Mountain Rampage

by Graham, Scott

  He led her by the hand into the cabin. Boxes lined the kitchen table. Folded pants and shorts and jackets covered the sofa and chairs. Janelle came out of the back bedroom carrying an armful of the girls’ brightly colored blouses. She aimed an upward breath at a lock of hair that had fallen across one eye. When that proved unsuccessful, she laid the blouses over the back of the couch and pushed the loose length of hair behind her ear.

  She wore knee-length yoga pants and a tight nylon top that accentuated her trim figure. She gave Chuck a weary look.

  He saluted. “Private Bender, reporting for duty.”

  “About time.” She displayed the cabin with a sweep of her hand. “Lots to do.”

  They set to work, the girls pitching in, as the afternoon gave way to evening. They finished packing not long after dinner, boxes and duffle bags stacked in the living room, ready to be loaded in the bed of the truck for the drive home the next day.

  Chuck grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and wandered out to the front porch. He took a long swallow from the bottle, the cold brew tickling his throat.

  Things would happen fast in the morning. He would see the students off first, along with Kirina and, he could only hope, Clarence, who would drive the van to Durango. Next, he would check in with Hemphill, to make sure there was nothing more the officer needed from him before he, too, left for home with Janelle and the girls. He would stop by park headquarters on the way out of town to drop off the skull and sample of calaverite, and fill park staffers in on what he’d learned about the mine and the slaughter of the bighorns on Mount Landen.

  The forest surrounding the cabin was calm and quiet in the interlude between the last of the sun-warmed upslope breezes of daytime and the cool winds that fell from the high peaks and swept through the broad valley at night. A cricket sounded beneath the deck. The last light of dusk gave way to full dark.

  Chuck thought of Nicoleta struggling to breathe before dying in his arms. What if the police never found the young woman’s killer?

  He thought of the bullet hole in the skull he’d found in the mine shaft. The odds of solving that long-ago murder were slim indeed.

  And he thought, again, of Jake and the dead rams—and realized the wrecker owner’s guilt was the one thing he could do something about.

  He set his beer on the deck railing. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he looked up the 24-hour number for Jake’s Wrecker Service online, punched it in, and brought the phone to his ear.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Jake answered on the second ring. Chuck explained that Parker accidentally had directed the wrecker owner to leave Nicoleta’s car in the wrong spot in the maintenance yard.

  “It’s in the way of a piece of heavy equipment he needs to get to first thing tomorrow,” Chuck said. “He wants you to come back out and move it tonight.”

  “I don’t think I left it in the way of anything,” Jake said.

  “I haven’t been there, so I wouldn’t know. But he said to tell you he’d pay you double, since it’s after hours and all.”

  “Double? I like that. But why’s he got you calling me?”

  “He’s busy with the murder investigation. Something’s up. I’m not sure what.”

  A note of excitement entered Jake’s voice. “Are the police out there again?”

  “I’m guessing they’re on their way. You might get to see them make their big bust if you get here quick enough.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes,” Jake said. “I’ll meet you at the yard.”

  Chuck stuck his head inside the cabin, muttered Parker’s name, and, sounding disgruntled, explained to Janelle that he had to leave for a few minutes.

  The girls lay on their backs on the couch, their heads hanging off the cushions, watching television upside-down, their bare feet pointed at the ceiling. Rosie looked at Chuck and rubbed her stomach in an exaggerated circle. “I’m hungry.”

  “We just ate an hour ago,” Chuck said.

  Janelle spoke over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen. “Get back as quick as you can.”

  Chuck grabbed a mini-Maglite from the truck toolbox and hurried through the forest, aiming the small flashlight at the needle-covered ground ahead of him. Shadows flitted away from the light into the thick grove of trees standing between the cabin and maintenance yard.

