by Jeff Carson
According to Duke’s earlier assessment, backed by over thirty years of experience with the Rocky Points Resort ski patrol, there was a small chance they were going to see a slide reach the road, or even something bigger. The official accumulation from last night’s storm was twenty-seven inches at the peak, and conditions had conspired to prevent CDOT and ski patrol from preemptively blasting the bowl. Topping that, the wind had shifted and come strong out of the north all night, loading at least nine feet of wind-deposited snow underneath a freshly sculpted cornice, all on top of a layer of depth hoar crystals, or sugar snow, a result of the resort’s dry and sunny conditions over the past month.
For ski conditions on the rest of the mountain, and the skiers who would be enjoying them all day, the new snow was a godsend. But as Wolf watched the white cloud explode from the bowl above, he wondered if this wasn’t something sent from hell.
The deputies and personnel surrounding Wolf began to shift at the sight of the pyroclastic flow-like explosion traveling down the mountain, and everyone, including Wolf, let out a gasp of amazement.
The billowing mass rumbled, and hundred-year-old trees cracking into millions of pieces inside the torrent were muffled pops.
At the front of the cloud, a white streak shot forward at startling speed, then another, and another, reminding Wolf of streamers coming out of a napalm explosion. They were snow and ice covered rocks ejected at hundreds of miles per hour, and they were a definite surprise to Wolf.
Wolf watched as one of the streamers struck a tree a third of the way up the mountain, wrenching it out of sight in a twist of green branches and a puff of powder.
“Heads up!” Wolf yelled, though certain every spectator had seen the new danger and was acting accordingly.
Wolf looked up, wondering if rocks that had shed their visible ice and rock streamers were headed right for them. He couldn’t see any, so he looked back to the front of the rolling monster.
The barrage seemed to be gaining speed, which was hard to believe since it was moving so fast and now so low on the mountain. It was going to hit the road with full force, Wolf thought. As quickly as the thought came, the thundering mass shot across the road. Trees cart-wheeled out of the cloud and crashed into the trees on the far side of the road, and the monster just kept going.
“Holy mother of…” Wolf heard Rachette say somewhere nearby.
The trees to the immediate left blocked everyone’s view as the slide reached the flat valley below, but the roar and snapping and cracking was still there. Then the white steam came back into sight, climbing up the other side of the valley, as if it were a huge bucket of water splashing from one side of a bathtub to the other.
The spectacle was short lived, however, because a cloud of powder was descending on them, traveling down the highway at more than a few over the speed limit.
“Holy shit,” someone said.
Wolf turned his back and jumped as the cloud hit, half expecting to be knocked into oblivion by a wall of snow, rocks, and trees. But the feared deadly impact never came, and Wolf fell onto his butt, jarring his spine, as the millions of hissing ice crystals collided with his back and then invaded every crack in his winter armor. Shutting his eyes and holding his breath, he shoved his face inside his coat and waited for the tempest to pass.
When the air stilled, he popped his face out and watched the others around him do the same. The air was sweet with the stench of pinesap. Rachette had huddled into the airplane crash position and was now uncoiling himself from the ground. Wolf stood up and scanned the group through the still swirling air.
“Everyone all right?” Wolf yelled.
“Okay.”
“Yeah.”
Expletives flew from everyone’s mouths, and there was a faint cheer from the crowd below gathered on the road.
Wolf started accounting for every person that had been there before. Eleven…twelve…thirteen bodies, all moving and talking excitedly to one another.
“Oh. My. God,” Rachette said. “Did you see that?”
Wolf blinked in response, and then took a glove off and began wiping the fine powder from his upper and lower lashes. His skin was beading with moisture, and he palmed his entire face and pulled down, raking the melting snow off his beard with his shaking hands. Yes, he’d seen that, and for a second, he’d thought that he’d killed thirteen people.
