He pointed to a flat rock at the edge of the water about further downstream. “There. Boot and clothes.”
I made my way over and crouched.
A well-worn left hiking boot sat next to tattered clothing on a smooth-topped rock just above the current waterline. The boot leather was dried and cracked, curling at the edges. Red mud was caked into the leather, and the eyelets and the laces were stiff with muck. A crust of dried silt had formed inside the boot around the footbed. Ants had moved in, tracking steady lines along the tongue of the boot and disappearing inside.
I leaned closer. A dark stain was along the inside heel of the boot. Could be mud. Could be blood. I took out my phone and photographed it without comment.
The clothing was a shirt. Tattered and torn, bloody and covered in mud, folded next to the upright boot.
I stood and looked at Kayden. “They’re together. Nice and neat.”
He shifted his weight. “After we found them, Charlie was upset. She put them together.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” I kept my voice neutral. “But here’s what doesn’t. If Doug was swept away in a flood powerful enough to strip the boot off his foot, how did it end up here, above the waterline, with the laces still tied?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“A flood that size would’ve tumbled that boot for kilometers.” I pointed downstream. “The laces would be shredded. The boot would be packed solid with silt and debris, or more likely, sitting at the bottom of the creek.” I looked back at the rock. “This boot looks like someone walked out wearing it. Not like someone drowned in it.”
He folded his arms. “Or his body washed up on the bank, and the animals got to him. A dingo would’ve gnawed that boot off the body.”
“With the laces still tied?”
“Sure. Dingoes are scavengers. Things don’t always make logical sense out here.”
“No,” I said. “They don’t.”
I kept photographing the boot, catching the tiny scratch marks in the leather. Then I photographed the tattered shirt, zooming in on the blood on the sleeve.
I turned to Kayden. “Who found these? Specifically.”
“All of us rode out looking for him. Me, Mitch, Charlie, and Cassidy. We split up.”
“But who spotted these items first?”
A pause, and he frowned. “Charlie found the boot first and called out.”
“And was anyone else with her when she found it?”
“Mitch was with her.”
“Your brother.” I straightened. “They’re together now, aren’t they? Charlie and Mitch.”
“What the hell has that got to do with anything?”
“Just getting my facts straight.”
“Sounds more like you’re building a case against my family.”
“I’m trying to make sense of the evidence. That’s all.” I crouched again and photographed the sole of the boot. “Were the laces tied or undone when Charlie found them?”
He scowled. “Tied, I think.”
“You think.”
“I wasn’t the one who spotted them. I rode up after. Ask Charlie and Mitch, they were right there.”
“I will,” I murmured as I wrote tied laces in my notebook. “So, here’s one possibility. Doug survived the flood. Crawled out somewhere downstream. Made it this far. And then something else happened to him.”