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When retired firefighter Andy Klemsen goes out for a dirt bike ride in the woods, the last thing he has on his mind is a dead body, but that's just what he finds.
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 We’d parked our dirt bikes for a breather on one of the few hilltops that wasn’t completely covered with giant fir trees. Dennis made a rest-stop visit to the bushes. He excitedly called out, “Holy smokes, Andy! Come here. You’re not going to believe what I just found.”
I expected him to have discovered a treasure left by loggers, who are notorious for having a loose grip on everything they touch. Instead, I saw a small tennis shoe sticking out of a pile of freshly cut fir boughs.
What seemed like an eternity was probably just a couple of minutes, but I’m sure if anyone had seen us, we would have looked like a couple of goobers, standing there with our mouths open. That dread of something awful crept up my neck and paralyzed me. I carefully pulled back the branches until I had uncovered the body of a small person lying face down in the grass—only there was no face.
The head was missing.
I know you don’t get do-overs in life, but this was one time I wished that we had lingered over breakfast longer or had decided to ride someplace else. I also knew neither one of us could even think about covering the body back up. We couldn’t ride off into the woods and forget what we’d just seen.
“Well, Dennis, our day of riding is done,” I said.
“Yeah, Andy, but what the hell are we going to do?”
My mind was rolling through the possibilities like a news program at light speed. Dennis had no idea how long this was going to take and how much of a pain in the ass it was going to be. This was probably the first dead body of a non-relative that Dennis had ever seen, let alone a murder. I, on the other hand, had spent 25 years as a firefighter/ medic and been an arson investigator for half that time. I’d seen my share of dead bodies, murdered and otherwise.
“All right, Dennis, you’re going to have one of the longest days of your life. One of us is going to have to go call the authorities and guide them into the scene, while the other stays here and makes sure the body doesn’t disappear.”
Dennis gave me one of those down-the-nose looks and just shook his head. He was used to my gallows humor, which most emergency folk have, but that didn’t mean he always liked it.
“The real problem is that we’re going to become persons of interest in a murder.”
“What the heck do you mean by that?” He was back to that wide-eyed, mouth- open look.
“Well, we found the body, right? We’ve become the only suspects. Cops always have to have someone to link to a situation like this. They’ll list us as persons of interest.”
“Andy, that’s just plain stupid. Are they going to think that we carried that person up here on our motorcycles, and then were dumb enough to call them?”
“Hey, don’t get your panties in a wad! I’m just warning you. You’re going to get asked a ton of pointed questions. I want you to tell them only what you saw. Don’t ever add what you think. You’re going to get asked if you knew this person and where you’ve been for the last few days. Don’t react or get mad. Just be patient and tell them the truth. But again, only answer the questions. Don’t add anything. When the cop just sits there and looks at you waiting for you to say something, wait him out.”
I’d spent most of my adult life working with law enforcement personnel. I knew that they were necessary, but my attitude about them was also tempered with tons of experience regarding their quirks.
My philosophy was, if someone wanted to be a cop, you shouldn’t let them. Cops were the most paranoid lot you could ever hope to meet. For the most part, they started out wanting to help people. But being in charge, carrying a gun and wearing a badge shaped their outlook. It gave them that power-of-life-and-death attitude. Lots of them called themselves garbage men, because that’s what they did: cleaned up the streets. Most of the people they saw were bad actors, people with little or no moral compass.
“Dennis, let’s make something happen. How about if I stay here with the body while you go call the police? This is going to be a mess because we’re on state land. We’re going to get forest rangers, Oregon State Police, and probably deputies from whatever county this is in. My suggestion is to take your GPS. Note this location as a way point so you can find your way back. By the time you return, it’ll probably be dark. Use your forest map. Stop at all the intersections, and mark your turns because when you return, you may have a train of vehicles following you.
“Make sure you tell them that this person is stone dead, so we don’t have a rescue started with helicopters and ambulances.”
Dennis still had that kewpie-doll look to his eyes, but an action plan brightened him right up.
“Andy, are you sure you want to stay here with the dead body just lying there?”
