Ranger

The deputies took Dale into custody.

They carried him out on a rescue litter because he could not walk on his own.

Trent and Elise walked out under their own power.

I walked out too, with a field bandage on my arm and an escort on either side because the blood loss had left me lightheaded and the deputies did not want me falling on the descent.

We reached the trailhead at 9.15 that night.

I spent two days in the hospital.

The cut took 27 stitches and a tendon repair.

Dale Riley was booked into the county jail under the name Clark Morrison because that was what his driver's license said.

His fingerprints came back within six hours.

They matched a missing persons file from September of 1997.

DNA confirmed it the following week.

I gave my statement to the sheriff's office on October 15th.

I told them everything I have told you.

I told them about Dale and my father.

I told them about the chipped tooth and the hooked finger.

I told them about the old station at the junction and the man who never existed.

The detective who took my statement was a woman named Karen Halleck, who had been with the county for 19 years, and she did not interrupt me once in the three hours it took me to tell it.

Over the following six months, the Sheriff's Office and the State Police opened investigations into 11 missing persons cases across three districts.

They found the remains of the real Clark Morrison in a drainage four miles northwest of Elk Pass Outpost, in a shallow grave that had been dug in the summer of 2022, about four months before the permit in his name was filed.

They found the remains of a hiker named Andrea Finch who had been missing since 2015 in a separate drainage about six miles south of the first.