It took a full five minutes for the cloud of ice crystals to fully dissipate, drifting on a small breath of wind that was a striking contrast to the howling blizzard the night before.
Thirty minutes later, after three more charges failed to slide any more snow high above on the bowl, officials deemed the slide zone safe for CDOT workers to clear off the road.
Wolf looked up as a growling front-end loader crunched its way through the snow toward the wall that now blocked the pass. Another tractor rattled to life and beeped, and the deputies made way for the awakening machines.
“…I gave him a roadside last night.” Deputy Baine was giving Rachette an earful about something.
“Did he pass?” Rachette asked.
Baine looked up at Wolf and nodded, as if including him on the conversation. “Yep. Passed with flying colors.”
Taylor Hunt, a burly man who had seen real napalm streamers in Vietnam, drove by in a lurching yellow Volvo tractor. He wore a wide smile with a cigarette between his teeth, and he waved at the crowd of men and women from behind the glass. Just like everyone else who had witnessed the avalanche, he looked excited to be alive, and excited for the stories he’d be able to tell over a beer tonight.
“That’s not a normal-sized slide, right? That was like, a hundred-year slide, right?” Rachette was grilling Patterson.
Patterson avoided eye contact and responded with a shrug. For the first time, Wolf noticed that she seemed shaken up.
Rachette noticed, too. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I just don’t like avalanches.”
Rachette gave Wolf a quick glance. “What, you have history with avalanches or something?”
Patterson looked at Rachette and then to the ground. “Yeah.” Her tone said, let’s drop it.
“All right everyone,” Wolf said. “Let’s huddle up. We have a lot of work to do, and now that we have three of our snow movers stuck on the pass for” — Wolf turned around and looked at the tractors who were picking away at the wall of snow. It was taller at one point than two of the big machines stacked on one another — “most of the day at least, that means driving conditions are going to be more hazardous. Get started on the patrols we talked about this morning. You know your assignments. And keep an eye on all our plowing friends.”
Wolf looked at Deputy Yates who nodded back. Wolf had given Yates the task of keeping an eye on the Hosfeld twins, a pair of brothers that loved to rage through town with their plow-wielding four by fours each and every snowstorm, providing more terror than help for the community each and every time.
“And, again.” Wolf took a deep breath, “the funeral service starts at two-thirty. Get there early, or just do not get there. Stay out in the parking lot if you can’t make it on time. Am I clear?”
Wolf moved his gaze from one deputy to the next, and each nodded in turn.
Wolf smacked his gloved hands together. “All right, let’s get out and help our community today, people.”
The uniformed crowd scattered and walked back down the road to their waiting vehicles.
“Rachette, Patterson.” Wolf said.
“Yeah?” Rachette turned and stopped. Patterson did the same.
“First thing: Go to Edna Yerton’s place and check on her. Her wood pile is going to be buried, I doubt she’ll have a fire lit, and she probably won’t have enough groceries to make dinner tonight.” He took off his glove, pulled out his wallet, and gave Rachette a twenty. “Get some food and take it up to her, get a fire going and plenty of wood inside to dry, and make sure she’s got what she needs for the next few days. Be careful on the w
ay up, the plows probably haven’t done her road, and don’t try pulling into her drive. Park on 15 and shoe the hundred yards or so to her house.”
Rachette pulled the edges of his mouth down and nodded. “All right.” He glanced at Patterson and then back at Wolf. “So, not that I’m against this, but doesn’t she have a neighbor who could help her out?”
“No,” Wolf said. “He’s dead.”
“Oh,” Rachette said. “Wait, dead? Who was that? When was that?”
“I’m glad you keep up on town current events,” Wolf started walking down the road.
There was a bright piercing light near the gate, and they all slowed when they saw a television camera and a reporter speaking into a microphone and gesturing toward them.
“Rachette, you up for doing an interview with Renee Moore?” Wolf asked.
Rachette stopped in his tracks. He went pale, almost green, and by his shifting body language looked like he might get sick, or lose control of his bladder, or both.
