The screech of a hunting raptor high above them was the only sound that broke the silence of the deserted and desolate scene before them. There were no signs of human activity.
As they neared the far end of Spanish Bottom, Mandy scanned along the edge of the four-foot shelf of packed sand along the river, looking for a good landing spot. Rob had said they would camp at the downriver end of the bottom, right before the Colorado River made a sharp left turn to enter the narrower Cataract Canyon.
The base of the Doll House trail was near there. It was likely their last chance of finding people before reaching the end of Cataract Canyon. This trail and the Lathrop Canyon trail were the only two that zig-zagged down from the canyon rim to the river along the whole expanse of their 100-mile river journey.
The group would hike up the trail the next morning before hitting the rapids after lunch, but Mandy was anxious to spot somebody, anybody, on the trail or the rim right then and there. She kept glancing up high as well as at the river bank.
Rob, Kendra, and Gonzo searched, too, for both a good landing and human activity. Kendra was the first to say, “How about there?” She pointed at an alcove in the bank. A collapsed shelf of firm sand provided a stepping-up point to a small break in the thicket of brush lining the bank.
“Looks good to me,” Mandy replied.
Kendra paddled her raft in and jumped out to tie it to a large cottonwood trunk. “I’ll do a quick scout.”
She trotted into the brush while the other rafts jostled in next to hers. Gonzo hopped out to tie his raft to the same tree that Kendra had. Then he took ropes tossed from Rob and Mandy and tied their rafts to a thick tamarisk trunk a dozen feet upstream.
Kendra returned as he finished the last knot. “It’s just a short walk to a nice open sandy area on the other side of these willows.”
“Okay, let’s set up the bucket brigade, then,” Rob said.
While Rob and Mandy unlashed gear, Cool hopped out. He and Gonzo gave all of the clients a hand-up onto the bank. Rob and Mandy lifted Elsa to them, so she wouldn’t have to put weight on her injured ankle. Then Kendra helped her hobble to a shady spot to rest in. Familiar with the routine, the other clients formed a line to the campsite to pass gear along, with Rob and Mandy doing the hard part of hoisting the gear up to Cool and Gonzo from river level to sand bank level.
After the unloading was complete, everyone but Mandy and Rob scattered to pitch tents. The two of them lowered Alex’s body bag into the river again to keep it cool overnight. The corpse’s arms and legs were less stiff, indicating rigor mortis was receding. Mandy knew that meant bloating was not far behind, and with it the stink of decomposition. She fervently hoped they would be able to hand off the body soon.
When she jumped onto the bank after the job was done, she noticed that Hal had returned. He was watching them with an anguished expression.
“I’m sorry we haven’t been able to find a way to get him out of the canyon yet,” Mandy said.
“I understand,” Hal replied. “I’ve seen all you guides scanning the river and cliffs for people. I know you’re trying.” He gulped hard and blinked. “In the meantime, you’ve been very respectful of his body. I want to thank you for that.”
Mandy did what came naturally. She hugged him. The poor man had lost his son and was stuck with the body in the wilderness, with no way to properly mourn his son or honor his life.
She released Hal and gazed into his hang-dog eyes. “I wish we could do more.”
He patted her arm. “You’re taking care of him the best you can. That’s all I can ask.” He turned and walked back toward the campsite, his head lowered and his hands jammed in his pants pockets.
Rob joined Mandy and silently watched Hal go. “Unfortunately, I think we’ll be doing this again tomorrow night.”
They walked to the campsite, quickly pitched their tent and threw sleeping bags inside. Then they rolled up their sleeves and went to work on dinner preparations with the other guides. The menu was grilled squash and Spanish rice with shrimp and leftover breakfast sausage. Dessert was an assortment of large soft cookies from the City Market bakery in Moab, including Mandy’s favorite, peanut butter. She hoped that the menu would tempt the Anderson family’s appetite. She was especially worried about Diana and Amy, who had only managed to pick at their food since Alex had been killed.
