Why the Rock Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  Lacey settled back against her chair. “There’s no sign they’ll break up even if she doesn’t get pregnant. But you know it’s still possible Bart beat me up over that external drive. That’s not exactly a five-star recommendation.”

  “You don’t really suspect him, do you?” A beam from the setting sun invaded the living room. Jan put up a hand to shield her tired eyes. “Someone up there must have attacked you, but I thought you said everyone who could have rigged the Rover that Monday was accounted for last night.”

  “Almost everyone,” Lacey corrected. “Bart isn’t cleared for last night yet, even though Andy and Ben are. It’s like one of those logic puzzles: Andy and Bart are X’d off for the Monday — Wayne found a neighbour who saw them on their deck until about ten o’clock, too late to be on a ranch camera at eleven. Well, unless they used Orrin’s helicopter, and there’s no sign it left the ranch that night. Besides, Andy could be giving Bart a fake alibi for last night. I won’t know that until I see if his legs are bruised from the fight. Ben is cleared for last night, but he has no alibi for the Monday. Plus he knew which cameras were misaligned, and he was the one who rigged the workout room’s outside door. Equally, he and Bart could have hatched a plan to get rid of Orrin before he could change his will to cut Ben out. Being identical twins, it might have been Ben with Andy on her deck while Bart snuck out to the ranch on the Monday.”

  “My head is starting to hurt,” Jan complained. “But it really does look like a woman in the garage video. Could either of the twins shrink those muscular upper bodies to look like a woman’s on camera?”

  “Silhouettes can mislead,” said Lacey. “As for women, there’s still Sloane and Cheryl, who were both at the ranch on the Monday and last night. They could easily know Earl’s daughters messed with the cameras. Cheryl at least has been in the workout room regularly and could have discovered that damaged door any time. The only thing I can’t figure out is how they’d have left the house without being caught by any of the cameras around there.”

  “And why,” said Jan thoughtfully, “they wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to keep Tyrone out of his father’s Rover until the sabotage had done its job.”

  “That, too. I wondered if Sloane hadn’t tampered with the vehicle originally and then, after Tyrone went missing with Orrin, she confessed to Cheryl, who came after the external drive last night to keep her from being identified.”

  Jan shook her head against the pillow. “I’m sure Sloane wouldn’t risk her son.” What hell she must have lived all week as things stood. It would be exponentially worse if she’d accidentally let her son vanish with her husband in the vehicle she’d sabotaged. “So, tomorrow, when you go to the hospital to see how Tyrone’s doing, ask both women to show you their legs. Then you’ll know.”

  “And how will I convince them to show me their bare legs?”

  “Easy. It’s either show you or show the RCMP after you report being assaulted on their property.”

  Lacey pressed the bottle against her bruised cheek. “Then they, and everyone else on the ranch, will know I’ve been investigating the Rover.”

  “Well, you have to come out with that soon, anyway. Isn’t Wayne going to the RCMP with the garage footage?”

  “That’s what he said. I honestly can’t see those two women risking Tyrone for an instant. But of course when they left that day, he was safely occupied with Michael. Orrin was off with Mylo. Nobody could have predicted how fast the situation would change. Then there’s Earl. According to Wayne, he was at a Ranchman’s Club dinner that Monday evening, in full sight of forty industry leaders. And he has no obvious accomplice. His wife and kids went back to Denver the day before.”

  “Earl and Cheryl?” Jan suggested.

  “Unlikely. Cheryl outright told me Sloane believed someone sabotaged the Rover, and her pick is Earl. If Cheryl was in it with him, she’d hardly have suggested the vehicle was sabotaged or pointed a finger at him for it.”

  “Like rocks rolling uphill.” Jan rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Sorry I’m being no help. My brain’s garbage tonight.”

  “You’ve already helped by reminding me I can simply ask anyone I think is innocent to show me their legs. No bruises, no conspiracy.”

  “So you’ll go to the hospital in the morning and let me know how Tyrone is doing, too?”

  Lacey nodded. “Last I heard from Andy — she and Bart headed in right away — he still can’t talk due to throat damage, so can’t tell anyone where he and his father got separated. But he knew his mother and Cheryl right away.”

