One Mile Under

by Gross, Andrew

  “Sheriff Warrick, my name is Ty Hauck, and I was a police detective for years back in Greenwich, Connecticut. I’m here with Chief Joe Riddick of the Templeton police force up near Greeley. I know it’s late, but we have a bit of an emergency here that involves Chief Dunn of Carbondale and we need your help …”

  Riddick had done about everything he could going through the skeptical night duty officer to raise the Aspen sheriff so late at night. Hauck couldn’t locate the number of the phone Dani had used to call him from earlier, his own phone no more than a mound of melted plastic back at Watkins’s barn, but he recalled Geoff’s name, Davies, and they were able to obtain his number, which they called, Robertson having told Hauck with relish that it was too late to stop it now, and, thank God, Davies answered. Saying how she was gone—the house empty—and only the dog was there, barking up a storm. And that she would never have left without leaving him a note, and anyway, the only car there had been his. He was worried out of his mind.

  Their next call was to the Carbondale Police Department looking for Wade. Hauck was told he was out, on personal matters—that he had been for much of the day—and left strict instructions with the duty officer not to track him down. Hauck pleaded with the guy that it was urgent, but he wasn’t sure if the officer would do what had to be done against his boss with his career path on the line. That was when Hauck thought to bring in Aspen, which had the largest force in the valley.

  “There’s been a number of people killed, both here and back where you are, Sheriff Warrick. Trey Watkins and the people in that balloon. And I’m sorry to say it appears Chief Dunn’s had a hand in them. But that’s not why I’m calling now. What’s pressing now is I’m pretty sure he’s got Dani Whalen with him, who’s aware of his involvement in these matters, and I believe he may have already done something terrible to her to keep her quiet. She’s gone missing and we don’t know where he is, and we need to find him, Sheriff, now—if it’s not already too late.”

  “You think he’s going to what …?” the Aspen sheriff asked.

  “I don’t know, sir. But he was apparently being squeezed by people up here to shut her up. Bad people.”

  “Dani Whalen …” The sheriff already seemed to be in gear. “She’s Wade’s stepdaughter, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is, Sheriff,” Hauck said worriedly. “She is.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  They were almost at the summit now. Dani recalled that the access road led to a flat cliff top, which during the day paragliders and base jumpers used as a jumping-off point. And a sheer drop of two thousand feet.

  She eyed Wade’s gun, but knew she couldn’t get close to it. What was he going to do, shoot her up there and then roll her body off to the valley floor? At the top, there would be nowhere for her to run or escape other than over the cliff.

  Dani’s heart began to race. There was only a couple of hundred feet left to climb.

  “I remember when I first met you,” Dani said. She wiped the blood off her chin. “I was what, ten? You were a whole lot different than my dad, and I went, ‘What the hell has mom brought home now?’”

  He looked at her and tried to convey he wasn’t into this. “Shut up.”

  “You weren’t exactly a girl’s dad,” Dani went on. “You were into all this cowboy stuff and had this hard exterior. But I got to like you, didn’t I? And I always thought you liked me. I kind of thought we had this deal. We didn’t show we liked each other, but inside we really did. In a way, I think you turned me a little into the person I am today. All the rough edges. And stubbornness.”

  “I said, shut up!” He glared at her. “You were just a brat. You came with the deal.”

  “No, I don’t believe you, Wade. We had good times. I can remember them. When you took me back east to school, all my roommates thought you were the bee’s knees. With your python boots and turquoise ring, all the big movie actors you knew …”

  He shook his head. “It’s not gonna work, Dani. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”

  Dani saw that the tree line had thinned. Only another quarter mile or so of road. “I actually remember that I—”

  A voice came over the radio. Up until then it had just been police cars and dispatchers talking between themselves. This time the voice was different.

  “Chief Dunn. It’s Dave. Can you hear me?” Dave Warrick.

  Wade slowed. He seemed startled. He turned the volume up, but didn’t make a move to talk back.

