Worlds Apart (7 page)

~~

“Hey, c'mon. Don't hog the
cigarette.”

“You're hoggin' the pictures. How
come you get everything?”

“Knock it off, morons! You're
getting her wet!”

The scuffling stopped, and an
effort was made to reestablish the tarp the three boys huddled
under. Water from the laden trees splashed onto their crossed legs,
leaving splotches on essential parts of Miss March’s anatomy before
they got things back under control.

“Damn, now the cigarette's
out.”

“You can't do anything right,
dude.”

“Fuck you.”

Les Chardes ignored the bickering
of his friends, brushing a respectful hand over the magazine open
on his lap. “Hold the flashlight still, Jason,” he said. “Pete can
always light the cigarette again.”

The circle of light dashed onto
the dirt as Jason made a final adjustment to the tarp over his
head, then made a precise path to Miss March’s fuzzy patch. Les
sighed. “Perfect.”

Pete Griffin snickered as he lit
the cigarette, bending over Les's shoulder for a better
view.

The boys shared a moan, and Pete
passed the cigarette to Les, who took a puff before passing it to
Jason. The page rustled as Les turned it, and another moan arose. A
crunch up the hill made Pete tilt his head. “Did you hear
something?”

“Nah,” Jason said, bending further
to see the entire series of poses. But a moment later, steady
footsteps made the boys scramble out of the tarp, cigarette and
magazine disappearing as if by magic.

Les swung the flashlight toward
the sound. “Who's there?”

“Sorry, boys. Didn't mean to scare
you.” The voice was not one they knew, and Jason couldn't hold back
a fearful squeak. Pete's elbow urged him to be quiet.

The flashlight revealed a thin
man, taller than Pete, who was the tallest of the three of them at
five-feet-ten. The man wore dark clothing with a day pack on his
back. His fur-lined hood was down, showing stringy blond hair
hanging around his face and mingling with a short blond beard. He
raised an arm to his eyes. “Can you point that thing down,
please?”

“Sorry.” The light jerked down as
Jason fumbled with it, but Les suddenly grabbed it from him and
flung the light back up into the man's eyes.

“Who are you, Mister? What are you
doing here?” Les's voice didn't waver, but Jason heard the fear in
it. He suspected the man did, too.

“Name's Damien Fontaine. I'm just
hiking around. Not on private property, am I?”

“No,” Les said. “It's just kind of
cold and wet to be hiking. Most people wait for summer.”

“You're out here,” the man said,
as if proving a point. “What is it that three boys like you might
be doing hiding under a tarp in the middle of a wet
forest?”

They shuffled, halfway glancing at
each other as they mumbled, “Nothing.” The light danced along the
ground in guilty circles.

Damien Fontaine folded his arms,
eyeing them with adult doubt. He sniffed, as if testing the air,
and took a step toward the tarp. “You hiding something under
there?”

“No, sir, just…” Les stopped,
raising the light again, but not in the man's eyes. “It's
nothin'.”

Dark danger seemed to flow from
the man. “How old are you boys? Fourteen or so? You're not hiding
any weed under there, are you?”

The boys glanced at each other,
startled. “No!” Les said. “It's just a magazine, mister. It belongs
to my dad. I gotta bring it back.” His voice was
desperate.

“That so? Let's have a
look.”

The man’s voice held no hint of
threat, but Les felt it wise to not push things. He nodded to Pete,
who turned to the tarp, flipping it up until the magazine appeared,
still open to Miss March. Pete walked a few steps closer to the man
and stopped, holding the magazine out.

The man took it, tilting it into
the light. His face revealed nothing as he flipped a few pages, but
after a minute, he nodded, holding the magazine out to them.
“Pretty girl,” he said. “You fellas have good taste.”

Pete took the magazine, his grin
answering the camaraderie in the man's voice. Les and Jason grinned
too, co-conspirators with all men in the world.

Their new friend changed the
subject. “Does running into you mean I'm near a town? I got a
little turned around with all the cloud cover and a cheap compass.
I'll need to restock my provisions soon.”