  “Wonderful. Take a picture of him and send it to me for Michael.” Jan shifted on her pillows. “Chad’s coming down tomorrow. I’ll have to tell him that Michael isn’t his son, either, and he has to stop this nonsense. I could have happily run him over this afternoon. What an ass.”

  “You’re just saying that because he cost you a lot of energy you need for other things.”

  “Yeah, so?” Jan yawned again. “I’m going to fade out on you any second now. Tell me quick, what are your plans for tomorrow?”

  “Hospital, early, then I’ll corral Bart, Ben, and Earl with a map and make them show me everywhere Orrin ever took them in the Rover, whether he dropped them off or not. They’ve done a bit of that already, but as an outsider I can keep them on task, instead of them ripping each other’s throats out after five minutes.”

  “No brotherly love there, huh?”

  Lacey unfolded from the carpet. “Let’s put it this way: I’m surprised they all reached adulthood alive.”

  A good romp with the dogs and a night’s sleep in her own bed restored Lacey considerably. When she woke up Thursday morning, she felt ready to face the day’s challenges, the chief one being to figure out who among the Caine clan were allies and which were enemies. After breakfast and packing up the clothes she’d washed overnight, she climbed back into Wayne’s truck and headed for Calgary. Half an hour later, she saw the colourful Children’s Hospital, stacked up on its hill like a building made of toy blocks. She followed the signs uphill to visitor parking, got directions from the information desk, and got stopped by a nurse outside the ICU, who asked for her visitor code.

  “I don’t have one,” said Lacey. “Can you ask if Sloane Caine or Cheryl Marr can come out here for a minute?”

  The woman smiled. “Young Tyrone. One tough kid. He’s just been moved to a private room.”

  Lacey followed her directions to Unit One and wove past a breakfast cart to peer into the room. Ty was propped up slightly in bed, asleep. The rash around his mouth had faded to dull blotches, and the green stains were gone. His skin was its normal healthy tan again on both face and hands. A small, hard knot in her chest released. He truly would recover.

  Sloane slouched in a chair by the bed, her long legs folded under her. The hem of her wrinkled shorts was high enough up her thighs for Lacey to be sure there was no bruising or scraping where a chair-back or boot would have connected. Count out another suspect in the security office attack. She squinted at Lacey, then uncurled from the chair and beckoned her out to the hallway.

  “Hi,” she said. “Is something else wrong?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Lacey said. “I wanted to see for myself how your son is doing.”

  Sloane rubbed the heel of one hand into each of her eyes, careless of the mascara already smudged around them. “Pretty well, all things considered. They think he ate something he’s allergic to. They had to put a tube down his throat so he could breathe. But they took it out last night when the swelling went down.”

  “I’m so happy to hear that. When I first saw him in that field, I was very worried.”

  Sloane tightened her lopsided ponytail. She looked emptied out from within, as if all the tears she’d shed had drained her. Hard to believe this was the same woman who had flirted with Mylo Matheson barely a week ago.

  “He hasn’t said anything about where he left his father?”

  “He hasn’t been able
to talk yet. He scribbled hut on a piece of paper an hour ago but otherwise he hasn’t been awake long enough to answer questions.”

  “Hut, hmm?” A solid lead at last. Someone among the searchers, the family, or the neighbours would know where there was a hut. Whether they’d reach it to find Orrin alive or dead — or there at all, if it was only the place he’d dropped off Tyrone before heading back — was far from certain. “I’ll stop by the airstrip to ask the searchers if they know of any. Is Cheryl at the ranch?”

  Sloane shook her head. “She went home to grab some sleep and a change of clothes. I expect her back soon.”

  “I hope you’ll get some rest, too. You’ve had a really hard week.”

  “‘Hard’ doesn’t begin to describe how exhausted I am.” Sloane yawned as she said it. “But I’ll wake up in a hell of a hurry if Earl shows his face here. He’s not getting inside that door.”

  So she still thought Earl was behind the vehicle sabotage? Choosing her words carefully, Lacey asked, “Why in particular do you not want him here?”

