Sacrifice

by Michael Arches

  Sacrifice

  Book Three of the Hank Morgan Aspen Mystery-Thrillers

  By Michael Arches

  Copyright by Pyrenees Publishing 2019

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  91024

  Chapter 1

  Some women in Aspen think I’m their personal cop, particularly the ladies in the sisterhood. So, I wasn’t surprised when bright and early one Monday in early December, Patsy Peters called me instead of 911.

  “Hank, girl, you’ve got to come right away! There’s a bony hand trying to pull itself out of the river!”

  I’d only had one cup of coffee before leaving the house, and it wasn’t enough. “Whoa. How about you start at the beginning. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Sorry. I was out on my morning run with Trixie. We usually jog through town to the campground. You follow?”

  “Yep.” Trixie was her constant companion, a little Manchester Terrier. They usually ran east of Aspen on a path next to Highway 82. The path ended at the access road for Difficult Campground, which was situated along the Roaring Fork River.

  “We usually turn around at the water’s edge. This morning, I saw something weird sticking out of the ice in an eddy. Trixie went nuts. Pulling on her leash trying to get at it. When I inched closer, I spotted five bony fingers sticking out of the ice, like a skeleton was trying to drag itself onto the riverbank.”

  I fought a laugh. That was definitely not something I heard every day. Patsy was usually a down-to-earth gal, too. She ran a local Western art gallery. A clear-headed businesswoman who happened to enjoy the outdoors.

  “Sounds like a toy fell into the river upstream and got trapped in the ice,” I said.

  “I thought that at first, but nope. Got closer. Hand is real. Nasty. Some of the skin’s still there. Totally yuck. You gotta come.”

  I wouldn’t miss it for the world. “Already on my way. Someone is obviously in real trouble. Maybe dead.”

  “How soon can you get here?”

  “Just passing through Old Snowmass. It’s not quite seven, so shouldn’t be much traffic. I can get there in fifteen minutes. Where are you?”

  “Back at the highway. Couldn’t get a signal by the river.”

  “Fine. How about you stay there? We don’t want to compromise any evidence that hasn’t already been disturbed.”

  “I’m not getting close to that thing without you. Hurry.”

  I hung up. What a creepy way to start the week. Ski season was always weird—everyone scrambling to make enough money in a few months to carry them through the rest of the year. But this was different. Someone might’ve lost their life.

  Willow Higgins, my girlfriend, had flown out yesterday for Tokyo, so I’d left for the office early. She had some International Monetary Fund emergency meeting.

  I called the county coroner’s department and left a message explaining what little I knew. The coroner himself, Doctor Dan Longfellow, called me back and promised to send someone to collect the human remains.

  -o-o-o-

  By the time my bloodhound Boomer and I arrived at the campground’s access road, Dr. Dan was waiting with Patsy at the closed gate. The bright, cloudless morning gave no hint of trouble. Both of my friends were in their sixties and slender. Patsy was short, and Dan tall. They had deeply tanned faces, but hers was pale.

  The temperature was about fifteen degrees. I got out of my departmental SUV and put on a long, black parka with a hood.

  “You get the weirdest cases,” Dan said. “I’ve got to see this icy hand for myself.”

  “All will be revealed soon, I’m sure,” I said, glancing at Patsy.

  She nodded.

  While we walked down the long access road, we caught up with each other’s news. I hadn’t talked to them in a month, not since the victory party for my election as county sheriff. They’d been two of my earliest and most vocal fans.

  Our first confirmation of Patsy’s story came when Boomer froze and stuck his nose in the air. He smelled something, and his tail wagged furiously. There were few things he liked better than the delicate aroma of decaying flesh.

  Trixie began barking. Patsy held her back with a taut leash. With her shivering free hand, she pointed at a small eddy filled with floating debris and edged with ice. “Right there. Just like I said.”

  “Keep the dogs back,” the doctor said. “Since you got your crazy mutt, Hank, I’ll take the pictures.”

  He grabbed a camera out of his backpack and took several shots of the area. I approached close enough to see the hand’s bony fingers sticking up out of a thin shelf of ice about six inches wide. That and the floating debris in the eddy made it impossible to tell how much of the arm was attached, but the eddy was shallow. No chance that an entire body lurked below the water’s surface.

  The hand definitely wasn’t a toy. Boomer tugged like a maniac to get at it, but I’d expected that. I planted my good foot forward to take most of the strain, and my new fake foot remained solid. Willow had dropped an obscene amount of money and bought me the best prosthetic she could find.

  My stomach turned queasy as Dr. Dan cleared away the debris around the hand. Nobody in town had been whining about losing one of their extremities lately. That meant the rest of the victim’s body was probably nearby, just as dead. We didn’t get many body dumps, not this far from any big city.

  Every so often, he took more pictures. Finally, he said, “I can see the entire thing. The hand and forearm were cut off below the elbow. Clean cut. I’m going to break up the ice to remove the body part.”

  First, he took more photos.

