Mountain Rampage

by Graham, Scott

  In an instant, everything came flooding back. He snatched his phone from the bedside table. It was after ten o’clock. He had voicemail from Kirina asking where he was, from Professor Sartore demanding that Chuck check in with him yet again, and from Parker, who said he’d thought of something he wanted to tell Chuck.

  “I’ve got to get going,” he told Janelle, swinging his feet to the floor.

  “Breakfast first.”

  “No time.” He waved his phone at her.

  He dressed, splashed water on his face, and ran his fingers through his hair, pressing it into place.

  He opened his laptop on the kitchen table and skimmed the emails piling up from the students’ parents. The field school blog, though filled with excited chatter by the students, contained no new information. The Estes Park Trail-Gazette website offered little solid news in its lead story beyond the murdered cashier’s full name, Nicoleta Barstolik, her age, twenty-two, and her nationality, Bulgarian.

  Janelle looked over Chuck’s shoulder at his computer screen until he closed it. “You really have to go?”

  He rose and turned to her. “You shouldn’t stay here either. I’ll leave the truck for you. In fact, there’s something I’m wondering if you could do for me.”

  He went outside and returned with the baggie of black material he’d collected from the mine shaft. Janelle held it in her hand while he explained, “There’s a research librarian, Elaine, the one I talked to yesterday, who wants this. I’m wondering if you could—”

  She cut him off. “Let me get this straight. We’ve got a murder, Clarence under suspicion as Jack the Ripper, cops all over the place—” she waved the bag in Chuck’s face “—and you want me to deliver a bag of dirt to some librarian for you?” She stopped, her eyes lighting on the baggie in her hand. She turned the bag, studying it. “What is this stuff, anyway?”

  “It’s from the mine. The librarian wants to see it.”

  “Because…?”

  “She thinks she might know what it is.”

  “And this has what to do with the murder, exactly?”

  “I’ve been wondering about the timing of the blood on the ground and finding the hidden shaft in the mine the very next day.”

  Her mouth turned down. “This is just something to keep me and the girls busy, isn’t it?”

  “And away from the cabin,” he agreed, content to follow Janelle’s lead. “You’ve probably seen her down there. She’s the one with the cane.”

  Janelle gave the bag a shake. “This doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? The only thing that matters is getting out of here.”

  “The only thing that matters is making sure Clarence doesn’t get locked away for something he didn’t do—which is exactly what will happen if we leave today.” Chuck took hold of Janelle’s free hand with both of his. “Tomorrow. Twenty-four more hours.”

  She pulled her hand away and tossed the bag on the kitchen table. It landed with a wet plop and slid a few inches, leaving a skid of black on the tabletop. She went to the sink, rinsed her hands, and turned to Chuck as she wiped the outside of the baggie clean with a paper towel. “Okay,” she said, worry in her eyes. “I’ll run your errand. I’ll drop off your bag. Then the girls and I will ‘lay low’ in town. I won’t make any trouble for you.”

  “Jan.”

  “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “Janelle.”

  “But I want one thing in return,” she said. She threw the wadded paper towel at him, her arm a flash of motion. He caught the towel against his chest as tears sprang to her eyes. “I want you to get down there to Raven House and look after my little brother.”

  THURSDAY

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Chuck walked straight to the conference center. He fingered his phone in his pocket. Sartore wanted him to call, but he had nothing new to report. The professor could wait.

  He climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked on Parker’s office door.

  Parker stood at his office window with his back to Chuck, his binoculars to his eyes, the case open on the windowsill beside him. Chuck recognized the binoculars as Brunton Epochs, a technological marvel in the way they amplified available light to provide crisp, clear views, particularly at dawn and dusk.

  Parker lowered the binoculars and turned from the window. “Thought maybe you’d gone into hiding.”

  “I’m tempted,” Chuck said. He looked past Parker at the sunny day outside. “This summer was supposed to be easy. A vacation.”

