David Wolf series Box Set

by Jeff Carson

  Wolf shook his hand and gave a nod, and then walked away toward his SUV.

  “Hey, I came to talk to you,” Ash said.

  Wolf turned around. “Oh? What about?”

  “Well, about Kevin.”

  “What about Kevin?”

  Ash frowned like Wolf’s question was ridiculous. “What did you think? When’s he starting?”

  Wolf looked into the trees for a moment, picked the right words, and then looked back at Ash. “I didn’t hire Kevin.”

  Ash’s face went blank. He shrugged, straightened his suit jacket, and passed one hand over his pink tie to smooth wrinkles that weren’t there. After a few more seconds of contemplative thought while grooming himself, he said, “That’s disappointing.”

  “The interview was disappointing, yes,” Wolf said. “I’m sorry. I’ve found a better candidate, and I hired her.”

  Ash tilted his head back and scoffed. “So you hired Margaret’s niece?”

  Wolf took a deep breath and walked away. “I hired the best candidate for the job, Chairman. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get going.”

  Ash stepped up and pulled on Wolf’s shoulder.

  Wolf stopped dead and looked down at Ash’s hand.

  The chairman removed his hand like he’d rested it on a hot stove burner, and then took up position in front of Wolf.

  “You know it’s just a matter of time before Sluice County changes, right? Pretty soon we’re all going to have to join the twenty-first century and county officials are going to be voted into office. The state’s fed up with our antiquated appointment system. That’s why we had to jump through hoops and this hire happened in the first place so we could get our money. The next step is a complete overhaul of our county government structure, and you know that means law enforcement, too. They’re even talking about merging us with Summit or Park Counties.”

  “I’ve heard the rumors.”

  Ash scoffed. “Rumors? These are plans being considered, not rumors. You have any friends in Park or Summit? I mean, besides those lowlifes you know from your high-school football days, digging ditches by day and swigging beer by night.”

  Wolf said nothing.

  “I do.” Ash stretched his mouth in a self-satisfied grin. “I know quite a few people in Park and Summit. People in high places.”

  “What are you saying, Chairman? That I should compromise my integrity to ensure I’m keeping you happy, so I can keep my job in the future? You trying to corrupt me?”

  Ash stared with ripening cheeks, and then pleaded to the sky. “I’m just saying, you’re going to need friends to keep your career on track when that day comes. And it’s coming.” He lifted his glasses to his forehead and continued, “You shouldn’t forget that.”

  Wolf turned and walked away. “Goodbye, Chairman.” Ash’s car door slammed and his tires sawed into the gravel on the way out.

  Chapter 4

  Jack looked up and stopped in his tracks as he and Wolf heard the loud thump. Wolf stepped around him to see what the commotion was.

  “Whoa, oh my God,” Jack snickered quietly, just like any twelve-year-old boy would do when a man face-plants somewhere nearby.

  Wolf could hardly blame his son for laughing, the unexpectedness of the whole scene was startling. It was the first sign of seeing another human being since they’d began their hike at the high-alpine parking lot an hour ago. Walking through the trees, up the remote mountain valley, a few elk and soaring hawks overhead had been their only companions. Now, out in the clearing along a trail cutting through the expanse of knee-high grass and high alpine flowers, a man struggled on the ground under an upside-down backpack. He was shoulders-down, the top of his head on the ground and the rest of his body twisted like a pretzel, trying to right himself without any luck.

  “Is he okay?” Jack asked.

  Good question, Wolf thought. He stepped forward, his concern growing for the man by the second. “Hey, you all right?”

  “Ah! Fuck! Goddammit!”

  Wolf’s blood pressure jumped as the man’s outburst echoed down the valley behind them.

  “Stay behind me,” he said to Jack.

  The man couldn’t get up, as if an industrial-strength magnet in the top of his pack had latched onto a car buried underneath the trail. He squirmed for a few seconds, and then finally rolled out of the straps and got up, swiping the dust from his green shell jacket and camouflage canvas pants. He took off his baseball cap and slapped the backpack, and then rose up with a start at the sight of Wolf and Jack.