  I appreciated that. We never seemed to have enough. “Need any help? I could tie Boomer to one of the trees.”

  “No need,” he said, “got it.”

  He lifted the hand and forearm and slipped it into a large zippered plastic bag. Once it was closed, he brought it to me. Patsy turned away.

  The arm was white, pink, and puffy, at least where it hadn’t been chewed away. Disgusting, but unfortunately, I’d seen worse. The lower arm’s two bones had been cut through cleanly. “Looks like somebody used a meat saw, at least that’s what my parents called ours.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Surgeons use something fancier for amputations, but it’s basically the same.”

  Patsy gagged behind us. I realized this wasn’t the kind of conversation she wanted to be part of. “Hang on, doc.”

  I walked over to the white-faced woman. “Thanks so much for your help. We can take it from here. Is there anything else you can think of that might help us find the attacker or the victim?”

  Her lips quivered as she shook her head.

  “Let me drive you back to your condo,” I said. “You’re in no shape to be walking that far.”

  “It’s okay. Millie’s on the way. May even be at the campground gate. I called her after I spoke to you.”

  Boomer and I walked with Patsy and Trixie t
o the road, just to make sure. Her wife was waiting there. I thanked our witness again for all her help.

  Once they left, I called for backup, specifically asking for Jason Riddle. He was our most experienced deputy when it came to working around water.

  I had my own theory of what was going on, but I wanted to get Dr. Dan’s. When Boomer and I returned to the river, I asked, “What do you make of this?”

  “I’m not the detective, just the doctor for the dead. I can tell you this wasn’t a surgical procedure gone wrong. In any amputation, the skin on the forearm would’ve been saved. And we have very specific protocols for disposing of severed limbs.”

  I nodded. “Looks to me like someone cut up a body to make it easier to get rid of. The ground is frozen, so no digging without heavy duty equipment. Maybe somebody thought they’d slice and dice then toss parts in the river.”

  He shrugged. “Seems lazy. I’d drive to Glenwood and dump the remains into the Colorado. That’s a much bigger river.”

  “Good point. My only other idea for easily getting rid of a body this time of year would be to find a steep cliff and toss it over the edge.”

  I thought for a moment where I could find a steep cliff nearby. The answer was nowhere. All of the roads into the high country were snowbound.

  That raised another question. “How long do you think this hand’s been decomposing? Maybe it was dumped before the snow began falling.”

  He scrunched up his face in thought. “Really hard to say. Don’t have enough experience to make an educated guess. Definitely weeks, but when it’s this cold, the remains don’t decompose much. I can’t say any more specifically than that. I’ll research it back at the office. If I come across anything helpful, I’ll let you know.”

  That was the best I could hope for. “I’ve got reinforcements coming. We’ll check the area for more body parts. Also, we’ll look upriver in places where there’s access. Not that many spots where someone can reach the river, even in summer.”

  “You’d know better than me. I’ll take our new puzzle piece back to the morgue. Call if you find the rest of him or her. A fairly small hand, so probably female, or God forbid, a child.”

  The doctor took off. Boomer and I searched along both sides of the river near the campground. Unfortunately, a lot of the area was thick with trees and bushes. Although my mutt wasn’t trained for cadaver work, he loved the smell. I figured that if the rest of the corpse was nearby, he’d find it.

  But no luck.

  -o-o-o-

  Boomer, Jason, and I searched the accessible stretches of the river down to the town limits. We didn’t find any other human remains. Highway 82 was closed east for the winter, but I wondered whether the pieces might’ve been dumped over the summer or earlier in the fall. That brought to mind one stretch of Highway 82 where the road climbed a mountainside almost directly over the Roaring Fork. The road even had a large turnout at the turn I was thinking of. It was a popular spot for tourists to stop and take pictures. And at night, it would be easy for someone to park and toss body parts over the cliff. Some might land in the river.

  Jason and Linda Kingsley were our only trained climbers. I asked him about my hunch. He agreed it was worth a look at the turnout.

  We headed back to the office to get snowmobiles, climbing gear, and Linda.

  -o-o-o-

  Ninety minutes later, we stood on the snowy turnout just west of the trailhead for Weller Lake. The Roaring Fork rushed through a series of icy rapids a hundred feet below us. A stiff, cold breeze from the east chilled my cheeks and nose. I was wearing plenty of warm clothes, but my face froze each time I stood facing the wind. Couldn’t be helped.

  I tossed a rock my boot had kicked up from under the snow. The rock landed in the trees on the far side of the river.

  Taking a different approach, I let a second rock roll down the slope. It was so steep that the rock bounced only a few times before splashing into the churning white foam below.

  With a pair of binoculars, I scanned as much of the cliff face as I could. It mostly faced south and very little snow stuck to the rocky face. No body parts were visible.

  I said, “I’m guessing this is where the killer dumped the pieces of the corpse.”

  “We’ll be sure to let you know,” Linda said.