  “Wade, we know where you are. You know as well as I do there’s a tracking device in the GPS of all your cars. We know you’re on Red Mountain. And we know who’s with you.”

  Wade slowly pulled to a stop. They were only about a hundred feet below the summit. He sat there impassively. As if not knowing whether to go forward or turn back. Whether to reply or not. He closed his eyes.

  “Wade, it’s all over now.” Warrick’s voice crackled in. “The people who were pressuring you are either dead or in custody. There’s no point getting yourself in any deeper. Or hurting people you care about. I spoke to someone named Hauck.” At the sound of his name, Dani’s insides soared. “He told me about Trey and those people in the balloon. Wade, I want you to stay where you are until we can get a car to you. Dani, can you hear me? Are you all right …?”

  “Tell him I’m okay, Wade,” Dani said. “Please …”

  Wade opened his eyes back up. His face seemed to have a different cast on it now. Like some doomed, trapped inevitability. Instead of nodding, he just put his foot back on the gas again and continued up the mountain.

  “Wade, you can’t,” Dani pleaded. “They know. It’s over. There’s no point going forward.”

  He just kept gunning the engine up to the last rise.

  “Wade, I want you to answer me,” Sheriff Warrick said. “We’ve been friends a long time. You were always respectful to me, how things went, and I hope you always felt I was to you. I want to hear that Dani’s okay. You have to let her do that now, okay …?”

  Wade ignored him and kept the SUV going forward.

  “Wade, let me talk to him, please. Chief … Chief!” The reply button wasn’t on; there was no response. “Please, let me tell them that I’m okay and that you’ll wait for the other officers. I’ll be here with you. Kyle would want that, wouldn’t he?”

  Wade pushed the accelerator up the last rise, his eyes narrowed ahead.

  “Wade, please …?” Dani said, more firmly. The SUV picked up speed. “Wade!” she shouted, becoming scared he was about to do something crazy.

  Finally they rose up over the last bumpy rise to the top of the mountain. The stars were close and bright. Millions of them. A canopy of lights. A thousand homes sparkling brightly on the valley floor. Wade traversed slowly over the ridges and rocky growths as what was left of the road came to a stop. Dani’s heart picked up. Wade pulled to within ten feet or so of the edge.

  “Wade, please,” she begged. “I’m scared. Don’t!”

  He stopped.

  He swallowed slowly; Dani almost saw the lump in his throat crawl down his thick neck. He ran his hand across his scalp, knocking off his pride Stetson hat, and then when it fell in his lap, swatted it away in wordless rage into the backseat. He just sat there breathing, composed but heavy. Warrick kept saying, “Wade, Wade, answer me.”

  Then he turned off the radio.

  “I’ve done some bad things,” he said, staring forward.

  “I know. I know you have, Wade. But it’s like with recovery, isn’t that what you always said? It’s never too little or too late. Let me tell them you’ll give yourself up.”

  “I don’t mean just about Trey. And Rooster. Though I haven’t lost a minute of sleep over him. And those others …” He finally turned to her. “I never knew any of that was going to happen like it did. I swear.”

  She looked at him. “I believe you, Wade.”

  “I was talking about Judy,” he said. “Your mom.”

  “What d
o you mean about Mom?”

  He inhaled a deep breath that seemed like it had been inside him forever and then locked his hands behind his head. “She had time left. I don’t know how much. But time. You could have made it back to be with her. But I …” He stopped. “She was taking a lot of morphine then.”

  Dani’s eyes grew wide and she didn’t understand. “What are you saying, Wade?”

  “I took that from you, I know. Your last time with her. I increased her dosage. A lot. More than tripled it. She was in pain and I told myself I was doing the right thing. But we both know I was out of control back then. And scared. I was scared she wouldn’t die. I needed money to pay back a few things. My lawyer. Some people who I owed things to, who would speak up for me.” He swallowed again hard and then nodded as if finally making some peace with it himself. “You should’ve had that time.”

