River Run

by Toni Dwiggins

  I asked, “Find anything new?”

  He answered that question. “Nope. Still quartz. Particle size around oh-point-two millimeters. Silt. No match to the samples I took at the beach.”

  A disappointment, but no surprise. As he'd first theorized, river wash. The river was always carrying silty stuff and depositing it as it flowed. A line laid across the shoreline would more likely than not pick up river wash.

  There came the sound of laughter from outside, from the concrete walkway that separated our lab—Walter's 'rim cabin'—from the overlook into the Grand Canyon. The noise could be distracting, but I wasn't complaining. The cabin had a spectacular view. The room itself was comfy, with cream-colored walls and a slightly vaulted ceiling and worn leather easy chairs and a mini-fridge with a coffee-maker sitting on top. The bed was set off in a small alcove and the small tiled bathroom was clean and bright. The entire place had an updated Western vibe, a nod to Grand Canyon history and to modern tastes.

  Neely had rented four of the cabins along the rim for the Hawthorne Group Productions crew, including us, getting a nice discount. She had one, I had one, Walter had one, and Edgar and Justin shared. The cabins were part of the Bright Angel Lodge. Seems she knew somebody who knew somebody at the Lodge, which seemed to be the charmed story of Neely's HGP.

  More laughter outside, and happy voices.

  At sunset I planned that Walter and I would take a break and go sit on the low stacked-stone wall edging the Canyon rim. Admire the show while sipping a glass of pinot grigio from the bottle we had chilling in our mini-fridge. Or maybe a Sam Adams lager. Make it a picnic dinner. We'd stocked the place with the basics: coffee, wine, beer, Braeburn apples, big brick of Irish cheddar, stone-ground crackers, and the pound-plus size Trader Joe's 70% cacao chocolate bar. A quick picnic, then back to work.

  It had been a long day, starting early when Superintendent Martin Atherton asked us to join Ranger Molina's investigation. Several hours later, after Wes choppered us back to the Village, Walter and I had met briefly with Martin to fill him in. He'd already heard, from Neely no doubt, that Walter knew the survivor. Walter had answered Martin's questions with polite brevity. I hadn't seen him for a number of years and I have no idea what he was doing on the river.

  Then we'd returned to our lab. We used Walter's cabin because it was bigger than mine. We'd set up the lab when we first arrived at the Canyon, with the portable field equipment we always carried. We even had work stations—folding card tables and chairs, supplied by Neely. The backgrounder for her documentary was going to require some analysis of rock samples.

  Now, we were putting the lab to a different use.

  I continued watching Walter. I was ready to mention the zombie apocalypse—anything to jar him out of the funk into which he'd settled—when he spoke.

  “In light of Reid, there's nothing to discuss,” he said. “We have nothing.”

  Oh sure we had. We had a boatload of questions. Such as, why was Reid leading a rafting trip under an assumed name? Leading a trip that had ended in what looked to be tragedy. Wearing a life vest, sparing him from that tragedy.

  I began, “We could start with the immediate question—why was Reid leading this mysterious rafting trip?”

  Walter shot me a look. “He's a natural leader.”

  Yeah, so I understood. I had known Reid only through Walter's stories. Walter held Reid in the highest regard. Like brothers, Walter had described the relationship, Reid being the younger brother. The prodigy. The leader type, age aside.

  I said, “I meant, how did he end up on the river? You never said he was a rafter.”

  “He was an outdoorsman.” Walter added, voice controlled, “Evidently he took up rafting at some point.”

  And never mentioned it to his old friend.

  Walter got up from the floor and returned to his chair. He took in a long breath. “You want to talk about Reid? Here's something about Reid. It could explain that panic in our scenario.”

  I carefully nodded. Glad to have my partner engaging.

  “One day Reid and I and a few others were in the field. Doing facies mapping.” Walter's eyes focused beyond me, into the past it seemed.

  I waited. I tried to picture Reid and Walter mapping the rock attributes of some geologic unit—Walter a young man, brown hair worn long and eyes exceptionally blue and face all planes and angles, a face that could be a stratigraphic map in itself. I'd seen an old photo of Walter. Walter had never shown me a photo of Reid. When I'd asked what Reid looked like, Walter said, “Devilishly handsome.” I'd almost laughed. It seemed a line out of a bad romance novel. But the man we'd found on the beach earlier today, although battered and aged, could still be termed handsome.

