The worst thing that ever happened to Steve Touloumes was the disappearance of his girlfriend Karen Byers, when he was seventeen and she was sixteen.
They had been technically camping illegally in a forest, not an official campground, a pretty piece of private property at the base of a mountain, less than ten miles from their hometown. They had fallen asleep in the same tent after getting sloshed on some whiskey Karen had stolen from her older brother's stash. Steve woke up the next morning and Karen was gone. Forever. The true story was as simple as that. But few believed it. There were detectives (and many others) who went to their graves convinced that Steve had gotten away with murder. They had spun the usual, predictable narratives and clung to them. It's worse to think some boogeyman in the shadows can just swoop in like that, isn't it?
Steve had gotten away with nothing but a stone in his heart and a lifelong regret that he had ever stolen away with a beautiful young girl all those years ago. He was sure then Karen had been abducted and murdered, as sure then as he was today.
Steve would still think of Karen whenever he saw a young woman who looked the way she looked that summer, or when he looked at his own daughters growing up and worried about their safety and counseled them with an urgency they might not see in other fathers warning their daughters about what to do or not to do in a world of strangers.
But Steve's daughters were all women safely ensconced in their own complicated lives in other towns, other states, that day he walked into his favorite Salvation Army store, located in a strip mall not five miles from his home.. Home now lay in a town a mere thirty miles from his original hometown.
Della, a whie-haired comedian who worked the register, liked to greet Steve and joke with him. She knew his preferences.
"We've got a bunch more old cameras in. Film, not digital. Woo-hoo. You're probably the only person on the planet interested, if you are up for more of that Stone Age tech. You know where. The usual aisle."
Steve called out his thanks and made a beeline. Photography had become a passion for him over the past decade.
Once he reached the aisle with the mostly junky old cameras, his eyes zeroed in on an antiquated little Minolta. This one seemed to be in pretty decent shape. It didn't appear to have been used much at all. Steve smiled when he remembered all the old commercials back in the days from this now defunct Japanese company, which was actually one of the best makers of cameras for decades. "From the mind of Minolta," the commercials would always intone somewhat portentously. Minolta had launched in Japan (in the thirties, was it?) but it was a cooperative venture back then with German lens makers. You got the best of both worlds, as you couldn't beat the German lenses at the time. By the time the camera Steve was now turning over in his hands had been produced, the company had begun making forays into digital and had begun incorporating those advanced features into their cameras. This little camera was just such a hybrid. It was still a film camera, but it had a few nice digital features. It had a decent zoom capacity.
Then Steve noticed there was film in the camera. He smiled. It was always fun to drop off these rolls and peer into the lives of strangers. Quite possibly these people were no longer walking the planet. But here were their most cherished moments, on a dusty thrift store shelf. Film would keep those memories safe for half a century if need be, possibly longer. Because every found roll Steve had ever dropped off for developing had come out fine. Heat could damage an old roll of undeveloped film, but you'd still usually be able to see what was photographed through the colorful distortions which heat causes. No doubt about it, film is a small miracle of memory.
The camera was a real steal. They always were here. Della was right. Steve was one of the few who even gave these old machines of yesteryear a second glance.
On the way home, Steve dropped the film off at at a CVS that had an in-store lab. He always made it a point to tell the girl (rarely it was a young dude) behind the counter that it was found film. Just in case it turned out to be naked photos of someone's girlfriend or boyfriend. You could never be sure what you were getting. It had never happened to Steve, but he had heard the funny stories.
Steve hadn't yet gotten around to stopping at a battery supply place to find the specialty batteries the Minolta required by the time he picked up the developed film two days later. He sat in his car with the windows down and opened the film packet and entered another world as soon as he looked at the first print.
His head began to spin. He felt a tightness in his chest.
The first photo was of himself. He was in the woods. Camping. He had the long hair of his youth. There was the tent. The tent. He had never gone camping again after that Friday night and Saturday morning when his life changed for the worst, forever.