  “Don’t take any chances,” I added. “If either of you gets hurt, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Jason laughed. “Yeah, Hank, that keeps me up at night. It’d be a damned shame if I broke my neck then people yelled at you for sending me to my death.”

  When he put it that way, I felt ridiculous. Not that I’d admit it. “Just be careful, smartass.”

  In a few places, a few trees and shrubs had managed to grow on the almost-vertical slope. “And look closely around the vegetation. Those are good places for something to get stuck.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Linda said with a snicker. “We actually are trained investigators, you know?”

  That was true, but since the election, I’d felt a lot more responsibility for everyone in the office. I tended to annoy them by telling folks how to do their damned jobs, but I had a hard time stopping myself.

  Boomer was eager to go over the side with them, but I kept him behind the guard rail. It was even colder up here as compared to town, so I’d put on his new, official K9 winter vest and snow booties. The vest included both a bulletproof layer and thermal insulation.

  After the election, Randy had agreed to “hire” the mutt as a staff member but no salary. He did get dog treats and a limited amount of new gear. And if he ever got injured in the line of duty, he’d be patched up at the county’s expense.

  While I held the dog back with one hand, with the other, I showed my two intrepid rock climbers where I thought someone might’ve tossed human remains. They hooked their ropes to the guard rail in front of those spots and walked backwards over the side.

  I cringed as they slowly lowered themselves. I wanted them to be careful, but I couldn’t wait to find out whether my hunch had paid off.

  As each passed the sparse clumps of vegetation, they carefully searched that area.

  I couldn’t do much but peer over the edge, and that wasn’t smart. Waiting was worse than going down there myself. I didn’t have the training, but I would’ve felt better about risking my own life than asking them to do the same.

  I was still ruminating about the joys of command when Jason’s voice came over my portable radio. “If stink means anything, I’ve got something. It’s jammed hard against the uphill base of a small lodgepole pine.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from saying, Be careful, again.

  “Ewww!” he said. “A chunk of thigh. The birds have been pecking at it pretty good. I’m bagging it.”

  “Might be more parts near there,” I said. “Take your time.”

  Linda didn’t find anything on her way down, but now I knew we were searching at the right spot. Or, a right spot. The remains could’ve been scattered far and wide across the forests.

  Linda reached the river. “The water is crashing up against the base of the cliff here,” she said. “I’m moving sideways a dozen feet to where there’s a strip of dry ground. Think I see a puzzle part.”

  A clump of vegetation on the hillside blocked my view of her. Anxiety made my skin crawl as she remained silent. Finally, I said into my radio, “Linda, you okay?”

  “Yeah, just having a ball down here. Found a couple of chunks. One’s a foot and ankle with six inches of leg. The other part must be a part of someone’s ribcage. I can see several exposed ribs where an animal has eaten away the skin and muscle.”

  I kept my advice to myself and let them do their work.

  Jason piped up, “You definitely picked the right spot, boss lady. I see more smelly bits. You’re going to have to lower the basket. Too much to carry up by hand.”

  Our three snowmobiles had towed sleds filled with equipment, including a portable winch att
ached to a large, tough, plastic basket. The thing was big enough for two people to sit inside if necessary.

  I secured the winch to the guard rail and lowered the basket. Boomer wanted to get in, but no chance. The hound had no common sense.

  Chapter 2

  I used a portable radio to report to our dispatcher. He patched me through to the acting sheriff, Randy Duncan. I’d beaten him in the election but wouldn’t take office until mid-January. Going forward, I’d asked him to stay on as chief deputy. He was terrific at handling all the bureaucratic bullshit so I wouldn’t have to.

  Our former sheriff, John Jenkins, had been so disgusted by my victory that he quit days after the election. Left for Arizona. Good riddance.

  Because Randy had been the next person in the chain of command, he automatically became the acting sheriff. It was a weird turn of events, but Randy and I’d always worked well together.

  I updated him on our investigation. He promised to ask someone from the coroner’s office to proceed to the closed gate on Highway 82. One of us would drive the body parts down on a snow machine so they could be taken to the morgue.

  Before I signed off, I asked Randy to order a few pizzas to be delivered to the gate. We hadn’t eaten any lunch, and we weren’t likely to finish our work anytime soon.

  -o-o-o-

  As with most weird crime scenes, this one attracted attention from other law enforcement agencies. Aspen PD’s chief, Tim Sakamoto, called me and asked if I minded him joining us. I was happy to see him, in large part because I hoped his office would help us by searching for body parts in the stretch of the river that flowed through his jurisdiction.

  He drove a snowmobile up to our turnout to see what we’d found, and he brought the pizzas Randy had ordered.

  I was starving, so kept one and sent two down the hillside in a backpack tied to a rope. Needed to keep the troops well fed. Boomer and I ate the third pizza while standing in the snowy turnout.

  I’d been meeting with Tim for breakfast one day a week since the election—keeping lines of communication open—but we weren’t close friends. He, like our former sheriff, had a tendency to grant special favors for special folks. That was bad news.