Cassidy Kincaid Mysteries Box Set

by Amy Waeschle

  Twelve

  Mt. Baker backcountry

  January 10, 2016, 11:07 am

  Cassidy struggled her feet, hearing the avalanche roar down the mountain. “Pete!” she called out, her ears ringing. She returned to the edge of the trees. The slope had been scraped clean of its new layer of snow, leaving a granular-looking face dotted with chunks of debris. “Pete!” she called again, her eyes sweeping the slope for any sign of him. He could have stayed on top of the slide, she thought. Or there could be some clue as to where he had come to a stop—a ski pole sticking up, his pompom hat. Her breath caught as she thought about what would happen if they didn’t find him fast.

  She zipped open her coat to unclip the side belt of her avalanche beacon and turned the dial on its face to receive.

  Mark’s voice called out to them while he side slipped down the icy slope above Cassidy. He skidded to a stop just above her.

  “We’re okay,” Tara replied, emerging from the forest.

  “Everyone turn your beacons to receive,” Cassidy ordered, trying to keep the panic from her voice. How many minutes had already elapsed? One? Three? She knew from experience that people could stay alive under the snow for twenty, even thirty minutes, but those were rare cases. Most people ran out of air after seven minutes, and many people were injured by the tumbling of the avalanche, sometimes fatally.

  “Did you see him?” Cassidy asked Mark, her voice shaky.

  Mark swept his beacon back and forth in front of him in an attempt to pick up Pete’s signal. “The cloud kind of swallowed him up, but he was on the left side of it.” He pointed to a tree that was missing its middle section of branches. “There.”

  The three of them spread out and began to slide down, slowly. Cassidy watched her beacon for signs of a signal. Below her about three hundred yards, the avalanche had decelerated, leaving a giant pile of blocks and mounded snow that Cassidy knew would have already set up like concrete.

  A moment later her beacon blipped. “I got him!” she cried.

  “Me too!” Tara said.

  Mark swiveled left to right while sliding downhill slowly. “Got ’im,” he said finally, his face grim.

  The three skiers slid to the edge of the snow deposit. They all removed their skis and continued on foot. Her heartbeat rammed into her ears as the signal continued to strengthen. Her beacon flashed smaller and smaller numbers, indicating that she was getting closer. Her lungs burned with the exertion of climbing over and around the ice blocks, and the anxiety that they may already be too late.

  No, she told herself, her eyes on her display. We’re going to find him.

  They followed the signals around a giant chunk, then over a hard mound.

  “His ski!” Mark called out, and Cassidy turned to see him hand-digging the tip of Pete’s ski out of the snow.

  Cassidy’s signal started buzzing, the numbers flashing. She dropped her pack. “He’s close,” she said. Can you hear me, Pete? She imagined him tucked into a ball somewhere beneath her feet, waiting. We’re coming! Just hang on!

  She stuck one of her ski poles in the snow and continued walking until the signal faded, then she planted her other pole. Tara and Mark were doing the same, only in the left-right axis, and when they were done, Pete’s position had been narrowed to a square of snow about ten feet wide. Cassidy yanked her probe out of her backpack. How much time had they used up now? It felt like hours but that couldn’t be right. As a ski patroller, Cassidy had participated in many avalanche rescues, some successful, some not. Her crew completed countless drills every season. She had partnered with avalanche dogs and their handlers, with teams of ten, teams of two. She had used every brand of beacon in order to familiarize herself with the particularities of each type. It never took her longer than ten minutes.

  But Pete might not have ten minutes.

  Tara and Mark had removed and assembled their probes and the three of them plunged the long black metal poles into the snow, hoping to hit something that might be Pete. Cassidy moved forward one step at a time. Step, probe. Step, probe. Step, probe. Could Pete be deeper than her probe’s length? Cassidy’s eyes swept the debris field—the slide hadn’t been big enough for that. So where was he? She checked her beacon again. Had she misread the signal and they were probing in the wrong place?

  To her left, Tara cried out.

  “You found him?” Cassidy asked.

  “I think so!” she replied. Cassidy and Mark rushed over.

  “Where?” Cassidy said, her chest tightening.

