Yosemite Fall (National Park Mystery Series)

by Scott Graham

  “Yes. It was Alden’s idea. Climbing comps are doing it more and more—placing different routes for male and female competitors. Everyone knows men and women climb differently. Men are stronger. That’s just a basic fact of human physiology. Women have plenty of strength, of course, but they tend to have way more finesse than men, too. That’s what makes them so much fun to watch when they climb—the way they move, so balanced and graceful, like they’re doing ballet up there on the wall.”

  “Especially, I take it, on routes that play to their abilities.”

  “You got it. We’ll start the competition with a route set specifically for Tara and your little girl here; that is, with the holds placed to reward finesse as well as strength—what’s known as a combo route-set.” Jimmy pivoted on his crutches to face Carmelita. “Tara already knows the two of you are going first. You deserve to know, too, so you’ll be ready right at the start.” He rocked forward on his crutches. “I can’t wait to see you in action tonight.”

  Mark’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and studied its face. “Owen wants to meet me back at the campground in thirty minutes,” he reported to the others. He typed on his phone with his thumbs and returned it to his pocket. “I’d better get going.”

  “I’ll be next,” Caleb said. “I’ll go with you.”

  Jimmy turned to Bernard. “You’re scheduled after them. Are you ready to head back?”

  Bernard nodded hard several times, the staccato jerks of his head timed with hand taps to his thighs.

  Jimmy turned to Chuck. “What about you?”

  “He’s got me set for two o’clock.”

  “Sounds like he’s saving you for last. I wonder why?”

  “So do I.”

  27

  Chuck watched Jimmy and the others cross the front lobby and leave the building. He turned to Clarence, Janelle, and the girls.

  Clarence tilted his head at the stairwell. A length of his long, black hair escaped from behind his ear to dangle beside his face. “That way?”

  “Yep.”

  Clarence tucked the hair back behind his ear. “It’s a Sunday morning, you know.”

  “The archives are overseen by the Yosemite Historical Society. Volunteers keep them open seven days a week from Memorial Day through Labor Day.”

  “I’ll take the girls,” Janelle offered to Chuck, “provided you make it quick.”

  “It shouldn’t take long,” he told her.

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “I promise.”

  “I’ve heard that before, too.”

  “At least you’ll know where to find us this time.”

  She exhaled through her nose. “True.” She turned to Rosie. “¿Helado?”

  “¡Buenisimo!” Rosie cheered.

  Janelle led the girls out of the museum. Chuck descended the stone steps with Clarence to the museum’s lower level. At the foot of the stairs, an elderly woman sat reading a book at a desk in a small foyer. Behind her, a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, broken by a metal door, separated the foyer from a narrow room lit by fluorescent lights and lined with head-high metal shelves. Aged, leather-bound books and cardboard document boxes of various sizes filled the shelves.

  The woman closed her book and placed it face down on the desk. Her gray hair was combed close on the sides of her head. A tag on her breast identified her as Irene.

  She clasped her sun-spotted hands on top of her book and asked, “May I be of service to you?”

  Chuck looked past her through the windowed wall. “Are those the Yosemite Museum archives?”

  “Indeed, they are.” The historical society volunteer smiled, causing wrinkles to gather like waves at the sides of her mouth. “Most people come down here by mistake, looking for more museum displays.”

  “The archives don’t attract a lot of visitors?”

  “More than a few, I’d say, but not many,” the volunteer, Irene, said. “We’ve digitized and placed so much of the collection online over the years that it’s almost put me out of a job—not that the pay is very good.”

  Introducing himself and Clarence, Chuck explained their purpose in the valley on behalf of the Indigenous Tribespeople Foundation. “I’ve spent a lot of time accessing the archives online the last few months myself,” he concluded.

  “The ITF is a great organization,” Irene said. Her manner of speech was crisp and precise. “They do fine work correcting the historical record.”

  “Attempting to correct it, at any rate.”

  “I and others have spent a good deal of time with their researchers on the phone over the last couple of years. So far, I’m happy to say, we’ve been able to provide them everything they’ve asked for in digitized fashion.”

  “I found pretty much everything I needed through your website, too,” Chuck said.

  “Pretty much everything?”

  “I need to gather one last detail for the foundation. They’re meticulous in their research, as you already know. They even go so far as to track, as best they can, who else is looking into the same stories they’re studying.”

  A twinkle appeared in Irene’s eyes. “They do have their enemies, don’t they?”

  Chuck lifted his eyebrows.

  “No need to look surprised,” she said. “I may be down here in a museum basement on a Sunday morning reading a romance novel, but I know how the world works. Someone at the foundation understands that while it’s good to know who your friends are, it’s far better to know who might be working against you.” She looked up at Chuck and Clarence from her seat. “We don’t track visitors to our website. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

  Her eyes fell to a registration book resting on the front corner of the desk. A place-holding ribbon extended from the middle of the closed book’s pages. She spun the book to her and opened it to the pages marked by the ribbon. The two pages were lined with neat columns of signatures and dates left by those who had signed in to study the physical archives in the glass-enclosed room behind the desk.

