Free The Body in the Woods by April Henry Page B

this was an evidence search, which Nick knew from a training weekend meant they would be shoulder to shoulder on their hands and knees.
    Waiting for his turn to shout, he felt nervous. Which was stupid. It wasn’t like you could blow saying your number. It reminded him of calling out numbers to choose teams in grade school. The kind of thing teachers did so that no one felt left out. As if there weren’t a million other ways to be excluded.
    â€œSeven,” he yelled out. And so on. At the end of the line was a certified named Max. He shouted “Fourteen!”
    Max was wearing the string pack on his back. It buckled in front, and on the back was a giant roll of string, so much string you could probably fly a kite to the moon. Since there weren’t nearly enough people to cover the whole marked-off square in one pass, Max would tie the string to the point where they began so it could serve as a guideline for the next pass.
    â€œTeam forward!” Mitchell called out.
    â€œTeam forward,” they echoed raggedly. Then they turned, dropped to their knees, and began to slowly crawl under the yellow tape.
    â€œOne entering grid!” Ezra called out.
    â€œTwo entering grid!” Dimitri yelled a second later. The rule was that you never got ahead of the person on your left.
    â€œThree entering grid!”
    Nick’s heart started to beat faster. This was the real deal. He could be the one who found something important. Finally it was his turn. “Seven entering grid!”
    In a few seconds, they were all under the line and crawling forward. The cold seeped through his leather gloves. He glanced over at Alexis, but her eyes were focused on the ground. Unlike the rest of them, Alexis wasn’t wearing padded painter’s kneelers. On her hands were regular red fleece gloves, not the leather SAR recommended for evidence work. Her hands and knees must already be wet. He wondered why she hadn’t bought better stuff.
    Inch by slow inch, they moved forward. Nick’s eyes scoured the ground. Dirt, pine needles, pebbles, more dirt, decaying leaves, small plants, slightly bigger plants. At least there weren’t any big bushes directly in front of him. The SAR rule was that if you couldn’t see through something, you had to go through it, even if that meant tunneling through a blackberry bush. A bad guy might be counting on you not finding his gun because you weren’t willing to brave the thorns.
    A certified named Jackie was the first to find something. “Team halt!”
    The team echoed her. “Team halt!” One by one, everyone straightened up until they were kneeling, all of them looking at Jackie.
    Mitchell hurried up behind them. “Who called team halt?”
    Jackie, who was a senior, said crisply, “Twelve. Possible evidence.” She pointed, but didn’t touch. They had been lectured about this several times. If they didn’t touch or disturb the evidence, they didn’t enter the official chain of custody.
    Mitchell leaned over Jackie’s shoulder.
    â€œWhatcha got?” Detective Harriman asked, coming up behind him.
    Mitchell turned toward him. “A piece of gum, sir.”
    On the other side of Alexis, Ruby said something about DNA. Nick hadn’t thought about it before, but gum must have spit on it.
    â€œFlag it and keep going,” Detective Harriman said. Mitchell handed Jackie a small orange plastic flag on a wire, which she poked into the dirt. On their first training weekend, Nick had been a little disappointed to find out that evidence flags looked exactly like survey flags at a construction site. They had been told it was better to flag everything than to stop to collect each item. It made it less likely that they would miss a spot. Only the important finds were worth pulling everyone off the search.
    After she finished, Mitchell called out, “Team forward!”
    â€œTeam forward!” they answered, a little