  “He hates my son.” Sloane’s tired face tightened. “He always has. When Ty wasn’t even in preschool yet, Earl dropped a rock on him from the climbing wall and broke his arm. He mocked Ty for having allergies and went out of his way to make him seem weak in front of their father. He laughed when Ty tripped on the bluff stairs and fell down a whole flight and almost broke his neck. I wouldn’t put anything past Earl. I’m sure he’s furious Ty’s been found.”

  That was a nasty catalogue of bad behaviour from an adult to a child, but not surprising in Orrin’s oldest son, who had been raised in the same brutal manner by their father. But it didn’t rise to the same level as deliberate sabotage of a vehicle.

  “You’re okay with the rest of the family visiting?”

  “Oh, yes. Andy and Bart were in last night.” Sloane closed her eyes as fresh tears seeped under her lashes. Her palms smeared the mascara further. “They brought my boy’s favourite things from his room so he’ll have them when he wakes up. Everybody loves Ty. Except Earl and his damned mother. I could kill that woman.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Spent the whole of Ty’s birthday weekend reminding Orrin that her son at that age had survived a night alone in the bush and found his own way home. She was needling us, saying Ty hasn’t proved himself yet, that he isn’t as tough as Orrin wants to believe. I’m sure that’s why he took Ty out with him as soon as my back was turned. I’ll never forgive her for that.”

  Who knew better than an ex-wife how to get under a man’s skin? “The twins’ mother was at the birthday, too, wasn’t she? Did she join in the needling?” Not that Lacey thought Cassandra Landry, who had protected her own sons from Orrin, would encourage him to abuse the youngest one. But there wasn’t confirmation from Wayne yet whether that Mrs. Caine had flown away before the sabotage occurred.

  “Oh, yeah, she was there.” Sloane groped in a pocket for a rumpled tissue and blew her nose. “You’d have to know Cass. She’s too mellow to snipe at anybody. I think she’s stoned half the time. She always reeks of pot. I kind of envied her, being able to detach. If she’d stayed another day, I’d have been down at the cabin smoking with her.”

  Lacey had a brief struggle with her habit of keeping secrets from civilians and lost. “If it makes you feel any better, Earl didn’t find his own way home that time he was lost overnight. He’d been going the wrong way entirely. Old Susan Norris found him. She let him off outside the gate and never took the credit because he was afraid Orrin would beat him for needing help.”

  Sloane’s raccoon-ringed eyes focused on hers. “Are you serious? Earl’s great adventure was bullshit all along? I bet Giselle knew it, too. She set my son up to fail a test that her son cheated at. Fucking witch.”

  Cheryl stepped into the hallway from the elevator lobby. Her short linen skirt showed bare, unmarred legs. Another suspect cleared. That left only Bart and Earl. Lacey made a silent wish that it would be Earl she’d have the pleasure of taking down. Then she remembered she was a civilian and could only report him to the RCMP … assuming she found evidence to back up an accusation of assault, much less attempted murder. If she found the hut, she’d probably find the Rover, too, but that wouldn’t help convict Earl, since he hadn’t been the saboteur. That co-conspirator’s fingerprints wouldn’t be there if Jan was right about them wearing gloves, but maybe a stray hair? How could she convince a crime scene team to go over every inch of the motor with a microscope?

  She dragged her head from her inner calculations and greeted Cheryl with a smile that still felt lopsided from the bruising. Cheryl hugged Sloane, peeked into the room to check on Ty, and stared at Lacey’s face.

  “Did you run into a door or something?”

  “Occupational hazard of working around ladders,” Lacey lied. “Straightening all those deranged cameras. I’ve been meaning to ask if you knew the workout room’s exterior door wouldn’t lock.” She was safe asking that now that Cheryl wasn’t implicated in beating her down for the archive drive.

  “Another legacy of Earl’s daughters.” Cheryl grinned. “Can’t blame them for treating Orrin’s property like crap. They all know he has no use for girls, especially girls who won’t marry for his business advantage like their parents did.”

  “That’s utterly feudal,” said Lacey. “Good on them for standing up to him. Anyway, I fixed the door yesterday, so you’ll need your fob to use it. Is there anything else you can think of around the place — security related — that I should get out of the way today?”

