I erupted, emboldened by Lauren. “Look, Aengus, can’t you just let a grieving parent be? For two years I’ve felt like I’ve been held underwater. And for the first time I can come up for air and I can breathe. And you just want to shove me back down? No, Aengus, I have had enough!”

At that moment, I saw in Aengus what others had whispered. He had seemed to be on our side. Now I wasn’t so sure.

The next morning, Peggy and I went to El Doctor. I held her hand as we slipped and slid down the steep muddy hillside, following the tracks left by the repeated passage of a dozen OIJ, Fuerza, and MINAE. Peggy ducked beneath the yellow crime tape and started digging, first with a small stick and then with a spoon, brought for our lunch.

The rangers wandered off. Hesitant at first, I slipped under the yellow tape and joined her, the now-familiar feeling of looking for sign of Roman washing over me as we searched for anything that might help us understand what had happened. From experience, I knew that seeing anything of his would bring him close to me again and touch my heart.

A sympathetic Costa Rican had given us each a long solid walking stick made of local wood. Peggy’s was light but sturdy and an inch and a half across. Mine was heavy, longer, and thicker, made of a tropical hardwood called manu. We used our walking sticks as levers to move the eight-and ten-foot sections of log aside, digging underneath, pushing aside the sediment and debris, looking, but finding nothing. The OIJ had been thorough.

I pointed out the dead tree, the new growth. “It looks like a tree fell on his camp, doesn’t it? Although some of the rangers think it was snakebite and found a terciopelo down here. What do you think, Peggy? Do you think somebody killed Roman here?”

“No. No way. Why would anybody be here in the first place?”

“Maybe somebody killed him and brought him here?” I prodded.

“Too much work. How would they get him down the steep hill? Cut him up and carry him? It’s hard to walk here even without a pack. No, he died here. He was probably in camp or making camp and a tree fell, probably in the dark and he couldn’t see to run out of the way. Lots of trees fall here. Like we saw near Dos Brazos. Or when you were here with Brad and Todd and the Learn to Return guys.” She sounded as convinced as I felt that it had been a natural death.

Afterward we walked back to Dos Brazos to meet the miner who had found Roman. The miner said that the locals felt a kinship with Roman, because he had explored off-trail in a very challenging canyon and forest area, and he had done it without permission, against authority. The miner said that Roman had the spirit of the gold miners and they all admired him for that.

WE LEFT THE Osa for San José, where we joined a press conference with the OIJ and embassy. In front of a room full of media, I thanked the miners, the rangers, Cruz Roja, the OIJ, and the embassy, even all the people of Costa Rica for their big hearts and helpfulness. Afterward we met with Georgina, gave our blood samples for DNA testing, thanked everyone personally, and prepared to leave for home.

There was only one step left. In an office in OIJ’s brooding granite building in downtown San Jose, we told a soft-spoken translator that Pata Lora’s story wasn’t true. He had never been with our son. We retracted the denuncia that the OIJ had prepared to arrest Pata Lora for murder.

TIJAT’s producers had been right: the power of the camera is real. The effort to have Roman’s case moved from missing persons to murder had been successful, thanks to Carson and Missing Dial. But in the end, the media’s search for sensationalism had left us all vulnerable to a schizophrenic’s self-incrimination.

Almost two years after Roman’s last emails had thrown Peggy and me into a valley of grief that darkened and deepened with time, we now found ourselves atop a small hill of relief rising up from the valley bottom. Roman had not been murdered. He had not waited for us to save him. He had probably died before any of us knew he was in trouble. Before I had even read his last words: “it should be difficult to get lost forever.”

We had found him.

Chapter 50

Gather the Ashes

Clouds over Costa Rica, December 2016.

Courtesy of the author

By August 2016, we heard from Georgina that Roman’s dental records matched. In October, she sent the DNA results from the bone marrow sampled inside a tibia. The DNA showed conclusively that the tibia came from our son. Then the embassy wrote asking us what we wished to do with his remains. We agreed on cremation. At the end of November, we flew down to see the bones, collect the ashes, and pay the reward to the miner who had found him.

