by Jeff Carson
There were frantic noises coming from inside—fast footsteps on hardwood floors, a dish slamming against a countertop, the hissing of voices to shush one another, and then silence.
Wolf sniffed and wiped his dripping nose once again, catching a whiff of marijuana smoke from inside.
“Oh, here we go,” Rachette said, smelling the same thing.
Wolf reached up to push the bell again, but the door rattled and the doorknob turned.
A red-eyed man in his early twenties peeked out, opening the door only enough to reveal his face “Hello?”
“Good morning. I’m Sheriff Wolf. These are deputies Rachette and Patterson. Does Stephanie Lang live here?”
The kid’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. “Yes. What can I do for you officers?”
“We need to ask you a few questions. May we come in?” Wolf asked.
“Uh,” the kid said. “I don’t know. I…”
A hot stream of air was pouring out of the door and wafting the thick smell of marijuana toward Wolf, Rachette, and Patterson
“We-we-we—“
Rachette put a hand on Wolf’s shoulder. “Hey, if you guys are smoking weed in there, well, guess what? It’s legal. So quit freaking out and let’s talk. Huh, John?”
Wolf stepped aside. Rachette’s time off spent at the local bars was finally paying dividends.
“Hey, Tom. Uh, okay”—he opened the door wider and looked down—“What’s this about?”
“We just said,” Rachette said, walking into the house. “Stephanie.”
“She’s not here,” he said, looking at Rachette.
“We know,” Rachette said.
John frowned and ruffled his thick head of sandy-blonde hair. He was dressed in baggy blue ski pants, suspenders hanging off his waist, and a zip-up sweater on top.
Wolf stomped his feet against the doorstep and walked in after Rachette, Patterson taking up the rear.
“Of course, driving while high is not legal,” Rachette said, looking into the house.
Wolf looked into the living room and saw why Rachette had said as much. There were three people in total in the house. Another man and woman, both in their early twenties, sat on the couch in their ski pants and underclothes. Soft music was coming from the television, and there were skiers jumping off cliffs on the screen.
It was clear that they were gearing up to get a late-morning start on one of the biggest powder days on the mountain in recent memory, and it appeared a bong-load each was to be their final step before piling in the car.
“And you two are?” Wolf asked, nodding to the young man on the couch and the young woman on the chair.
The guy on the living room couch was in his late teens or early twenties. He wore black ski clothing five sizes too big, plastered with duct tape covering rips in the fabric. He had a long ponytail of knotted hair draping over his shoulder and a wispy beard that made Rachette’s facial growth look downright GQ. The guy’s eyes were narrowed, because of the weed or his defiance. It was unclear.
“Tyler,” he said, shaking his head. “Tyler McClellan.”
Defiance, Wolf decided.
The woman sitting on the other couch looked up at Wolf with chocolate brown eyes. Her hair was greasy blonde and hung behind her ears, looking like it hadn’t been washed for days. She wore a beaded hemp necklace that draped onto a pink fleece, and black ski pants and pink socks completed her outfit. She was probably attractive after a shower, Wolf thought, which looked to be a rare occurrence.
“Jamie,” she said. “Jamie Bancroft.”
Patterson had her notebook out and was writing furiously.
“John,” Wolf said. “What’s your last name?”
“Cameron,” he said. “What’s—”
“Was Stephanie here last night?” Wolf asked.
The guy on the living room couch blew air out of his lips and looked out the big window.
“Did I say something interesting to you?” Wolf asked.
The kid put his elbows on his knees and scratched the back of his head. “Nah.”
Wolf looked at them and held up his hands.
“Uh, she didn’t come home,” John said. “She texted me and said she was getting a ride home from some guys, so we didn’t go pick her up. But she never did show up here.”
“Pick her up from where?” Wolf asked.
“Sometimes we’ll pick her up from the shuttle stop at the bottom of the road, in town. She works up at Antler Creek Restaurant,” John said.
Wolf realized that’s where he’d seen Stephanie Lang before. He’d seen her walking the room last night, waiting on tables.
