Chapter 5: The Necessary Distance

Miller retrieved his rucksack from where he had left it at the edge of the mobile command center tent. He had secured his silence with the police, offering nothing that contradicted the physical evidence or the basic facts of the emergency. Chief Hanson’s sincere thanks echoed in his mind, something he mostly ignored. He walked away from the white utility tent, stepping onto the cracked asphalt of the visitors’ parking lot, seeking the familiar weight of anonymity. He looked like an ordinary man preparing to drive home after a long, intense day.

The parking lot was still busy with the official response vehicles, the white and blue presence dominating the otherwise empty space. He walked past the Sheriff’s sedan and the Park Ranger’s SUV, each vehicle representing a bureaucratic layer he had just successfully navigated. He held his keys, jingling them faintly in the oppressive quiet of the late afternoon. The sense of liberation came not from being free from incarceration, but from having successfully managed a potentially explosive situation, controlling every variable that had presented itself. The truth, the real truth, remained safely locked away, destroyed by fire and now secured by his carefully constructed narrative.

He reached his truck, a slightly older model, dark green pickup, weathered by years of use in both the mountains and the city. It stood at the edge of the parking lot, already loaded with the rest of his camping gear, waiting for him. He paused, placing the heavy rucksack carefully into the back with the rest of the supplies. The routine of organizing the simple items provided a brief moment of distraction. He could feel the tension slowly draining out of his shoulders, replaced by a low, humming need for movement.

He opened the driver’s side door, climbing up and into the cab, welcoming the familiar scent of old vinyl, dust, and pine needles that had accumulated over the past week. He inserted the key into the ignition. He twisted it, listening to the solid, reliable sound of the old engine turning over and catching immediately. The machine responded without hesitation. The simple act of commanding the truck provided a grounding connection to his immediate world, removing him one more layer from the chaotic violence of the accident scene and the sterile scrutiny of the police interrogation.

Miller checked his mirrors slowly. He put the vehicle into gear. He drove toward the narrow, winding National Forest access road. He needed to be meticulous now, ensuring he provided no last-minute reason for a secondary traffic stop or suspicion. The police knew his license plate number, and they knew his face. Any perceived infraction could reopen the door to unwanted scrutiny.

He maintained a slow, almost painfully deliberate pace, adhering strictly to the posted speed limit of fifteen miles per hour as he drove down the winding dirt and gravel road. The road cut through dense pockets of spruce and fir, the canopy closing in overhead. He glanced at the side mirror every few seconds, watching the official response vehicles shrink in the distance. He kept his foot light on the accelerator pedal. He focused on the routine. He drove like a man who had no reason to hurry, a man simply concluding a hiking trip.

He drove for a little over ten minutes, navigating the series of sharp, banked curves. Then he reached the park boundary—a simple wooden sign carved with the National Forest emblem and a small, official-looking sign that read, You Are Now Leaving Federal Jurisdiction. Immediately past the sign, the road became paved asphalt, straightening out into a two-lane state highway. He pulled fully clear of the patrol area.

He waited another minute, ensuring he passed the first mile marker on the highway. There were no other vehicles visible in his rearview mirror. He eased the truck up to fifty-five miles per hour, settling into the easy, consistent rhythm of highway travel. The park was now officially behind him, reduced to a collection of trees and rock faces in the side mirror.

He drove for approximately twenty minutes. The highway had changed completely, transitioning from a state route to a rural road that cut through acres of farmland and sparse patches of deciduous forest. The road was empty of traffic in both directions. He needed to stop. He needed to internalize exactly what he had accomplished.

Miller located a wide, isolated shoulder on a long, straight stretch of road, bordered by an overgrown, defunct fence line. The area was far from any dwellings. He checked the rearview mirror one final time, confirming his solitude. He signaled, pulling the truck slowly off the asphalt and onto the gravel shoulder. The tires crunched reassuringly against the loose stone.

He engaged the parking brake with a firm pull. He reached down immediately and turned the ignition all the way off. The engine died abruptly. The sudden silence in the narrow cabin was absolute. It rushed in, filling the void left by thirty minutes of controlled motion.