  “Like you need one with your career—work when you want, as long as you want, on the jobs you want.” Parker set the binoculars on the windowsill and dropped into his seat behind his polished desk.

  Chuck let his gaze roam around the well-appointed office. “You haven’t got a lot to complain about yourself.” He rounded Parker’s desk, picked up the binoculars, and focused through the window on the dormitories. As he watched, a kitchen worker in a white apron emerged from the rear of Falcon House and walked up the sidewalk toward the cafeteria building.

  “You re-opened the dining hall?”

  “People have to eat.”

  Chuck swept the binoculars past the string of commercial buildings lining Elkhorn Avenue and stopped at the Stanley Hotel, its clapboard walls blazing white in the morning sun. The hotel sat at the head of a sloping lawn on the far side of town, nearly two miles away. Tourists, ant-like in the binoculars’ viewfinder, made their way up the broad stone stairway to the famously haunted lodge.

  Chuck returned the binoculars to the sill and took a seat in front of Parker’s desk. “Must be quite the view at night.”

  “A view’s only worth so much.” Parker shifted his weight in his chair. “I’ve been doing this for ten years, and I’m still not sure I’m cut out to be a desk jockey.”

  “How many employees are you in charge of?”

  “More than a hundred, and they’re every single one of them trouble—the ones in Falcon House most of all. The local workers go home at night, but with the dorm, it’s like sitting on a volcano all summer.” He aimed a thumb out the window. “I look over there when I’m working late, and they’re scurrying around like mice, coming and going in their junker cars, lights flicking on and off in each other’s rooms, slipping outside to get stoned.” He whistled through his front teeth. “The things I’ve seen.”

  “Why don’t you do something about it?”

  “What is there to do? They’re good kids for the most part. Adventurous, which is why they signed up to come over here in the first place. And they’re hard workers, I’ll grant them that. It’s when the sun goes down, that’s the problem—” he looked at Chuck over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses “—whether they’re mine or yours.”

  Chuck let Parker’s insinuation pass. “You said you’d thought of something.”

  “Right.” Parker sat forward. “Not sure if it means anything, but…I came back up here the other night, after dinner, to do some work—the story of my summer, every summer. Anyway, I was up here pretty late.” He paused. “It was two nights ago.”

  “The night of the blood.”

  “And the night of your brother-in-law’s knife.”

  Chuck dug his fingernails into the supple leather arms of his chair as Parker continued.

  “The view from up here is pretty…all-encompassing.”

  Chuck pointed at the high-tech Bruntons. “Especially with those.”

  “It’s fun, actually, a lot of the time, looking around with them. People going in and out of the Stanley, cars coming down Trail Ridge Road.”

  “And here in the resort, too.”

  “It’s good to keep an eye on things. And, like I said, the things I’ve seen…but all of it, you know—” he waggled his hand “—consenting.” He looked away.

  “Go on,” Chuck urged.

  The resort manager’s eyes came to rest on the wooden bear sculpture in the corner, the creature’s gouged-out eye sockets staring back at him. “It’s not what I sa
w. The problem is what I didn’t see.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “What didn’t you see, then?” Chuck asked, playing along.

  “I didn’t see Nicoleta’s roommate, Anca.”

  Chuck pressed his hands to his stomach, containing himself. It had been Anca who had come after Clarence in the Falcon House hallway.

  Parker continued, “There’s no smoking in the dorms, as you know. And of course, with the drought, there’s pretty much no smoking allowed anywhere. One spark and—” he puffed his cheek “—poof.”

  “But people still smoke.”

  “We can’t prohibit it. You know the buckets, right?”

  Chuck nodded. Red metal canisters, open at the top and filled with sand, were bolted waist-high to the light poles lining the sidewalk in front of the dormitory buildings. Smokers were to stay within ten feet of the buckets, and to put their butts out in the sand.

  “Every night at ten o’clock,” Parker said, “the TV goes off in the front room of Falcon House and she comes out for a smoke. Every single night.”