“Trust me, Dennis; if it gets up, I’ll make a run for it.”
I got that look again, but this time he was grinning and, with a shake of his head, he donned his helmet, jumped on his bike and was gone before I could come up with a plan where he stayed and I went.
An hour earlier we had set out into the woods called the Tillamook Burn. They got their name from the numerous forest fires that years ago had consumed nearly 7,000 acres of fir forest. Now, more than sixty years later, the replanted trees were so green that on a bright, sunny day it almost hurt your eyes. The forest lay in the Oregon Coast Range mountains, which separate the Willamette Valley, where Portland is located, from the Pacific Coast sixty miles to the west.
The forest was a maze of fire access roads plus trails used by loggers, hikers, firefighters, and dirt bikers. Dennis Rivelli and I were the latter. It was one of our greatest joys to dash off into the woods, chasing each other through the shaded canopy of trees following one of the Oregon OHV trails. We paid a fee to the state of Oregon and our off- road clubs spent thousands of hours each year helping to build and maintain these trails. Now our reverie had been broken by something that would stay with us our whole lives.
I carried a camera on these dirt bike trips. Normally, it was for those stunning views from a hilltop. On a really clear day, you could see the blue of the ocean many miles to the west. Today the camera had the most grisly task it had ever been used for. I took fifty pictures, using every angle. That was the beauty of a digital camera. I could simply delete what I didn’t want when I loaded it onto my computer at home. I had found through years of fire investigation that often I saw something in a photo that I’d missed at the scene.
The body looked to be a small woman lying face down, clad in a pair of what seemed to be orange work coveralls like a city worker might wear. I could see the outline of skimpy panties through the coveralls. There were silver spots placed in strategic spots on the arms, legs, and back. I really wanted to turn over the body, but knew that if I touched it, the movement would show in the bent-over grass. So I had to be satisfied with turning the collar over to see if there was a maker’s tag. Sure enough, there was one.
It simply read ‘Hecho en Mexico.’
That simple tag could open a whole new can of worms. These couldn’t have been the clothes of a public worker, because I didn’t think the U.S. was ready to dress its employees in foreign-made work clothes yet.
So was this gal a migrant worker?
The only skin I could see was the palms of her hands. They were the dark color of the dead. Death changes the human form as the body decays. The fingernails were long and painted and the palms didn't look calloused, so she probably wasn’t a migrant.
The girl with no head keyed a particularly bad memory. While on the rescue truck, we got a call of a car-versus-truck accident. Often times there were only minor injuries. Not this time.
When we arrived, we found a small foreign-made sedan stuffed half under a flatbed truck. The truck had apparently stopped, but the car hadn’t. The bed of the truck had sheared off the top of the car right above the dashboard. While setting up fire protection hoses in case of fire, we could hear a small child screaming bloody murder. When we removed the car’s back window to gain access, we found out why.
There was a little girl buckled into a child seat, directly behind the driver. The girl was screaming because she had her mother’s head in her lap. The flatbed of the truck had sliced through the car, decapitating the mother. The car stopped when it ran into the dual wheels of the truck.
The little girl appeared unhurt when we removed her. We rushed her to the hospital for a checkup and to get her away from that grisly scene. She was only three.
Hopefully her memory of the accident had since slipped away.
Mine was permanently etched in my picture book.
I didn’t know about other emergency responders, but I had a huge picture album in my head of all the heinous things that I’d seen. Sometimes one of those pictures would pop up at the oddest times. The really notable ones seemed to stay at the top of the pile and could surface unbidden.
I called it my parade of horrors.
One picture could trigger another. They seemed to march along through my head like a parade of the most awful things I'd seen in my life.
That day, I was in one of my favorite places on Earth, standing over a dead body, adding more pictures to the album in my head.
Would this stain the forest for me forever?
I spun a dozen possible scenarios about who this gal was and what had brought her here to violate my special place. This was obviously murder. How many people were involved?