  Two hundred yards south of the lodge and conference center, the yard sat in an opening carved from the forest. A wide, dirt drive extended through the trees to a paved rectangle lit by overhead lights and surrounded on three sides by open-faced sheds lined with vehicles and maintenance gear. Chuck stood on the pavement beneath the lights and squinted into the shadowy sheds, spotting two well-used pickup trucks painted Y of the Rockies blue, a pair of Bobcat front-end loaders, a mini-excavator, a scissor-style platform riser, roll after roll of chain-link fencing, and piles of weathered lumber. Nicoleta’s sedan sat where Jake had left it, at the far end of one of the sheds, well away from any stored equipment.

  The rev of the wrecker’s engine sounded from the foot of the driveway. The wrecker negotiated a ninety-degree turn in the trees behind the conference center, then straightened and accelerated, its headlights illuminating the gravel drive leading from the turn to the yard. Chuck faced the glare of the oncoming lights and used his flashlight to wave Jake onto the rectangle of pavement.

  The wrecker rolled to a stop. Its air brakes belched and its engine died. Jake climbed to the ground, leaving the driver’s door open and the key hanging on a ring in the ignition. He doffed his cap and scratched his head as he approached, his eyes on Nicoleta’s sedan. “Just what I figured. I left it out of the way of everything.”

  “Yep,” Chuck said. “I called and checked with Parker when I saw where it was parked. He said to tell you he was sorry, that he must have remembered wrong. Since you were already on your way, though, he asked if you could help get one of the Bobcats trailered for tomorrow.”

  Jake’s mouth lifted in a flinty smile. “He knew I’d charge him for the call no matter what. Trying to get his money’s worth out of me.”

  Chuck pointed past the end of the far shed row. “He said the trailer’s around back.”

  Jake grunted. “Guess we’d best have a look.”

  He climbed up to the open driver’s door of the wrecker, leaned inside to grab a metal flashlight from the passenger seat, and hopped back down to the pavement.

  Chuck followed Jake a few steps toward the end of the shed before stopping. “You go ahead,” he told him. “I’ll make sure Parker’s right about the key being in the ignition of the Bobcat. I don’t trust him at this point, and we’re wasting our time if he’s wrong.”

  “Suit yourself,” Jake said before disappearing behind the shed.

  Chuck ran in silence, balanced on the balls of his feet, back across the pavement to the wrecker. Shoving his flashlight in the rear pocket of his jeans, he hoisted himself up the two ladder-like steps to the driver’s side of the cab and plucked the ring of keys from the ignition.

  He leapt to the ground and stepped to the front of the long, black toolbox bolted just back of the driver’s door. The hole for the key in the toolbox handle was far smaller than a standard ignition keyhole. He fanned the ring’s dozen-plus keys on his palm. Half of those on the ring were long ignition keys. The others were shorter.

  He flipped through to the first of the shorter keys and tried it in the toolbox-handle keyhole. The key’s thick tongue didn’t even begin to slide into the slot.

  “Ain’t seein’ no trailer at all,” Jake hollered from the far side of the shed row.

  Chuck hustled around the front of the truck so his voice would carry to the wrecker owner. “What’s back there?”

  “Nothin’ but a bunch of weeds. They’re waist high.”

  “Maybe he meant on around to the very back,” Chuck called.

  “Don’t look like a vehicle’s ever even been driven back here. Good God almighty.” When Chuck didn’t respond, Jake grumbled, “Okay, then.
I’ll go on and make the full loop.”

  Chuck ducked back around the truck and worked his way to the next small-sized key. This one sank to its shoulder in the keyhole but did not budge when he tried to turn it in the lock.

  He flipped to a third small key. This one, too, slipped in to its shoulder. This time, when he twisted, the key turned. He pulled the handle and the toolbox lid rose.

  The interior of the box, shielded from the overhead lights by the truck’s flatbed, was black with shadow. Chuck aimed his flashlight inside it.

  Atop a plastic rifle case resting at the bottom of the toolbox, wedged against one another in a neat row, were eight Rocky Mountain sheep horns, six full curl, two three-quarters.

  Packed around the horns to hold them firmly in place were beige nylon stuff sacks, each about a gallon in size, secured at their necks by cinch cords. The outsides of the sacks, designed for use by campers to hold stuffed sleeping bags, were smeared with black.