Pete nodded. “Green Roads is a
couple miles that way,” he said, pointing behind them. “There's a
trail just around the hill. You just stay on it and you'll be in
town.”

“Good to know. I'm all right for
now, but I'll stop by before hiking out. Lovely country you got
here. Is Green Roads a very big town?”

Les and Jason snickered. Pete
rolled his eyes. “Nah. It's a turd on the ass-end of nowhere. But
you'll find plenty of supplies.”

Damien laughed. “That bad, huh?
How many people? Ten, twenty thousand? Five? One gas station or
two?”

“Two,” Pete admitted. “About five
thousand people, if you count all the outliers.”

“Couple of good restaurants,” Les
said. “And the pub has rooms if you decide to sleep in a
bed.”

“
Good to know. Just the one pub?
Got a downtown? What's the layout of the place?”

The boys exchanged glances. Les
shrugged. “Not really a downtown. There's a few pubs, but only
Eddie's has rooms. Just one main street with a couple stores,
churches, the gas stations, and restaurants. Rest of the town is
people's houses mostly. And the schools.”

“Library, too,” Pete offered.
“Next to the sheriff's and the city council offices.”

“And Doc Cassidy, down below Main
Street,” Jason said, jabbing Les with his elbow. They all
snickered.

Damien lifted a brow. “What about
Doc Cassidy?”

The answering shrugs came with
more snickers and a trace of embarrassment from the boys. “She's
hot,” Pete said.

Les pumped a hand. “Can't wait for
school checkups.” His swagger slipped as a nervous giggle escaped
him.

Damien laughed. “Maybe I should
sprain my ankle when I get to town.” The boys laughed with him,
agreeing it would be worth his time.

Les glanced at his watch.
“Speaking of time, dinner'll be ready soon.”

“Yeah, gotta get home,” Pete
said.

“
Thanks boys. Don't stay out too
late. Your parents will worry.”

They acknowledged this, at ease
with the stranger now, and turned to gather up their
tarp.

Chapter 7

Tina sipped her Cabernet as she
gave Beowulf a scratch behind his ears. The cat returned the favor
with a nibble to her palm before leaning into the scratch, eyes
closing in bliss. “Hedonist,” Tina murmured. “But you've got the
right idea. Since I don't have anyone to give
me
a massage,
I'm off for a bath.”

She continued into the bathroom,
pulling her bottle of lavender oil from its place on the shelf.
After another sip of wine, she set the glass down and turned to the
tub.

Her cell rang.

“Ah,
fuuucckk
.” She took a
moment to lift her eyes skyward, threw one rueful glance at the
wine and the lavender oil, and fished the phone out of her pocket.
“Doc Cassidy speaking.”

“You're on coroner duty
tonight.”

The statement, spoken in Sheriff
Ringstrom's flat tone, brought her alert. Underneath his words, she
heard despair, and she fought down a brief wave of panic. “Shit,”
she said. “What you got?”

He hesitated and her panic
vanished, replaced with a dull ache deep in her gut. Whatever had
happened, it was bad.

“I don't know yet, Tina,” he said.
“I'm sending Sally out to pick you up. She'll be there in about
five minutes. We're up on Vacker's Ridge.”

She hung up and went to put on her
rain gear.

~~

Sally didn't have a lot of
information. “Rock slide, probably,” was all she could offer after
Tina jumped in the squad car. “Three kids got caught.”

The flashing lights of ambulance
and squad car reflected off the rain, and indicated their
destination on the dirt road about a mile out of town. As Sally
pulled up, Tina caught a glimpse of boulders and smaller rocks
scattered along the road ahead of them. They had to hike down from
the trail, adding their flashlights to the floods the rescue team
had put up, as they made their way from wet boulder to wet boulder
down the slope. Fifty feet down, Ringstrom stood with two EMTs near
a monster rock. About ten other people, wearing reflective safety
vests over their rain coats, huddled under a light. They watched
without comment. A few were weeping.