Mandy scanned the campsite while she chopped onions, wiping tears from her eyes. Hal and Diana sat with Paul and Tina at one of the camp tables, talking quietly. All four were sipping wine, but only Paul and Tina were snacking on the tortilla chips and guacamole that Kendra had set out. Betsy, Mo, and Viv had enticed Amy into joining them in a game of bridge at another table.
Elsa was resting in Tina’s and her tent, which Mandy noticed was pitched right next to Cool’s and Gonzo’s. Mandy knew it was a cautious move on Elsa’s part to put herself right next to two guides. However, it also put her next to one of Mandy’s suspects, Cool, though while he may have had a motive to hurt Elsa, she hadn’t found any reason for him to go after Alex.
Les and Alice approached the kitchen with beer cans in their hands. “We’re going to reconnoiter,” he said and held up his camera pack that was always with him. “And I want to get some photos of that field of big white flowers near camp. What are they?”
“There’re multiple names for them,” Cool said. “Moonflower, jimson weed, locoweed, or sacred datura are some of them. The plant’s hallucinogenic. Native Americans would smoke it for ceremonies.”
“How appropriate,” Alice said with a nod. “All those flowers reminded me of the poppy field scene in the Wizard of Oz movie.”
Cool cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West. “Poppies will put them to sleep!”
With a grin, Rob said to Les, “Just plan to be back in about forty-five minutes. Dinner will be ready then.”
Les saluted him with his beer. “Will do. Don’t want to miss one of your great meals.”
Alice looked at the dinner preparations and made a face like she didn’t agree with that assessment, which raised Mandy’s hackles. She sank her knife in another onion. Here she had been slaving away to make an appealing meal for the grieving family.
When Tina stood a few minutes later and headed off in the direction of the portable toilet, Mandy whispered to Rob, “Now’s my chance to talk to Tina alone. I’ll catch her on the way back.”
He nodded, and she waited a couple of minutes. Then she headed through the thicket, stopping about halfway along the path from the camp to the toilet to wait for Tina to reappear. When she did, carrying the key, Mandy waved to her and said, “I’m next.”
“Here you go, then.” Tina handed her the plastic bag containing the roll of TP.
Tina started to pass, but Mandy stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Wait. I wanted to talk to you, alone, and I haven’t had a chance to until now. You seemed pretty freaked out about your mom and Alex last night. Are you okay?”
Tina put her hands on her hips. “Not really. I still can’t believe Mom was sleeping with Alex. I mean, he was young enough to be my brother!”
Mandy nodded, trying to look sympathetic. “I guess the news was pretty hard to take.”
“Damn right!”
“How’d your dad react when you told him?”
Tina pursed her lips. “He took it better than I thought he would, said Mom wasn’t married to him anymore, so she could sleep with whoever she wants. I can’t believe he wasn’t more upset!”
“Do you think he already knew about it?”
Shaking her head, Tina said, “I asked him if he did, and he said no, that last night was the first he’d heard about it.”
“And you didn’t know about it before either?”
“Hell no! If I did, I sure wouldn’t have brought Dad on this trip, knowing her boy toy was coming, too. And, I would have told Mom how pervy i
t was that she was screwing one of her students.” Tina threw up her hands. “Think of the trouble she would have been in if the department chair or university administration found out!”
Mandy was sure professors had had affairs with students before, and Alex was over twenty-one, an adult, so she didn’t agree that Elsa would have been in trouble. But, she wasn’t going to say that to Tina. Instead, she flung out something provocative to see how Tina would react. “I bet you were ready to wring her neck.”
With a laugh, Tina said, “I guess that’s one way to put it. I’m still not talking to her.”
“I noticed.”
Tina’s brow furrowed and she worried her lip for a moment. Finally she spoke. “I guess I should apologize to her. That’s probably what you came out here to ask me to do, because our fight is yet another downer on the whole group.” She sighed. “I’ll go talk to her now.” She turned and walked away before Mandy could say anything else.