  The man’s eyes sprung open and he set his feet wide, as if he’d just woken up on a set of railroad tracks, staring at a diesel engine speeding right at him.

  Then the guy relaxed and jerked his head around to look behind him. He stood still like that for a moment, and then turned to Wolf and Jack, and bent down and pushed his backpack over.

  In the still mountain air, Jack and Wolf heard the contents of the bag scrape and clunk, and listened to the man grunt like he was wrestling with a backpack full of bricks.

  The man’s camo pants and lace-up boots looked military to Wolf, standard army combat uniform, ACU, but the green parka was a light ski jacket, a combination of civilian and military attire.

  “He ate it hard,” Jack whispered behind Wolf.

  Wolf held up a hand for Jack to be quiet.

  The man squatted and hung the pack on his shoulders, then teetered to a standing position, his teeth baring as he did so. He pulled his baseball cap low, and wobbled fast toward them. His breathing was hard and loud, like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. In the first twenty yards, he looked over his shoulder three times, which sent his body into a slight twist that threatened to topple him again.

  The more Wolf watched, his unease grew. Not only were the guy’s actions puzzling, so was his presence at all. For one, it was a Tuesday afternoon, in such a remote area of National Forest that even mid-summer weekends rarely saw hikers. Second, when they had started their hike at the trailhead parking lot, Wolf hadn’t seen any other vehicles. Third, that parking lot sat atop an unforgiving road. Wolf and Jack had spent over an hour bouncing and scraping their way up Grimm Lake Road at a snail’s pace. The skid-plate underneath Wolf’s old Toyota pickup had slammed, scraped, and pinged against rocks as they inched their way over huge washout gullies dug into the steep incline. Most people turned back after the first two switchbacks.

  So where did this guy come from? Was he on a long trek from the other side of the mountains? If so, why such a large pack, with so much weight?

  Wolf’s pulse accelerated as he watched the guy scramble toward them with out-of-control speed. When he saw what was dangling on the guy’s backpack strap—a wood-handled .357 revolver in a leather holster—his body tensed for action.

  Wolf had a gun, too, as was his habit after spending so much time rubbing elbows with the seedier population of the world. Only, while backpacking he always carried his paddle holster in the side pocket of his pack rather than on his hip.

  Wolf turned and glared at Jack. “Stay behind me.”

  Jack nodded, now with wide eyes.

  “Hey, you all right?” Wolf called out as he unbuckled his hip belt. He put both his thumbs underneath his pack straps and slid them an inch outward, envisioning exactly how he’d remove his pistol in the fastest move possible.

  The guy ignored Wolf and kept walking toward them. His head was down, face obscured by his Boston Red Sox cap, and he was digging in the collar of his jacket for something. After a few steps, he fingered out a dark-blue handkerchief with a pattern of white logos on it, and then pulled it up over his face.

  An instant later, he tripped again on a jagged rock in the trail, and went down hard. This time he twisted before being tackled by the crushing weight on his back. The man landed on his side and the backpack clanked like a huge sack of ingots.

  Wolf shook his head and stepped forward. “Hey, whoa! What’s—”

  “Fuck!” The man’s s
cream shook the air.

  Wolf flipped his pack straps off his shoulders, turned around, and unzipped the side pocket of his pack the instant it hit the ground. With a quick move he pulled his personal pistol, a Glock 17 identical to his department-issue piece, and turned around, stopping short of pointing it at the guy. Wolf put his finger on the trigger and held it at his side. “Hey.”

  The man grunted and struggled to his knees, then planted one foot.

  “Hey!” Wolf said. “What the hell is going on? Are you running from something? You’d better start talking.”

  The guy got to his feet and started walking again.

  Now, from only ten yards away, Wolf could see a streak of blood oozing from underneath the man’s cap. It was dried where it ran underneath the neckline of his jacket, like it was a wound from hours ago.

  “Are you hurt?” Wolf asked.

  The man kept coming, like Wolf and Jack were ghosts.