  “You do work late, don’t you?”

  “Never past midnight. My wife won’t let me. But we’re talking about Anca, not me.”

  “Nicoleta’s roommate,” Chuck confirmed.

  “Ten p.m., on the dot. Except for two nights ago.”

  “I’m not really sure—”

  “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” Parker said. “But she never showed. I mean, it’s gotten to the point where, when I’ve been working this summer, I’ve started anticipating ten o’clock. I know she’ll come out, have her smoke, go back inside. When she goes through her routine, it’s like everything’s okay in my world. I can keep working, go home, whatever, but the earth’s still turning, I’m going to make it through another summer season, know what I mean?”

  “Except for two nights ago.”

  “It was odd, that’s all. I was sitting right here.” Parker turned ninety degrees to a small computer table with a keyboard tray and oversized monitor, demonstrating how easy it was for him to glance out the window while he worked. “Ten o’clock came and went. Ten-fifteen. Ten-thirty. I finally went home, but it was unsettling.”

  “Somebody doesn’t smoke a cigarette, and you call that ‘unsettling’?”

  “I know. Believe me, I get it. You’re not sure what to make of it, and neither am I. But I can tell you this, Chuck: five hours after Anca’s a no-show, the cops were scooping up a bunch of what apparently is human blood, just back of where she usually has her smoke.”

  “And twenty-four hours later, her roommate is dead, in almost the same place.”

  “Which is why I wanted you to know, seeing’s how it’s your brother-in-law’s knife the cops are parading around.” Parker stopped, but it was clear there was something more on his mind. “He’s got a real obvious body frame, your brother-in-law.”

  Chuck pictured Clarence’s short, stocky build, his pot belly, and his long, dark hair. “One that’s easy to spot in binoculars, I suppose.”

  “Even at night,” Parker said.

  “You saw him the night of the blood?”

  “No.”

  “The night before last?”

  “Not then, either.”

  “Good.”

  “But I saw him other nights. Lots of other nights. Your brother-in-law, from what I’ve seen, has gotten around quite a bit this summer.”

  “Making his way over to Falcon House?”

  Parker nodded. “Several of the girls’ rooms. Lights on, lights off. Curtains open, curtains closed. Doesn’t seem to matter to him.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, he told the police.”

  “As well he should have.”

  “You don’t miss a thing around here, do you?”

  “Oh, I’m sure I miss plenty. But I consider it part of my job to catch as much as I can.”

  Chuck angled back toward the cabin after exiting the conference center. Upon entering the trees, he turned and made his way through the forest to the back of the dormitories, avoiding Parker’s long-lensed gaze. Above the dining hall, the crime-scene tape was gone, the place where Nicoleta’s body had lain impossible to pick out on the slope. The mobile command vehicle and police cars were gone, too, as if the murder never had taken place.

  He entered Raven House through the back door and found the students at work alongside Clarence and Kirina in the common room, with its knotty, aspen-plank walls running all the way to the second-story ceiling. Finds from the mine site, most dug from beneath the collapsed cabin, lined the front room’s wooden tables. Each item was stored in an annotated Ziploc bag. The students talked among themselves while they toted their laptops from find to find, typing up written descriptions of each.

  By the end of the course, the students were to have completed full logbooks of everything recovered from the mine site, including discovery date, grid location, and physical description. Based on the fact that all twelve students were working when Chuck entered the room, it was clear they still had plenty to do.

  Chuck stuck around for the remainder of the morning, growing increasingly antsy as the minutes ticked by. He couldn’t stop thinking of the errand he’d sent Janelle on with the girls. What would Elaine make of the black material? Would she recognize something about it that would shed light on the hidden shaft, the puddle of blood—even the murder?

  THIRTY-SIX

  “I recognized it the instant I saw it,” Elaine said, leaning on her cane as she settled in her chair beside the dumpster. “It was what I suspected.”

