A body would answer a lot of questions. It was also necessary for any murder convictions.

The rest of the meeting was like so many others over the years: assurances and explanations about the limits of American law enforcement in foreign lands. “These things take time,” said the agent who had flattered me. “It could be years.” They also commented on how Carson’s activities had damaged relations between the U.S. and Costa Rica on this case.

AFTER THE MEETING, we collected our phones. Mine had a message from a number in Costa Rica. It was the consul general from the U.S. Embassy. He said to give him a call, no matter the time. My phone was almost dead. “It’s Ravi. He wants me to call,” I told Peggy. We walked the few blocks to the hotel to charge my phone. I called Ravi and put him on speaker.

“Roman,” Ravi said over the phone, “I’m not sure there’s any other way to say this but directly: human remains were found today near Dos Brazos. With camping equipment.”

I sat down. Over the years, Toby, Lauren, and the embassy had contacted us about news of other bodies in the jungle. But this felt different. This felt like Roman.

Ravi continued. “What we understand is that a miner had been in the mountains today and found bones in a streambed. Then, moving upstream, he found camping equipment. He immediately called 911 from there in the jungle. We wanted to let you know as soon as we could. It seems this might be your son.”

My feelings swirled between pain and relief. Relief, because it seemed the ordeal of searching without knowing might be over. Pain, because it would mean, once and for all, that our son was dead.

We needed to return to Costa Rica immediately. I had to see the scene, to judge for myself if it had been crime or accident.

Two years before, I had described in detail Roman’s equipment to Ravi. The blue Patagonia Puffball. The Jetboil. Green Salomon shoes. A yellow and gray Z-rest foam pad that folded rather than rolled. Peggy and I had made a poster of these and others items, hanging copies from Cerro de Oro to Carate. But I hadn’t listed all the things I knew Roman carried. I kept some to myself, for later, for proof. For a moment like now.

“Where did they find him, Ravi?”

“Up the Rio Tigre from Dos Brazos. Inside the park, in Corcovado. MINAE rangers are going up there in the morning to confirm.”

The next morning, Friday, Peggy and I went to my mom’s, taking the train to northern Virginia where we waited for her to pick us up at a bus stop. While we waited, a writer from People magazine called to interview me for an article about Missing Dial.

In the middle of her questioning, my phone lit up with a Costa Rican number. I told the reporter I had to take it. It was Kara, from the embassy. She was brief. She said she’d send me photos from the site where the remains had been found. She asked that I confirm if I recognized any equipment.

The photos arrived on my phone and I hurried through them. I needed to know if this was him. The first showed a bright green Salomon shoe pushed against a fallen tree limb, toe down, half buried in sand and debris. It looked as fresh as if it had come right off Roman’s foot that day. “His shoe doesn’t look old enough to have been in the jungle for two years!” Peggy exclaimed.

The next photo showed a pack, bottom up and partially beneath a rotten log. It, too, was mostly buried in dirty sand and gravel among sticks and brown leaves that had obviously been washed down as flood debris. A cookpot was partially exposed next to the pack. Another photo showed the pack free from the log and debris. It looked greenish gray. I quickly pulled up the catalog photo from the San José North Face store and found myself catching my breath. It was the same model and color.

The shoe and the pack were convincing enough to answer Kara’s question. But as more photos arrived, there could be no doubt. They were all Roman’s things. The yellow and gray colored folding sleeping pad was crumpled and partially shoved beneath a log. A compass with a black lanyard. A blue Petzl headlamp that I’d handed him in Alaska. This was all essential tropical camping equipment from our family stash back home.

There was also an unfamiliar silver cookpot and something green and metal. I couldn’t judge its size. It rested in a streambed where shallow water ran over it. I didn’t recognize this object at all. The last picture was sobering. It felt callous that they had even sent it. It was unmistakable: a human skull with the upper jaw visible, half buried in sticks and debris and backed up against a termite mound. Everything looked to me naturally deposited by flowing water in a creek, not haphazardly buried by a criminal hiding evidence.

My battery was nearly spent. The reporter from People called back. I sputtered something about the discovery, but her interview seemed superfluous, and I said I had to go. Peggy and I studied the images, teary-eyed and nostalgic. We reminisced about Roman, held each other and cried on the bus stop bench. We pored over every image again and again, checking and rechecking that these were indeed his shoes, his pad, his pack, his headlamp, his compass. There was no doubt.

After the miner had dialed 911 from one of Thai’s “little jungle phone booths,” the news traveled fast. Texts and emails poured in from Lauren and Toby soon after those from the embassy. The Cleavers knew the ranger who had gone with the miner to the site that morning. He marked the find on his GPS. The ranger’s wife emailed me two topo maps showing the discovery site. It was a half-mile past Zeledón, upstream of Negritos in a canyon. I’d walked its rim many times.

How could I have missed him?

Chapter 48

Sleeping in the Forest

Above El Doctor, May 21, 2016.

Courtesy of the author

We would head to Costa Rica as soon as we could get on a flight. I left Virginia while Peggy waited for Jazz to send her passport by air express. Somehow, my flight escaped a volcanic ash-fall that shut down all other flights into San José. I made it to Puerto Jiménez the same day.

Ken and a Tico named Gerhardt met me at the Fiscal’s office in Puerto Jiménez at five the next morning. Gerhardt is a lean and gentle multisport athlete who worked as a local fixer for Missing Dial. He could handle the jungle better than anyone who’d worked on the show and we had become good friends during filming.

Gerhardt translated, explaining that the discovery site was on a small creek called El Doctor. This was the uppermost tributary of the Negritos canyon that Steve and I had descended on rope. The creek was named for a doctor killed there many years ago in an airplane crash. Miners know it for its strange, focused winds that knock down trees remarkably often, like the one that nearly landed on the LTR crew above the Zeledón.

It was the day that Missing Dial would air its first episode. Aengus had returned to the Osa for the unexpected turn of events. The timing seemed suspicious to him. He hurried to Dos Brazos to capture what he could of the action. In Dos Brazos, production shoved cameras into people’s lives, probing without asking, only checking that a release had been signed to excuse their intrusions. There’s no poetry in reality TV, no doing more with less.

I was embarrassed to be part of it now, especially in Dos Brazos, where residents who’d seen the trailers were horrified by the portrayal of their village and had encouraged the miner to go into the jungle. The miner explored the one corner that no one had searched and nearest to where Jenkins met Roman. It was the dry season, when the uppermost little tributaries like El Doctor are traditionally accessed.

Ken, Gerhardt, and I arrived in Dos Brazos at dawn. Pancho, the patient ranger who had taken Thai and me into the Conte years before, led us to El Doctor. I wanted to meet the OIJ forensics team while it was still on site. The four of us raced along park trails through the forest to Zeledón. Struggling to keep up with my younger, healthier companions, I felt fat, old, hot, thirsty, and tired. The last two years had taken their toll on my health. But our mission was urgent and I pushed myself.

By eight we reached the campsite where Ole and Steve, Brad and Todd had all camped with me. Twenty minutes later, we were at the forensic team’s camp on the ridge above El Doctor. The Fuerza prevented Ken and Gerhardt—employed by TIJAT—from visiting the site. I went down with Pancho.

Ken had heartily drunk Carson’s Kool-Aid. “I’ll only believe it wasn’t foul play if there’s money and his passport with his pack. Otherwise, someone put all this here—or killed him—either Joe or the Guichos.”