  Wolf racked the slide of his gun, stepped in front of the man, and raised it for effect, keeping his aim to the woods in the distance. “Start talking. Now!”

  The man stopped at the unmistakable sound of the gun and lifted his head, revealing wide brown eyes, dilated from excitement. He wore a medium-length brown beard, which was thinner on one side. Wolf realized one side of the man’s face had been burned. One of his ears was smaller than the other, wilted into scar tissue, like Wolf had seen on severely burned veterans in the past.

  The man raised his hands. “Whoa! What the hell?”

  Wolf stared. “Good question. What the hell is going on? Are you hurt? Are you running from something? Start talking, now.”

  The man opened his mouth, and then his eyes narrowed to slits and he made a face like he’d just smelled the worst thing in the world. “Whoa, man, I’ve got rights. You can’t just pull a gun on someone in this country. I’ve got rights.” He pecked himself in the chest, then pointed at Wolf, and then at Jack. “You’ve got rights, little man—”

  “Don’t talk to my son,” Wolf said. “Fuck your rights. What’s going on?”

  The guy stared at Wolf and swallowed.

  The man was crazy. And probably a little drunk, maybe a lot drunk, though Wolf couldn’t smell anything. Or maybe he’d been eating magic mushrooms.

  Wolf shook his head and lowered his gun. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know why you’re running. Are you running from something? Because it looks like you are. Do my son and I need to be worried?”

  The man swung slowly under the huge weight, and looked back up the trail.

  Wolf tightened his grip on his pistol and kept his eyes on the man’s hands.

  After a beat, the man turned back with a strained smile. It could have been the man’s facial injuries that gave the illusion of strain, but Wolf didn’t think so. The man was scared.

  “No man, I’m not runnin’. Just enjoying the day, like you two.”

  “I didn’t see your vehicle down at the Grimm Lake trailhead lot. Where’re you coming from?” Wolf asked.

  “What, you a game warden or something? I’m not hunting.”

  “No, but I’m the sheriff of Sluice County,” Wolf said. “Where are you coming from?”

  “Just up there, camping. I parked at the other lot.” He pointed past them, down the trail and to the west. “I came from Aspen, past Ruedi Reservoir, then on up a hairy road. The trailhead is a couple of hours down. You have to know where to look for the cut-off.”

  They stared at each other for a few seconds. Wolf didn’t know about the other trail, and he had been coming here for years.

  The man stood still and shrugged, a gesture that failed to move his heavy pack a millimeter. “Well, have a good day.”

  Wolf nodded and gave him a sour smile. “Yeah. Have a good day.” What could Wolf do? He couldn’t exactly arrest the man for lack of social skills.

  The guy nodded to both of them and walked away at his same frenetic pace.

  As he left, Wolf caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the side of his neck—a bomb pointing straight down with crossed lightning bolts through it. Underneath the bolts were curled-up branches, resembling the shape of a handlebar mustache from a distance. Wolf had seen it many times before and recognized it as the Army Explosives Ordnance Disposal badge.

  Now Wolf’s pulse jumped again at the thought of the metallic clank from the man’s backpack as he’d slammed against the ground. Was this guy trudging through the high alpine Rockies with a backpack full of heavy bomb parts? Freaked out because they were about to blow up on his back?

  Wolf didn’t dare blink as he watched the man waddle down the path, welcoming the distance opening up between them.

  Jack kept quiet, shooting glances up at Wolf. When the guy finally bobbed out of sight for good, Jack looked up at Wolf. “What the heck?”

  Wolf looked down at him and forced a smile. “Who knows? What a weirdo.”

  Jack’s worried look melted away. “Seriously. Oh my God, did you see that first fall? He face-planted so hard.”

  Wolf shook his head and smiled. “Yeah, I did. Okay, enough standing around. We’re losing time. Let’s get going.” Wolf nudged Jack and let him go first. His nerves were zapping from the encounter and he didn’t want Jack out of his sights for a second. Wolf tucked his paddle holster on the hip strap of his pack and followed close.

  Chapter 5

  “What position did you play?”

  “Center field. Hey, one more time,” Wolf said.

