Mountain Rampage (30 page)

“I came back a few minutes later. She was gone. I went inside, locked the door, lay down. I was all in.”

Chuck gritted his teeth.
The alcohol
.

Clarence continued, “I didn't wake up until I heard the sirens. I came outside with everyone else.”

“She ran away,” Chuck said, sure of it. “Into the woods. She told me where she went in the mornings. She said she hadn't been up there since the police investigation.”

“If that's where she ran off to, the fire should've driven her back down by now.”

“That's what you'd think.”

They sprinted down the first-floor hallway and burst out the back door. A loud crack, distinct as a rifle shot, issued from the raging fire to the south. They set out up the slope past the dining hall, Chuck aiming his flashlight ahead into the trees, Clarence shining his phone light. They moved fast, straight uphill, passing the spot where Nicoleta had died in Chuck's arms. He swept his flashlight at bare tree trunks, dry grass patches, occasional low bushes. Nothing. Sheila could be anywhere.

“What was she wearing?” he asked Clarence.

Sheila's private spot above the dorms couldn't be far; she'd visited it during the few minutes the students had to themselves each morning between breakfast and when they reported to the van for the drive to the mine.

“A green shirt. It had a bunch of little buttons down the front that she—” He stopped, began again. “Tan pants with cargo pockets.”

The clothes she'd been wearing when Chuck had visited with her in the Raven House hallway.

The forest floor climbed steadily. Chuck and Clarence wended their way up the slope between the trees. The growl of the fire grew louder as they climbed closer to the expanding periphery of the blaze. Wind whipped past them up the slope, drawn by the flames.

The forest floor leveled after a short, steep pitch. Chuck paused at the top of the slope, swinging his flashlight back and forth. Clarence stopped beside him.

They were a hundred yards from Raven House. The tiny plateau upon which they stood stretched thirty feet to where the slope resumed its climb out of the valley to the west.

Chuck cocked his head, sensing the breeze as it shifted around them. Rather than continuing to flow up the slope toward the fire, the wind moved one way, then the other, like liquid sloshing in a bowl, until, as if having made up its mind, it burst back across the narrow plateau from the west, tumbling past Chuck and Clarence and on down the slope toward the dining hall and dormitories.

A cloud of smoke followed the initial blast of hot air across the plateau. Coughing, Chuck bent forward, terrified. Where there was smoke, flames wouldn't be far behind.

He grasped Clarence's arm and turned at the edge of the plateau to sprint back down the slope to safety. There, beyond a break in the trees, just visible through the coursing smoke, was Sheila's view across the valley, the lights of the resort at the foot of the slope and those of Estes Park beyond.

The roar of the fire grew louder as the flames, having reversed direction with the wind, ate their way toward them, driven back into the valley by the cool night air flowing off the high peaks of the Mummy Range.

Squinting through the smoke, Chuck looked both directions
across the plateau, his smoke-filled lungs seizing.

Sheila wasn't here. They had to go.

Chuck started back down the slope. He came up short when a weak cry emerged through the roar of the flames.

F
ORTY
-N
INE

Chuck turned to Clarence. “You heard that?”

Clarence raised a hand.

“Help,” the faint cry came again, from the north. Chuck ran full out across the plateau with Clarence at his side.

Chuck's flashlight beam cut a hard line that marked the north edge of the plateau. He slid to a stop and aimed his flashlight down the hill. The smoke lifted a few feet off the ground. Sheila lay on her back against the base of a small pine tree twenty feet below, her eyes shining in the beam of light.

She raised a limp hand. Her torso was twisted around the tree trunk, her shirt and slacks covered in dust.

Her eyes fell closed and her hand dropped to her side as Chuck and Clarence scrambled to her.

Chuck gripped her shoulder, his light bright on her face. “Sheila!”

Clarence, kneeling beside Chuck, pointed at her neck. “Same as Nicoleta.”

A bright red cut ran from Sheila's left ear and disappeared beneath her chin.

Chuck nearly gagged.
Not again
. He tightened his grip on Sheila's shoulder. “Sheila,” he urged, her name catching in his throat.

Sheila's arms lay unmoving at her sides. Her mouth hung open, her chin slack.

Chuck put his fingers to her neck. The cut beneath her jaw was shallow. Her pulse was strong below her jawbone, just above the cut, which continued beneath her chin and almost to her right ear.

The slash on Sheila's neck was far less severe than that of Nicoleta's fatal wound. Blood seeped, but did not gush, from beneath Sheila's chin, staining the front of her green blouse.

Chuck continued to probe with his fingers. He found a large,
wet lump on the back of Sheila's head. When he took his fingers away from the lump, they were red with blood. “Somebody hit her, too.”

Clarence shoved his phone in his pocket and reached beneath Sheila, sliding her away from the tree. “We've got to get her out of here.”

The fire roared down the slope toward them, pressed by the down-rushing wind. Thick spirals of smoke, dark as molasses, curled above their heads.

Together, Chuck and Clarence lifted Sheila. They propped her limp body upright, her arms across their shoulders, and hurried down the slope toward the valley floor with her slung between them, her head lolling and her feet dragging.

The oncoming flames, no more than fifty yards up the slope behind them, lit the way ahead. Chuck looked back as they rushed down the hill. The fire was advancing faster than he and Clarence could move with Sheila draped awkwardly between them. The flames were only thirty yards away now, leaping down the slope from tree to tree like a blazing locomotive.

Chuck tripped over a branch, causing him to let go of Sheila and tumble down the hill, painfully knocking his head where he'd previously bruised it upon being thrown from Jake's wrecker. He came to rest sprawled on his back and watched from the forest floor as Clarence swung Sheila's body up and over his shoulder in a single, powerful move.