The second photo took away any doubt. There was Karen sitting on a boulder beside the creek in her cut-off shorts. She was smiling into a green space of shadowy trees across the creek, smiling at anything, at nothing. Smiling from the feeling of being sixteen, the feeling of being beautiful and free. Smiling at the feeling of having absconded for just one night, the feeling of being wild.
Almost all of the photos were surveillance photos like this, clearly taken with the little camera's zoom. He could see the primary focus in the photos was Karen.
Steve called his wife and began to explain what he was looking at. She was instantly worried he was having a heart attack or a stroke. He could barely speak. She actually insisted that he not drive anywhere. She made him promise. She drove to the CVS parking lot and they looked at the photos together. They agreed the police must be called. They needed to take custody of this evidence.
It was the last three photos which were most disturbing.
The third from last photo showed Karen in the back of a van, wearing a long green dress with a floral pattern. It was not like anything Karen would have owned or ever have worn. It looked like something you would see Loretta Lynn wear back in the day. It was the look of terror in Karen's eyes that really turned a screw somewhere in Steve's heart. It was an image he would carry to the grave.
His wife kept asking him, "Are you sure it's her? It looks like you, but I can't even be sure about that. Maybe we're both crazy. It certainly does look like you. But is it really her?"
The second from last photo showed a prayer service that had been held for Karen in the early days of her disappearance. Steve could see the back of his own head in the photo. This guy had clearly been enjoying this whole torturous process an entire town had been going through.
"We need to give these to the police, Steve. Do you think they can trace who dropped off the camera at the Salvation Army store? You didn't handle the camera much did you? There might be, well not fingerprints, but DNA? Can DNA last that long? Maybe he handled it recently when he donated it."
"He's probably dead," Steve said flatly. "That's probably why the camera was donated. The bastard probably slipped away."
The last photo was the worst. Somehow even worse than the photo of Karen in her terror. Though it would seem nothing more than a pretty landscape shot to someone who casually glanced at it. If the photo were not seen in the context of the roll.
The last photo showed a little pond in the woods with two sticks in the shallows making a rude cross. They had been lashed together with string. Just stuck in the mud. They would be long rotted away. They would not be there anymore. Steve knew that much. He also knew that's where she was. That's where Karen is, he thought. He knew. Her lonely, watery grave.
But now Steve's wife was second-guessing herself about the police. "They're going to be suspicious of you. All over again, babe. Should we even do this. It won't bring her back."
"I know. We have to. It's the right thing. If there's even the slightest chance..."
So that's what they did.
And the local police and the FBI were suspicious of Steve all over again. The DNA was a dead end. The photos went viral on the internet and still the case would not crack open.
The greatest hope lay in the chance that someone would recognize that little pond where the two crosses once were, but where, by now, there would be nothing.
Hundreds of leads poured in, but the resources and patience grew thin and nothing ever came of it.
After that, Steve felt trapped into searching the Salvation Army store not just for the cameras that came in, but any other possible clue that might surface. And then he began going from one thrift store to another, manically searching. He would often be there when the stores first opened their doors. He would virtually interrogate the employees about new arrivals of donations to the point of making himself a nuisance. He knew Monday mornings were important because that's when so many donated goods would be put out on the shelves. It consumed him. Once, he thought he recognized a comb that had belonged to Karen. There must have been millions like it produced. Then it was a t-shirt that proved to date from a period long after Karen's disappearance. In brief, he began to lose it all over again. He went back into therapy.
His marriage was strong but it ended. Karen was back again. His own children pleaded with him to let it go, but he knew this time he was back with her, his first girlfriend, to the end. On his bad days, he wished that day godspeed. On his better days, he had hope that the impossible thing would happen. The walls of this darkness would crack open. But he knew in his heart that the man was dead. That Karen would never escape that pond. And that he would be living that day all over again on the day he died. Little by little, he became a ghost to his own family. And you know how people will eventually push a ghost away. No matter how much it was initially loved.