  Walter resumed. “I'd gone off by myself around an outcrop. There was heavy brush. And there was a snake.”

  I sucked in a breath. Walter was snake phobic, although he'd gotten it pretty much under control.

  “Yes Cassie, I'm afraid I yelled. The others came running. I explained my phobia. I was damned embarrassed—a wannabe field geologist, spooked by a snake. Nobody laughed but they looked uncomfortable. And then, Reid...” A smile flashed across Walter's seamed face. “Reid said, Walter's not the only one. Turned out he shared the phobia. He told us his own snake story. He even made a joke, how he coped—amnesia, some kind of phobogenic reaction. Evidently he recovered bits of memory, after the event—islands of memory it's called—that's how he knew it had been a snake. So here was Reid, laying his fear bare. And understand, even though Reid was younger than all of us, he was confident. Skilled. A rockstar. So if Reid with his field cred was phobic, then there was no stigma to being afraid of snakes. From that point on, I would have done damned near anything for him.”

  I said, “That's quite a story.”

  “He was quite a friend.”

  My heart squeezed.

  Walter cleared his throat. “A year or so later the two of us did come across a snake. I handled it better that time. Reid didn't handle it well. We talked about getting therapy.”

  “And you did.”

  “And Reid did not, as far as I know. As to our scenario—if Reid was on the beach and saw a snake, he might have panicked. And if he was holding the bow line, and the baggie, he might have flung them. Startling the others. And by the time the snake disappeared and everything calmed down, the raft was adrift.”

  “And they all went into the river. And Reid survived.”

  Walter added, with an edge, “Let's not count out the others.”

  I wasn't. Per our scenarios, possibly the others went off hiking, which would explain why their vests were unused. Or, they went into the river to catch the raft. But what was the chance they survived without their PFDs? The outcome was more likely tragic, than not.

  One way or another, I thought, tragedy sure kept company with Reid.

  I did the math. It was about five years ago that the news came—the tragedy in Bolivia that had taken Reid's life. Or so we'd believed. There had been the story in the news. There had been emails from old grad-school friends, who Walter kept in touch with. As for Reid, after grad school he and Walter had gone their divergent ways, meeting now and then at geosciences conferences, otherwise separated by geography, Reid living primarily overseas, married for awhile to an Australian woman, Walter eventually settling in the California Sierra, where he'd taken on an eager young apprentice. Where, also, he'd found the love of his life, and lost her. And so adversity and distance and the passage of years had trimmed Walter's relationship with Reid to holiday emails. And then came the shock of Reid's death. Walter had been so shaken he could barely speak of it. All I could do was offer sympathy.

  And now? I guessed Walter was torn between relief at Reid's survival and a feeling of betrayal that Reid had let Walter believe he was dead.

  I cast about for words of sympathy, for that.

  But Walter had turned away, back to his microscope.

  I watched my partner at his work, assiduous.
As a kid learning the ropes in his lab, I would watch him and wonder if that rock he was assiduously studying could really help catch villains. I'd thought in simple terms back then—hero, villain. No shades of gray. In truth, what kept me at the work was a slightly shaded version of that worldview. What Walter offered me was the chance to right the wrongs, to stand against deeds committed by the... I cast about for the non-simplistic word. Couldn't find it. Villains would do. Walter and I succeeded, sometimes. We failed, sometimes. But there was always the next time, the next chance to gain justice. Avert calamity.

  I turned back to my worktable. Next on my list: start a deeper analysis of the Tapeats with the XRF. The machine was a nifty analyzer that used X-ray fluorescence to look for trace minerals. I was hoping for some trace to narrow the large Tapeats neighborhood. Because one or more of the three missing rafters might yet be alive. Went for a hike. Went into the river. And possibly, downstream, made it to shore.

  As I promised Pete this morning, we'd keep at it until our eyes crossed.

  And if we found nothing to point the way?

