Alive and Killing (A David Wolf Novel)

by Jeff Carson

  Chapter 4

  Wolf gave Tammy the news about hiring Patterson, which she smiled knowingly and nodded at, and walked out into the sunny morning. His boots scraped along the gravel of the lot, kicking small stones in front of him, and he thought about how he deserved the time off he was about to take. Even if it was only a single afternoon and night with his son in the mountains. Even if it was the week of the first annual music festival.

  He’d been going full-steam for months on the job now. As the ski season wrapped up, with spring skiing events at the resort, and a larger than average snow melt threatened roads and property in town, the men on his force were worked to the bone, and Wolf was right there along side them all, and then he was right there behind the scenes working overtime, all the while learning how to act in his new role as sheriff. He deserved the day with Jack.

  Crunching tires rumbled into the lot behind him, and he turned to see the glaring sun reflecting off Chairman Ash’s black Range Rover. He slowed, and then sped past Wolf and parked in a vacant spot, sending a cloud of dust into the sunlight.

  Wolf sighed and walked slowly to meet Ash as he stepped out of his truck.

  “Sheriff,” Ash said with a sly smile.

  “Chairman Ash,” Wolf said with a nod.

  “I just spoke with Kevin. He said the interview went,” Ash pushed up his gold rimmed glasses and looked to the doors of the station, “very well.” Ash smiled gratefully and held out a hand to Wolf.

  Wolf shook his hand and gave a nod, and then walked away toward his SUV.

  “Hey, I came to talk to you,” Ash said.

  Wolf turned around. “Oh? What about?”

  “Well, about Kevin.” Ash frowned like Wolf’s question was ridiculous.

  “What about Kevin?” Wolf asked.

  “Well, what did you think? When’s he starting?”

  Wolf looked into the trees for a moment, picked the right words, and then looked back at Ash. “I didn’t hire Kevin.”

  Ash’s face went blank. He shrugged, straightened his suit jacket, and passed one hand over his pink tie to smooth imagined wrinkles. He continued the strange grooming routine, swiping his gray comb-over hair with his other hand, and finally cleaning the corners of his mouth with thumb and forefinger.

  “That’s disappointing,” Ash said with a glare that threatened to frost his lenses.

  “The interview was disappointing, yes.” Wolf said. “I’m sorry. I’ve found a better candidate, and I hired her.”

  Ash tilted his head back and scoffed. “So you hired Margaret’s niece?”

  Wolf took a deep breath and walked away. “I hired the best candidate for the job, Chairman. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get going.”

  Ash stepped up and pulled on Wolf’s shoulder.

  Wolf stopped dead and looked down at Ash’s hand.

  Ash moved it like he’d rested it on a hot stove burner, and then walked in front of Wolf.

  “You signed a five-year contract,” said Ash, putting his hands on his hips as if to convey some measure of authority. “After that pro-ba-tion period, it’s back to a vote for the golden contract.”

  Wolf didn’t blink. “What are you saying, Chairman? That I should compromise my integrity to ensure I’m keeping you happy, so I can keep my job?”

  Ash stared with ripening cheeks, and then pleaded to the sky. “I’m just saying, you’re going to need friends to keep your career on track.” He lifted his glasses to his forehead and continued, “Friends in high places. You shouldn’t forget that.”

  Wolf turned and walked away. “Goodbye, Chairman.”

  Wolf kept going, and didn’t look back while Ash’s car door slammed and his tires sawed into the gravel on the way out.

  Chapter 5

  Jack looked up and stopped in his tracks when they both heard the loud thump, and Wolf stepped around him to see what the commotion was.

  “Whoa, oh my God,” Jack snickered quietly, just like any twelve-year-old boy would do when a man face plants somewhere nearby.

  Out in the clearing, along the blood-red dirt trail cutting through the green expanse of knee high grass and high alpine flowers, a man struggled behind an upside-down backpack.

  “Ah! Fuck! God dammit!”

  Wolf’s blood pressure jumped as the man’s outburst echoed down the valley behind them.

  “Stay behind me,” he said to Jack.

