Vargas wanted only to charge downstream. Near three-thirty in the afternoon, Peggy said it felt like rain was coming. I tried to get Vargas to stop. Instead he shook his head and urged us on. We’d already suffered one icy cold shower. Peggy wanted to camp before another but it went dark before we could. Sharp lightning exploded in thunder overhead and the sky cracked open, dumping rain and chilling us instantly. We stopped, waiting for it to slow so we could set up the tents.

With no end to the deluge in sight, I strung a line and hung the Visqueen. We huddled under it, Peggy pushing us all close to her, body to body for warmth. The river rose past our toes, our ankles, our shins. “Rio crescendo! Muy peligroso!” said Jefe. River rising! Very dangerous!

In a flash, the Rio Claro flooded from a knee-deep, clearwater creek to a ten-foot deep, brown torrent, flooding the beach where we had planned to pitch camp. I left to find a campsite on an old river terrace in the forest, beyond the reach of rising floodwaters. By the time I hurried back to the others, the water was nearing their knees.

“Vargas, aqui!”

Together we wrapped plastic around a cross pole and resuspended our Visqueen on the old, forested river terrace. Peggy and I set up our bug net tent atop the palm and heliconia leaves that father and son had cut to cover the mud. We fell asleep to the roar of the flood. It seemed unlikely we would reach the beach the next day, much less catch the three o’clock colectivo in Carate, sixteen miles away.

In the morning, Vargas made it clear that he and his son were heading back the way we’d come. Sirena, hours downstream and a half mile from the mouth of the Rio Claro, had the highest concentration of tourists, guides, and rangers in the park. He couldn’t risk being caught. Vargas gave us a machete, its point sharpened as a weapon. I shook his hand and then his son’s. He gave Peggy a farewell embrace.

Startled, she looked at me and smiled big: “He just kissed me! On the mouth!”

The sixty-two-year-old grinned, turned away, and headed back upstream with his son in tow.

Peggy and I would be on our own.

Chapter 40

Rio Claro

Rio Claro, September 2014.

Courtesy of the author

The heliconia and short palms were still wet with rain, but the bright sun shining in a cloudless blue sky left the jungle friendly again. Birds were singing and insects buzzing as another day got under way, as if the storm had never happened. The Rio Claro had crested hours before dawn. Logs and other fresh flotsam lined its banks, left by the receding flood. And while it was still high and brown, it was no longer pushy and we waded at times to our chests with little fear. Where the river narrowed between vertical walls that plunged into its waters making it too deep to wade, the reassuring tzing of the machete left a path clear of snakes, ants, and vines through the trackless forest. Peggy’s bravery in the deep water and jungle amplified her beauty and strengthened my love and admiration for her.

Eventually the water dropped enough to reveal beaches with boot tracks. We followed the tracks to a trail, where we snuck along quietly. We were maybe twenty minutes from Sirena, the touristic heart of the park. Without the mandatory guide, we worried about being caught.

Walking along the maintained trail, we came to a puzzling arrow that a hiker had scratched across the path. Curious of its meaning, I turned and backed up in the direction the arrow aimed, nearly stepping on a fer-de-lance. A literal line in the sand not to cross, the arrow pointed directly at the snake in warning. The angry-faced serpent no doubt waited at the trail’s edge for a fat rodent to pass. It would not have struck unless threatened—or stepped on. My foolishness elicited a nervous laugh from me and a head shake from Peggy.

More challenges awaited us at the coast. A high tide had pushed into the mouth of the Rio Claro. We also needed to dodge guides who might rat us out and rangers at the park boundary, ten miles away. It would be after dark when we reached the La Leona Ranger Station; we hoped to sneak by unnoticed.

My first attempt to cross the Rio Claro found me swimming and thinking about bull sharks and crocodiles. “I’m not swimming!” Peggy called out to me.

PEGGY WAS BORN the youngest of ten. She didn’t learn how to swim until halfway through college. On our first trip to Hawaii, when we were nineteen and twenty, she had not yet swum in ocean waves. Like many Alaskan-raised kids, she was afraid of deep water and could only “doggy-paddle,” as she called it.