  Unable to restrain himself, Chuck had left the students in Raven House at the beginning of lunch hour. He drove the field school van to the library, where Elaine abandoned the research desk and led him to her break site at the side of the building, a brown leather purse over her arm.

  She leaned her cane against the wall, extracted the baggie of black material from her purse, and set it on the ground before lighting a cigarette. Chuck drew up the bent library chair he’d used yesterday afternoon and sat down.

  Elaine exhaled a long stream of smoke, a dreamy look on her face. “Two a day,” she said. “That’s all I allow myself.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “The first drag is always so fucking great.”

  The legs of her maroon pantsuit rode up on her calves, showing thick ankles. She sat up straight, elbow on folded arm, cigarette hovering in front of her face, and eyed Chuck through a tendril of smoke. “Your wife’s a real beauty. Quite the catch.”

  Chuck nodded in agreement.

  Elaine toggled her head, her face alight. “And those two little girls. Darlings.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t take credit for them.”

  “It’s better for girls to take after their mothers. I took after my father, and look what happened to me.”

  Chuck spoke without thinking. “I bet you were quite the looker before…” He faltered.

  “Before this?” She indicated her twisted frame with a wave of her cigarette. “Polio. I was one of the last to ever get it. I was the age of your girls, or thereabout. Go figure.”

  “Something tells me it didn’t keep you out of mischief.”

  “That’s one of the good things I got from my father.”

  “I’ll have to keep my girls away from you, then.”

  “I imagine you’ll help them find plenty of mischief on your own. Especially the younger one; she’s going to be a handful.”

  “She already is.”

  “The minute I saw your wife and girls, I knew you were a lucky man.” Elaine paused. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep it that way?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She pointed at the baggie on the pavement beside her chair. “This stuff has some bad juju to it. I can feel it.”

  Chuck studied her. She didn’t seem the type, not remotely, yet she was talking in riddles just like Sheila—and as if she knew of the skull and skeletal remains at the bottom of the mine.<
br />
  “I’ve been lucky enough so far,” Chuck said. “I’m willing to take my chances.”

  Elaine sighed, smoke escaping her lips. “Of course you are.” She tapped ash from the end of her cigarette and settled back in her seat. “Okay, then,” she said, as much to herself as to Chuck. “Ever heard of Thomas Walsh?”

  “Walsh? Afraid not.”

  “You said you’re from Durango. The Thomas Walsh Public Library is just over the mountains north of you in the little town of Ouray.”

  “Sorry, never heard of him.”

  “But you’ve heard of the Hope Diamond.”

  “Who hasn’t?” He fixed his eyes on the black material in the Ziploc.

  She smiled. “Patience,” she said.

  She took a pull on her cigarette before continuing. “Once upon a time, Thomas Walsh was one of the richest men in America, if not the richest. For many years, Walsh was one of Colorado’s most famous self-made men, but hardly anyone remembers him anymore.”

  “Except you.”

  “I like what he did for the people of Ouray. He was a humanitarian of the highest order. Treated his employees better than any mining boss ever before him, or since.”

  “Finally,” Chuck said with another glance at the plastic bag. “Mining.”

  Elaine blew a stream of smoke straight up into the air. “Not at first. He started out as a hotelier in Denver’s early days. He had his own place, owned it free and clear. All he had to do was run his hotel and have a nice life. But the gold bug bit him instead.”

  “The gold bug?”

  “It got people in different ways. Take Horace Tabor. He ran a mercantile in Leadville during the gold-rush years. He made his fortune grub-staking others, which was a fine way to go. Didn’t even have to get his hands dirty. But that sort of thing wasn’t for Thomas Walsh. He wanted to do it all by himself. And when he got the fever, he got it bad. He was smarter than your average prospector, though. Most of them headed into the hills and started digging and panning wherever they wound up—and just about all of them ended up broke and hungry and empty-handed in a matter of weeks.”