Mountain Rampage (26 page)

Sheila came down the hall carrying a cardboard box.

“Are you going back in the van tomorrow?” Chuck asked her.

“Yes. Then on home from there for my healing ceremony.”

“Your what?”

“My grandfather is a
hatáli
, a medicine man, from Two Gray Hills,” she said, naming the Navajo reservation district on the Arizona-New Mexico border famous for its intricately woven rugs.

“Let me guess—if your grandfather is a medicine man, your grandmother must be a weaver.”

Sheila's broad face broke into a smile. She tossed her long, silky, black hair over her shoulder. “Yep. Dezba Natani. A couple of galleries in Durango carry her rugs. Have you seen them?”

“Afraid not. I'll have to check them out.” He looked her over. “You come by your belief in skinwalkers honestly, don't you?”

“Of course.” She grew serious. “My grandfather does my cleansing every summer, before school starts. He's been doing it for me since I was little. But now, after…” She left a space where Nicoleta's name should have been. “I really need it.”

“Your morning walks up the hill aren't enough?”

“They've helped me make it through the summer. There's a flat spot up there with a break in the trees where I can see all the way across the valley. But I haven't gone back up there since…since…”

Chuck steered the conversation away from Nicoleta's murder. “Healing ceremonies involve sweat lodges, right?”

“Only for the men. Mine just has a lot of chanting and incense burning and waving eagle feathers around. It's kind of goofy, but it works. Gets me ready for the school year.”

Chuck smiled. “Sounds fun. Maybe he'd do one for me, too.”

“He would, you know. He does lots of them for
bilagáana
—for white people, I mean.”

Chuck stepped aside to let her pass. “I want you to know how much I've appreciated having you in the course this summer.”

“It's been good,” she said. “I mean,” she hedged as she headed down the hall, “it's been better than I expected.”

Chuck climbed the rear stairs to the second floor. Bits of conversation came from an open doorway as he walked down the hall.

“Yes,” said a young woman's voice. “Gold. Seriously. That's what he said.”

“The whole summer? You're telling me we've been—” The second voice, that of another member of Team Paydirt, cut off as Chuck passed the doorway. He kept moving, pretending he hadn't heard anything, and strode straight to Clarence's room.

The door was open. Clarence lay sprawled on his back on his unmade single bed, his eyes closed, a travel mug, its spill-proof lid snapped into place, balanced on his chest with both hands.

“Clarence,” Chuck snapped. “What's it been, less than an hour?”

Clarence sat up, his eyes unfocused. Chuck closed the door behind him, crossed the room, and sniffed the mug.
Tequila
.

“What did I tell you last night at the cabin?” Chuck demanded.

Clarence squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Just a little,
jefe
. To help me relax.”

“The last thing you need to do right now is relax. Don't you
get it? We'll be out of here tomorrow—as long as we keep ourselves together. Just one more night, Clarence.”

“One more night of wondering if I'm gonna be locked away for the rest of my life.”

Chuck glared at him. “You told everybody about the gold.”

“Just Samuel. You didn't say I couldn't.”

“He already told everyone else.”

Clarence shrugged. “So what? You said it was going to be big news. Didn't seem like it was a secret or anything.”

Chuck ripped the mug from Clarence's hand. “Give me that.” He looked around the room. “Where's the bottle?”

Clarence's eyes grew steely. Then, in sullen defeat, he jutted his chin at his desk on the opposite side of the small room.

Chuck opened the desk drawers one at a time until, in the bottom drawer, he came upon a quart bottle of Cuervo Gold sloshing with tequila. “It's like I'm your babysitter,” he grumbled.

He grabbed the bottle by its neck, shoved the drawer closed with his foot, and wheeled on Clarence. “I'm sure you've got more booze around here somewhere.
Don't touch it
, you hear me?”

Kirina poked her head out of her room when Chuck passed on his way down the hall, headed for the dumpster out back with Clarence's mug and bottle.

“Let's talk,” she said, waving him into her room and closing the door behind him. Half-filled duffle bags covered the linoleum floor. A stuffed backpack leaned against her bed.

“Is it true, about the mine?” she asked.

He ignored her question and held up Clarence's bottle. “Did you know about this?”

She looked away.

“Of course, you did.” He eyed the side of her face. “But you told me how much you like him, didn't you? Far be it for you to get him in any trouble.” He paused. “And, yes, it's true.”

She turned back to him. “I heard it looks like dirt, but that it's really gold.”

“Ten percent of it is. Or so I'm told. Not that it'll do anyone any good. It's park property. I'll let them know about it after everyone leaves tomorrow morning.”

Kirina whistled. “Who'd've thought?”

After tossing the tequila in the trash, Chuck walked across the fields, headed for the conference center. His phone dinged with a text from Janelle.

Hard to get much done with the girls
.
You coming?

Back soon,
Chuck texted back.
Stopping to see Parker first
.

“Saw you headed this way,” the resort manager said after Chuck knocked on Parker's office door and entered.

Chuck looked out the picture window. In the distance, the afternoon sun flashed off the windows of Estes Park's downtown buildings. He took a seat in front of the desk. “All you ever do is creep on people.”

“Moving my office up here was the best idea I ever had. I don't miss much.”

“Except Nicoleta's murder.”

“Which is why I'm spending even more time looking out my window now.” He shook his head. “I can't wait for tomorrow to be over.”