They had been technically camping illegally in a forest, not an official campground, a pretty piece of private property at the base of a mountain, less than ten miles from their hometown. They had fallen asleep in the same tent after getting sloshed on some whiskey Karen had stolen from her older brother's stash. Steve woke up the next morning and Karen was gone. Forever. The true story was as simple as that. But few believed it. There were detectives (and many others) who went to their graves convinced that Steve had gotten away with murder. They had spun the usual, predictable narratives and clung to them. It's worse to think some boogeyman in the shadows can just swoop in like that, isn't it?
Steve had gotten away with nothing but a stone in his heart and a lifelong regret that he had ever stolen away with a beautiful young girl all those years ago. He was sure then Karen had been abducted and murdered, as sure then as he was today.
Steve would still think of Karen whenever he saw a young woman who looked the way she looked that summer, or when he looked at his own daughters growing up and worried about their safety and counseled them with an urgency they might not see in other fathers warning their daughters about what to do or not to do in a world of strangers.
But Steve's daughters were all women safely ensconced in their own complicated lives in other towns, other states, that day he walked into his favorite Salvation Army store, located in a strip mall not five miles from his home.. Home now lay in a town a mere thirty miles from his original hometown.
Della, a whie-haired comedian who worked the register, liked to greet Steve and joke with him. She knew his preferences.
"We've got a bunch more old cameras in. Film, not digital. Woo-hoo. You're probably the only person on the planet interested, if you are up for more of that Stone Age tech. You know where. The usual aisle."
Steve called out his thanks and made a beeline. Photography had become a passion for him over the past decade.
Once he reached the aisle with the mostly junky old cameras, his eyes zeroed in on an antiquated little Minolta. This one seemed to be in pretty decent shape. It didn't appear to have been used much at all. Steve smiled when he remembered all the old commercials back in the days from this now defunct Japanese company, which was actually one of the best makers of cameras for decades. "From the mind of Minolta," the commercials would always intone somewhat portentously. Minolta had launched in Japan (in the thirties, was it?) but it was a cooperative venture back then with German lens makers. You got the best of both worlds, as you couldn't beat the German lenses at the time. By the time the camera Steve was now turning over in his hands had been produced, the company had begun making forays into digital and had begun incorporating those advanced features into their cameras. This little camera was just such a hybrid. It was still a film camera, but it had a few nice digital features. It had a decent zoom capacity.
Then Steve noticed there was film in the camera. He smiled. It was always fun to drop off these rolls and peer into the lives of strangers. Quite possibly these people were no longer walking the planet. But here were their most cherished moments, on a dusty thrift store shelf. Film would keep those memories safe for half a century if need be, possibly longer. Because every found roll Steve had ever dropped off for developing had come out fine. Heat could damage an old roll of undeveloped film, but you'd still usually be able to see what was photographed through the colorful distortions which heat causes. No doubt about it, film is a small miracle of memory.
The camera was a real steal. They always were here. Della was right. Steve was one of the few who even gave these old machines of yesteryear a second glance.
On the way home, Steve dropped the film off at at a CVS that had an in-store lab. He always made it a point to tell the girl (rarely it was a young dude) behind the counter that it was found film. Just in case it turned out to be naked photos of someone's girlfriend or boyfriend. You could never be sure what you were getting. It had never happened to Steve, but he had heard the funny stories.
Steve hadn't yet gotten around to stopping at a battery supply place to find the specialty batteries the Minolta required by the time he picked up the developed film two days later. He sat in his car with the windows down and opened the film packet and entered another world as soon as he looked at the first print.
His head began to spin. He felt a tightness in his chest.
The first photo was of himself. He was in the woods. Camping. He had the long hair of his youth. There was the tent. The tent. He had never gone camping again after that Friday night and Saturday morning when his life changed for the worst, forever.
