- Hard Fall Read online

  "Starting when?"

  For a second I thought about writing this down. With how the SUV pitched through the ruts, even if I managed to hit the paper with the pen, I wouldn't be able to decipher my hen scratch. "Let's start from when you first saw the Warners." I'd get a formal statement later. Right now I wanted a version so I could compare it to any other versions I might hear.

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  With a shrug, Kabe returned to staring out the window.

  "Well, two days ago, in the morning, pretty early, I ran into these two people on their mountain bikes." I had to strain a bit to hear him over the window noise. Ramon's truck didn't have air. "Not literally. But I was at the gas station near one of the campgrounds getting the cans filled for the four-wheeler. They pulled in to use the can and get some food.

  The guy, Gunter, spoke pretty good English. His wife, Anya, not so much."

  Kabe shifted again, resting his head on the doorframe, like he didn't have the energy to hold it up and look at me at the same time. "Anyway, I noticed they had some gear with them and we started talking climbing. They asked if I knew any good places to camp and hike. They're really more boulderers than actual climbers, you know." That brief moment he cracked a smug not-quite grin. Oh yeah, I knew that pride.

  The pecking order of mountain jockeys. No gear and jumping from rock to rock rated less than no gear and hanging from your fingers off a 400-foot drop. "The chick was really into photographing stuff, she had a real nice camera set up. I told them, actually Gunter because Anya was taking photos all over the place, about some trails at the back end of the property."

  "Okay."

  Messing with the bottom of his shorts, running his fingers between fabric and skin, Kabe retreated from that one spark of interest into the flat I-don't-care guise. "So Gunter starts complaining about all the people at the campground they're at and that they really just wanted to be away, have a 29

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  peaceful outdoors vacation. Seemed real, I don't know, adamant about it." He shook his head as if banishing the thought. "They're like every German I ever met on a wall; closet naturalists, you know? So, I told them I was going to go camping and do some soloing on one of the faces on T's property, to get away myself."

  "Completely by yourself?" I shouldn't have pushed into the story. Good way to hink up someone's recollection. Still, a little part of me snapped up with worry. Guess I'm a little too cautious sometimes. "That's dicey."

  "Done it a lot. No biggy." Didn't even get a shrug with that response. "And it's not a terrible pitch. More for getting back up to speed." His words minimized, his body didn't even react.

  Maybe Frank was right. Could be Kabe was so broke, so angry he'd lost his reactions. Seen that happen in cons before. It knocked you flat, how quick institutionalization happened for some. Big words I learned working the joint: institutionalization, desensitization, poor impulse control.

  Most just meant "convict" in fancy language. "Sorry, you were saying?"

  "No problem." Again it was delivered flat. Well, maybe this was for the best. If there weren't nothing but eye-candy to Kabe, I'd be off the kick soon enough. "So he asks if maybe I can show him the place or if they could camp for a night just to be away. I mean, they said they'd paid for their spot, but one night completely in the wilderness, not a developed campsite. And I know T's said yes a couple times since I've been up here. So, I told them I thought it would be okay. I 30

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  gave them directions and told them to meet me at the ranch yesterday morning."

  While I did the mental filing routine, I mumbled, "I assume then they made it." A nothin' statement, just to break the words into smaller chunks of information.

  "Yeah. Rode their mountain bikes in as I was loading up the ATV. Probably hit the place around tenish. Anya had the camera out the moment she got off her gold bike, taking pictures of everything." A fleeting, not much of anything, sidewise grin flashed over his face. "Me, the ranch house, flowers sprouting out of the gravel and shit. She showed me her set up. Digital SRS, nice professional-quality camera.

  Already filled up two SD cards on the trip, said she owned a photo studio, if I heard her right. We headed out the ranch road for a while, back toward the bluffs. Passed a family fishing and talked with them a bit. We were stopping every fifteen minutes so Anya could take photos. Irritated Gunter.

  He kept getting more and more pissed, like he had someplace to be."

  "Chafing?"