“What?” he said, staring into the distance.
Wolf looked down the road to the reporter, then back at Rachette. “Mitch Casper.”
“What? Mitch Camper?” Rachette looked at Wolf. “What?”
“Mitch Casper died. He was the neighbor. Who died?”
“Oh. Yeah…”
Patterson looked at Wolf and smiled for the first time of the day. “I never heard about that, either. Never knew the guy.”
Wolf nodded. “His family found him this fall. Ninety years old. Natural causes. Was dead for a week. I don’t think he left his house much for the last ten years. Not a social guy at all.” They started walking. “Sarah has the listing. She can’t sell the house apparently. Is having trouble getting the banks to lower the price or something like that. Hey, Rachette, you ready?”
“What?” Rachette looked at Wolf in horror.
Wolf slapped him on the shoulder. “Rachette. Under no circumstances, ever, would I allow you to be the spokesman for the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department on television.”
Rachette almost collapsed from relief. “Oh, good. Thank God.”
Chapter 3
“The road is covered by at least ten feet of snow, trees and rocks, and it’s going to take some time to clear the pass to the south,” Wolf said, feeling the heat coming off the light panel mounted on the expensive-looking camera.
Renee Moore was confident and pretty, and smelled like expensive perfume. Her face was perfect, made up with lavish precision only seen on television stars, or so Wolf assumed, since he’d never seen a television star this close. Her thick red lips sucked in the light and held it without reflecting back, her face was tanned with red cheeks, her eyes giant blue orbs surrounded by thick eyelashes so long she could have used a curling iron on them. Her shoulder-length blonde hair peeked out beneath her hat and framed her face just so. She was downright attractive, holding a look of attentive interest for Wolf’s words. With the reflecting camera lens two feet from his face, he had to concentrate to control what was coming out of his mouth. Since this was his first television interview ever, he had no clue how it was going — no other moment to compare it against.
“…on the pass?” she asked.
Wolf realized he’d been zoning out and felt his face flush. His five-day beard sure itched like hell, but at least the dark hair obscured the lower half of his reddening face. “I’m sorry, pardon me?”
She flashed a facetious smile and pulled the microphone back to her mouth. “I was asking, have you ever seen an avalanche like that before on this pass? It was amazing-looking from where we were standing.”
Wolf shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen one that big. We had some conditions come together that were pretty rare, resulting in quite a lot of snow coming down the mountain.”
“And how long will it take to clear that snow off the pass?” she asked.
“I would say Williams Pass will be closed for at least the day, even with crews working from both sides of the slide zone.”
“And surely a great thing for the ski resort? Rocky Points Resort is reporting twenty-seven inches of powder at the top. Do you get to make a few turns up there yourself, Sheriff?” She gave a little wink, which made Wolf’s lips curl. She was good.
“Ah, no. All of our deputies have a lot of work to do now, helping dig the town out from the snow, and making sure everyone is healthy and safe from the cold temperatures that have settled in for the day.”
“Thank you, Sheriff Wolf.” She turned to the camera, “And there you have it. We were just talking with Sheriff David Wolf of the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department, after an absolutely huge avalanche, triggered by CDOT and the ski patrol of Rocky Points Resort, all caught on camera by our excellent camera crew here. I’m Renee Moore, reporting…”
Wolf decided to walk toward his car rather than stand next to her like a dumbass. For the first time of the day, he walked out of the dull light of the shadowed valley and into the sun’s morning rays reflecting painfully off the white snow. He pulled his sunglasses down off his head. They were glazed over with a thin layer of frost, so he put them back up, and then broke into two quick sneezes. The air was a balmy zero degrees, biting into the inside of his nostrils when he sniffed.
“Excuse me, Sheriff?”
Wolf wiped his nose and turned around, hoping he was presentable.