  Gripping his Maglite in his teeth to light the interior of the toolbox, Chuck loosened one of the bags and reached inside. His fingers dug into material that was moist and had the consistency of coffee grounds. He drew a handful of the material from the bag into the beam of his light.

  He gasped, the flashlight falling from his mouth into the box. There was no doubt—it was calaverite.

  He did some quick mental math. The nylon bags, lined against the horns, took up the full length of both sides of the five-foot-long toolbox, perhaps twenty bags in all. If each bag contained roughly a gallon of calaverite, and if Elaine’s ten-percent estimate was correct, then the bags held some two hundred ounces of gold—more than a quarter of a million dollars’ worth.

  Chuck shoved the handful of gold-infused ore back into the bag, cinched it shut, and retrieved his flashlight.

  Before he could close the toolbox lid, he was blinded by a flashlight beam aimed at his face.

  “What the hell you think you’re doing?” Jake growled.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Chuck dropped the metal lid with a clang. The ring of keys rattled against the side of the box.

  “I was looking for tools,” he said. “No keys in the Bobcat. Figured maybe we could hotwire it.”

  “Bullshit,” Jake said. He flipped his long flashlight and gripped it by its head, the flashlight’s beam turning his curled fingers blood red. Somewhere along the way, he’d paused to light a cigarette, now clamped in the corner of his mouth.

  “I been wondering about you,” Jake said, the cigarette bouncing up and down as he spoke. “All your questions.” He jerked his head in the direction of the sheds. “And no trailers back there neither. Parker don’t know nothin’ about this, does he?”

  Jake patted his empty palm with the heavy flashlight and took a threatening step forward.

  Chuck backed away from the toolbox. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sure if we call Park—”

  “Shut your trap,” Jake snarled. He took another step forward, drawing even with the box. Keeping his eyes fixed on Chuck, he fumbled with his free hand until he found the ring of keys. He spun the key in the toolbox handle to the locked position and dropped the key ring in his coveralls pocket.

  Chuck’s heart was in his throat, his mind racing. He’d hoped—even expected—to find the evidence of Jake’s poaching. But the calaverite?

  Chuck took another step away from the toolbox, recalling the gouges he’d spotted halfway down the vertical shaft, where the black striations began. He’d assumed the cavities were the result of the calaverite having fallen away from the walls of the shaft. Now he knew otherwise. The black material, dug from the shaft walls, had wound up in Jake’s toolbox.

  Somehow, Jake had learned about the gold, and had discovered the hidden vertical shaft at the back of the mine. Entering the tunnel at night over the last few weeks would not have been a problem for Jake; the mine door had been unlocked all summer. Hiding what he was up to would have been easy, too; he had only to loosen one of the floorboards at the end of the tunnel and slip down the ladder into the shaft, then re-secure the plank when he finished before dawn.

  Assuming Jake knew the immense value of the gold he’d taken from the mine—and how could he not?—Chuck’s situation was precarious indeed.

  Chuck slipped his right hand, black from handling the calaverite, behind his back. He jutted his chin at Jake. “You’re the scumbag who’s been slaughtering the park’s sheep,” he said, focusing on what Jake was sure to see as the lesser of his transgressions, “for your daughters’ tuition money.”

  Jake’s eyes flicked to the toolbox. “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ to you.” He tapped the metal lid with the butt end of his flashlight. “You didn’t see a goddamn thing in this here box, you got it? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut. You got no proof. You got nothin’.”

  “You really think you can get away with it?”

  “There’s plenty enough sheep to go around. A little culling’s exactly what them animals up there need. Hell, the park people been talking about thinning them out for years.”

  “Justifying your own greed. No surprise there.”

  Jake’s eyes flashed beneath the brim of his cap. He lifted his flashlight, ready to strike, but came up short when Chuck asked, “What’s in the bags, Jake?”

  The wrecker owner eyed Chuck. “Sand,” he answered after a beat. “To anchor guns for sightin’ in at the range. I’m vice president of the gun club.”

  Chuck said, disgusted, “The vice president of the Estes Park Gun Club is a lazy, good-for-nothing poacher.”