Suddenly shouts rang out from camp.
Tina looked back at Mandy, her eyes wide.
What the hell is going on?
Mandy took off running toward camp, and Tina turned and followed her. When they broke through the thicket, Mandy saw that everyone was standing and shouting and waving their hands toward the top of the canyon wall, where the Doll House formation sat.
Mandy shaded her eyes and searched the formation. There. She saw two tiny figures dressed in blue and green clothing, so they stood out against the red, pink, and white backdrop of the wind-carved sandstone. They were waving, too, but if they were shouting something back, the sound wasn’t carrying down to them.
The people in camp were yelling, “Help!” “Come down!” “Do you have a radio?” and other phrases, all jumbled into a mishmash of incoherent noise.
Mandy ran to Viv. “Where are your binoculars?”
“Good thinking.” Viv ran to her tent to get them and Mandy followed. After taking the powerful binoculars from Viv, Mandy trained them on the two figures. They were a young Asian couple with black hair, wearing backpacks. They had wide grins on their faces and waved gaily at the group far below them.
“They can’t tell what we’re saying,” Mandy yelled to Rob.
Rob shouted, “Hush, everyone! Quiet!” until he had everyone’s attention. “Now, on the count of three, we’ll all yell ‘help us’ at the same time.”
He counted and they all yelled while Mandy watched the couple through the binoculars. The couple laughed and waved back again. Either they couldn’t make out the words of their shouts, they thought the group was joking, or they didn’t understand English.
“They aren’t getting it,” Mandy said. “Someone needs to go up there.”
“I’ll go,” Cool said, grabbing a bottle of water. “I know the trail best.”
As he took off running, Rob yelled to him, “If you don’t see them when you get to the top, come back. Don’t run around up there in the dark!”
Mandy looked at the sky and realized the sun was dipping below the canyon rim. They would be losing the light soon. She focused the binoculars on the couple again. They had turned away from the rim and soon disappeared from sight. If they were heading back into the Doll House formation, or somewhere else in The Maze district of the Canyonlands up there, it would be impossible for Cool to spot them after he reached the top. Even scrambling up the trail as fast as he could, it would take him almost an hour.
She crossed her fingers and said to Rob, “Hopefully they’re coming down the trail to Spanish Bottom and Cool will run into them on the trail.”
He nodded. “And hopefully they have a radio.”
_____
Almost two hours later, Cool returned, dragging himself into camp and looking dejected. He slumped into a camp chair at one of the tables. Mandy was glad to see he had made it back okay but was not glad to see his expression.
“Gonzo and I were just about to form a search party and go after you,” Rob said to Cool. “I wasn’t sure you could make it back in the dark.” The last bit of twilight had just faded.
“Bummer, dude. No sign of ’em, huh?” Gonzo said from the next table, where he had most of the clients ensconced in chairs with their heads tilted back. He had started another session of stargazing, since the night sky was clear and the Milky Way was blanketing the sky with brilliant stars. Diana and Hal peered hopefully at Cool.
“No, never spotted them. I ran out of water, so I figured I should head back.” Cool held up his empty water bottle.
Looking disappointed, Diana and Hal turned away. Mandy took Cool’s water bottle and refilled it from the fresh water jug while Kendra brought him a plate of food.
“We kept it warm for you,” she said as she handed him some utensils.
“Thanks, I’m starving.” He dug into the Spanish rice and took huge gulps of water while Kendra kept him company.
“We need to talk,” Mandy said to Rob. She pulled him into a willow thicket, well out of earshot of the clients and Cool. She filled him in on her conversation with Tina Norton. “It sure seemed like neither she nor Paul knew anything about Elsa and Alex before last night.”
“That’s the story I got from Paul when we searched the confluence beach together.”
“Did he seem upset or angry about Elsa and Alex?”