  “Here we are,” she said. Turning the registration book, she flopped it open in front of Chuck and Clarence. “Help yourselves.”

  Chuck scanned the columns. The two pages accounted for visitors to the archives dating back nearly a year, their names and the dates of their visits handprinted alongside their accompanying signatures.

  He checked the most recent visitor. His intuition had been right. Owen Hutchins, Jr., had signed in thirty minutes ago, along with Dale. The two had signed out ten minutes later.

  Chuck worked his way backward by date, scanning the list of visitors. Two weeks ago, Owen also had signed in as a visitor to the archives. Chuck continued to study the list. The ranger’s name and signature appeared another time a week earlier, and yet again two weeks prior to that.

  Based on his cursory glance at the two pages, Chuck counted five times Owen had visited the archives in the previous few months. He flipped the page, moving farther backward in time. On the preceding two pages, he spotted three additional visits by Owen to the archives in the past year.

  Returning to the most recent two pages of listed visitors, Chuck double-checked the dates of Owen’s visits. One had been the day after the public announcement by the Indigenous Tribespeople Foundation that Bender Archaeological, Inc., had been awarded the survey contract aimed at assessing the veracity of Stephen Grover’s account of the killings of the two prospectors in the valley.

  Chuck cut a sidelong look at Clarence.

  Irene chuckled. “Methinks you found what you were looking for,” she said.

  Chuck and Clarence caught up with Janelle and the girls. From the ice cream parlor, they visited the village’s gift shops and the Ansel Adams Gallery, dedicated to preserving the legacy of Adams’ stunning black and white photographs, captured over the course of decades, of the valley in winter, spring, summer, and fall.

  They grabbed sandwiches from Degnan’s Deli at the edge of the village and jumped a shuttle to Majestic Yosemit
e Hotel, the park’s premiere example of the architectural style known as National Park Service rustic—lodges constructed in national parks throughout the twentieth century of natural stone and massive beams to complement the parks’ natural landscapes.

  They wandered through the hotel’s cavernous lobby, the room’s high ceiling hand-painted with tribal and Hispanic motifs harkening to California’s early years. From the back patio, they looked nearly straight up at Glacier Point, half a vertical mile above. Chuck craned his head, staring at the distant granite prow. Two days ago, Thorpe had leapt from the point only to die in Sentinel Gap.

  Guests chatted over cocktails and iced tea on the hotel veranda around Chuck. But Thorpe was dead. Ponch, too. Jimmy was lucky to be alive, as were Chuck and his family after the close call with the tumbling boulder.

  He gathered Carmelita and Rosie to him and shivered despite the midday heat. Janelle was right. The sooner they left Yosemite, the better.

  Chuck arrived for his interview with Owen just after two o’clock, entering the small A-frame office at the entrance to Camp 4. Owen looked up from forms stacked on the desk in front of him with hooded eyes, his face drawn. He was aging before Chuck’s eyes, turning into a sallow-cheeked, baggy-eyed version of his father over the course of a single weekend.

  He waved Chuck to the wooden bench against the front wall, leaned back in his office chair, and put his hands to his face, covering his eyes.

  Chuck lowered himself cautiously to the bench. “You seem tired,” he ventured.

  The ranger lowered his hands. “I could say the same about you.”

  Chuck ran the back of his wrist across his mouth. No doubt Owen was right.

  The ranger sat forward. When he spoke, weariness deadened his voice. “All of you guys are so screwed up.”

  Chuck frowned. “I’m not sure I—”

  Owen continued, cutting Chuck off. “I’ve never understood you climbers. You’re all so competitive, so fixated on cheating death and pretending you’re so brave.”

  “The other rangers get along with the climbers in the valley these days,” Chuck said. “They even climb together now and then.”

  Owen eyed the scarred desktop. “I know.”

  “You don’t understand the other rangers either, is that it?”

  Owen raised his head. “Before my dad died, he told me I had to keep up the ‘good work.’ That’s what he called it. Can you imagine?”

  “From what I’ve seen since I’ve been here, everyone seems to be on the same side now. You can be, too. I can’t imagine it would be that hard. In fact, you’re already trying, aren’t you? I heard you spent a good chunk of time with Dale this morning.”

  Owen straightened in his seat. “I questioned him, like everyone else, that’s all.”

  “You left the office with him. Mark saw you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Because?”

  “He was my first interview. I needed some answers.”

  “Where’d you go to get your answers?”

  “Am I conducting this interview or are you?”

  “I’m just wondering if you’re going to want me to go somewhere with you, too.”

  Owen settled back, his hands on the arms of his chair. “We drove to the head of the valley for a closer look at Half Dome. He told me about the charcoal volcanos, your group’s little stunt. He pointed out to me where everything was set up, how it all happened. He said he’d planned to pick up the cans, and that the next rainstorm would wash away the ashes.”

  “You drove back to the campground with him after that?”

  “I saw what I needed to see. We came back here and finished up.”

  “Without going anywhere else?”

  Owen hesitated. “Right.”

  Chuck kept his eyes on the ranger. “You forgot to mention that you signed in and visited the archives with him, in the basement of the museum.”