  The man couldn’t get up, as if an industrial-strength magnet in the top of his pack had latched onto a car buried underneath the trail. He squirmed for a few seconds, and then finally rolled out of the straps and got up, swiping the dust from his green shell jacket and camouflage canvass pants. He took off his baseball cap and slapped the backpack, and then rose up with a start at the sight of Wolf and Jack.

  The man’s eyes sprung open and he set his feet wide, as if he’d just woken up on a set of railroad tracks, staring at a diesel engine speeding right at him.

  Then the guy relaxed, and then jerked his head around to look behind him. He stood still like that for a moment, and then turned to Wolf and Jack, and bent down and pushed his backpack over.

  In the still mountain air, Jack and Wolf listened to the man grunt, and the contents of the bag scrape and clunk, like he was wrestling with a backpack full of bricks.

  The man’s camo pants and lace up boots looked military to Wolf, standard Army Combat Uniform, ACU, but the green parka was a light ski jacket, a combination of civilian and military attire.

  “Holy crap. That guy ate it hard.” Jack whispered behind Wolf.

  Wolf held up a hand for Jack to be quiet.

  The man finally hung the pack on his shoulders, teetering back and forth like he was carrying over a hundred pounds in weight. He pulled his baseball cap low, and wobbled fast toward them. His breathing was hard and loud, like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. In the first twenty yards he looked over his shoulder three times, which sent his body into a slight twist that threatened to topple him again.

  Wolf realized the man must have been running from something. If he was running, his actions made more sense. But as Wolf watched and thought, his unease grew. Not only were the guy’s actions puzzling, so was the man’s presence at all. For one, it was a Tuesday afternoon, in such a remote area of the Saguatche National Forest that even mid-summer weekends didn’t see hikers. Secondly, an hour ago, when they had started their hike at the trailhead parking lot, Wolf hadn’t seen any other vehicles. Third, that parking lot sat atop an unforgiving road. Wolf and Jack had spent over an hour bouncing and scraping their way up Grimm Lake Road at a snail’s pace. The skid-plate underneath Wolf’s old Toyota pickup slammed, scraped, and pinged against rocks as they inched their way over huge washout gullies dug into the steep incline. Most people turned back after the first two switchbacks.

  So where did this guy come from? Was he on a long trek from the other side of the mountains? If so, why such a large pack, with so much weight?

  Wolf’s pulse accelerated as he watched the guy scramble toward them with out of control speed. When he saw what was dangling on the guy’s backpack strap—a wood-handled .45 revolver in a leather holster—his body tensed for action.

  Wolf had a gun, too, as was his habit after seeing many seedy parts of the world in his day. Only, when Wolf put the gun on the hip belt of his backpack with his paddle holster, it was too much in the way, always getting bumped with his forearm. So he always carried it tucked it in the side pocket of his pack.

  Wolf turned and glared at Jack. “Stay behind me.”

  Jack nodded, now with wide eyes.

  “Hey, you all right?” Wolf called out as he unbuckled his hip belt. He put both his thumbs underneath his pack straps and slid them an inch outward, envisioning exactly how he’d remove his pistol in the fastest move possible.

  The guy ignored Wolf and kept walking toward them. His head was down, face obscured by his Boston Red Sox cap, and he was digging in the collar of his jacket for something. After a
few steps he fingered out a dark blue handkerchief with a pattern of white logos on it, and then pulled it up over his face.

  An instant later he tripped again on a jagged rock in the trail, and went down hard. This time he twisted before being tackled by the crushing weight on his back. The man landed on his side and the backpack clanked like a huge sack of ingots.

  Wolf shook his head and stepped forward. “Hey, whoa! Whats—”

  “Fuck!” The man’s scream shook the air.

  Wolf flipped his pack straps off his shoulders, turned around, and unzipped the side pocket of his pack the instant it hit the ground. With a quick move he pulled his police-issue Glock 22 and turned around, stopping short of pointing it at the guy. Wolf put his finger on the trigger and held it at his side. “Hey.”

  The man grunted and struggled to his knees, then planted one foot.