“Come on,” he grunted to Chuck without breaking stride.

Chuck scrambled to his feet and followed as Clarence galloped down the slope, matching the speed of the pursuing flames.

The on-rushing fire lit the rear wall of the dining hall ahead of them. The flames were hot on Chuck's back. The smoke, flowing along the ground where the angle of the slope lessened near the bottom of the valley, seared his lungs. He trailed Clarence
and Sheila along the side of the dining hall and out of the trees just as the fire reached the back wall of the building.

Chuck charged past the cafeteria and into the open, Clarence just ahead of him. He took a rasping breath. Human forms, hazy in the roiling smoke, lined the paved path leading from the dormitories to the dining hall. Waiting arms lowered Sheila's limp body from Clarence's shoulders and carried her past the dorms and across the parking lot to the grass fields.

Clarence sank to his knees on the path. Chuck looked back the way they'd come, his chest heaving. Flames snaked across the cafeteria's asphalt-shingle roof, spinning into the night sky like specters from the spirit world. He pulled Clarence up by the arm and they fled together to the fields.

Kirina and Parker crouched on either side of Sheila, who lay on the grass in the glow of an overhead streetlight. The students stood in a circle, looking on, while the workers from Falcon House hovered a few yards away in a tight clutch.

Chuck and Clarence elbowed their way inside the circle of students. Kirina looked up, stricken, her eyes darting from Clarence to Chuck and back to Clarence. “We thought…we thought…”

Chuck moved the students back, his arms outstretched. “She's going to be all right,” he said. “She hasn't lost much blood.”

Parker held his phone to his ear. “Nothing. I can't get through.”

Samuel spoke from the circle of students. “None of us can.”

“Keep trying,” Chuck told him. “If we need to, we can get the firefighters to help.” He knelt next to Kirina. “Her pulse was strong when we found her.”

Kirina put her fingers to Sheila's neck. “Still is. The cut isn't deep.” She stroked Sheila's forehead, her hand streaked with blood, her shoulders trembling.

Clarence leaned over them from above. “She called out.
That's the only reason we found her.”

Janelle approached with the first-aid kit from the truck, the girls close behind her. She knelt next to Parker, snapped the case open, and set about applying gauze bandages to the wound on Sheila's neck, displaying the same calm assurance as when she tended to the girls' scraped knees and elbows.

Carmelita draped herself across Janelle's back and buried her face in her mother's long hair. Chuck reached a hand to Rosie, who collapsed against him. He rose and lifted her in his arms.

Rosie pushed herself away from him and pointed down at Sheila. “Will Dr. Gregory make her all better?”

“Of course, he will,” Chuck promised.

“
Mamá
says you don't like him.”

Chuck looked Rosie in the eye. “Don't like him? Ha. He saved your life, remember?”

Parker looked up from his phone. “She needs an ambulance, but—”

Samuel waved his hand and spoke, his voice urgent. “I just got through. Quiet!”

“We have a medical emergency,” Samuel yelled into his phone. “We need an ambulance.” He provided their location and a description of Sheila's injuries before lowering his phone and addressing the waiting group. “She said she'd send a police officer.”

Chuck frowned. “An officer?”

“She said the ambulance isn't available.”

“We only have the one,” Parker said.

A siren sounded from downtown. Seconds later, a police car raced up the road to the resort entrance. At the bottom of the valley, fire trucks surrounded the lodge and conference center, blocking the main road, while firefighters directed defensive streams of water on the two buildings. The police car bounced over the curb separating the entrance drive from the fields and
careened across the grass, headed for the dorms.

Chuck lowered Rosie to the ground. She went to Janelle while he stepped out of the circle of students. He waved his flashlight at the police car, which slid to a stop in front of him. Two figures emerged. The driver, lit by the overhead lights lining the fields, was Hemphill. Tall, broad-shouldered Dr. Gregory climbed from the passenger side of the car.

A large first-aid kit hung from the young doctor's hand. He hurried over to Sheila. Behind him, a rear door of the police car opened and a third person stepped out and rounded the car.

Chuck's boss, Fort Lewis College Professor of Anthropology Arturo Sartore.

Sartore's signature shock of long, silver hair, combed back from his wrinkled face, fell past his ears to his collar. He wore a short-sleeved dress shirt tucked into high-waisted khakis.

Chuck had forgotten Sartore was on his way to Estes Park. “Professor?”

“Chuck,” Sartore said grimly. “I barely made it into town before all hell broke loose. I went to the police station and managed to catch a ride here.”

Chuck turned and joined the circle of students. Gregory knelt at Sheila's side and pulled on a pair of latex gloves from his medical kit. Janelle sat back, allowing him to take over. Chuck aimed his flashlight at Sheila's head and torso, adding to the glow of the streetlight. Blood seeped from the gauze bandages swaddling her neck.

Janelle turned to Gregory. “Her pulse is steady. Her eyes have been fluttering; she's coming around.”

The doctor touched Janelle's arm. “You've done a great job with her.”

Color rose in Chuck's cheeks, this time the result of pride. He addressed Hemphill. “We found her up the hill in the trees.”

The officer looked up at him. “
You
found her?”

“She was missing. Clarence and I went to—”

“
Clarence
?” Hemphill exchanged a glance with Sartore.

The professor told Chuck, “That's why the officer agreed to bring me here.”

Clarence stepped back.

Chuck stared at Sartore. “What are you talking about?”

“Jim, Officer Hemphill, wants me to be here when he…” The professor fell silent, looking everywhere but at Clarence.

Chuck turned to Hemphill. “Be here for
what
?”

The officer rose from Sheila's side. “For Clarence's arrest,” he said. He turned to face Clarence. “I'm here to arrest you for the assault and murder of Nicoleta Barstolik.”