  Jack stopped and turned around.

  Wolf did too, scanning the trail behind them. They now stood almost at the top of a steep south-facing mountain slope. The path they’d climbed switched back and forth down an open scree field, and then flattened on a long valley that stretched out south for miles ahead before turning to the east and out of sight. He looked up past Jack. Ahead a short distance, the trail wound up and out of sight, and onto the cirque valley where their destination waited—Grimm Lake.

  Wolf slowed his breath and listened. The tips of the pine trees swayed and howled in the breeze below, and a marmot barked in the rocks somewhere nearby. The sky was clear, except for some saucer-shaped clouds created by the winds flowing over the snow-covered peaks. Two crows cawed as they circled above the valley in front of them. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Wolf raised a hand to block the late-afternoon sun and a freshening wind cooled the sweat on his neck and armpit. He squinted and methodically followed the trail with his eyes until it turned out of sight. There was no movement or glints of metal in the sun.

  “Is it much further?” Jack asked.

  Wolf looked up. “One, two … looks like four more switchbacks, then we’re there.”

  Jack smiled. “Cool. It’s just over the ridge, then?”

  “Yep. Let’s go.”

  Ten minutes later they crested the mountain slope.

  Grimm Lake was a frigid pool of melt-water three quarters of the way up a peak that was a thirteener, as Coloradans would call it—not quite a fourteen-thousand-foot peak, but formidable nonetheless. Steep mountain walls surrounded the water on three sides, which were strewn with slushy veins of snow, reflecting the orange light of the fading day.

  Wolf loved this spot. The place was always deserted—the burly condition of the road at the trailhead made sure of that. He could count on one hand the times he’d seen another human being in this part of the mountains, despite its relatively close proximity to the large populations of Vail to the north, and Glenwood Springs and Aspen to the west.

  The camping was exceptional. Since the lake sat below timberline, it was lined on the west side by pines that twisted and leaned toward the mouth of the valley, bent by the relentless wind over time. They were thick in a few places, creating a few nooks to camp in.

  Then there was the water. The shallow edge of Grimm Lake was almost as clear as the mountain air, allowing one to see the rocks, logs, and swimming fish, and the deeper interior of the lake glowed an emerald green.

&nbs
p; But Wolf’s biggest reason for loving the area was the memories of him and his father camping here every year for as long as Wolf could remember. Even the year his father had died, they’d come here earlier that summer and fished for two days. It had always been just the two of them; not even his little brother had come along. It had been their private spot, and now Wolf was continuing the legacy.

  “Wow!” Jack’s smile glowed in the orange light. “This is wet.” He bounced his way down the trail toward the water.

  Wolf looked at the lake and heard the trickle of the groundwater sliding from the slopes into the lake. “Yeah, I guess it is. Lots of melting this time of year,” he said with a shrug.

  Jack stopped and turned around. “No. Like, you know, dude, that’s wet.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, like, it’s awesome up here.” Jack rolled his eyes and kept walking.

  Wolf sighed and followed. Good God.

  Jack ran all the way to the edge of the lake, looked down the shoreline, and darted to a place with a ring of rocks blackened by fire.

  “We should camp here!” Jack yelled.

  Wolf’s smile widened. “Yeah, sounds good to me.” It was the same spot Wolf had camped at every time he’d come here with his father. Probably every single person that had come here had camped there. It was naturally inviting, with a clump of pines surrounding a fire pit, blocking the winds that frequented these altitudes of the Rocky Mountains.

  “All right, let’s set up our tents,” Wolf said as they reached the spot. “Make it quick. Then we’ll get some grub cooked up.”

  Wolf and Jack set down their bags and got started unpacking the tents.

  A few seconds later, Wolf froze as the boom of a rifle rolled up the valley, and twisted into the distance.

  “What?” Jack said, seeing Wolf’s alarm.

  Wolf held out a hand and looked to the blue layers of mountains out the mouth of the cirque valley.

  Another shot rang out, this time a little louder, perhaps riding a different pocket of wind. It was definitely a rifle and not a pistol or a shotgun.