Rob shook his head. “Not really. He seems like a pretty laid-back guy to me, not one to get hot-headed, like his ex-wife.”
“Or his daughter,” Mandy added. “Do we know if Gonzo was able to get anything out of Cool when they searched the other end of the beach?”
“When you went after Tina, Gonzo and I walked to the rafts together to fetch the dinner stuff. I asked him then. He said he brought up the subject by asking Cool if he was having any luck with any of the women, Cool said it looked like he wasn’t going to get any tail on this trip.” Rob held up his hands. “His words, not mine.”
“That slimeball,” Mandy spat out. “He has absolutely no respect for women.”
Rob smiled and smoothed a thumb across her cheek. “That’s why the fool will never be lucky enough to find a little spitfire like you to marry him.” He kissed her on the nose before continuing. “Gonzo said that comment opened the door for him to ask Cool if he was mad at any of the women for turning him down.”
“Let me guess.” Mandy put her hand on her hip and stared between willow branches at Cool as he pointed out a star formation to Tina, his arm around her shoulder. He had finished his meal and joined the stargazers. “He can’t figure out why they’re all turning down God’s gift to womankind.”
“Something like that,” Rob said with a smirk. “The gist of the conversation, though, was that Cool didn’t seem to feel any more anger toward Elsa than he did for the other women.”
“Or he was very good at hiding it from Gonzo.” Then a sinking thought hit her. “Do you think he was really looking for the hikers? Maybe he didn’t want to find them—or us to either. Maybe that’s why he volunteered to go.”
Rob quirked an eyebrow at her. “You’re quite the suspicious one, aren’t you?”
“We have to be—until we find out who’s doing this!” She stared at the people in camp. “But Cool’s not the only one I’m suspicious of. Tina or Paul could have been hiding their true feelings from us, too. Just because we haven’t found a good reason for any of them to kill Alex or sabotage Elsa doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”
Rob cocked his head to one side. “You don’t think we have more than one killer in our group, do you? That one was after Alex and the other after Elsa, for different reasons?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Mandy said with exasperation. “It’s creepy enough to believe we have one killer among us. But Alex is dead, and it sure doesn’t look like a bear did it, given what Betsy said.”
“You never got a chance to compare the claw marks on his face with those in her g
uidebook, did you?”
“No, not with Elsa and Tina there last night.”
“We should try again tonight,” Rob said with some reluctance, “after everyone’s asleep.”
Mandy gave a nod. “We should, and maybe we’ll find something else, now that we’re looking for evidence of murder.” She shuddered. She had seen more than her fair share of dead bodies the past summer working as a river ranger. “But his body’s going to be gruesome—and smelly.”
Rob wrinkled his nose. “There aren’t any cops here to help us, so I don’t see any alternative. We need to look for clues ourselves.”
“Very carefully, though,” Mandy said, “because if the killer finds out what we’re doing before we find out who he or she is, we’ll become targets.” A shiver of dread crawled up her spine and tapped her on the shoulder. She wheeled to search the dark willows around them to make sure no one had crept up on them.
With a nod toward camp, Rob said, “I counted heads. They’re all there, except Kendra.”
Mandy blew out a breath, trying to slow her racing heart. “We’ll have to be on constant alert if we’re going to protect ourselves and the clients.”
“Especially at night. We need to set up guard shifts. Frankly, we should have done it last night.”
Kendra had just returned to camp after throwing out the dishwater from washing Cool’s plate and silverware. Rob walked toward camp and called out, “Kendra, Gonzo, could you come over here for a minute?”
When Cool glanced at him, looking puzzled about why he wasn’t included in the summons, Rob said, “You’re the stargazing expert, so keep on doing what you’re doing.”
After Kendra and Gonzo joined them, Rob and Mandy explained that they were going to organize guard shifts.
“Crapola,” Gonzo said, his eyes wide with worry. “So you think this killer’s going to strike again?”
Fatal Descent Page 14