Jamie looked up from the cloth chair and lifted a finger, “Why are you asking about her? Did something happen?”
Wolf turned to John. “Could I see that text message, please?”
John unzipped a pocket on his ski pants and produced his cell phone. After a few taps on the screen, he held it up.
Wolf read the last incoming message from “Steph”: I got a ride from two dudes tonight. You don’t need to pick me up.
Then “John” replied: Okay. You have to bring more beer if they want to drink anything.
Wolf nodded. “Who was here last night?”
John gestured to the couch. “Just us three.”
“And how long were you guys here? From approximately what time to what time?”
John shrugged, “All night. From sundown on. We were just riding out the storm with a few beers, chillin out, you know?”
The kid on the couch scoffed and shook his head again.
“Is Stephanie seeing anybody? Dating anybody in particular?” Wolf asked.
The guy on the couch seemed to have heard the last straw, because he leaned his head back and started laughing.
Wolf frowned and watched the display for a few seconds, then asked, “Why’s that funny, Tyler?”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah. It’s just funny because you asked if she was seeing or dating anybody in particular.”
“I know what I asked. So why’s that funny?”
The kid put up finger quotes. “Anybody in particular. No. She isn’t seeing anyone in particular.” He sat back and concentrated on a fingernail.
“Um”—John looked in between Tyler and Wolf—“no, she wasn’t seeing anyone in particular.”
“What’s going on?” Jamie asked, this time with more conviction.
“Yeah,” Tyler stood up from the couch and swiped his ponytail with a hand. “This is straight BS. You have to tell us what’s going on. You’re like entrapping us into making Stephanie look guilty for something, and we don’t even know it.”
“We found Stephanie’s body a half-mile down the road this morning,” Wolf said.
Tyler’s face dropped, and he sat back down on the couch. Jamie smothered her face in her hands and started whimpering.
“What? Her…body?” John said. “Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry,” Wolf said, studying their three faces as they withdrew into their own worlds of shock. Although they were all high as cirrus clouds and hard to read up until then, they seemed to be reacting genuinely to the news. No act of concern, it was the real deal.
Wolf cleared his throat. “Tyler. Why did you laugh and say that about her seeing someone in particular?”
Tyler swayed his head back and forth a few times then looked up at Wolf with glassy eyes. “I…I, she…she just sees a lot of different guys.” He sniffed and a tear rolled down his cheek.
“Were you dating her, Tyler?” Patterson asked.
Wolf was surprised by the question. He watched Tyler closely.
Tyler looked up at Patterson, his eyes streaming now and his teeth bared, and Patterson offered a sympathetic gaze in return, which seemed to soften his contorted face.
“Like I said, she doesn’t really date anyone…didn’t really date anyone in particular. But, yeah. We were kinda seeing each other. We were getting pretty close. So you can see that I was kind of pissed this morning that she was
out with a couple of guys all night last night.” He shook his head and clenched his eyes. “Oh, my God. What happened to her?”
“We’re looking into it,” Wolf said.
“Was she killed?” Tyler pointed at the phone in John’s hand. “It was those two guys. Whoever those two guys were, it was them.”
Wolf pointed down the hall. “We need to search her things. Is her room back there?”
John nodded. “Yeah.” He went over and crammed himself next to the girl known as Jamie and put an arm around her.
Wolf looked at Patterson and then flicked his head toward the three kids. Patterson nodded and took out a pen and paper notebook from her pocket.
Rachette pointed at a door in the hallway and looked at John.
“It’s the last door on the right,” John said.
“Thank you,” Rachette said, and started walking.
Wolf followed him down the hall and into the room. It was completely dark, the window covered by a thick blanket fastened to the wall with screws.
Rachette flicked on the light and whispered to Wolf, “What do you think?”
Wolf shrugged, “Not sure yet.”
He went to the window and pulled aside the blanket, and saw there was a hook on the wall to hang it on, so he did so. The room faced east, and the blazing, snow-reflected sun lit up the room like stadium lights on a football field.