  “What are you saying, Wade, you killed her?”

  “I just put her in God’s hands, I told myself. But yes, you could say I did.”

  Dani blinked. “I always hated myself for not being back with her.”

  “I know you did.” He nodded. “But now you see. It was me. That’s why this seems right now. Now get out.”

  A wave of anger rose up inside Dani. Now it was her turn to look at him. “What seems right? How could you have done that, Wade? She loved you.”

  “Get out now, Danielle. Time’s up.” He took out his gun and cocked it back and pointed it squarely at her. “Walk over toward the edge. Sorry, but it doesn’t end like you wanted it to, Dani. It just doesn’t.” He lifted the automatic door locks.

  “What are you going to do, Wade? The police are on their way up now.”

  He said, “You want me to just shoot you here? I will. It’s pretty clear I have nothing else to lose. Now go on …”

  Dani remained there rooted to her seat.

  “Count of three. And don’t test me on this, Dani. Not this.”

  Confused, nervous, Dani fumbled at the door. She stepped out and just looked back at him. The killer of her mom. An accessory in killing Trey. So many things became clear.

  His face had a cast of doom on it.

  “Now close it,” he said, keeping the gun on her and lowering the window. “Step back.”

  “Wade, please …” Dani shut the door.

  “Now start to walk over. To the ledge.”

  Fear shot up in her. “What are you going to do to me, Wade?”

  “Take a step, I said.” He kept the gun trained on her through the open window. “Go on.”

  She did. She took a step or two, then she just stood there, Wade nodding and training the gun on her.

  “Now walk over there.” He swung the gun to indicate the cliff’s edge. She stayed rooted, but her heart quickened its pace in fear. She didn’t know if there was any reason left in him. “Walk over there, or so help me God I’ll shoot you where you stand, Danielle. I will.”

  Tears of dread wound their way down her cheeks. She took another step back.

  “Walk!” he shouted.

  She started to move. She tripped in her sandals over a rough growth of scrub and caught herself. She backed away to a distance of about ten feet from Wade’s car. She was maybe three or four feet from the ledge. A two-thousand-foot drop. She could start to run, but to where? And not in her sandals. She was trapped. She could feel the warm wind whooshing up the cliff face and beating into her. How could he want to kill her now? There was no point. She always thought he loved her.

  He still had the gun pointed at her through the open window.

  “Wait.”

  Dani stood there.

  “Watch out for him,” Wade said.

  “Who?”

  “He still needs lots of help. He gets whatever I have, of course, which ain’t much. He’ll just need somebody.”

  It took a second for what he was saying to break through her confusion and fear. “Wade, please, don’t … What are you even thinking?”

  “I lied before.” His voice seemed to soften. “What I said about you … We always did have that deal. Being tough with one another. But I was always fond of you, Danielle. I tried to think of you as if you were my own. No matter what I’ve done, I did.”

  “I know.” Suddenly the tears were burning in her eyes. And they were no longer of fear. “I did, too.”

  “I tried to warn you …”

  Suddenly there were sirens in the distance.

  “Don’t let my son think ill of me, if you can.”

  Dani heard the V8 engine rev.

  “Wade, wait!”

  He looked ahead, and with a roar the white police SUV lurched forward and hurtled toward the edge.

  “Wade, no!” Dani screamed in horror.

  It shot off the edge, vaulting into the night sky, and seemed to hold there for an instant, like a hang glider catching the wind, about to soar.

  Then it fell, nose forward into the deep abyss of the valley. Into the web of a million flickering lights. The valley Wade practically owned at one time, or at least that was the way it seemed, she thought later. If you could ever really own something like that, a man who never had a dime, only an off-color joke, a hearty laugh, or a slap on the back. Descending silently with a hundred secrets still buried with him.

  Yet in his own way he had.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Three days later, the United Airlines A320 touched down at LaGuardia Airport in New York and pulled up at the end of the runway with Hauck in it.