  Tara slid her probe in again, one foot from her last location. Her probe stopped halfway down—so five feet beneath the snow. Cassidy slid her probe into the snow and felt the soft tap on the other end. Pete!

  Tara had already assembled her shovel. Cassidy and Mark quickly followed suit. Without speaking the three began to dig. But the snow was set up firm, like ice. The blocks were thick and heavy. Even with her extra-large blade, Cassidy’s progress seemed insignificant. She drove her blade harder into the snow, her muscles alive with purpose. Tears burned her eyes as she slammed her shovel blade into the snow, then lifted and dumped it in a pile beyond her left boot. Pete was under her, waiting. Slam, lift. Slam, lift. Her arm muscles burned but she pushed on. Slam, lift. Working together, a crater about five feet wide grew, but it was only two feet deep.

  “Come on!” Cassidy shouted.

  Faster they dug. The snow was less blocky the deeper they went, but still compressed and solid. The sound of the shovel blades slicing the rough snow blared in her ears. The pit grew. Around her neck, her beacon buzzed even louder. Dig, lift. Dig, lift. We’re coming, Pete, her brain screamed. We’re almost there.

  On her next scoop, something blue appeared beneath the snow.

  “Wait!” Cassidy called out, stopping Mark and Tara mid-action.

  The three made softer use of their shovels and the length of something blue emerged—Pete’s coat. He was facedown.

  They dropped to their knees and scraped away the snow with gloved hands. Please be alive, Cassidy begged. His body looked so still. How much time had they been searching? The three of them scraped and scrabbled. His body lay at an angle, his head downhill and lower than his torso. They uncovered the back of his head, his thick brown hair pressed flat to his head, and a cry escaped Cassidy’s lips. They dug down to reach his mouth. She saw the sandy brown hair of his beard; then they uncovered his chin. Suddenly, they broke through to a pocket of air in front of his mouth.

  “Pete!” Cassidy called. She scraped away more snow around his face. He hadn’t moved. “Pete!” she called again, and peered into the space, her face so close her nose touched his cheek. His eyes fluttered and Cassidy cried out. “We’ve got you,” she said, her voice breaking.

  Mark and Tara were working on the other side of Pete’s head and his shoulders. Cassidy continued scraping away more snow. “Pete, can you hear me?” she said, tossing her gloves out of the pit.

  Pete moaned.

  “Hang on, we’re going to get you out of here,” Cassidy replied, her heart pounding.

  Moments later, they finished freeing Pete’s head and shoulders. One arm lay bent in front of his face below him, the other extended outward at a ninety-degree angle.

  “Are you hurt?” Cassidy said, crouching as low into the space as she could to listen.

  Pete coughed, his eyes fluttered open again. “Cass?” he croaked.

  “Yes,” she said, stroking his back. “I’m here.”

  “Oh, God,” he said with a gasp.

  “It’s okay,” Cassidy said. “Mark and Tara are both here. We’re all okay.”

  Pete was quiet, but she could hear his sobbing breaths.

  “Can you tell me if anything hurts?” Her fingers were burning from digging in the icy snow beneath his face to get him more air and light, and to get his other arm out so his upper body could be free.

  It took Pete a moment to answer. “My side,” he said. “My right hand,” he added.

 
“Okay,” Cassidy said, and looked up at Mark who was digging out Pete’s right arm. Mark nodded at this information and proceeded carefully. Tara had dug down to his legs.

  “Can you wiggle your toes?” Cassidy asked Pete.

  “Yes,” he said after a moment.

  Cassidy breathed a sigh of relief. Wiggling his toes was a good sign. “You said your side hurt. Does it hurt to take a breath?” she asked.

  Pete grimaced. “Yes,” he said with effort.

  Broken rib, Cassidy thought. Her digging had uncovered the top of his hand and the edge of his arm. He wiggled his arm to help her uncover it the rest of the way. A moment later, Pete’s legs were freed enough that he could move them, but the effort seemed to cause him immense pain.

  “What? Are your legs hurt?” Cassidy demanded, her mind already preparing their evacuation. If Pete could ski, they could have him out in a matter of hours. If they needed help, such as from a litter and twenty extra people to carry it, they could be here all day and even into the night.