Thick brown shag carpet covered the floor, and the boards underneath squeaked with every step. The unmade bed was centered against the wall opposite the window.
Wolf eased open the top drawer of the chest of drawers set under the window, and saw neatly folded socks and underwear. The second drawer held t-shirts, and the third, miscellaneous stuff: a leather folder, a notebook, various letters, and credit card statements including some charges by merchants Wolf didn’t recognize. Sex toys. A half-empty box of condoms. Massage oils, and candles.
“Hey,” Rachette said, pointing in the top drawer of a small desk set in the corner.
Wolf walked over and looked inside at a stack of hundred dollar bills. He picked up a pencil and pushed them with the eraser, fanning them out. They were crisp and had successive serial numbers, looking like they had never seen the inside of a wallet.
Wolf counted the money by sight. “That’s twelve hundred in cash.”
“Yeah,” Rachette said, “and that’s not from waiting tables. No way.”
Wolf nodded. “Could have brought a stack of smaller bills and traded them in for fresh hundreds at the bank … I guess,” Wolf said, but not believing his own words.
“Drugs?” Rachette asked.
Wolf shrugged. “Bag it,” he said.
A thorough search of the rest of the room revealed nothing significant; nothing like twelve hundred in crisp cash.
Wolf and Rachette walked back into the living room. Patterson looked up, closed her notebook, thanked the three kids quietly, and nodded at Wolf.
“Did Stephanie sell drugs?” Wolf asked no one in particular.
They looked at each other and shook their heads.
“No, she didn’t,” John said.
“She was clean. Didn’t like drugs anymore,” said Tyler.
“What do you mean, anymore?” asked Rachette.
“She used to do all sorts of stuff, like weed, and other stuff, and then she quit. Cold turkey. It was like a big deal for her. She went to a counseling group about it and everything,” Tyler said.
“Where did she do that?” Wolf asked.
“At the old bank building,” Tyler said. “Mondays and Thursdays.”
Rachette, Wolf, and Patterson exchanged glances. They all knew that’s where Sarah, Wolf’s Sarah, counseled a group of troubled young men and women, and they knew those were her nights. It had been a memorable quip by Rachette, Mondays and Thursdays? Those are football nights. I’d just have to stay an addict, Rachette had said, and Wolf knew his fellow deputies were remembering the same thing right now.
“Thank you, guys,” Wolf said. “Deputy Patterson?”
Patterson nodded and waved her notebook. Yeah, I have everything we need here—names, phone numbers, addresses.
Wolf pulled a stack of business cards out of his pocket and peeled three off and handed them out. “Please stay available for us. We’ll probably be back soon, but we’ll call first. And in the meantime, if you need to talk, remember anything of importance, please either call us or come down. Any time, all right?”
They nodded, and Wolf ushered Rachette and Patterson out.
The sun was a little higher in the eastern sky, but it was still nostril-freezing cold out, and they walked in silence out to the cars, all zipping and pulling on fabric to stave off the invading air that jabbed at their faces, necks, ears, and wrists.
“You get the next of kin info?” Wolf asked, holding out a hand.
Patterson shook her head. “There is none.”
Wolf frowned. “No parents?”
“Nope. No one, as far as they knew. They said her parents were killed when she was a kid, and they didn’t know about brothers or sisters. Nothing about grandparents. Nothing.”
Wolf nodded, “Okay. I’m going back by the scene. You two make your way up to Antler Creek and find out who those two were she left with last night.”
Rachette nodded, and opened his mouth like he wanted to ask something, then thought better of it.
“You going to see Sarah?” Patterson asked, looking up with a curious wince.
Wolf looked at her and narrowed his eyes, thinking about his earlier conversation with Special Agent Luke, and how she had been so in-the-know about Sarah’s breakup with Mark Wilson, and how her source of gossip must have been Patterson. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll talk to her about Lang.”
“Tell her ‘hi’ from us,” Patterson said cheerily, and turned and walked to their SUV.
