Mountain Rampage (19 page)

Carmelita and Rosie pressed forward on either side of Janelle, who held them back with extended arms. The girls focused the beams of their headlamps on the skull. Chuck wiped his headlamp lens and directed its light at the object in his hand as well.

The skull differed markedly from the ancient Native American skulls he encountered in the course of his archaeological work on federal lands across the Southwest. Those skulls featured receding jaw lines and wide nasal passages. The skull resting in his palm had a prognathous, or extended, jaw line and a narrow nasal opening associated with Caucasians. A thin, bony protrusion between the eyes known as a nuchal ridge also pointed to the skull's European ancestry.

Chuck rotated the skull to study the bullet's jagged exit wound.

Deaths in Colorado's hard-rock mines were commonplace.

Mountain-town cemeteries dating from the late 1800s were lined with the graves of miners who'd died of everything from tunnel collapses to carbon-monoxide poisoning to silicosis caused by rock-dust inhalation. Murder, on the other hand, was rare in the state's tight-knit mining communities—yet the skull in his hand revealed death by a deliberate hand.

Chuck turned the skull back around and rubbed his thumb across the small, dark circle in the center of its forehead. How had the miner come to be shot and killed?

Rosie leaned on her mother's arm while balancing on a couple of loosened floorboard planks. The planks squeaked against one another beneath her weight. The sound, similar to the squeak of the mine-mouth door, startled Chuck.

The baggie of sodden black material fell from his shirt as he scrambled to his feet, thinking of the locked door that had been eased closed in silence at the mouth of the mine just twenty-four hours ago. He peered down the tunnel past Janelle and the girls. The rectangle of starry night sky was visible at the mouth of the mine. The door was still open.

He shoved the baggie and skull into his pack and led Janelle and the girls down the tunnel at a fast clip, the rectangle of sky growing larger with each step. He increased his speed, almost jogging, as they passed the tunnel's halfway point.

“What's the rush?” Janelle asked, herding the girls as best she could behind him.

Though the end of the tunnel was less than a hundred feet away, the reinstalled floorboards seemed to stretch far ahead of him.

He broke into a run.

T
HIRTY
-O
NE

Fifty feet to go. Thirty. Ten.

Chuck burst from the mine and stood, panting, between the ore cart tracks.

Janelle ushered the girls out of the mine behind him. “What were you thinking?” she demanded.

“Yeah,” Rosie said, placing her hands on her hips. “What were you thinking?”

Chuck swung his headlamp all directions. No one was there.

“I was thinking,” he said, grabbing Rosie beneath her arms, “how incredibly cute you and Carm are.”

He spun Rosie around and around, his boots digging into the gravel between the tracks, the stars rotating above their heads.

“Whooo!” Rosie cried, grinning in the light of his headlamp, her legs flying free as she twirled.

Chuck slowed, set her down, and used her as a staff, leaning on her shoulder and bending forward. “You're not a little girl anymore, you know that?” he said between gulps of air.

“No, I'm not.” She clapped her hands. “I'm a big girl.” Displaying no signs of dizziness, she looked at Janelle, her headlamp lighting her mother's face. “I've always been a big girl, haven't I,
Mamá
?”

“In every way,” Janelle agreed. She directed her headlamp at Chuck's grit-encrusted pack. “I thought archaeologists weren't supposed to mess with human remains.”

“Generally, that's true.” He straightened. “But if it was me who'd been murdered—even it was more than a century ago—I wouldn't mind if somebody tried to figure out what had happened.”

She aimed her headlamp at his face. “This is your idea of making sure everything's ‘squared away' around here, is it?”

He answered with a question of his own. “What say we get out of here?”

Two hours later, Chuck stopped the truck halfway down the cabin's driveway. He climbed out and looked up at the slice of sky showing between the trees lining the drive. Light from the moon, high in the eastern sky, nearly washed out the stars.

When he'd returned to the resort with Janelle and the girls half an hour ago, he'd spotted only a couple of police cars along with the mobile command vehicle still parked in front of the dormitory buildings.

After showering off his latest round of black grit, Chuck convinced Janelle—and himself—that she'd be okay on her own with Carmelita and Rosie for a little while.

“It should only take a few minutes to check in with Clarence and see how things went at Falcon House,” he said.

She glanced out the front window at the dark forest surrounding the cabin.

“You can come along,” Chuck said. “But…”

Behind her, in the tiny bathroom at the back of the cabin, the girls giggled as they brushed their teeth, wrestling for position in front of the sink.

She sighed. “Straight there and straight back.”

From where he stood outside the truck at the edge of the driveway, Chuck's eyes fell on his grimy pack resting on the floor between the truck's front and back seats, lit by a sliver of moonlight angling through the trees. He would wait until he was on his way out of town to turn the skull over to park officials. He would also let them know about the ram carcasses rotting in the forest on the north flank of Mount Landen.

His thoughts returned, compass-like, to Nicoleta's murder, and to the fact that he'd put off checking in with Professor Sartore for far too long. He fished his phone from his pocket and punched up Sartore's number.

The professor answered before the first ring ended. “Chuck, I swear to God—”

“It's been nonstop here, professor,” Chuck said. He hurried on, outlining the murder and its aftermath, knowing full well Sartore had been following events online as they unfolded.

“Shut everything down first thing tomorrow morning,” Sartore said when Chuck finished. “I want those students out of there.”

“I'll do my best.”