  “No,” Pete said with a grimace. “It’s just . . . my side.”

  “Okay, we’re almost there,” she said, still digging. She saw his hand wiggle some more and then his arm. “I want you to keep your neck and back still, can you do that for me?” she asked. With such a tremendous force as an avalanche, spine and neck trauma was a likely injury. Until she could complete a full assessment, having Pete be still was standard protocol.

  “Okay,” Tara said, digging away the last of the snow. “I think we can move him now.”

  Mark sat back on his heels, breathing hard.

  “We need to get him out of this,” Cassidy said, making eye contact with her companions. Together, they slid Pete forward on his stomach, his slippery ski clothes gliding over the bumpy surface, causing him to hiss with pain. They moved him to a semi-flat area. “Okay, let’s roll him over on my count,” she commanded.

  Working together, they carefully rolled him to his back. Pete’s eyes were wide with fear, like a little kid’s. It took Cassidy five minutes to find all of Pete’s injuries: wrist, ribs, some cuts to his face and hands. Thankfully, no sign of a back or neck injury.

  Pete’s eyes had filled with tears while she checked him, and his voice cracked several times as he answered “No,” to her “does this hurt?” questions. She stroked his face and held his good hand as Mark made a makeshift splint for his wrist and tucked it into his coat for comfort.

  They helped him sit up, and then they were quiet for a moment. Pete looked at them all staring at him. “Thanks, guys,” he said, his face pale. He probed the area on his left side, grimacing as he found the injury.

  He looked up the slope, seeing the destruction for the first time. “What happened?” he said softly. “I mean, we had done everything right, hadn’t we?”

  Cassidy was sitting close to him, their legs touching. “It’s my fault,” she said.

  “What?” Mark said. “No, Cassidy, this isn’t anyone’s fault. We did this thing by the book. It was just a freak accident.”

  “Yeah,” Tara said, touching Cassidy’s knee. “The layers in the pit held. We stayed off the face.” She shrugged. “I’m just glad you’re okay,” she said to Pete.

  Cassidy remembered the windblown snow on the trees during their descent. Had she interpreted something wrong? Had the terrain features funneled the wind differently halfway down the slope, making it more unstable than at the top? Should they have dug another pit at the halfway mark before continuing? A sick, guilty feeling crept into her thoughts.

  Pete’s face was still white, like he might be sick. “I thought I was a goner. I just kept rolling over and over. I tried to fight, you know? Like all the stories you hear where the victim kicks and swims and all that?” He breathed for a moment. “But I just felt like I was getting buried deeper and deeper. The snow was punching me everywhere. It was so strong. I felt like nothing, like it would crush me,” he finished, his voice catching. “At least I managed to make an air pocket,” he said.

  “It probably saved your life,” Tara said somberly.

  “No, you guys did,” he said, meeting all of them in the eye. Then he seemed to go inside himself.

  Cassidy surveyed the snow slope around them, her adrenaline fading, and in its place, a strange feeling of heaviness overtook her. Their packs were ripped open, contents spilled out, their ski poles marking Pete’s location as if they had been playing treasure hunt; their shovels abandoned at three opposite corners. Cassidy remembered Pete’s ski tip poking out of the snow, and realized that they must have been ripped off during the slide. There was no sign of his poles, either.

  Mark left with his shovel, and they heard him digging. He returned with Pete’s ski. “Let’s get you out of here, buddy,” Mark said.

  Getting the traumatized Pete out posed a significant challenge, what with his broken rib and wrist. Cassidy knew she needed to rally, but her energy felt drained.

  “I’ve always wanted to mono-ski,” Pete said. He tried to smile but it faltered and his eyes brimmed with tears.

  Thirteen

  St. Joseph Hospital, Bellingham

  January 10, 2016, 10:38 pm

  Cassidy waited in the examining room for Pete’s return from the X-ray, reliving the avalanche: the horrible crack as it let loose, the blast of pressurized air knocking her off her feet, realizing that Pete was gone. Her fingers began to shake and she stood to get a drink of water, realizing how thirsty she was.

  After taking all of his gear from his pack, Cassidy, Mark, and Tara had skied Pete out. On the way down through the slide zone, they had discovered another one of Pete’s poles, and Cassidy donated one of hers so he could pole plant, though the action caused him significant pain. She gave him Advil but knew it would do little good.