  "I guess. I kinda liked it, you know, taking time. If I'd just been by myself, I'd have just blasted through on the wheels.

  It made me slow down and take it in a little more, you know?"

  "Okay, so you're heading out, stopping here and there." I repeated it more for my own recollection than to prompt Kabe. "Gunter's chomping at the bit to get himself relaxed.

  Then what happens?"

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  "We got to the base of that rise up ahead." He pointed between two pine-covered hills cut by a pass of streams and pasture. Just beyond them a craggy, torn section of mountain reared up. "I was gonna head around to the north end, maybe another two miles, to the face I wanted to climb. I told them to keep on the road and at about four miles they'd see a pine growing out of the top of a boulder with a path. If they took that, it'd take them up to a bluff with a nice camp spot that overlooked the park."

  "Y'all parted at the fork then. When was the next time you saw them?"

  "Well, that afternoon I did the face twice. It's like a 5.3."

  Now a little flush seeped onto his cheeks and down his neck.

  "Not as scenic, at least from day-packer's perspective."

  Climber pride—a face you could do twice in a day didn't rate real high and a 5.3 was nothing ... the Yosemite scale started at 5.0 and went through 5.15 on rating how difficult a face was to climb. "It really isn't much, but there are some stretches and reaches, you know, to limber up. Chin-ups aren't the same as pushing your body up a rock with your toes."

  With those words, life seemed to pump into Kabe. Not a lot. Just enough to tell that this was something he enjoyed.

  Not the recounting of his day, but the climb. "Okay, got it."

  "I camped there, then packed up before the sun was up.

  The whole night was quiet. I was going to go farther in, to a 5.6 point pitch, you know, easy enough to get my center back. I thought I should swing by Gunter and Anya's and check in." He shrugged and tapped the window frame.

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  "Something just told me to. So I'm maybe halfway up that trail and I run into Gunter coming down. He was acting all freaked out and said that Anya fell. I'm thinking, shit there goes my weekend, 'cause I'm going to have to haul some German tourist back with a broken leg."

  "Wasn't a broken leg." The comment didn't need saying, but I said it all the same. Reminding myself we were out for someone who wasn't coming home.

  "No, no broken leg. He jumps on the ATV with me, takes me up and over past their camp. He's telling me, actually yelling it into my ear so I can hear, that Anya took off to photograph the sunrise over the park. When she didn't come back for breakfast he goes looking and finds her."

  "When do you think this was?" That question I had to ask.

  Needed times, even if they weren't solid. "When you first ran into him on the trail?"

  "About eightish."

  "Sunup was around six," Ramon, for the first time, broke in, "maybe a little after." I'd plumb well forgotten he was there. Made no more sense than a rabbit at a wolf convention since he was driving, but my mind does that sometimes.

  "Yeah," Kabe mumbled, "about then. Why?"

  "Nothing, keep going."

  "Well, we had to leave the ATV at one point. He's telling me to hurry. Mayb
e with both of us we can haul her out. Save her. He hustles me over to the rim. One look, and I knew it was over."

  "How so?"

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  "Most people's heads don't face their spine." A little twitch flicked at the corner of Kabe's eye. No more reaction than that, though. "Broken neck, completely twisted around, you know?"

  "Bad then?"

  "Brutal way to die." He drifted off for a moment, just staring at nothing. "I tried my cell, but the reception is crap out here. I told Gunter to come back with me. He wouldn't leave her." The tiniest shake of his head told me he didn't really understand. "Shit, man, he had to know she was dead.

  A half-blind monkey would know she was dead. I think it was starting to sink in. He got real calm looking down there. So I headed back toward the ranch. Wasn't until I hit the spot where we met the people fishing that I got any reception.

  That would have been close to nine-thirty, maybe ten I think.

  Called. Got back to the ranch and waited for you guys."

  "Doing chores?" Whoa Nelly, Ramon's tone was snide. I never pulled my emotions into an interview. Didn't serve no purpose and just got interviewees all defensive.

