The Adventurer's Son(78)
Carson must be right.
Chapter 45
Pata Lora
Guichos, Carate, November 2015.
Courtesy of the author
One of the biggest events in Missing Dial—when the producers and Carson are sure they’ve caught the lightning in a bottle of live crime-solving on TV—comes when Ken and Carson lure Pata Lora to a remote shack to scare him into thinking they have all the facts. Carson lays out the narrative his Dos Brazos informants had fed him, based on stories by Willim, who claimed his nephew Pata Lora told him about Guicho, the dismemberment, and the sharks.
Aengus put me in a stuffy SUV where I took notes, listening via an audio receiver connected to the car’s speakers. A cameraman and GoPro recorded my reactions to Carson’s soft interrogation of Pata Lora. At the end of a long hike together, Ken had led him to a remote shack where Carson was waiting. Initially wary, it took some coaxing on Carson’s part and reassurance by Ken, Pata Lora’s new best friend, to get him to relax and talk. That and chain-smoking cigarettes.
“Everybody saw you go in with him but you came out alone,” Carson said referring to the hike with Cody.
“Who said that?” Pata Lora responded.
“Four miners in Carate.” Carson’s reference to the Guicho family was meant to throw Pata Lora off-balance.
Pata Lora now took the story and ran with it, spinning yarn faster than Carson could pick it up. He described in detail how he and Cody encountered the three Guichos a few miles up the Carate River from the beach. There was Pollo with a 9-mm pistol, Mario with a machete, and their dreadlocked father, who went by Guicho, standing behind his sons.
“I saw their faces, Guicho, like they were angry. They were looking at Cody, like, ‘YOU OWE ME!’”
“What did Cody say?” Carson asked.
Pata Lora recounted Cody’s alarm: “What happened? What happened?”
The Guichos responded: “Shut up, motherfucker—and you—you run! RUN! Or I will kill you, motherfucker!”
Pata Lora went on, “Of course, man, I run.”
Carson pushed. “And Cody was alive?”
“Of course. I don’t know how they killed him. I don’t know nothing, man. I save my life, that’s all. That was the last thing I saw. I’m not fucking lie. You look in my eyes.”
The scene in the show is tense. The hidden cameras give it a peep-show quality. Pata Lora sounds shaken: “Now I’m fucking scared.”
Carson was sure that this was Pata Lora’s “dark secret,” a true confession of a scene Pata Lora had witnessed—the Guichos abducting Cody.
The interrogation disturbed me, too. Afterward, everyone in production—cameramen, sound men, assistants, Aengus, Jeff—was quiet, somber, long-faced, and respectful toward me. Aengus walked up, his white iPhone earpiece dangling. “Sorry, man,” he said putting his hand on my shoulder. I was in shock, feeling like I should believe what I had just heard, but couldn’t.
Have I been wrong all along? And Dondee and Carson right? Was my son not who I thought he was?
CARSON CLAIMED “THIRTY witnesses” from Puerto Jiménez to Carate saw Cody and Pata Lora. Whenever I challenged him, he responded, “They’re all wrong, and you’re right?” Dondee had said the same thing. It was what everyone said, the polite ones, too, when I was out of earshot: “That poor grieving father. He’s lost his son and refuses to accept the truth that his son had no skills and poor judgment.”
For me, the show Missing Dial doesn’t document Carson and Ken catching a killer. It documents my betrayal of the son I raised as I warp dates to fit the fantasy of the Osa’s pariah: Pata Lora.
I managed to save some of my son’s dignity in a corner of my heart, crowded against our Umnak walk, Culebra swim, Wilderness Classic, and a lifetime of trust. I tried to make sense of these feelings in my notebook:
I’m wondering how did I just let everything I know go—I was so sure that Roman wasn’t with Pata Lora. Now I’ve given in to all of it, following Carson’s lead. Like him, any little thing that doesn’t jive with the narrative is just ignored.
Dates don’t line up?
Nobody keeps a calendar here.
Footwear and colors don’t match up?
What color did you wear last week, last month, last year? How about just yesterday?
Smoking pot?
Are you so sure it wasn’t just Pata Lora smoking pot?
Thumbtacks?
Maybe he was trying something out for Panama.
And a guide?
Maybe he just liked Pata Lora as a local, was using him the way he might in Panama.
Just writing all that is difficult! It’s like I feel like I am stepping on his memory! Like I am disregarding everything I know after six months of emails and a lifetime with my own son.
But I signed on for Carson and this is where he brought us—and while I have trouble separating his truth from his manipulations, he does want to solve this. And he has “dozens” of people who said, Yes, we saw Pata Lora with that gringo who looks and acts like Roman! That seems less likely than the other contradictions.
Do I have doubt?
Yes.
Am I willing to swallow that bitter pill?
Yes.
Do I want this to end?
Of course.