Rock Bottom (Em Hansen Mysteries)

by Sarah Andrews

  “He flew helicopters in the marines over Iraq,” said Fritz.

  Fritz was usually very polite to people he’d just met, so I was surprised that he had taken any of the man’s bait, much less felt the need to let him know that he had zoomed overhead in a fast jet while the marines were grunting along with their flying eggbeaters. Under his breath, he said, “Crazy jarheads get dropped on their punkin heads in boot camp, each and every one of them.”

  Transcript of telephone call from Ranger Gerald Weber to Heather Oberley, wife of George Oberley, late of Rocky Hill, New Jersey

  April 19, 9:45 A.M.

  Mrs. Oberley: Hello?

  Weber: Hello, am I speaking with Mrs. George Oberley?

  Mrs. Oberley: Who wants to know?

  Weber: Ma’am, this is Chief Ranger Gerald Weber at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. And ma’am, for your information I am recording this call.

  Mrs. Oberley: Oh. What’s he done now?

  Weber: Excuse me?

  Mrs. Oberley: Wink. He’s got hisself caught again, huh? All right, where do I gotta go to bail him out?

  Weber: Ma’am, are you confirming that you are his wife?

  Mrs. Oberley: Yeah, that’s me, ol’ lucky Heather, the idiot that married Mr. Wonderful.

  Weber: [pause] Oh. Well, Mrs. Oberley, I’m afraid I have some bad … well, some news for you. Are you sitting down?

  Mrs. Oberley: What is this, some kind of a joke? Who did you say you are?

  Weber: No, I assure you this is not a prank call. I am chief ranger at—

  Mrs. Oberley: So cut to the chase. What is it you’ve got to tell me?

  Weber: Ma’am, your husband has been found dead.

  Mrs. Oberley: [long pause] Dead? [another pause] You’re shitting me!

  Weber: No ma’am, I assure you I’m not—

  Mrs. Oberley: How?

  Weber: How did he die? Well, we have an investigation under way to try to determine exactly what happened, and—

  Mrs. Oberley: Wait a minute! You say you’re calling from the canyon?

  Weber: Yes.

  Mrs. Oberley: Then … and you’re telling me he’s dead?

  Weber: Yes.

  Mrs. Oberley: Where?

  Weber: His body was found at a place called Whitmore Wash. It’s at the bottom of the canyon, river mile—

  Mrs. Oberley: I know where Whitmore Wash is! You’re telling me that bastard has been in Arizona all this time?

  Weber: Were you … you didn’t know he was here?

  Mrs. Oberley: Hell no! I haven’t seen him for weeks! A month, almost! A month this time. He’s been out there gallivanting around for how long?

  Weber: His party launched from Lees Ferry on April first.

  Mrs. Oberley: And this happened when?

  Weber: His body was discovered on the eighteenth. He had been missing for two days. The information on the roster we had for that raft trip was incomplete … inaccurate where it came to your husband, so it took me a while to trace you, and—

  Mrs. Oberley: Yeah, I’ll bet he didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address!

  Weber: Has he done this sort of thing before?

  Mrs. Oberley: Not more than half a dozen times. [starts to cry]

  Weber: Ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss, but I have a few more questions for you if you can—

  Mrs. Oberley: I loved him, no matter what!

  Weber: I’m sure you did. Now, we are trying to determine exactly how he died. He was found—

  Mrs. Oberley: My poor Georgie!

  Weber: Here’s the thing, ma’am: We think he was murdered.

  Mrs. Oberley: [pause] Oh.

  Weber: So we need to determine who might have done this.

  Mrs. Oberley: [nervous laughter] Well, get in line! I mean, that’s a long list, you know what I mean?

  Weber: Did he have any … Well, are you aware of anyone in particular who would want him dead?

  Mrs. Oberley: No …

  Weber: Ma’am, are you acquainted with a Fritz Calder of Salt Lake City?

  Mrs. Oberley: No … never heard of him. Did he kill my Georgie?

  Weber: We do not at this time know who was responsible for your husband’s death. Calder is the leader of the rafting trip your husband was on. He was the alternate, actually, standing in for one Albert “Tiny” Lewis. Are you acquainted with him?

  Mrs. Oberley: Never heard of either of them. But that don’t mean nothing. Georgie’s kind of a schmoozer. He’d talk his way into anything, especially a raft trip!