He sat there, the stillness of the truck feeling like a pressurized environment. He pressed his palms flat against the steering wheel, waiting for the physiological response to fully subside. The controlled compliance had worked. The performance had been perfect. He had provided a clean, concise, and truthful account of an accident discovery and a necessary medical intervention. He had destroyed the single incriminating piece of evidence, the Kennkarte, which would have connected the elderly, amnesiac victim to his past as a Nazi guard and, therefore, tied Frank Miller to that same ugly history.

He thought about Karl Neumann. Four decades of hatred, of carefully suppressed memory, had crystallized into a single burning piece of paper. He remembered the smell of the burning document, the acrid, chemical smell of old paper and ink dissolving into nothingness. He had made a cold, calculated decision: the risk of an international incident, the potential for a media frenzy and the excavation of his own past trauma, outweighed the ethical impulse to expose a former war criminal. He chose silence. He chose preservation.

A different conflict immediately replaced the first one: the moral burden of saving the life of his former tormentor. He had administered first aid with military precision. He had secured the medevac. He had ensured Neumann lived, even knowing who he was. Why? The question was simple, but the answer felt layered and complex.

He had been a soldier. He was a survivor. His primary directive, even after forty years, remained the preservation of life. He knew this about himself: he did not possess the kind of anger that could override his professional training, the decades of conditioning that prioritized stabilization over personal vengeance. He had saved a man’s life. That was the medical fact.

Frank Miller realized the true danger was not the police investigation, which he had successfully mitigated, but the internal conflict that Neumann’s survival now represented. He had performed the act, but he had not yet processed the emotional and ethical consequences. He had saved the man, but he was not yet done with the man.

The truth felt like a hard, physical object in his chest: he was responsible for Karl Neumann's future survival. He could not simply drive away and leave the situation unresolved. The destruction of the Kennkarte and the subsequent lie to Detective Vance meant that he had actively inserted himself into the man’s ongoing fate. He had secured the rescue, but the rescue was only phase one. Phase two was the recovery.

Miller pushed the heavy, conflicted thoughts away. He needed clear, definitive action. He needed information. He needed to know that his life-saving actions had actually worked, that Neumann had successfully survived the transport and the necessary subsequent neurosurgery that a head injury of that magnitude almost certainly required. He needed an outcome.

He picked up his satellite phone from the center console. He considered making an anonymous call to the local hospital, but quickly discarded the idea. A civilian asking anonymously about an injured man from a remote area, especially after a high-profile medevac, stood a high chance of raising suspicion. They would log the call. They would log the voice. He was still too close. A digital request for information, even an untraceable one, would be a mistake this soon.

He needed distance. He needed to become anonymous again. The most effective method of tracking a high-trauma, high-profile incident in an area served by a small medical center was, almost always, the local media. Accident reports, especially those involving a helicopter extraction, were local news fodder. He needed to find the local television channels and newspapers serving that small, county hospital.

Miller put the satellite phone away. He placed the truck back in drive. He pulled back onto the rural highway, accelerating quickly up to the speed limit. The destination was not yet fixed, but the direction was clear: away from the park, away from his identity, and toward a large, anonymous metropolitan area where he could blend into the background. He needed a place where he could sit in a sterile hotel room, watch the news, and gather information without anyone asking him difficult questions.

He drove for hours, pushing the speed limit slightly on the long, empty stretches of road. The sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in deep, bruised colors of orange and purple. The truck settled into the monotonous rhythm of the highway. He passed through several small towns without stopping, each one too small, too close to the scene of the accident. He ate an energy bar he found in the glove box. He drank water from a thermos. He refused to break the rhythm of the drive until he had established a safe, significant physical distance.

He watched the odometer tick over, counting down the miles until he felt truly safe. Two hundred miles passed. Then three hundred. He crossed a state line, the change of jurisdiction providing a small measure of psychological relief. He did not let the relief slow him down. He continued driving east, selecting a trajectory that took him entirely away from his permanent home and the region where he conducted his annual camping trips. He needed to disappear completely.