Rachette watched her leave and then looked back at Wolf.
“Antler Creek,” Wolf said.
“Yeah,” Rachette said, and turned around and left.
Chapter 8
Patterson, Rachette, and Deputy Brent Wilson sat in the six-person gondola car, suspended what looked like at least sixty feet over the flat slope below. As it traveled over the wheels on the tower, it pulled up and bounced, and then dropped back down.
As this happened, Rachette closed his eyes again, a prolonged blink that was much more than an involuntary movement to moisten his eyeballs.
It was not lost on Patterson that Rachette was scared to death of the gondola at Rocky Points. Every time they had rode it this year, he would pause every sentence, straighten his posture, and fake every smile when they bounced past a tower or swayed in a particularly strong gust of wind. At least it beat the catatonic state he got into when, God forbid, they went on a chairlift without a safety bar to pull down.
Wilson looked at Patterson and grinned, seeing the same thing Patterson did, and they exchanged knowing smiles.
Patterson liked Wilson, and was glad Wolf had radioed for them to pick him up at the station on the way to the mountain. Wilson was only two years in the department, so he was a relative rookie just like Rachette and Patterson. But he was at least ten years their elder with two kids, so he brought a completely different, more mature perspective to the table. Patterson, for one, welcomed Wilson’s adult sensibility. Being stuck with Rachette day in and day out took its toll on her.
Wilson was a quiet man, tall and soft looking like a big teddy bear. Just like his physique, his face and expressions were always soft—a constantly friendly guy. But she had seen his soft, forgiving physique to be a false appearance on more than one occasion. Everyone in the department treated Wilson as their resident strongman. He had tremendous lifting and pushing and twisting power with his thick limbs.
“How’s your skiing coming, Rachette?” Wilson asked, his blonde mustache bouncing on his face when he talked.
Rachette sucked in a breath and looked out the window, then put on a cool look and shrugged. “You’
ll have to ask Patterson.”
Wilson turned to her and raised his eyebrows, the side of his mustache curling up.
“He’s doing very well for his first year skiing,” she said. And she meant it. “With his bum leg, I didn’t expect him to improve as quickly as he has.”
Rachette smiled and nodded to Wilson. “There you go.”
The gondola entered the top terminal, plunging them in shadow and slowing the gondola from full speed to almost a dead stop in the distance of a few feet, a series of events that sent Rachette grabbing for the bench he sat on. Since he was sitting facing downhill, he’d really been caught off-guard this time.
Patterson and Wilson laughed and buried their faces in their hands.
Rachette’s face reddened as the doors opened, and Patterson got out quickly to help him save face. She stepped a few paces and turned around, and then slapped him on the shoulder. “The lifts take a little getting used to,” she said.
Rachette gave her a deadly look, and she knew immediately that she should have just ignored the whole thing.
They stepped out of the terminal and into the thin, bright air at the top of the mountain. The view at the top was a spectacular sight today, with all the peaks coated in white as far as the eye could see in all directions, save the south where miles beyond Wilson Pass the terrain flattened into a vast plain valley lined by tall mountains on either side, like a half-pipe for the gods. Up to the north, they could see past Cave Creek and beyond. To the west was peak after peak, and she picked out the ski runs of Aspen Mountain and Snowmass, looking like powder-green sundaes drenched in streams of white chocolate.
The sight gave her a tinge of homesickness and, at the same time, gave her comfort that she could see home at that very second. She loved it up here.
“Howdy, Deputies,” a tall man with mirrored glasses crunched toward them with an outstretched bare hand.
Patterson took off her glove and they shook hands. The man pulled up his sunglasses, revealing beautiful sea-green eyes set under thick, dark eyebrows.
“I’m Scott. Scott Reed,” he said, shaking her hand.
“I’m Heather. Heather Patterson,” she said, shaking his hand back.
His smile seemed to brighten the day even more, and she was glad she had her sunglasses on, because she was certain she was staring like an idiot. They parted grips, perhaps a second too late, and he swiveled to Rachette and Wilson.