“Hemphill's what all of us are waiting on. I haven't heard a thing from him today, have you?”

“He didn't have much to say when I talked to him about moving Nicoleta's car. Maybe he's getting ready to pounce. That's what I'm hoping, anyway.”

“He has to wait for the lab reports, the autopsy, all that. Could be a while.”

“I'm not so sure about that. She was knifed, or maybe garroted or whatever they call it, that's obvious enough. And the killer took whatever he used with him. What else is there to study?”

“For one thing, what the victim was doing before she was killed. I'm sure Hemphill will want to know if she slept with anybody in the hours leading up to her death.”

“Ohhhh.”

“If the autopsy turns up anything, I think you…we…can count on lots of DNA requests.”

“Both dorms?”

“I expect so.”

Parker made no effort to hide his disgust. “Kids today. I swear.”

“This from the guy who chased after every girl in Durango 24/7.”

“That was different. I never caught any.”

“Your failure makes you hate others' success?”

“I don't hate
you
.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Parker leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “Look who you showed up with this summer. Give me a break, buddy.”

“Janelle?”

“Yes,
Janelle
. She's the talk of the town.” Parker's eyes grew bright. “Or of the hospital, anyway.”

Chuck sat forward. “What's that supposed to mean?”

The resort manager jerked a thumb toward the window behind him. “The new ER doc.”

“You saw him?”

“He drove right by. His SUV is hard to miss.”

“He made a house call. He was checking up on Rosie.”

“While you were away.”

“He was there when I came back. There was nothing going on.”

“Of course there wasn't,” Parker said.

F
ORTY
-T
HREE

Chuck kicked a piece of gravel out of his path as he made his way up the driveway to the cabin. The afternoon sun sliced through the trees. Insects buzzed in the ponderosas growing close on both sides of the two-track.

What would happen, he asked himself, when he revealed what he'd learned about the gold in the mine and turned over the skull to park officials? No doubt they would get in touch with the Estes Park Police Department, Officer Hemphill included.

Chuck shook his head. He was too tired to care what Hemphill might do at that point.

But what about Jake and the dead rams? Exhausted though Chuck was, anger flared in him.

He knew how things would go after he made his report: Jake was bound to hear what was up, and he would ditch any evidence that could be used against him. He would get off, at best, with a warning—and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, Chuck could do about it.

He cursed as he walked on up the drive to the cabin. Tracking the drag path to the fen, finding the tire tracks and boot prints, gathering the flakes of dried blood from the side of the toolbox within feet of Jake—all for nothing.

At the sound of his footsteps on the deck stairs, Rosie ran out the front door and dove into Chuck's arms. His heart warmed as he pulled her to him.

“
Preciosa mia
,” he whispered in her ear.

Rosie giggled. “
Preciosa mia tambien
,” she whispered back.

He led her by the hand into the cabin. Boxes lined the kitchen table. Folded pants and shorts and jackets covered the sofa and chairs. Janelle came out of the back bedroom carrying an armful of the girls' brightly colored blouses. She aimed an upward
breath at a lock of hair that had fallen across one eye. When that proved unsuccessful, she laid the blouses over the back of the couch and pushed the loose length of hair behind her ear.

She wore knee-length yoga pants and a tight nylon top that accentuated her trim figure. She gave Chuck a weary look.

He saluted. “Private Bender, reporting for duty.”

“About time.” She displayed the cabin with a sweep of her hand. “Lots to do.”

They set to work, the girls pitching in, as the afternoon gave way to evening. They finished packing not long after dinner, boxes and duffle bags stacked in the living room, ready to be loaded in the bed of the truck for the drive home the next day.

Chuck grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and wandered out to the front porch. He took a long swallow from the bottle, the cold brew tickling his throat.

Things would happen fast in the morning. He would see the students off first, along with Kirina and, he could only hope, Clarence, who would drive the van to Durango. Next, he would check in with Hemphill, to make sure there was nothing more the officer needed from him before he, too, left for home with Janelle and the girls. He would stop by park headquarters on the way out of town to drop off the skull and sample of calaverite, and fill park staffers in on what he'd learned about the mine and the slaughter of the bighorns on Mount Landen.

The forest surrounding the cabin was calm and quiet in the interlude between the last of the sun-warmed upslope breezes of daytime and the cool winds that fell from the high peaks and swept through the broad valley at night. A cricket sounded beneath the deck. The last light of dusk gave way to full dark.

Chuck thought of Nicoleta struggling to breathe before dying in his arms. What if the police never found the young woman's killer?

He thought of the bullet hole in the skull he'd found in the mine
shaft. The odds of solving that long-ago murder were slim indeed.

And he thought, again, of Jake and the dead rams—and realized the wrecker owner's guilt was the one thing he could do something about.

He set his beer on the deck railing. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he looked up the 24-hour number for Jake's Wrecker Service online, punched it in, and brought the phone to his ear.

F
ORTY
-F
OUR

Jake answered on the second ring. Chuck explained that Parker accidentally had directed the wrecker owner to leave Nicoleta's car in the wrong spot in the maintenance yard.

“It's in the way of a piece of heavy equipment he needs to get to first thing tomorrow,” Chuck said. “He wants you to come back out and move it tonight.”

“I don't think I left it in the way of anything,” Jake said.