Murder on High

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Murder on High

A Charlotte Graham Mystery

Stefanie Matteson

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

In memory of

ROGER P. BEIRNE

August 16, 1911 to November 25, 1993

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages, do not climb mountains,—their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them. Pomola is always angry with those who climb to the summit of Ktaadn.

—
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
,
The Maine Woods

1

It had taken her five hours and twelve minutes this year to reach Baxter Peak, the highest peak of Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain. It was fourteen minutes more than last year, but still good by anyone’s measure, for a woman of seventy-two. She had climbed the mountain every year for the last fourteen years at this time:
Diapensia
time, the second week in June. Her routine was always the same: up the Saddle Trail and over the saddle to the Tableland, a broad, plateau-like expanse on the south side of the summit, suspended nearly a mile above the surrounding countryside, to see the
Diapensia
. The Tableland, which had been molded by the retreating glacier, was one of the few places in the East where the unusual alpine wildflower bloomed in such profusion. There was a small colony on the summit of Mount Washington in neighboring New Hampshire, but nothing like here, where clusters of the dainty white flowers dotted the barren, windswept tundra, each a testimony to the ability of nature to adapt to near-arctic conditions. It took a plant eight to ten years to develop a taproot in the poor, thin soil, to say nothing of the twenty years it took to form the small evergreen cushion of tiny, leathery leaves, as dense as a clump of brain coral, that allowed it to survive the constant exposure to wind and snow.

Iris Richards felt a special sympathy with this tiny alpine wildflower, on whose habitat she had become something of an authority. She sometimes thought of herself in terms of a colony of
Diapensia
, alone on the tundra, drawn into herself, protected from an inhospitable environment by her thick, leathery skin. She supposed that’s why she felt so protective of the plants. Though signs warned hikers not to stray from the trail, few knew the reason was to protect the
Diapensia
. One footstep could cause what botanists called a blowout in the center of a cushion, opening a chink in the plant’s armor to a lethal invasion of the brutal winter winds that robbed it of life-giving moisture and causing it to die from the center out, thereby destroying a plant that might have taken thirty-five years to establish itself.

And even those who knew about the
Diapensia
didn’t care. Like that man she’d run into on the rim, the same one who’d kept dislodging rocks on the Saddle Slide. He’d said he was a member of the Highpointers Club. Their goal was to climb the highest peak in each of the fifty states. He’d climbed thirty, he said—all of the easiest ones. Some he’d simply driven up, like Mount Washington. And some, like the highest point in Delaware, were nothing more than a crossroad. It was a goal so typically American: a goal that satisfied the compulsion to quantify. He’d showed her his tally card. Up and down, probably not even stopping to look around. What was he going to do when he had to climb McKinley? she wondered. He certainly hadn’t taken any time to look at the
Diapensia
, hadn’t even noticed he was stepping on it. She’d carefully explained to him about the delicacy of its root system, to which he’d replied, “Well, if it’s so rare, I’d better take a picture of it,” proceeding as he did so to squash another clump with a foot shod in a fancy new hiking boot. A member of the Highpointers Club indeed! When she’d chastised him, he’d retorted with the outrageous statement that being stepped on by hikers was the price it had to pay for growing so near the trail. Awful man! She should have beaned him with her hiking stick when she’d run into him again on her way up. Good thing she hadn’t seen him on the Knife Edge. She’d have been tempted to push him right off.

Having added her rock to the rock monument at the summit, she now sat in a nest of lichen-clad boulders near the sign proclaiming Baxter Peak as the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. As she ate her snack (a cold sweet potato; she didn’t believe in eating meat, didn’t even believe in cooking her food because it was a waste of precious energy), she pondered the second part of her annual pilgrimage: across the Knife Edge to Pamola Peak. The Knife Edge: in length, slightly more than a mile; in width, as narrow as nine inches in places; in height, one mile, with a vertical drop-off of two thousand feet on either side. Getting across it was the test she set for herself each year. The Knife Edge was the ground on which she came to terms with herself. Courage, resolve, patience, fortitude, perseverance—it was a measure of the old-fashioned virtues in which she put her stock. It was also her opportunity to make her annual offering to the Indian god, Pamola, a ritual that she had created in recognition of the virtue in which she put the highest stock of all: sobriety. Others collected anniversary pins from AA; she, being intolerant of the society of others in general and especially so of the society of alcoholics, whose self-indulgent outpourings of guilt revolted her, waved a fifth of rum to the winds on Pamola’s summit in observance of another year without a relapse.