  Three days of being treated for his wounds—two fractured ribs, a contusion on the back of his skull, and a clean through-and-through gunshot wound in the shoulder. And sorting things out with the various law enforcement agencies to come to the conclusion that despite two dead and one wounded at the farm, on top of the six dead in Aspen, he and Chuck Watkins wouldn’t be charged.

  In the end, the only charge that seemed even remotely prosecutable, but at the same time moot, was for unlawfully breaking into Robertson’s mailbox, which the DA in Greeley seemed agreeable to ignore, only half jokingly, if Hauck promised never to come back to the state.

  Randall J. McKay, from Alpha, was brought up on multiple counts of attempted murder, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder in the case of Trey Watkins, blackmail, and witness intimidation. Not to mention federal charges of illegally using military PsyOps tactics in the United States. Alpha Group agreed to discontinue all operations on the Wattenberg field pending a review of their business practices, and before that was even undertaken, several other energy accounts of theirs decided to walk away, and the firm collapsed. Several litigations against their management and board of directors were initiated.

  Resurgent Mining and Mineral underwent an internal audit and Wendell Moss, their regional head of Colorado operations, resigned, pending charges against him of blackmail, conspiracy to defraud the justice system, and conspiracy to commit murder. The company expressed its “dismay and disappointment” at the tactics employed in the Wattenberg region, which ran against its “core philosophy to working hand in hand with local communities.” The CEO said it would immediately take steps to ensure “that sufficient levels of water, either from local sources or beyond,” would immediately be made available to the farmers and ranchers of Weld County, “who had been disadvantaged by their policies.” In advance of what was anticipated to be several class action suits, the company pledged up front to invest the sum of $60 million to be put back into the affected localities, for RMM’s role in compounding the hardships of the drought the past two years. At the same time the company insisted it had only worked within the wishes of the local municipalities affected, and that other than the actions of a few misguided managers, it had broken no laws. In Templeton, Police Chief Joseph Riddick tendered his resignation, citing reasons of personal health, pending a criminal review, and an outside lieutenant from Greeley was temporarily put in charge.

  Two days after Hauck was taken away from Trixie One on a stretcher, a news release came over
the wires that the proposed merger between RMM and Global had been put on hold.

  RMM’s stock fell twenty points that day.

  On Hauck’s second day in the hospital, a call came in from Vern Fitzpatrick, the chief of police back in Greenwich and Hauck’s old boss, who’d tried to reach him before. When he heard Hauck was in the hospital and why, he laughed. “Every time I talk to you, life seems to be chipping a little more away,” Vern said, recalling what had happened only months before after the Gstaad Group venture. “Bet you never thought when you left the force, that’s when things would really start to get dangerous.”

  “Never did.” Hauck chuckled. “That’s true.”

  They talked about some people they knew in common; Hauck brought Fitzpatrick up-to-date on how he’d spent his past three months. Then he said, “So I know you didn’t call in to hear about my trip to the Rockies …”

  “No,” Vern admitted. “I didn’t.” The chief paused for a second. “I guess you could tell the last time we saw each other, Ty, I’m not getting any younger. I’ve been running this department for almost twenty years now.”

  “And doing it pretty damn well,” Hauck said. “Everyone respects you.” Though Vern was right, the last time they had seen each other, at a retirement party for one of the department’s longtime secretaries, Hauck couldn’t help but notice the gray had turned to white, the crow’s-feet around the eyes more pronounced.

  “Thanks. That’s actually kind of what I want to talk to you about.”

  Hauck shifted in his bed. “Okay …”

  “I have a few things going on, beyond the usual aches and pains. I seem to have this irregular heartbeat now, they tell me. And this shake. You probably saw.” Hauck had noticed the tremor the last time they met. “That’s not getting any better.”

  “Have you gotten it tested?” Hauck asked. Vern was as much a friend as an ex-boss.

  “I have.” Then he switched the subject. “Marge and I were thinking about spending a little more time down south. We have this place, outside Charleston. Ever been there?”