  Next step would be a chopper ride back into the gorge. We'd take samples upriver from the beach—that long stretch of Tapeats that Pete described. Maybe we'd get lucky. Maybe one of those upriver sites would provide a match to the baggie chips.

  And if not? My thoughts turned to the man who would know where the raft had anchored. But, last we'd heard, Reid was unconscious in the Flagstaff hospital, where he'd been airlifted.

  If and when he regained consciousness, I'd have a couple of other questions for him, as well. Such as, which name was his real name? And why the hell had he ghosted his old friend over the past five years? I thought, although I wouldn't say it out loud, that Reid Lassen AKA Reid Darnay might be called untrustworthy.

  Even, I suddenly thought, dangerous. It was not out of the question that Reid somehow caused this rafting tragedy.

  I tried to shake that thought. I had to admit that an evil Reid didn't fit with the picture Walter had painted of his old friend—cocky and controlling, sure. But also brilliant and funny and charming and generous, the best friend in the world.

  Until he wasn't.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “WE'RE NOT GOING TO sandbag him,” Walter said.

  We stood in the hallway outside Reid Darnay's hospital room.

  Reid Lassen, I corrected myself, reading the name on the tag clipped to the door.

  We'd driven the eighty miles from Grand Canyon Village to Flagstaff early this morning, after being awakened by a call from Superintendent Atherton. Martin had just had a call from Reid's doctor to say that Reid had awakened. The doc tried questioning him about what happened on the river, but Reid had been very confused. So Martin phoned to dispatch us, on the theory that Walter might be able to get information from his old friend.

  We hoped so.

  Night before last we'd worked late, finishing the deep analysis on the Tapeats Sandstone and—Walter being his thorough self—on the unpromising silt from the bow line. Our eyes didn't cross, but our spirits fell. There were no telling inclusions. We'd struck out.

  Next day—long day yesterday—Pete and his chopper pilot had ferried us upriver from the ghost-raft beach to sites where the Tapeats was at river level, or formed overhanging cliffs. The pilot landed anyplace there was a beach or a rock ledge where a raft might have anchored. The pilot could land on a skid. Back at the lab, working into the night, Walter and I struck out. The samples we'd taken were similar, but not a match, to the chips from the zipper baggie.

  At this point, our hopes were pinned on Reid.

  And Walter was already being overprotective.

  He'd told Martin—and Neely, before we left—that HGP was not invited, because the film crew would needlessly agitate Reid.

  And now he was warning me not to agitate Reid.

  I said, “I'm sure the doctors wouldn't permit us to sandbag him.”

  “You know this how?”

  “You know how it goes. Cops try to interrogate a...” I almost said suspect. But I didn't. “...a person of interest, and the guy's in a hospital bed hooked up to all the gadgets, and just as the cops ask the question they most want an answer to, a doctor rushes in and tells them they're putting the patient at risk, tells them to get the hell out.”

  “That's on television,” Walter said.

  REID DARNAY AKA REID Lassen lay in the hospital bed in the private room.

  The Flagstaff Medical Center was a brick and stone-faced building, framed by high rocky peaks on the horizon.

  Reid's room was blandly cheery: pale yellow paint job, big wall calendar with a photo of sunset-purple mountains, big window showing the reddish morning-sun mountains on the horizon.

  A stainless-steel tray on a swivel bridged Reid. The tray held a glass of water with a bendy straw.

  Beside the bed was a long counter with machines and medical displays. Vital signs pulsed on one display, cabled to Reid.

  Thin cables snaked beneath the neck of his hospital gown. An oximeter clipped his left forefinger. An IV line needled the inside of his left forearm. An oxygen cannula lodged in his nostrils. His arms—bare below the short hospital gown sleeves—bore multi-colored bruises. His right hand was in a blue cast, up to the forearm, and the thumb and fingers were bruised and scraped. I recalled, from the beach, his eggplant-swollen palm, which was now hidden beneath the cast. Despite the injuries, his arms looked muscular and fully capable of swimming the Colorado River.

  The left side of his face, from the high cheekbone down to the strong jawline, bore a multicolored bruise to match those on his arms. A thick bandage covered half his forehead. His thick gray hair with its white skunk line had been neatly combed, by a nurse I figured.