The Knife Edge stretched away from her now toward Pamola Peak: a dark, sharp, undulating spine of granite, banked on either side by a sea of gray-white fog, and wreathed in ghostly wisps of mist. It looked more eerie, more threatening than she had ever seen it, but oddly enough, less frightening. The fog that had moved in during the last hour camouflaged how high up she really was, thus eliminating
down
as a direction to consider (as if
across
wasn’t bad enough). It was this fear of
down
that provided much of the motive for her annual trek across the Knife Edge. It was a fear so severe that it reduced all thought to the question of where to put your feet next, and even that became too much to consider at times. Next to the Knife Edge, all of her life’s tribulations, foremost among them her daily battle with temptation, became mere minor annoyances. It was a terror that reduced life to its most basic element: survival.

Having finished her sweet potato, she slipped on her ash splint backpack, picked up her hiking stick, and stood up. There weren’t many other hikers on the peak today: a tall, handsome man passing by, a group of three young men eating lunch. She supposed the weather report posted at the ranger station at Chimney Pond had kept the hikers down below. Because of the fog and the chance of precipitation, park authorities had ranked this a Class II Hiking Day, meaning that the trails above the tree line were open, but not recommended because of potential weather deterioration. So far, the weather hadn’t deteriorated to the point that she would have to consider turning back, but it had turned cold and windy. Taking off her pack, she pulled out the foul-weather gear that Jeanne had given her: a windbreaker and matching rain pants in a synthetic fabric. Though she appreciated the practical advantage of a fabric that was both lightweight and waterproof—she had waited out too many rainstorms in the discomfort of a heavy rubber rain slicker—she wished the manufacturers had produced it in more discreet colors. This was a neon green, almost a chartreuse, trimmed with black. She might have questioned Jeanne’s judgment had she not noticed that all of these foul-weather suits seemed to come in similarly vivid colors. After donning the jacket and pants, she put her backpack on again, picked up her hiking stick, and set out.

She was glad the summit wasn’t crowded. There was nothing worse than traversing the Knife Edge with someone breathing down your neck. She especially didn’t want to be hurried today, tired as she was. She hadn’t been able to get back to sleep last night after being awakened by the creature that had appeared at the front of her lean-to at the Chimney Pond Campground. She’d thought at first that it was a moose. She’d seen a moose grazing near the lean-to just before she’d gone to bed that evening. But then she’d realized that it was a man wearing a headdress of moose antlers. He’d been an eerie sight in the moonlight, against the backdrop of twisted white birches, softly shaking the rattle he held in one hand. For a second, she thought he was a hallucination. Then she remembered that she wasn’t drinking anymore. He’d disappeared the moment she’d sat up, evaporated into the woods without even a rustle of the underbrush. The ranger had appeared a moment later, dispelling any doubts she may have had about the figure’s reality. He’d heard the rattle, he said. The man was a prankster pretending to be Pamola haunting the campground. The ranger himself had heard him several times, but on each occasion the man had vanished before he could be apprehended. Though the ranger assured her that he wouldn’t appear again that night, she hadn’t been able to fall back asleep. The incident had been deeply disturbing. She was reminded of the demons in Tibetan Buddhist rituals, symbols of the personal demons that needed to be overcome on the path to enlightenment. She had chosen the fierce, avenging storm spirit as the symbol of her personal demon, and here he was, taunting her, as if he were an emissary from her own subconscious. “You thought I was dead,” he said. “But I’m still very much alive.” It gave her the shivers just to think about him. So she decided she wouldn’t. Just put him back in his box, and close the lid. Bam! Take that, you little nasty. The deed done, she checked her watch—it read 1:32
P.M.
—and headed out onto the trail that led across the clouds.