  “Hey!” Wolf said. “What the hell is going on? Are you running from something? You’d better start talking.”

  The guy got to his feet and started walking again.

  Now, from only ten yards away, Wolf could see a streak of blood oozing from underneath the man’s cap. It was dried where it ran underneath the neckline of his jacket, like it was a wound from hours ago.

  “Are you hurt?” Wolf asked.

  The man kept coming, like Wolf and Jack were ghosts.

  Wolf racked the slide of his gun, stepped in front of the man, and raised it for effect, keeping his aim to the woods in the distance. “Start talking. Now!”

  The man stopped and lifted his head, revealing wide brown eyes, dilated from excitement. He wore a medium length brown beard, which was thinner on one side. Wolf realized one side of the man’s face had been burned, perhaps recently, as it was bright red. One of his ears was smaller than the other, wilted into scar tissue, like Wolf had seen on severely burned veterans in the past.

  The man raised his hands. “Whoa! What the hell?”

  Wolf stared. “Good question. What the hell is going on? Are you hurt? Are you running from something?” Do my son and I have any reason to be worried? “Start talking, now.”

  The man opened his mouth, and then his eyes narrowed to slits and he made a face like he’d just smelled the worst thing in the world. “Whoa man, I’ve got rights. You can’t just pull a gun on someone in this country. I’ve got rights.” He pecked himself in the chest, then pointed at Wolf, and then at Jack. “You’ve got rights, little man—“

  “Don’t talk to my son.” Wolf said. “Fuck your rights. What’s going on?”

  The guy stared at Wolf and swallowed.

  He was crazy. And probably a little drunk, maybe a lot drunk, though Wolf couldn’t smell anything. Or maybe he’d been eating magic mushrooms.

  Wolf shook his head and lowered his gun. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know why you’re running. Are you running from something? Because it looks like you are. Do my son and I need to be worried?”

  The man swung slowly under the huge weight, and looked back up the trail.

  Wolf tightened his grip on his Glock and kept his eyes on the man’s hands.

  After a beat, the man turned back with a strained smile. It could have been the man’s facial injuries that gave the illusion of strain, but Wolf didn’t think so. The man was scared.

  “No man, I’m not runnin’. Just enjoying the day, like you two.”

  “I didn’t see your vehicle down at the Grimm Lake trailhead lot. Where you coming from?” Wolf asked.

  “What, you a game warden or something? I’m not huntin’.”

  “No, I’m the Sheriff of Rocky Points.” Wolf said. “Where’re you coming from?”

  “Just up there, camping. I parked at the other lot.” He pointed past them down the trail and to the west. “I came from Aspen, past Reudi Reservoir, then on up a hairy road. The trailhead is a couple hours down. You have to know where to look for the cut-off.”

  They stared at each other for a few seconds. Wolf didn’t know about the other trail, and had been coming here for years.

  The man stood still and shrugged, a gesture that failed to move his heavy pack a millimeter. “Well, have a good day.”

  Wolf nodded and gave him a sour smile. “Yeah. Have a good day.” What could Wolf do? He couldn’t exactly arrest the man for acting weird.

  The guy nodded to both of them and walked away at his same frenetic pace.

  As he left, Wolf caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the side of his neck — a bomb pointing straight down with crossed lightning bolts through it. Underneath the bolts were curled up branches, looking almost like a handlebar mustache. Wolf had seen it before many times. It was the Army Explosives Ordinance Disposal badge.

  Now Wolf thought of the metallic clank of the man’s backpack as he slammed against the ground. Was this guy trudging through the high alpine Rockies with a backpack full of heavy bomb parts? Freaked out because they were about to blow up on his back?

  Wolf didn’t dare blink as he watched the man waddle down the path.

  Jack kept quiet, glancing between Wolf and the man. When the guy finally bobbed out of sight for good, Jack looked up at Wolf. “What the heck?”

  Wolf looked down at him and forced a smile. “Who knows? What a weirdo.”

  Jack’s worried look melted away. “Seriously. Oh my God, did you see that first fall? He face-planted so hard.”

