within twenty-four hours, friends set up a fund and deposited money for our search.

The Tico Times, a Costa Rican English-language newspaper, ran a story. People reached out to help. Then, Facebook kicked in. Someone posted on an Osa-specific page about a sighting. I messaged him and he wrote back:

I am 90% sure that I saw your son based on his picture—did he have a tan safari type outfit (shorts and shirt matching and a hat)? I remember seeing him walking alone along the road and I took him for one of the many volunteers who are always in that area and who never want a ride. I made eye contact with him and he nodded. He was looking into the woods at something that caught his attention. If you want you can call. Hopefully he is simply walking through some tough terrain out in the park and working his way back.

I ached for it to be true. But it couldn’t be Roman dressed in safari garb, turning down a ride on a road. I knew that it wasn’t. Together we had spent too many months over too many years in too many countries on too many continents for that to be the son I raised.

He was in trouble. I knew.

Chapter 21

Dondee

Dondee, MINAE headquarters, July 25, 2014.

Courtesy of the author

Thai Verzone is a good friend and my first choice for trips needing multiple skills. Son of an Italian father and a Vietnamese mother, he is a consummate traveler who blends in anywhere with his one-world look and winning smile. During his twenties, he guided clients up mountains in Alaska, Nepal, South America, even Antarctica. In his thirties, he served as a refugee-camp volunteer in Africa and the Middle East. Now in his forties, he’s a physician’s assistant in Anchorage. For a few years he visited every continent once a year, including Antarctica. He even flew to the South Pole in winter as a medic for an emergency evacuation, receiving a letter from President Obama for his efforts.

In 2011, another scientist and I were headed to western China to search for Tibetan ice worms on a month-long expedition. Three days before our departure, my collaborator called to say he couldn’t go. Minutes after hanging up, I texted Thai: Can you go to China on Tuesday?

Thai texted back a minute later. China? Sure! Let me check at the clinic.

Given leave from work, Thai applied to the Chinese Embassy for a visa. They refused his passport. “Too dirty,” they said. He would have to get another one, but felt confident he could, and would catch me in China a week later. We agreed to meet at an airport in remote Yunnan Province.

In Yunnan, he walked off the airplane with a young woman. Their body language and animated conversation said they were old friends. Spotting me, he grinned and hugged hello. “Hey, Roman! We made it!” He turned to the young woman, asking me, “Hey, could we give . . . ,” but stopped mid-question to flash his heart-melting smile at her to ask, “What was your name again?” He repeated her name and finished his question, “. . . a ride into town?”

That was Thai: making friends wherever he went, comfortable with whatever was thrown his way. It was also like Thai to drop everything and come down to help me.

BY THE TIME he and I landed in Puerto Jiménez it was Friday afternoon, July 25. The red-eye from Alaska by way of Georgia had left me dimwitted and under-slept. Having Thai along with his outdoor skills, problem-solving abilities, and collaborative nature reassured me. We would find Roman.

We headed to the Iguana Lodge, a few miles beyond Puerto Jiménez. Nestled in a beachside forest, the Iguana hosts its guests in a handful of screened-in cabanas and eclectic structures. The oldest building—the Pearl—is a restaurant and bar, with upstairs rooms and a grassy lawn fronting a palm-lined beach. The newest building is a two-story, open-plan yoga studio with a poolside veranda. Between the pool and the Pearl is the biggest building. This central structure is a postmodern hut with a round thatched roof, a cool, shady downstairs of stone tile, and an upstairs for more formal, open-air dinners. Its office has a landline, computer, and printer we would come to depend on.

Toby and Lauren Cleaver, the American couple who own the Iguana, greeted us. Parents of adult children themselves, they expressed their condolences with sympathy and a sincere desire to help. Both are well respected by their local employees and, like Thai, would be indispensable in my search for Roman. But Thai’s help would last only a few weeks. The Cleavers’ unwavering support would stretch to months and years. Iguana would serve as our base camp on nearly every trip to the Osa.

Five-foot-two, blond, and smiling, Lauren was fit and fiery and spoke fluent Spanish with a distinctly American accent. Constantly in motion, with a big heart and a sense of justice, she offered to help in any way and, unlike everyone else, she was ideally positioned to do so. Her staff of twenty from the Osa, most of whom spoke English, both liked and respected her, as did former employees who’d moved on to other jobs.

Both Lauren and Toby had been attorneys who needed to escape the ethical ambiguities they faced as defense lawyers in Colorado. They’d bought the Pearl twenty years earlier, renamed it the Iguana Lodge, tripled its size, and added a pool. The Cleavers’ sharp, practical knowledge of how Costa Rica functions, together with their extensive network of connections, would be invaluable during our search.

Thai and I drove to the office of the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), the government agency in charge of Corcovado National Park—a low, one-story gated compound next to the airport. A uniformed man led us to a spare room with a dozen chairs and tables pushed together. A dozen or so men huddled in groups speaking softly. Thin senior MINAE officials in tan uniforms contrasted with husky, young Cruz Roja volunteers in navy vests marked by a red cross. The local police stood by silently in black boots and side arms, their ball caps emblazed with “Fuerza.” In Corcovado, where criminals are common, MINAE, Cruz Roja, and Fuerza search as teams.

Someone had put together a poster titled “Muchacho Perdido” with “Missing Person” in English just below. Roman grinned in glasses and a scraggly beard. I’d sent the photo only two days before and already it was plastered all over Puerto Jiménez with his name “Cody Roman Dial” and his weight and height in both Spanish and English. The sight of the poster everywhere both reassured and troubled me. Something was being done: people were looking. But Roman was missing and that left me anxious to do something myself. Standing there in the MINAE building was not enough.