The second photo took away any doubt. There was Karen sitting on a boulder beside the creek in her cut-off shorts. She was smiling into a green space of shadowy trees across the creek, smiling at anything, at nothing. Smiling from the feeling of being sixteen, the feeling of being beautiful and free. Smiling at the feeling of having absconded for just one night, the feeling of being wild.
Almost all of the photos were surveillance photos like this, clearly taken with the little camera's zoom. He could see the primary focus in the photos was Karen.
Steve called his wife and began to explain what he was looking at. She was instantly worried he was having a heart attack or a stroke. He could barely speak. She actually insisted that he not drive anywhere. She made him promise. She drove to the CVS parking lot and they looked at the photos together. They agreed the police must be called. They needed to take custody of this evidence.
It was the last three photos which were most disturbing.
The third from last photo showed Karen in the back of a van, wearing a long green dress with a floral pattern. It was not like anything Karen would have owned or ever have worn. It looked like something you would see Loretta Lynn wear back in the day. It was the look of terror in Karen's eyes that really turned a screw somewhere in Steve's heart. It was an image he would carry to the grave.
His wife kept asking him, "Are you sure it's her? It looks like you, but I can't even be sure about that. Maybe we're both crazy. It certainly does look like you. But is it really her?"
The second from last photo showed a prayer service that had been held for Karen in the early days of her disappearance. Steve could see the back of his own head in the photo. This guy had clearly been enjoying this whole torturous process an entire town had been going through.
"We need to give these to the police, Steve. Do you think they can trace who dropped off the camera at the Salvation Army store? You didn't handle the camera much did you? There might be, well not fingerprints, but DNA? Can DNA last that long? Maybe he handled it recently when he donated it."
"He's probably dead," Steve said flatly. "That's probably why the camera was donated. The bastard probably slipped away."
The last photo was the worst. Somehow even worse than the photo of Karen in her terror. Though it would seem nothing more than a pretty landscape shot to someone who casually glanced at it. If the photo were not seen in the context of the roll.
The last photo showed a little pond in the woods with two sticks in the shallows making a rude cross. They had been lashed together with string. Just stuck in the mud. They would be long rotted away. They would not be there anymore. Steve knew that much. He also knew that's where she was. That's where Karen is, he thought. He knew. Her lonely, watery grave.
But now Steve's wife was second-guessing herself about the police. "They're going to be suspicious of you. All over again, babe. Should we even do this. It won't bring her back."
"I know. We have to. It's the right thing. If there's even the slightest chance..."
So that's what they did.
And the local police and the FBI were suspicious of Steve all over again. The DNA was a dead end. The photos went viral on the internet and still the case would not crack open.
The greatest hope lay in the chance that someone would recognize that little pond where the two crosses once were, but where, by now, there would be nothing.
Hundreds of leads poured in, but the resources and patience grew thin and nothing ever came of it.
After that, Steve felt trapped into searching the Salvation Army store not just for the cameras that came in, but any other possible clue that might surface. And then he began going from one thrift store to another, manically searching. He would often be there when the stores first opened their doors. He would virtually interrogate the employees about new arrivals of donations to the point of making himself a nuisance. He knew Monday mornings were important because that's when so many donated goods would be put out on the shelves. It consumed him. Once, he thought he recognized a comb that had belonged to Karen. There must have been millions like it produced. Then it was a t-shirt that proved to date from a period long after Karen's disappearance. In brief, he began to lose it all over again. He went back into therapy.
His marriage was strong but it ended. Karen was back again. His own children pleaded with him to let it go, but he knew this time he was back with her, his first girlfriend, to the end. On his bad days, he wished that day godspeed. On his better days, he had hope that the impossible thing would happen. The walls of this darkness would crack open. But he knew in his heart that the man was dead. That Karen would never escape that pond. And that he would be living that day all over again on the day he died. Little by little, he became a ghost to his own family. And you know how people will eventually push a ghost away. No matter how much it was initially loved.
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