“You just gonna leave without saying goodbye?” Renee Moore jogged toward him, swishing her powder blue pant legs together with every step. She held out a knitted-mitten hand and Wolf took it.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Goodbye, be careful on the trip back to Denver. You do a great job on television. My son is going to flip when he knows I talked with you.”
She laughed, “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I think he’s a big fan.”
She mock frowned and gave a little laugh. “You think he’s a big fan? So you aren’t sure.”
“Well, it hasn’t come up. But he’s thirteen, and he tends to quickly develop crushes on attractive women, so I am quite confident he’s either a fan, or will be when he sees the interview.”
She stared at Wolf for a second and then narrowed one eye and smiled. “And your wife, what will she think?”
“Ex-wife,” Wolf said, “and she’ll probably hate you.”
She laughed, this time more naturally — and attractively — and then she looked down. “Well, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Wolf turned to his SUV and hopped in, and then gave her a quick wave as he drove away.
He smiled at the interaction and looked in the rear view mirror, seeing the Colorado-famous Renee Moore looking after his receding vehicle. He wondered why he didn’t ask her out, or at least for her number, and then wondered why the hell he would have. She lived in Denver, over two hours away, and that was if there was no traffic – a distance that had already been proved impossible for a relationship to endure.
Had she been hitting on him? Not really, he concluded. It was just easy politeness between two individuals that morphed into a nice interaction – one with no future in it.
That seemed to be the recurring theme of his love life nowadays. As he drove past the dwindling line of cars on the pass, he thought about seeing Sarah the night before. She had looked extremely good, to put it mildly, with her snug blue dress that hugged her athletic curves and her braided blond hair pulled back with shiny silver clips. And her eyes, as always, had been mesmerizing—brighter blue than the sky was today.
They had gotten along well last night, too. They had both attended a gala held atop the mountain at the Antler Creek Lodge, an ultra-exclusive restaurant open for dinner, only accessible by snow cat from the top of the gondola. In the small interaction they’d had, Wolf laughed at her gossip about various people in the dining room, and then they exchanged funny glances from across the room a couple times. It was how their relationship had been lately. With their past as complicated as it gets — a marriage, a kid, her drugs, her alcohol, her s
obriety, and her now defunct relationship with Mark Wilson — their present was going well. Just like his interaction with Renee Moore, though, he wasn’t ready to expect anything for the future. What was holding him back from pursuing the only love he’d ever known in his life again? He couldn’t say. But he was definitely hesitating because of some feeling he couldn’t put a finger on.
“Sheriff, do you copy?” It was Tammy Granger on the radio.
Wolf plucked the radio from the console. “Go ahead.”
“I have a visitor here at the station who wants to speak to you,” Tammy was using a quieter than normal voice speaking into the radio.
“Not exactly a good time. Who is it?”
“It’s a Mr. Irwin, from the Irwin Construction Corporation? He’s one of the—”
“Yeah, I know who he is. What does he want?” Wolf knew Tammy was using a tone of voice that suggested the man could hear what Wolf was saying, but Wolf didn’t really care. It was a bad day to drop in and request a little chat with the sheriff.
Tammy paused. “He wants to speak to you today and is wondering when you’ll be back in. He seems very adamant. What would you like me to tell him?”
Wolf was coasting down the final straightaway of the pass into town. “Listen, I’m on my way past the station now, I’ll just drop in. Tell him to sit tight.”
“Thanks, honey,” Tammy said in a singsong voice.
Wolf was unsure how to respond to that, so he didn’t.
Highway 734 from the Williams Pass gate to the southern edge of town was relatively easy driving, despite the snow the night before. The men plowing the town for the last eight hours had made sure of that.
There were only a couple of cars parked in front of the small shops lining Main, and ahead a green John Deere front-end loader was toiling away, grabbing an oversized bucket of snow, turning and dumping it on top of a ten-foot mountain in the center of the street that ran the length of a football field. The great wall of Rocky Points, Wolf thought.