  Weber: Okay, that’s helpful.

  Mrs. Oberley: I just recall him saying he might have a lead on a job. He took off from here one morning saying he was going on an extended job interview, was all. See, he’s been working on his Ph.D. here and, well … okay, so I’ve been the breadwinner for the whole while, and our kids have to have new shoes, you know?

  Weber: I get the picture. Ma’am? I’m afraid I’ve got a request for you. It is customary that we get the next of kin to identify the body.

  Mrs. Oberley: Well now, how am I supposed to get myself to Arizona? You think maybe plane fares grow on trees? I’m living in a one-bedroom apartment over a bar with two kids and a missing now dead husband and I’ve got no car! I go downstairs and work for tips, you know what I mean? And who’d look after my children? Come to think of that … [again breaks into sobbing]

  Weber: I’m sure this is a terrible shock.

  Mrs. Oberley: No, in fact it is not. Or it’s a shock, but no surprise, know what I mean?

  Voice of child in the background: Mommy?

  Weber: I … It’s important, ma’am. Can you help us in any way to identify the body?

  Mrs. Oberley: [angrily] Sure, I can help you with that! Roll him over and look at his left butt cheek. You’ll find the name of that damned leaky dory of his right there in a lovely little tattoo! I sure had to look at it enough!

  Voice of child in the background: Mommy? Is something wrong with Daddy?

  Weber: And … and what was the name of that dory, ma’am?

  Mrs. Oberley: [to child] Honey, run along. Mommy’s got to talk to a man about … Just run along, please.

  Weber: I’m sorry, ma’am. Do you need some time?

  Mrs. Oberley: No. No, it’s okay now. [sound of door closing] You were asking me something …

  Weber: You were telling me about a tattoo. It was the name of his dory?

  Mrs. Oberley: Yeah, Wave Slut! It was his love name for me … and for half the other women in Coconino County! So ask one of them to identify him! Me, I’m the sucker who followed him to New Jersey, and if you think the Ivy League was any cure for what ails that man, well …

  Weber: Could you name someone in particular?

  Mrs. Oberley: Sure, try Cleome James. Does she still work in your damned park? Yeah, ask Cleome to look at his damned corpse! I have better things to do, like raise his children! Good-bye!

  Connection ended by called party.

  APRIL 9: THE BIG DROP

  Fritz wasn’t kidding that the rapids got a whole lot bigger. Hance was a monster.

  Rapids tend to occur where a side canyon has shot a large tumble of boulders into the river. Sometimes the rocks are big enough (or the water is low enough, because the guys upstream at the dam have “turned the river off” again) that they stick up through the waves they create. Fritz calls this a “rock garden.” Other times the rocks are fully submerged. I’m not sure which I like better—or less. Even the most experienced rowers scouted the larger rapids before they ran them, because not only did the water level vary due to changes at the dam and runoff from side canyons, but, Fritz explained, those big rocks did occasionally shift, changing the dynamics of a rapid, and such simple things as the sun angle could make the water “read” differently. I supposed also that by scouting the larger rapids they could exult in how terrifying it was and prolong the pleasure of swamping themselves in adrenaline.

  Mungo told me one evening over the campfire that
he didn’t like to get wet as much as he used to, so he “sneaked” most rapids over to one side of the biggest waves. Fritz and Brendan liked to run right down the biggest line of waves laughing and screaming. I worked my damned fool mantras as hard as I could, and I’d gotten to the point where I enjoyed the rhythms of the waves on the small-to-moderate-sized rapids, but the trauma that underlay my fear still lived in my nervous system like a weird parasite, shooting adrenaline into my bloodstream and releasing intrusive memories. The flash image of my brother’s face would erupt in my mind. He floated wide-eyed, just beneath the waters, like he was down there in some other world trying to see into this one.

  I shoved these visions firmly into another part of my brain and instead studied how the water formed up at the top of a rapid: Dammed up by the jumble of rocks, it pillowed up to a pour point, forming a V of eerily smooth water that pointed downstream. I watched for “holes” formed by submerged rocks, and mapped places where the curves in the river and rock-strewn disturbances in flow might pull our sixteen-foot rafts off into eddies, jam them against walls, hang them up on rocks, or suck them into holes. I began to create over each rapid a moving diagram of success, a sort of space-time solution to the puzzle presented by rock and water.