  Owen’s fingers tightened around the arms of his chair. “Again, who’s conducting this interview?”

  “I’m just wondering why you didn’t see that as worth mentioning.”

  Owen shrugged. “Okay. Fine.” He released his grip on the chair. “Yes, Dale and I visited the archives. I admit to being an archive groupie. There are amazing things down there—maps, old photos, journals, diaries. I like going through them in my spare time.”

  “You didn’t take Dale there in your spare time.”

  “There’s a photo I wanted him to see before we drove up the valley. It wasn’t absolutely necessary. It’s an Ansel Adams print of Half Dome in winter. The lower half of the lens was fogged when Adams took the picture, so the bottom is fuzzy. That’s why it’s never been used in any of his books or posters. But the top half of the photo, of the dome itself, is crystal clear, extremely detailed. I wanted to see if your friend could pick out the depression he told me about, the one you guys used for your fires.”

  Chuck studied the ranger. “You and Dale argued,” he said, “in the parking lot behind the post office.”

  Owen didn’t blink. “No, we didn’t.”

  “You assaulted him. I saw you.”

  The ranger didn’t move. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Chuck sat up straight on the hard bench. Owen was lying. That much was obvious. But when had the ranger’s lies begun?

  Owen’s office chair squeaked as he shifted in his seat. “We’ve spent enough time on your questions. It’s my turn now.”

  Chuck hesitated. There was no reason to keep pressing the ranger. No amount of additional interrogation would elicit any more information. “What more can I tell you that the others haven’t?”

  “The SAIT—the Serious Accident Investigation Team—is already being formed for Thorpe’s accident. Sounds like they’ll investigate what happened last night on Half Dome, too. In that regard, there’s one primary question they want me to ask of everyone while you’re all still here in the park, to help determine the nature of their investigation. You probably know what it is. I’ve been asking it of everybody.”

  “I haven’t talked with anyone else.”

  Owen folded his hands over the papers in front of him. “Do you believe Henry Stilwell’s death this morning was an accident?”

  “You mean Ponch?” Chuck leaned back against the A-frame’s plywood wall. “What kind of a question is that?”

  Owen didn’t move, his fingers locked, his eyes on Chuck. “My assignment here today is to perform a preliminary examination of what we in the park service refer to as a bad outcome. Most bad outcomes in Yosemite are the result of accidents. But not all of them.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. Every time I conduct an accident investigation, preliminary or otherwise, I do so with the aim of uncovering any wrongdoing that may have led to each bad outcome, and to learn whether any discovered wrongdoing was incidental—or purposeful.”

  Chuck held Owen’s gaze.

  The ranger continued. “I initiate each of my examinations as if I’m looking into something more than a simple, straightforward accident. I’ve found it’s easier to start that way.”

  “You’re saying you begin with a presumption of guilt.”

  Owen rolled back from the desk and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. “You have to understand, we’re looking out for the interests of someone who, generally, is either dead or badly injured—the victim of a fall from a cliff, a car wreck, a drowning. Because they’re unable to speak for themselves, it’s our responsibility to ask questions for them.”

  “You require people you interview to prove their innocence, the exact opposite of how the legal system is supposed to work.”

  “I never make any assumptions at the outset.”

  “You just did with the question you asked me. You made a full-on assumption about what happened to Ponch—which, I can only assume, is something you learned from your dad.”

  Owen sat up, his back stiff. “He only ever did
what he thought was right.”

  Chuck straightened, too. “Doing what’s right means giving people the benefit of the doubt, not treating them as suspects.”

  Even as Chuck said the words, his own suspicions remained, vibrating inside him like a tuning fork. Owen’s explanation of his numerous visits to the Yosemite Museum archives had the feel of the truth about it, as did his explanation for his visit to the archives this morning: to view the Ansel Adams photo along with Dale, his first interview subject. But if the ranger had told the truth about all that, why had he not admitted to his altercation with Dale?

  What was Owen hiding?

  28

  Chuck held his position until Owen slumped in his seat.

  “Just answer my question,” he said. “Please.”

  Chuck sat still. There was nothing to be gained by sharing his suspicions regarding Ponch’s fatal plunge with Owen, not after the ranger’s own lack of truthfulness. “Do I think Ponch’s death was more than just an accident? No, I don’t.”

  “You believe the explosions startled him and caused him to fall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Owen rolled in his chair back to the desk and made a notation on the form in front of him. “That will be all.”

  “That’s it?”

  “If you have nothing more to add.” The ranger picked up the handwritten sheet on the top of the stack, looked at it, set it back down. “Since you got here, you’ve been on hand everywhere there’s been trouble. That’s why I wanted to interview you last today.” He paused. When Chuck said nothing, he continued. “At this point, I have several descriptions of what happened last night on Half Dome from everyone else. If, as you say, you’re convinced it was an accident . . .” He let the end of the sentence dangle.

  Chuck licked his lips. Clearly, Owen didn’t trust him and therefore saw value in questioning him further. Or was this some sort of trap? “It was dark. We were all crowded on top. The second can exploded, and Ponch fell.”

  “Nothing else?” the ranger asked.

  “Nothing else.”