Somehow, I coaxed her into Waikiki’s gentle surf. Heading into the shallow surf break, we held hands at first. But then, wading deeper, the surging ocean lifted her off her feet. Taut with exhilaration, she turned and wrapped herself around me. Her arms and legs felt warm in the cool Pacific as we drifted and bounded as one, my toes pushing off the bottom with each passing swell to keep our heads above water.

She clung to me, her smile wide as the sea. In that moment, I felt something for another person that I never had before: a physical sense of safeguarding and surety entwined with an emotional depth I longed to repeat.

It came again, just as richly with Cody Roman on a family camping trip to the island of Culebra near Puerto Rico. We had pedaled from the condo we rented in Luquillo to a nearby ferry dock, towing the kids in our bike trailer. Culebra is surrounded by coral reefs and we found a white sand beach where we camped in the shade.

A passing fisherman sold us spiny lobsters for a few dollars. Jazzy collected the foot-long seed pods of the flamboyán tree that she found fascinating, while Cody Roman, wearing his mask and holding his snorkel, bent over to peer underwater. I waded out to him and suggested we go deeper. The two of us set off to explore beyond the shallows where he normally stood.

At first, he rode on my back as I finned with my flippers. He clutched my neck with his left arm, holding his snorkel with his right. After he had ridden there a while, I reached to his hand with mine and he slipped off my back to glide along as we swam hand in hand.

It was a profound moment, somehow as deep as the instant I had witnessed Peggy give birth to him. There, over the splendor of a coral reef, to be so physically a part of his development, felt more enriching than holding his hand as he learned to walk.

The feeling intensified when we came to a deep channel in the reef and he climbed onto my back for the crossing. I could feel him tense up in my hand as the bottom fell away, then physically relax when on my back again. Once we’d crossed the channel, he slipped off to again swim hand in hand, but this time by his own volition. Without words he’d said, “Dad, I’m nervous and need reassurance.” Then, “I’m okay, let’s keep going.”

Experiences like those with my family are moments I cherish. Enriching their lives with physical trust has always enriched mine. Roman and I would learn to scuba dive together when he was old enough and Peggy would learn more than the doggy paddle, but fortunately she wouldn’t need to swim the Rio Claro.

MY FEET FELT a submerged sand bar that led all the way across the river. It would be no deeper than my navel. I came back for Peggy’s hand and we carried our nearly empty packs on our heads as we waded across to follow a trail through the coastal forest. During the afternoon hike we saw a crested guan and a pair of great curassows, big, turkey-sized birds clumsily balancing in the trees. Later we watched a tapir feed on sour fruits with its dexterous, elephantine snout. Halfway to Carate, we stopped to watch the sun drop into the Pacific as the full moon rose in the east in a cosmic balance. With tide out and sun down, we slipped by the guard station unnoticed, limping on sore feet to Carate.

The next day we caught the morning colectivo to Puerto Jiménez, convinced Roman didn’t complete the route he had described in his emails. “I think it’s got to be foul play,” Peggy said on the way into town. “He doesn’t seem to be in the park. Maybe somebody’s got him. Let’s talk to the private investigator.”

Chapter 41

Back to Alaska

Yaviza, Darién Gap, Panama, January 2015.

Courtesy of the author

At the end of the first week of September, soon after we’d returned from the Rio Claro, Lauren put us in touch with Fernando Arguedas, the private investigator who had cracked Kimberly Blackwell’s case and once been OIJ. Suspicious that people were telling us only what we wanted to hear, I gave Arguedas the names of those I’d interviewed to see if they would tell him what they had told me. He followed up other leads, too, talking to a dozen people altogether.

Most important, he asked Pata Lora our list of thirty-five questions about Roman’s gear, mannerisms, past, and intentions. The questions were meant to see if Pata Lora had actually been with Roman. Peggy even asked that Pata Lora draw Cody’s tent and hairline and describe the shape of his hands. Her intuition is sensitive to people’s behavior and motivations and her questions showed that perspective.