  The art to rowing a rapid began with “ferrying” the raft from the launch point out across the current to an optimum position relative to that smooth throat of water that was forming up over the spill point. The oarsman must present the side of the raft to it like an offering, and then, at the perfect instant, pulling on one oar just hard enough to swing the bow of the raft downriver, aiming it down the throat of that V. The oarsman had to continue to row, creating forward momentum with those oars to maintain maneuverability lest the raft begin to turn or spin and become the wrong kind of toy. The train of waves kicked up by the rocks was seldom straight. Some lay in opposition to each other, and sequences of rocks farther down a rapid presented additional problems.

  The oarsman sits about two-thirds of the way back in a raft, facing downriver. A second person sits up in the bow, usually kneeling just behind the forward roll of the flotation tube, hanging on for dear life as he throws his weight, “punching” into the waves to keep the bow from kicking straight up and maybe flipping the boat ass-over-teakettle backward. “Keep it straight in the big stuff and don’t hit the hard stuff,” Mungo liked to say.

  Fritz had promised that on the day we went over the first big rapids at Hance, I should plan on getting soaked. I had put on a waterproof paddle jacket underneath my life vest, and, as the weather was looking to turn rainy toward the end of this big day, I had struggled into a set of neoprene “farmer John” skintight overalls, a sleeveless form of wet suit that I had borrowed from a friend in Salt Lake City who liked to go scuba diving. For good measure I wore a fleece shirt under the paddle jacket to keep my arms and neck warm. Thus, as I scrambled over the rocks and sand at the mouth of the side canyon that fed Hance Rapid, I was moving stiffly and beginning to overheat.

  Hance was rated at a 7 to 8 on the scale of 10, serving up a thirty-foot drop over a run of a quarter of a mile. It arced slightly to the left, curling around the rocky debris pile that had accumulated at the mouth of the side canyon. The safety kayakers were already out in it, splashing and flipping like a bunch of funny-colored dolphins, making sudden moves with their double-ended paddles to steer this way and that.

  “Are you ready for this, Em?” Brendan asked, appearing at my side.

  “Sure,” I lied. “Bombs away.”

  Fritz had wandered farther down the bank of the river with the other oarsmen to discuss some particulars. Wink lagged behind them, heading to where I stood with Brendan. Over the pounding of the waves, he hollered, “They should just shoot it, right, Brendan?”

  Brendan tried to ignore him.

  Wink threw a couple of fake punches his way like a shadowboxer, then snapped forward, grabbed the kid’s arm, and twisted it hard, his expression changing from ha-ha-I’m-playing to the intense focus a hawk displays when he is about to hit a sparrow in midair.

  Brendan shot sideways to evade getting flipped, but in the process managed to twist an ankle on a loose rock.

  “Let’s get a snack before we take this rapid,” I said loudly, giving Brendan an excuse to follow me. I began walking, very quickly, up the beach, and Brendan lurched after me, limping. There was raw anxiety in his eyes, and I saw a glint in Wink’s, frustration mixed with rage that his prey was being taken from him.

  Fantasies of smacking Wink with a paddle or, better yet, one of the nice long oars from Fritz’s raft, began to bloom in my head. The man scared me, but much more than that, I was beginning to feel a visceral hatred of him. How dare he come on this trip? I wanted to know. How dare he live and breathe?

  It startled me that I felt so strongly. Is this how mothers feel about their children? I wondered. Is this what it feels like to be a mother? I hadn’t children, but given much thought to having suddenly, it didn’t matter that I was childless, because I had Brendan and I was damned well going to keep him safe, at least from this kind of harm.

  I turned and faced Wink, standing with my arms crossed like an angry schoolmarm, giving Brendan a chance to get ahead of me while I glared at the damned fool of a bully who pursued him.

  Wink stopped, smiled, and tipped his head to one side as if to charm me.

  I gave our staring match a ten full seconds, then turned and continued to our raft, and loaded Brendan into the cockpit. I tried to examine his ankle, but he refused to let me look at it.

  The boy stared across the river. After half a minute or so, as if by afterthought, he silently slapped me a crooked high five.

  Yes, this was definitely what motherhood must feel like: We were in this together, and he loved me just as I loved him.