  “I’m telling you for the last time,” Jake said, flat-lipped. “Keep your nose where it belongs.” He took the cigarette from his mouth and aimed it down the gravel road toward the lodge and conference center. “Get on out of here. Now.”

  Chuck cocked his head in defiance. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Suit yourself.” Jake shoved his cigarette back between his lips and turned away. He tossed his flashlight into the cab of the truck, climbed behind the steering wheel, and slammed the door.

  Chuck returned to the toolbox and pulled hard on the handle, but the lid was securely fastened.

  The tow truck’s engine roared to life. As the truck lurched forward, Chuck jumped onto the lowest of the steps leading to the driver’s door, clinging to the metal handles on either side. He climbed the second step to the door as Jake swung the wrecker in a tight circle in the paved center of the maintenance yard. Chuck let go of one of the handles long enough to try the door, but it was locked.

  Jake ignored Chuck’s face in the truck’s side window. He lined up the wrecker with the road and floored the engine, his left hand fixed on the steering wheel, his right hand working the truck through its gears, gaining speed.

  The truck bounced from the raised pavement to the dirt drive, the stiff recoil nearly causing Chuck to lose his grip on the side handles. Jake bent forward, hunched over the steering wheel, as the truck flew down the drive, trees flashing by on both sides.

  Chuck ducked to avoid being swept from his perch by an outstretched branch, then swung his body forward and threw his torso across the windshield. He stared through the curved window and gave the glass a solid thwack with his palm.

  Jake jerked backward and lost his grip on the steering wheel. The wheel spun a quick half turn before he caught it. The truck yawed left, skidding on the gravel, as Jake fought for control. Chuck twisted atop the hood as the truck skidded into the ninety-degree turn in the road behind the conference center.

  The wrecker spun around. Its front passenger wheel plunged into the bar ditch lining the side of the road. The truck pivoted over the buried wheel and lifted into the air with a tremendous wrenching of metal.

  Chuck flew off the hood to the ground, his fall cushioned by a thick stand of brush growing at the edge of the road. He tucked and rolled, his head striking the trunk of a small ponderosa as he tumbled past it. He came to a stop in a patch of scrub oak
at the edge of the forest. Behind him, the truck groaned and settled on its passenger side, half on the road, half off.

  Chuck tentatively moved his arms and legs. No broken bones. He put a hand to the side of his head to find blood oozing from a cut where the tree trunk had gouged his scalp.

  The driver’s door of the wrecker, facing the night sky, opened. The truck’s headlights produced enough ambient light for Chuck to watch as Jake clambered out of the cab and slid down the windshield to the ground, his cigarette still clamped in the corner of his mouth. Chuck crouched in the brush as Jake peered past him into the dark forest. The truck engine, no longer running, ticked as it cooled. The smell of spilled gasoline filled the night air.

  Behind the waist-high screen of scrub oak, Chuck pulled his phone from his pocket, holding it low to the ground.

  Jake took a drag on his cigarette, released the smoke. “I know you’re in there,” he said.

  Chuck pressed buttons on his phone, shoved it back in his pocket, and rose, showing himself. “You deserve what happened just now. You killed those sheep.”

  “Damn right I did. God didn’t put them there just to prance around and look pretty. He put them there to make use of.”

  “But you left their carcasses to rot in the forest. You didn’t even use the meat.”

  For the first time, a note of uncertainty entered Jake’s voice. “I’m done with all that now. I won’t be doing it no more.”

  Chuck made a show of extracting his phone from his pocket. “Too late. I’m calling the police.”

  “Be my guest. Won’t nothin’ come of it.” Jake took his cigarette from his mouth and pointed it at the toolbox bolted behind the cab of the truck. “You can’t do nothin’ without no evidence.” He faced the wrecker, his cigarette raised.

  “No,” Chuck yelled. “Don’t.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Jake flicked his cigarette at the spot where the crumpled hood of the upended wrecker met the ground. “Glad my insurance is all paid up,” he said.

  A tongue of orange flame raced beneath the truck, followed by an oxygen-sucking whoomp from the engine compartment. Flames climbed around the sides of the wrecker and leapt, crackling, into the night air.