The darkness of the night finally forced him to start looking for a stopping point. He found a promising cluster of lights on the horizon, signaling a town large enough to possess a major highway intersection and supporting infrastructure, but small enough to lack the intensity of a major city. He pulled off the highway at Exit 47.

The town was called Havenwood, a manufactured name that promised comfort but delivered only blandness. It had the standard array of chain restaurants, twenty-four-hour gas stations, and block upon block of budget motels. He selected a motel that looked sufficiently anonymous, one set slightly back from the main road, with a parking lot that was less than half full. The Travelers’ Rest Inn.

It was past ten o’clock when he parked the truck in a spot directly under a flickering yellow light. He checked the immediate surroundings. The parking lot was quiet. He lifted his rucksack from the truck bed, keeping only the necessities: a change of clothes, his wallet, and a small first aid kit. He did not want to appear to be carrying any camping equipment unnecessarily. He removed his dark jacket, rolling it up beneath his arm, wanting to present a less rugged image.

He walked into the brightly lit lobby. The air conditioning was set too high, smelling faintly of institutional cleaning supplies and stale coffee. A young man sat behind a counter, filling out a ledger, looking bored.

Miller approached the counter. He reached into his coat pocket and removed a thick roll of bills. He had carried cash for this trip, standard practice for avoiding digital footprints when traveling remotely. Now, the cash would serve a secondary purpose.

“Looking for a room for the night,” Miller said, keeping his voice low and weary. He presented a fabricated sense of exhaustion.

The clerk looked up. “Certainly, sir. How long are you staying?”

“Just tonight. Single.”

The clerk slid a registration card across the counter. Miller picked up the cheap plastic pen. He wrote in a clear, practiced hand: George M. Keller, from Columbus, Ohio. He knew George M. Keller was a man of his general age who had died six years ago, a piece of useless information he had picked up in a chance encounter. He used the address of an empty storage unit he once rented as the permanent address. He paid entirely in twenties, counting out a generous sum that included a few extra dollars to ensure the clerk offered no further questions.

“Room 107, sir. First floor, around the corner,” the clerk said, handing him an old-fashioned physical key, attached to a large plastic fob. The fob was a small deterrent against losing such a simple key.

Miller took the key and the receipt, nodding once. He bypassed the elevator, walking down the external corridor to Room 107.

He inserted the key, turning the lock. He pushed the door open. The motel room was exactly as expected: clean, utilitarian, and utterly characterless. The air was heavy and slightly stagnant. There was one double bed, a small desk, a television set mounted high on the wall, and a single, slightly warped print of a sunset over a distant, non-specific ocean.

Miller quickly entered the room. He dropped the rucksack onto the cheap carpet. His first priority was security. He pushed the heavy wooden armchair up against the door, wedging it firmly under the handle. He did not trust the flimsy lock, and he did not want to be taken by surprise.

Once the chair was secured, he turned his attention to the room’s sole source of external information: the television. He walked across the room, grabbing the remote control from the surface of the desk.

He clicked the power button. The screen fizzed to life, glowing blue against the darkness of the room. He flipped through the channels slowly, seeking the local news affiliates.

He passed a channel showing late-night programming, followed by a channel filled with nothing but static. He paused on a recognizable affiliate logo, a satellite dish superimposed over a stylized map of the state. He checked the display in the corner: KTHV News Channel 4, “Your Local Source for Area Coverage.”

It was 10:48 PM. The main nightly news broadcast would be long over, but the station might be running a continuous news loop or the late-night weather report. Miller muted the volume. He watched the screen carefully, waiting for the channel to switch from a paid advertisement for a local furniture store to an actual news segment.

He waited for a minute, the commercial playing out in silent, ridiculous action. Then, the screen shifted. The station logo appeared, followed by a local weather map. He advanced the audio slightly. He did not care about the weather. He was focused only on the anchor’s expression, the lower third of the screen, waiting for any mention of a helicopter, a park, or a serious accident victim.