  Cheryl gave Sloane a sideways glance. “If you could accidentally disconnect all the cameras pointing at Sloane’s suite, we’d both appreciate that. But I suppose you’d better wait until Orrin comes home. Or doesn’t.” Sloane returned the look but didn’t bother pretending she cared whether Orrin returned. Honestly, if these two women weren’t both cleared of the attack in the security office, they’d be prime suspects in engineering Orrin’s “accident.”

  Despite their lack of interest, Lacey volunteered to let them know if there was news at the SAR base and took herself out into the sunshine. Clouds were piling up over the mountain peaks, reminding her of Ike’s weather prediction. Rainstorms would make the searchers’ task infinitely more challenging.

  Even by the shortest route — north to Highway 1A and straight out past Cochrane — Lacey’s drive still took more than an hour. As the grasslands gave way to rolling hills and then to the evergreen forest, she contemplated her mental logic puzzle, adding and subtracting suspects, making and breaking accomplice combinations. The natural pairings were strong: Bart/Ben, Bart/Andy, Andy/Ben, Cheryl/Sloane. In each pair, one partner was already eliminated from either the Rover sabotage or the security room attack. Earl was everybody’s favourite suspect, but was that for real, or because he was an asshole and a bully? Was he hers just because he evoked Dan so strongly that she could hardly bear to look at him and yet would never willingly turn her back on him? Reflexively she pulled her cell and checked the Danlocator. Still where he should be, near the West Coast.

  Regardless, Bart’s and Earl’s legs must be seen to be eliminated. Bart’s would likely be on camera in workout shorts somewhere today, but Earl’s every appearance beyond his bedroom door had been in long pants and polo shirt. It wasn’t likely he’d change his habits now and hand her any evidence against him. Maybe she could spill hot coffee on his pant-leg to force him to strip down fast.

  As she passed the meadow where the helicopter had picked up Tyrone yesterday, she slowed. No sign today of searchers beyond the mess of tire tracks that had crushed the dry grasses. Sending out a grateful thought to the universe for Orrin’s helicopter and the SAR medics being so close at hand when needed, she cruised up to the airstrip and parked. When she stepped out onto the road, a cool breeze twined around her ankles. A cloud momentarily blocked the sun. The most distant peaks were shrouded in mist. The searchers would be lucky if they found that hut, and hopefully Or
rin alive inside it, before the clouds tumbled off those hidden peaks and smothered the Ghost Wilderness in much-needed rain.

  Markov was with the search coordinator when she reached the map tent. She reported the word hut from Tyrone and left them poring over each team’s notes for any mention of one.

  Finding Terry on a bench outside the Red Cross tent, eyeing the western sky with a frown on his grimy face, she sat down. “Hey, dude. How come you’re not out searching?”

  He lifted his left leg. Right up the inside of his calf was a long, oozing scrape embedded with bits of bark.

  “What’d you do?”

  “Fell off a log,” he grumbled. “Search fatigue. We all got a boost from Tyrone’s rescue, but there was nothing to show where he’d come from, and the odds are decreasing again that we’ll find his back trail. They’ll be even worse if it rains. Volunteers from the Stoney Nakoda Nation are combing the forest on their land. If he was ever that far east, they’ll find his tracks.”

  “They have land up here too? I thought theirs ended below the Ghost River.”

  “It used to all be theirs,” Terry said, waving his arm. “There’s still a large block east of Susan Norris’s. The hunters know how every plant and rock should look at this time of year. If one’s been recently turned over, they’ll spot it.” He stretched his neck to one side, then the other. “Man, sleeping on a cot after a hard day’s hiking gets old fast. I don’t know how that old Susan does it. She’s putting us to shame, spending her days in the saddle and sleeping on the cold ground night after night. She only went home today to check on a mare in foal. I left her a radio so she can call in if she goes out again.”

  “She’s one tough bird,” Lacey agreed. “Say, when you went out yesterday, did you see any huts or hunting shacks over east of her place, where Tyrone was wandering? That’s the only word he’s let out so far, and I hope that’s where he parted from Orrin.”

  “I didn’t see one. I’ll double-check with the others on my team. Jan said to tell you she’ll get on those videos by tonight. She was pretty crashed this morning still.”