  With the three of them helping, they finally reached their cars at eight o’clock, then drove the fifty miles to the city of Bellingham. While they waited in the ER, Mark offered to contact the sheriff about the slide.

  The doctor who examined Pete, Dr. Harris, glided back into the room, his coat billowing like the wings of a giant, white bat. “So, Cassidy,” he said, his tall frame looming over her. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut so short it looked like sand glued to his scalp. “What about you?” he asked, his large hands holding a clipboard had surely gripped a basketball at some point in his life.

  “Me?” she said. “I’m fine.” Earlier, Cassidy had stood by while Dr. Harris listened to Pete’s tale of being swept away by the avalanche. He completed a hands-on exam—a duplicate of Cassidy’s on the mountain, then asked a series of questions. Meanwhile, her emotions swirled. She remembered the terror of fearing that either they wouldn’t find Pete or that they would, only to be too late, alternating with a firm belief that her solid training would prevail. I’m good at this, she remembered thinking. I’m going to find him.

  “Mark tells me you were in the avalanche’s path,” he replied.

  Cassidy tried to remember. The blast had struck her, but she hadn’t hit her head. She hadn’t lost consciousness. “No,” she said. “It just knocked me down. I’m fine.”

  Dr. Harris’s serious gaze washed over her, and she squirmed.

  “Humor me, okay?” he asked, tapping Pete’s exam bed.

  Reluctantly, Cassidy climbed onto it.

  Dr. Harris looked in both ears and palpated her head and spine.

  “No pain?” Dr. Harris asked.

  Cassidy shook her head. “Pete’s broken rib didn’t puncture his lung, did it?” she asked. “He threw up a few times on our way out. I don’t think he told you that,” she said.

  “He has a mild concussion, but his lungs seem fine,” Dr. Harris said. “The X-ray will show us for sure.” He gave her a steely gaze, his jaw flexing. “He’s extremely lucky you were there.” He took out his stethoscope and listened as she took a few deep breaths.

  In the quiet while she breathed, she couldn’t help remembering the four of them at the top of the run. “I shouldn
’t have let us ski that slope,” she said, her breath shaky.

  The doctor flipped his stethoscope around his neck and crossed his arms. “Tell me why you think so,” he said.

  Cassidy shrugged. She couldn’t describe the haunting sensation she had experienced before they set off from the top. He would think she was nuts.

  He gave her a satisfied smile. “Well, I don’t see any injuries.”

  Cassidy hopped down from the table.

  “But if you experience any pain, tingling, numbness, headaches, anything like that, please get seen right away.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He pulled a pamphlet from his clipboard, and handed it to her.

  Cassidy read the cover: Surviving Trauma. “What’s this for?” she asked, unable to keep the distaste from her voice.

  Dr. Harris shuffled his feet. “It’s not uncommon for people who have survived a traumatic event to suffer emotional disturbances.”

  Cassidy glanced at the pamphlet again. It showed a woman sitting at a park bench, bent over and clearly distressed while another person tried to console her. “Thanks,” she managed, slipping it into her vest pocket.

  A knock sounded on the door and a tech wheeled Pete into the room. Relief flooded her at seeing him again, but his face looked so drawn and battered that she had to force herself to smile so as not to alarm him. The fact that he was still dressed in the hospital gown with a blanket covering his torso and legs did nothing to settle her simmering anxiety.

  “Not one but two broken ribs,” he said, grinning. Mark’s makeshift splint on his wrist had been replaced by a neoprene brace. “This one might need surgery,” he said, his smile more of a grimace now. “I’m supposed to see a specialist after the swelling goes down.”

  This was not good news—Pete depended on his wrists and hands to write.

  Dr. Harris pulled up the X-rays on the room’s computer screen, the rib fractures clearly visible. He talked them through the treatment—basically rest, and no coughing, laughing, lifting or vigorous exercise for six weeks—and prescribed a painkiller. He gave them the name of an orthopedic surgeon in Seattle and said to call tomorrow for an appointment. “Because of your profession, it’s worth getting a second opinion.”