  "Might as well." Kabe didn't rise. Prisoners learned that early, too. Don't let nothing rile you, 'cause you can't do nothing about it. "Kept me from thinking about it, you know?"

  For the first time during the ride, Kabe moved more than just an inch or so. He leaned forward against the back of Ramon's seat and pointed out the windshield. A house-sized boulder listed across the dirt road a couple miles ahead. Like a party favor, a lone pine tree jutted from the center of the stone.

  The mountain we headed towards loomed not too much farther than that. Distance though, up here, could really spin 34

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  your head 'round. "You'll want to turn there. Truck's not going to make it all the way up. Trail gets real narrow about the second bend."

  The rest of the ride I spent chewing on what Kabe'd said ...

  grinding it down to a good set of assumptions that might be subject to change at any given moment. The facts were only the facts until something told you different. A few miles up, Ramon parked in the middle of the trail ... wasn't like there was a side to move off onto. Fact, we'd probably have to back out just to find a turn around. As I swung out the passenger side, Fred and Nadia came to a halt just in back of us.

  Nadia Slokum slid out of the Park Service truck and ambled up toward me. "Meant to ask you, we going to wait for the coroner?"

  "Naw, not really." I snagged my hat outta Ramon's seat and snorted. "The coroner 'round these parts, he don't do field work much, runs one of the funeral parlors in Panguitch."

  When he did that even. We'd had good, we'd had bad and right now we had a guy who preferred boating in the Caribbean. I slammed the door and shrugged. "Pretty much if it looks dead, he calls it dead ... and he waits for some doctor to tell him why. We've got to ask him for an inquest when we think there might be cause to." I smiled as I settled the Stetson on my head. "Anyhow, Fred's got a couple disposable body bags in the truck, right?"

  "Yeah," he held up a set of yellow pouches, "and I snagged the collapsible back-country stretcher and a Reeves Sleeve. If the corpse is in full rigor you'll probably just have to stuff it in the sleeve and haul it out as a ball."

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  "Depending on time of death ... well, Kabe says she looked pretty done for 'round nine or so. That's maybe three to four hours and it's been pretty cool up here. She might still be pretty loose. I'll take both."

  Fred nodded. "I'll get 'em out of the back." Leaning into the back of the pickup, he began shifting gear.

  "So, you and me," Nadia stepped closer, "who's playing good cop?"

  I considered her with one eyebrow raised. "Good cop?" If I didn't think she was half teasing, I'd have been worried.

  "Yep, good cop, bad cop." She smiled. Yeah, I wouldn't want to go crossways with this woman.

  "Well," settling into a wide leg stance, I looked up the trail and thought a bit, "if he were local, I'd say I'd play good cop as the insider, but why don't we go with your nice southern charm?"

  Kabe'd made it out of Ramon's truck and ambled over.

  "Why are you talking like he's a suspect or something?"

  I took my gear from Fred. He'd thrown mine in the back of their truck. Who knew what would happen if I'd put it in the pit Ramon called a vehicle. Shouldering my pack, I answered,

  "'Cause he is."

  "But," Kabe shrugged into his own rack, "his wife fell."

  "That's what he told you." As I started up the trail, I kept talking. I could hear Ramon's grumbles about not much of anything. Kabe and I had our gear, Fred packed the emergency equipment and Nadia soldiered on in an altitude she wasn't used to. "And that very well may have happened.

  But in situations like this, you treat it like a crime until you're 36

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  sure it's not. Much easier to go back to a guy and say, 'sorry for the inconvenience, y'all understand though, it's just procedure,' rather than having to haul your butt back out to a scene, find evidence and locate witnesses if it turns out five days from now not to be an accident."

  "Oh."

  "So, Sugar," Nadia kept a good pace, staying pretty much in step with me. Given how much longer my legs were than hers, I was suitably impressed. "We treat everyone as a suspect, everything as a crime until we know better."

  For a while Kabe trudged along in silence. Finally, he mumbled out, "Everyone?"