  Wolf shook his head and smiled. “Yeah. I did. Okay, enough standing around. We’re losing time. Let’s get going.” Wolf nudged Jack and let him go first. His nerves were zapping from the strange encounter, and he didn’t want Jack out of his sights for a second. Wolf tucked his paddle holster on the hip strap of his pack and followed close.

  Chapter 6

  “What position did you play?”

  “Center field. Hey, one more time.” Wolf said.

  Jack stopped and turned around.

  Wolf did too, and scanned the trail behind them. They now stood almost at the top of a steep south-facing mountain slope. The path they’d climbed switched back and forth down an open scree field, and then flattened on a long valley that stretched out for miles ahead south before turning to the east and out of sight. He looked up past Jack. Ahead a short distance, the trail wound up and out of sight, and onto the cirque valley where their destination waited—Grimm Lake.

  Wolf slowed his breath and listened. The tips of the Ponderosa Pines swayed and howled in the breeze below, and a marmot barked in the rocks somewhere nearby. The sky was clear, except for a couple high saucer-shaped clouds created by the winds flowing over the snow covered peaks. Two crows cawed as they circled above the valley in front of them. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Wolf raised a hand to block the late-afternoon sun in the cloudless sky, and a freshening wind cooled the sweat on his neck and armpit. He squinted and looked at the trail, following it with his eyes until it turned out of sight. There weren’t any movements, or glints in the sun, or growls of hungry bears, or hoof beats of angry moose.

  “Is it much further?” Jack asked.

  Wolf looked up. “One, two, three, four more switchbacks, then we’re there.”

  Jack smiled. “Cool. It’s just over the ridge then?”

  “Yep. Let’s go.”

  Ten minutes later they crested the mountain slope.

  Grimm Lake was a frigid pool of melt-water three quarters of the way up a peak that was a Thirteener, as Coloradans would call it—not quite a fourteen-thousand foot peak, but formidable nonetheless. Steep mountain walls surrounded the water on three sides, which were strewn with slushy veins of snow, reflecting the orange light of the fading day.

  Wolf loved this spot. The place was always deserted, the burly condition of the road at the trailhead made sure to that. He could count on one hand the times he’d seen another human being in this part of the Saguatche National Forest, despite it’s relatively close proximity to the large populations of Vail to the north, and Glenwood Springs and Aspen to the West.

  The camping
was exceptional. Since the lake sat below timberline, it was lined on the west side by pines that twisted and leaned toward the mouth of the valley. They were thick in a few places, creating a few nooks to camp in.

  Then there was the water. The shallow edges of Grimm Lake was almost as clear as the mountain air, allowing one to see the rocks, logs, and swimming fish, and the deeper interior of the lake glowed an emerald green.

  But Wolf’s biggest reason for loving the area was the memories of him and his father camping here every year for as long as Wolf could remember. Even the year his father had died, they’d come here earlier that summer and fished for two days. It had always been just the two of them; not even his little brother had come along. It had always been their private spot, and now Wolf and Jack were experiencing the first of what Wolf hoped would be many father-son camping trips. Maybe he would be around to see Jack and his son take off for their first camping trip.

  “Wow!” Jack’s smile glowed in the orange light. “This is wet.” He bounced his way down the trail toward the water.

  Wolf looked at the lake and heard the trickle of the groundwater sliding from the slopes into the lake. “Yeah, I guess it is. Lot’s of melting this time of year,” he said with a shrug.

  Jack stopped and turned around. “No. Like, you know, Dude, that’s wet.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, like, it’s awesome up here.” Jack rolled his eyes and kept walking.

  Wolf sighed and followed. Good God.

  Jack ran all the way to the edge of the lake, looked down the shoreline, and darted to a place with a ring of jagged rocks, blackened by numerous fires over God knew how many years, by God knew how many people.

  “We should camp here!” Jack yelled.

  Wolf’s smile widened. “Yeah, sounds good to me.” It was the same spot Wolf had camped at every time he’d come here with his father. Probably every single person that had come here had camped there. It was naturally inviting, with a clump of pines surrounding a fire pit, blocking the winds that frequented these altitudes of the Rocky Mountains.