  I shot Hance Rapid in the bow of Fritz’s boat, singing out my joy of being with the people who made my world complete. I weathered the raging waters right there next to Brendan, grinning at the lad, taking in the grin he offered in return. We splashed and crashed through the water, the big raft bucking and rising on the humping waves and at the bottom of the waves, we shared a hug. Life was good—no, it was great!—as we continued downriver, the first traces of the Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite appearing along its banks. Over the next mile and a half of water I was happy. I was exultant. Then we reached the next big drop.

  Sockdolager Rapid.

  Fritz called it “Proctologer.” I didn’t like the sound of that.

  We beached our boats and climbed out to scout it—everybody came, even the safety kayakers, and even Wink; everybody, that is, except Brendan. He stayed in the raft.

  “Why aren’t you coming?” asked Fritz.

  Brendan said only, “I gave my ankle a little twist back there at the last scouting and thought maybe I’d soak it here in the river a bit.”

  “Good idea,” said Fritz.

  Brendan turned his back to us, peeled off his sandal and fleece sock, and worked his way over to the far side of the raft, where he could bobble his feet in the current. I said a silent prayer that the ankle was only bruised and not sprained or anything torn.

  Fritz double-checked the bow line of his raft, which he had cinched with the other boat lines around a large boulder, then headed up the slope to the scouting overlook. I clambered up the rock-strewn slope to the left of the rapid, turned, and looked down along the chasm we must now descend. The chute of whitewater was tight and churning, a heaving thatch of waves.

  The walls of the canyon had narrowed considerably in the last mile as the river bit down into the dark granites of the Inner Gorge. The orderly layers of the sedimentary rocks were a cliff-top memory now as we descended into the open maw of these most ancient rocks. “It’s a full-assed nine out of ten today,” Mungo pronounced cheerily. “God help us all.”

  Fritz slapped him on the shoulder. “Looks like we need to run it right down the middle,” he said.

  “You mean, because there aren’t an
y side parts to it?” Nancy Skinner asked. “That hole there at the beginning looks big enough to swallow a bull elephant!”

  Olaf spoke. “I heard this one guy tell me how he went into a hole here that pulled him down so hard that he had to shuck his kayak and dive rather than fight his way to the surface. Luckily it spat him out at the bottom.”

  The group stood silently for a while, mapping the holes and heaves as best they could, laying out plans. Mungo squinted and moved one hand in a dance, mentally rehearsing the route he would take.

  Fritz broke the reverie. “The weather is beginning to deteriorate,” he said. “I’ve been watching the clouds all morning, and now the temperature is beginning to drop and there’s a wind coming up. We’d better get on down the river.”

  Wink peeled off and headed back toward his boat, but Julianne had stayed behind, staring awkwardly at her feet. Had she chosen to stay on one of the big, wide-bottomed rafts rather than chance this size water in the leaking dory?

  Fritz deployed the kayakers next, saying, “If there’s anything out there you think we haven’t seen … well, pray for us, okay?”

  “See you at the bottom,” Gary said, as he headed down the slope. He pulled a beer out of the drop bag on Fritz’s raft and stuck it down the front of his life vest, then joined Lloyd and Olaf as they climbed into their kayaks, snapped the neoprene spray skirts in place, saluted us with their paddles, and heaved off into the current. There was little playing this time as they traversed the rapid, only tightly concentrated efforts to get their tiny craft down through the giant waves without being sucked under.

  I watched them go and next saw Wink in his dory, bouncing over the waves, his years of experience coming to the fore.

  “No!” Nancy shouted. She grabbed Fritz’s arm and yanked, directing his attention to a place just above the V, where the weirdly smooth part of the water was beginning to undulate over the rocks hidden beneath. I saw then what she was pointing at, something that stopped my heart: our raft, floating sideways out into the current, with Brendan still on it.

  The boy scrambled to gain a seat at the oars, but his naked, injured foot became tangled in an oarlock and he fell. Racing to gain control of the raft, he pulled himself up and heaved himself into the rower’s seat, but he was too late. The raft slipped sideways into that elephant-sized hole just as the fierce hydraulics of the Colorado River heaved the wave beyond it into a mountain. It grabbed the raft like a leaf and flipped it upside down. I stared in horror at the underside of the boat as it continued to plunge down the rapid.