  "Everyone who had any connection." I nodded, "Yep, that means you."

  "Then why do you want me to help you get the body? Is that a little strange, having a suspect help you?"

  "If there was another way, I'd take it. You'll have to do

  'cause we ain't got better." I grinned. "I ain't gonna let you touch anything, anyhow."

  He sped up. "Gee thanks."

  I guess he didn't like my faint praise. "No problem." I called to Kabe's back. If that wounded him, Kabe could darn sure get over it. 'Course it was hard to see anything getting under that boy's skin.

  The rest of the hike he stayed a bit ahead. Nadia, Fred and I kept together and, after I'd filled them in on Kabe's version, we yawed about other rescues that weren't so ill-fated as this. Ramon struggled somewhere behind us. Nadia looked back a couple of times, but since Fred and I didn't seem 37

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  concerned, I guess she let it slide. If I'd actually thought the man was having problems keeping up, I'd have dropped back.

  But Ramon liked his drama. He wanted us all to understand just how much he suffered for his job. When Ramon wasn't the center of attention he was planning how to get to be.

  The center of my attention ... that was ten feet ahead and wrapped in faded blue climbing shorts. Every muscle flexed as he hiked, the etched line standing out like a wind carved escarpment. And man, that butt was so tight you could have bounced a quarter off it. I wondered what the crack of it would taste like. Throw him against a tree, yank down his shorts and lick him all over.

  Thinking on things like that would do me no good. Still, I tortured myself with images dredged up from my own mind.

  Things I'd seen online done with ropes. Well, I don't think I needed anything all that fancy, but the idea of it, I could live on that.

  My thin fantasies were cut short when we came up over a rise. Not a far piece ahead a neon yellow, high-priced, high-tech two-man tent squatted in a clearing. A pair of equally high-end mountain bikes leaned against a tree. One of the bikes caught the sun and blazed bright gold. Had to be the woman's with the frame set up ... no ball whacker bar.

  A man, maybe late thirties or thereabouts, knelt next to a duffle pack. Clothing scattered about was either in the process
of coming out or going into the bag, couldn't really tell from where I was. Given the amount of pink mixed in, I doubted they were part of the man's gear. At the sound of 38

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  our feet he stood and I got my first good look at Gunter Warner.

  It took me all of a second to decide I didn't much care for the man. Don't know if it was the sour scowl that gripped his thin lips, or that he wiped his hands on his shorts long enough to make me wonder if he had a complex. Average height, better than average build—wouldn't have expected less from someone who could bike the hill we just climbed—brown hair and brown eyes, the man reeked of normal.

  And that set my gut off for some strange reason.

  Kabe nodded to Warner in greeting. Not going all the way into the man's camp, he hadn't been invited; Kabe chose a spot where a fallen log might serve as a bench. Then he shook off his pack and grabbed his water bottle. The three of us, with Ramon huffing behind, moved more slowly toward the site. If Nadia were any good, and she seemed to be, she'd be doing the same mental inventory of Warner and his camp that I ran through in my head. The campsite seemed too clean; the normal chaos of living out of nylon stuff sacks didn't seem present. 'Course they'd only been there one night and Gunter Warner had a good amount of time to just stay busy.

  That worried me, too. Put another edge on my distaste.

  What a suspect could cover up in a matter of hours: cleaning, tossing, moving things ... just like we'd caught ol' Gunter at.

  "Gunter Warner? Howdy." Nadia stepped up to him with an outstretched hand, but dropped it when the man didn't take the shake. "Sorry to meet you under these circumstances. I'm Nadia Slokum, with the National Parks." With a tip of her hat 39

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  brim toward me and Fred, "This here is Deputy Sheriff Joe Peterson, Fred Noces, also Park Service, and Ramon Piestewa from Land Management. I believe you've already met Mr.

  Varghese."

  "Yes." Warner's response seemed less tense than I'd expect. Could have been just the language though, or that he was in shock. Or could have been that he'd had from before breakfast 'till right 'round lunch to get his story straight.