  Despite the injuries, he was strikingly handsome. Bladed nose, chiseled lips, that jawline. Cover-model material for a bad romance novel, back in the day, when he'd been 'devilishly handsome,' in Walter's assessment.

  His eyes were closed. Piercingly blue? Smolderingly dark?

  I wanted to sympathize with the man in the bed, for he had surely been through a terrible ordeal.

  But I couldn't.

  What I could do was steal a worried glance at Walter.

  Walter was staring at Reid. No expression on my partner's face. A face I appreciated, although it would never have made the cover of a romance novel.

  I had to break the silence. I whispered, “It is him, then?” At the beach when he was found, Walter had been overcome, and Reid's injuries had looked worse, and it was possible that Walter had misidentified the survivor of the rafting tragedy.

  “It's him,” Walter said, in a normal tone.

  Perhaps Reid heard. His eyes opened. Brown eyes, no smolder.

  He coughed. Then said, in a raspy voice, “Walter.”

  “Reid,” Walter said. His own voice suddenly tight.

  “Long time no see,” Reid croaked.

  I bristled. Seriously? You disappear out of Walter's life and leave him deeply hurt and now you see him for the first time and trot out that stupid saying? But Reid's bruised chiseled lips curved into a smile that looked so warm, so grateful to acknowledge his old buddy Walter, that I was struck dumb.

  Walter, nearly, as well. He finally managed, “Yes. Too long.”

  Reid aimed his smile at me.

  Walter noticed, and retrieved his manners. He put a hand on my arm and addressed Reid. “This is Cassie Oldfield. I'm sure I've mentioned her in the past. My business partner. My dearest friend.”

  “Charmed,” Reid said. “Ms. Oldfield.”

  “Good to meet you,” I answered. “And it's Cassie, please.”

  “Reid.” Reid's eyes closed for a moment, and for a moment it seemed he had just dropped into sleep, but then he opened his eyes and picked up the water glass and sucked in a long drink. He set the glass down. “Your business, Walter...still forensic geology?”

  Walter nodded. “But we're at the Canyon on an unrelated project. Consulting on a fi
lm—a documentary about the river. A bit of vacation for us, to boot.”

  Reid smiled again, showing more teeth. Very white, very straight. Just slightly too large, marring his good looks.

  The three of us fell into silence. Reid closed his eyes again, and Walter said, “We're tiring you,” and Reid said, eyes still shut, “No, no,” and then after a very long pause he added, voice noticeably more hoarse, “There's much to say.” And then, another pause, and, “I'll need to take it slowly.”

  “Of course,” Walter said.

  Silence again, in the cheery room.

  Half a minute passed, and nobody came in to shoo us out, and somebody had to say something pertinent, so I asked, “What happened on the river?”

  Reid sighed. An expression, perhaps, of pain.

  Walter said, “Cassie.”

  Well hell, we'd just driven eighty miles to ask that question.

  I continued. “The SAR team needs to know where to search.”

  Reid opened his eyes. They were moist.

  “Search and Rescue,” Walter said. “SAR.”

  Okay then. Walter was getting with the program.

  Reid nodded.

  We waited.

  Reid took in a long breath. “I wish I could help.”

  I said, “You can. Tell us where your raft was. That anchorage. Tell us what happened.”

  Reid just shook his head.

  “Did the others go into the river? Or maybe went hiking up a canyon?”

  “I don't know.”

  “There were three unused PFDs in the raft.” I nearly added, but you managed to wear yours.

  He whispered, “So I've been told.”

  I glanced at the vital sign monitor, softly beeping in synchronization with Reid's heartbeats. Hospital version of a lie detector.

  Walter said, “Don't push it, Reid. Your doctor said you had some confusion about the event. To be expected, with your injuries.”

  I regarded the bandage on Reid's forehead. A blow to the head, possibly causing temporary memory loss, according to the doctor. How long it would last could not be predicted. Too long, anyway, to wait. I bumped my elbow against Walter's and he turned to me. I cocked my head: were we really going to leave it at that? He shot me a severe look. I returned it. There are missing rafters. What's the line between pertinent questioning, and sandbagging?