Was she a hooker? A druggie? Or just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
I’d probably never know anything more than I did at that moment, except that the decapitation could possibly point to a Mexican drug gang. The Mexican drug people always liked to make an example of their enemies. If you double-crossed them, or were just a rival gang member that got in their way, they might cut your head off, probably to show how tough and ruthless they were.
When a murder occurs, the police estimate that they have 72 hours to come up with a likely suspect. After that time, the likelihood of the crime ever being solved got smaller and smaller by the hour.
Those cold-case programs on TV made for good dramas, but in real life, when the case was cold, it most often went unsolved. And unlike on TV, in real life people could live with guilt. They seldom willingly admitted to a crime they had committed years ago.
The sun would set in a couple of hours. I rustled up a large pile of firewood. This whole circus was going to take place in the dark, so I dragged out an energy bar, ate it, and used the wrapping to help start a small fire. Dennis had been worried that a bear would smell the body and stop by for a snack.
It was weird to be all alone on a hilltop in the forest by myself. No adventurers with any sense at all would be out in the woods by themselves. We never rode our dirt bikes alone. Those fools who did were the ones you read about in the newspapers. The public spent thousands of dollars on trying to find and rescue them.
It was quiet on the hilltop, giving me time to reflect on my life. The circumstances could have been better, but sitting beside a fire in the middle of the forest tended to clear the everyday angst and make you look at the big picture.
I had the life most folks would die for: a job that I’d loved to get up in the morning and go to. A firefighter’s work schedule in Oregon is 24 hours on and 48 hours off. Sometimes you needed at least some of that 48 to rest up, because often calls came in the middle of the night. There were nights when you got little if any sleep on your regular shift. Lots of people had the idea that firefighters just sat around and played cards when they were not on an emergency, but that couldn’t be further from the truth today.
First thing in the morning, every piece of equipment you used got checked every day, to make sure that when you had to use it, it would be where it was suppose to be and in working order. Then you were off for an hour of workout in the gym. Then two hours of drill, either medical refresher or firefighting skills review, followed by lunch. The afternoon was usually filled with building inspections, looking for fire hazards. Any or all of this could be interrupted by an emergency call. So the days of the all-day card game were long gone.
That was also the beauty of the job. At any time, you could be called to deal with life and death situations that made your heart race and the adrenaline pump. I’d been told that if you profiled the personality of a firefighter, he would be a risk-taker. We love to scare ourselves!
The sun was just now starting to set and the colors were lighting up the sky. There were too many clouds to see the ocean, but the clouds made the sunset dazzling. As many times as I’d watched the sun set, I had yet to see that purported flash of green light just as the sun goes over the horizon. I was beginning to wonder if that was one of those myths with which we love to fool each other.
I wondered how Dennis was making out trying to explain this to the cops. He’d never been involved with anything concerning the law. I was fairly sure the death of elderly relatives had been his only brush with the Grim Reaper.
Dennis had grown up in a small town in Eastern Canada, the kind of town where you knew the local constable. Emo is close to the U.S. border, so he grew up with American radio stations and when TV came into the houses, he could watch both Canadian and U.S. stations.
The town existed mostly because of a local copper mine. When Dennis came back from college, he found what most people would consider their place in life, a good job at the mine. But he had bigger ideas, and eventually moved into the business of selling mining equipment. Along the way he married and divorced and vowed to never go there again. He sold the machinery business for a ton of money, retired young and decided to spend the rest of his life as an adventurer.
At 6’3”, Dennis towered over my 5’10” frame, and while I had never thought of him as good looking, women had a far different opinion. Whenever we walked into a restaurant or bar, I could see the women’s glances cut to Dennis. With his gift of gab, he had the ability to round the heels of a lot of girls. His sandy brown hair now had a touch of gray sneaking into his sideburns, but I believed the look had helped his magnetism rather than detracted from it. He has several houses, including the one in Milwaukie, Oregon, which made it handy for us to go for motorcycle rides together.
The darkness closed in and a chill started to creep into the air. I stoked the fire till I had a rip-roaring bonfire. A “white man’s fire,” my father would call it: a fire from which you sat way back, with the front of you hot and the back of you cold
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