“No, you won't ‘do your best,'” the professor growled. “You'll get them out of there tomorrow, no ifs, ands, or buts.”

“I'm afraid there is one ‘but,' sir. The police are telling me they'd like the kids to stick around until they give the all-clear.”

“That's illegal.”

“Some of the kids knew the young woman who was killed.”

“You mean to tell me the police are considering them as
suspects
?”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

“I will not have my students held hostage,” Sartore thundered. “I'll go to the governor if I have to.”

“I've met twice so far with the officer in charge of the investigation. He sees himself as a tough nut, likes to play hardball. He's careful to not say the students have to stay, but he's suggesting it very strongly. I think he'd almost like it if you took him on.”

“God
dammit
.”

“My feelings exactly, professor. Not sure we have a choice in this, though.”

Sartore grunted in defeat. “I'm driving up tomorrow, then.”

“You really don't need to.”

“Wrong. I
do
need to,” Sartore said. “I was counting on you, Chuck. But you've failed me. You hear that?
You've failed me
.”

Chuck clamped his mouth shut. Best to ride this out.

“Stay close to those kids until I get there,” the professor continued, his tone growing more reasonable in the wake of Chuck's silence. “All of them. And keep me posted.”

“We'll be okay by Friday,” Chuck said. “I'm sure of it. The police just have lots of people to talk to.”

Sartore huffed. “I want to know everything as soon as you know it. I know you like to handle things on your own. Hell, that's why I hired you. But not now, not with this. These long stretches between calls? No more of that. You hear me?”

“I hear you, sir.”

Hemphill stepped out of the mobile command vehicle when Chuck parked in front of Raven House.

“Where have you been?” the officer demanded, striding across the parking lot before Chuck could escape into the dormitory.

“Working. I've still got a job to do here.”

Hemphill aimed a finger behind him. “Come with me.”

Once again, they settled into the seats opposite one another at the small table inside the command vehicle. The interior lights were turned low, giving Chuck the impression he was seated with Hemphill in a quiet bar. The new-vehicle smell inside the RV had been replaced by the greasy odor of burgers and stale French fries.

Harley gave Chuck a weary nod from his seat at the rear counter. Even in the dim light, Chuck could see that Harley's eyes were bloodshot, his face drawn. Chuck could only imagine what his own face looked like after two nights with virtually no sleep.

Hemphill pressed his hands to his temples while Harley rolled down the narrow aisle in his chair and set his laptop and microphone on the table.

Chuck said, “I already told you what I know.”

Hemphill flicked his fingers at the microphone. “Just a formality.”

“You talked to all the students?”

“I did. Parker was right. Your group has been pretty busy this summer.”

Chuck kept his tone even. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“You're a hands-off kind of guy, that's what everyone says. You let your team leaders run things for you.”

“That's what they're for. And they've done a good job. Things have gone smoothly enough.”

“Up at the mine, maybe. But down here? It's been a full-on soap opera.” The officer lifted a finger. “First off, there's your guys.”

“Team Nugget,” Chuck confirmed.

“Yep. Drinking, toking, having a good time.”

“Doesn't surprise me.”

Hemphill lifted a second finger. “The thing that surprised me was your girls. What your boys were to alcohol and pot, your girls were to bed hopping.”

“With Team Nugget?”

“And Falcon House.”

“The Mexican workers?”

“The younger ones, some of them, from the sound of things.”

Chuck rested his fingers on the edge of the table. “None of what you're telling me speaks to the fact that it was the young woman from Falcon House, Nicoleta, who was killed.”

Hemphill lifted a third finger and continued as if Chuck hadn't spoken. “Then there's your brother-in-law. He knew the victim. Intimately. But I expect you already knew that, didn't you? You just didn't feel like sharing that piece of information with us.”

Chuck studied the tabletop as Hemphill went on. “He was up front with us about it. Told us he slept with her a couple of times at the beginning of the summer.”

Chuck looked up. “But you haven't arrested him yet.”

“That'd be the logical thing to do right about now.”

At the end of the table, Harley cleared his throat. Hemphill gave the gray-haired cop a sidelong glance before returning his gaze to Chuck.

“Your brother-in-law takes the prize, I'll give him that,” Hemphill said. “Out and about every night, and remarkably successful, too, from the sound of things—the way he measures success, anyway.”

Chuck tucked his hands in his lap. It sounded as if Hemphill believed Clarence was innocent, which meant Kirina hadn't said anything about seeing him slipping back into the dorm after the murder. “What more can I tell you?”

“I feel like I've got a pretty good sense of him at this point.”

“And?”

“I don't have any physical evidence tying him to the murder.”

Harley shifted in his seat. “Not yet,” he muttered.

Hemphill said, “As you can see, Harley and I have a difference of opinion regarding your brother-in-law.”

“Damn straight we do.” Harley crossed his arms tight across his chest. His face reddened in the muted light of the command vehicle.

“I respect Harley's opinion,” Hemphill said. “In this case, however, I disagree with it—at least for now. But the minute I have cause to think otherwise, I'll come knocking.”

“What you're thinking is one-hundred-percent correct,” Chuck said. “Your right-hand man here—” he dipped his head Harley's direction “—is wrong. Clarence is no murderer. And as for his knife and the blood, he had nothing to do with that, either.”

“I happen to agree with you,” Hemphill said. “For now, like I said. I think Clarence is telling the truth.” He looked straight across the table at Chuck, his eyes growing cold and hard.