The search team. Family members
and neighbors. Tina turned to Ringstrom, noting his quiet anger
before shifting her gaze to the bodies behind him. He stepped close
to speak near her ear. “We dug 'em out, but haven't done anything
else. Need your report before we move them.”

She nodded, then tilted her head
toward the crowd. Her voice was as soft as his. “Do they need to be
here?”

“Hell, they found the kids. Were
already digging 'em out when we got here.”

Tina sighed. “Okay. Give me twenty
minutes.”

The floodlights revealed nothing
remarkable about the scene. They stood on a shallow incline, a
small break in the steeper incline from above. A short distance
below them, the incline gave another drop. Rocks of various sizes
lay scattered about, all of them loose and still dangerous on the
slope. Flattened shrubs revealed the path of the rocks, and a few
feet away, a small tree stood cracked in two long pieces, with a
boulder resting against it. On the ground next to the boulder was a
blanket. Tina climbed around a smaller rock, knelt next to the
body, and pulled the blanket back with reverent hands.

Les Chardes. One of her patients,
a healthy boy she saw for annual checkups or sports injuries.
Furious tears burned behind her eyes, but she shut them away. Cuts,
contusions, and torn clothes did not indicate the cause of death.
His head was free of major injury. But the crushed chest was
obvious under the shredded shirt, revealing the near-annihilation
of internal organs. Her lips tightened as she nodded to herself,
looking up to stare at the rock, and further up the hill to follow
its path. She stood, steering her flashlight along the
slope.

Ringstrom stood behind her. “His
dad says he was lying pretty much like this when they found him.
There were some rocks on him, but he must have been thrown clear
when he was hit.”

“He was hit squarely in the
chest,” Tina said. “Probably the rock was bouncing and went on over
him after hitting him.” She shook her head. “They all had to be on
the path when the slide hit them and knocked them down.”

“Yeah, but why would he be facing
uphill? Why wouldn't he be running?”

She shrugged. “Heard the noise
perhaps, and looked up? Too terrified to move? It
happens.”

Pete Griffin was several feet to
the east. He'd had a rougher tumble than Les, his body so mangled
that Tina had to take Ringstrom's word for his identity.

“Covered with rocks,” Ringstrom
said.

Tina sent her light searching
along the ground as she knelt next to the body. “He's not all
here.”

“What's missing?”

“An arm.” She stood, climbing up a
few steps until the loose rocks forced her to stop.

Ringstrom followed her, but stayed
on solid ground. He touched her shoulder. “We'll do a thorough
search in daylight, Doc. It's too dangerous in these conditions.”
He gestured downhill. “Jason Fraizer's down there.”

He'd fallen over the second steep
hill, ending crumpled and torn next to a thirty-foot pine tree.
Even from above, Tina could see the blood and gore splashed on the
trunk. “Jesus,” she said.

“Those poor kids.” Ringstrom’s
voice was thick with tears. He cleared his throat, and when he
spoke again, his flat, professional tone was back. “We've got a
rope over here, Doc. Be best if you hang on to it to keep your
balance going down.”

She took his advice, since the
rain made the steep slope slippery. Her brief exam could not show a
specific injury that caused death, but she thought he had died
sometime in his terrifying roll down the hill. She gave Ringstrom
permission to move the bodies. While instructions were issued, she
stood and stared at the mountain, at the slope up to the trail,
then above. There was just enough light to see the dark trees of
the higher mountain, and perhaps make out the cleared path of the
rock fall. She thought about the boys walking home along the trail,
hearing a noise and looking up. She doubted any of them had time to
start running. If it was already dark, they might never have seen
the rocks coming.

The EMTs put the bodies in bags,
but the men in the search party had to help get them up to the
road. Three fathers, one uncle, two cousins. One older brother,
just sixteen. Two others were neighbors. Tina stood with the
mothers as they watched and tried to understand that their sons
were dead. She touched them all, held their hands, and assured them
she would take good care of their children's bodies. She fought to
keep her demeanor professional and competent, but she knew they saw
her pain, too. Perhaps it gave them comfort to know that even
professionals were heartbroken at this accident. Tina thought it
would give her some comfort, if she were the mother.