Tourism was down since Hurricane Otto had just hit Costa Rica and the volcano had erupted again. We met Peggy’s sister Maureen and her husband, Steve, at the San José airport. In the morning, Gerhardt picked us up and took us through thick traffic to the funeral home, where I paid for Roman’s cremation. Then we flew to Puerto Jiménez, rented a car, and went to the bank, where Steve donated money into a Cruz Roja account. I had a big wad of $5,000 in American bills to give to the miner who had discovered Roman’s remains. The $50,000 offer was only a ruse to get Pata Lora to talk. We had no intention to pay that sum.

The entire town served as a reminder of our two years of searching. Peggy and I pointed out the new Fiscal headquarters to Maureen and Steve. It had moved from Golfito to Puerto Jiménez about the time Jorge from the embassy took charge of the investigation, perhaps because of Roman’s disappearance, but more likely because of crime’s increase on the Osa.

We walked by the ballfield where we had studied young men’s feet in search of Roman’s Salomon shoes, the secondhand store where we had looked for Roman’s gear and clothes, and the Corners Hostel where Roman had stayed. Do?a Berta recognized us and came over to say that she was happy that we’d found Roman, clutching my hand in hers. At a restaurant where we had breakfast, Andres, who’d taken us to Cerro de Oro, said the same thing. Maureen even spotted Pata Lora at the grocery store. I made sure to avoid him.

We drove past the waterfront restaurant where I had called Peggy and told her, “Roman will probably be irritated I’m here,” and we had both laughed but agreed it was the right thing to do, coming down. So many places triggered so many memories of being wrong so often about what had happened to our son.

Sitting there along the waterfront, a gringo nodded and smiled. He looked travel-worn, with curly beach-blond hair, a scruffy beard, and a flowered travel shirt. Hmm, another local who recognizes us. Nodding back, I realized it was our friend Chris Flowers from Anchorage. We had planned to meet up in Costa Rica, but not here and not now.

Chris had his boys with him: Cody, nine, and Cole, eleven. When his second son was born, Chris called to tell me the news. I asked his newborn’s name and Chris said, “Cody,” adding, “I just hope he doesn’t change his name to ‘Roman’ when he gets older.” We both laughed.

Chris and his boys followed us to Dos Brazos to pay the miner’s reward. We bumped along the potholed road, past flooded fields and Brahma bulls. The recent rains from Hurricane Otto had ravaged the Rio Tigre’s banks and eaten into the oil palm plantations. Even the road looked like it might fall into the river.

We went to Jenkins’s place. He had a nice new house with a metal framed roof and white walls, a tiled floor, and two bedrooms that opened with doors rather than curtains. Jenkins’s younger brother was there. Out of hospitality, Jenkins’s wife, Gladys, and their teenage daughter passed out pink Nestlé’s Quik to all.

Jenkins told us the weather had been bad for almost three weeks, leaving everybody out of money, like the jungle’s birds and monkeys were out of fruit. He showed us the portable sluice box he had received as a tip from a client he guided. He looked a little tubbier than when we had last seen him. He said that he was like a little sausage in his shirt: “fat and happy” came to mind.

He had his new house, built by the government, and he’d made money in construction out at La Leona on the park boundary past Carate. Peggy and I had walked there six months earlier to tell him that Roman had been found and most likely killed at El Doctor by a fallen tree or a snake. We thought he should know, since he had been the last person to see Roman alive.

Jenkins said the town was happy. Most had seen the show and everyone could see that Pata Lora was lying, and that I had conflict with Carson, who believed all of Pata Lora’s story. Tourism was returning now that the rains had slowed. People in Dos Brazos had heard what I said on the news after Roman’s discovery. It seemed to confirm what the consul general, Ravi, had relayed to me: that everyone had appreciated my gratitude toward Costa Ricans.