Rock Bottom (Em Hansen Mysteries)

by Sarah Andrews

  Ours was the last raft to arrive at this scene, and Fritz stood up at the oars to face the challenge. “Is there a problem?” he asked loudly, in his calm pilot-commander voice.

  “This site is reserved!” the man roared again. “It’s reserved for the Calder party!” Suddenly he lurched toward our raft. “Are you Fritz Calder?”

  “Who wants to know?” Fritz asked, keeping his voice steady.

  The great galoot shook his branches at us one more time, then dropped them on the gravel and yanked off his ski mask. “Tiny wants to know!” he shouted in a higher, much more familiar voice. “How ya doin’, chump?”

  Fritz sprang from our raft and charged up the beach to embrace his friend. “How’d you get here? This is wonderful! Tiny, you old sot, you don’t know how glad I am to see you!”

  As the two big men slapped and hugged at each other, another tall person walked out from behind the cover of the tamarisk: Faye Carter, my friend and Fritz’s business partner, grinning to beat the band. Now I ran from the raft, so glad to see her I couldn’t help shrieking with delight. “How did you get here?” I demanded to know. The others were up on the shore now, securing their craft to the thickest stands of tamarisk and greeting the visitors.

  Faye gave me a bone-crushing hug. “When we heard what had happened up the river, we figured it was time to saddle up and get down here.” She pointed up the wash toward the north. “There’s a dude ranch up there—the Bar 10—and they have a nice little airstrip. Tiny got out of the hospital last week, and he’s feeling pretty good now, so I flew him down here. The ranch arranged to bring us down by helicopter. There’s a helo pad just a half mile up the river, and we caught a ride down here with a park ranger who was towing a dory with some ugly holes in its sides.”

  “Then you’ve met Maryann Eliasson.”

  “Her and Susanne McCoy. They’re just down the way there doing some studies on the tamarisk. Nice folks.”

  “Very nice. The ranger is a bit too admiring of Fritz for my comfort, but aside from that…”

  “You can’t argue with her taste. And don’t worry, I told her that the man is taken, and Fritz didn’t seem to matter much once she spotted Tiny! It seems she has a taste for enormous men. Besides, she wouldn’t want to mess with you.”

  “Not one bit. So where’s your gear?”

  Just then a helicopter came thundering in overhead, flew along the river, up over the cliff to river left, and descended out of sight.

  Faye said, “They come out of Las Vegas to meet up with rafts so people can take on the canyon à la carte, floating down only as far as Diamond Creek. The folks at Bar 10 make arrangements like that, too. Or if you’re sick of camping by this point, you can rim out and the Bar 10 will feed you up and fly you from their strip out to Las Vegas. It’s a neat outfit they have up there. You can stay in covered wagons, and they have trail rides and such.”

  “Wonders never cease.” I stared after the helicopter, a bit put out to have my sanctuary invaded by machinery. After almost three weeks camping on the river, life had become blessedly simple. “Do you have gear with you? Are you staying the night?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She led me up along a little creek to the place where they had stashed their belongings. “I’ve made arrangements to hike up the trail in the morning and get met by the four-wheel brigade. Tiny would like to stay and run the rest of the trip with you. He’s made an amazing recovery, but he’s not up to much hiking.”

  “The man’s insane. He left hunks of himself all over I-80.”

  “Both facts have been amply established.”

  I didn’t care how crazy Tiny was; Fritz had visibly relaxed the moment the man joined us. He was smiling again, laughing, his old happy self. Leading the trip had weighed heavily on his shoulders. Things had not gone to plan from the moment Wink joined the group, and when he left it as he had, the load on Fritz had become unbearable. He needed his friend.

  We had our tents set up and a mess of tamale pie cooking in the Dutch ovens when Maryann and Susanne appeared at the campsite. “We hate to ask,” Maryann began, “but another group has just arrived at the lower campsite, and it’s late. They’d have to head a couple of miles farther down the river to find a site large enough for them, and it’s possible that it’s already taken. Would it be all right if we joined your group?”

  Tiny answered for all of us by offering her a beer. “The more the merrier, little lady.”

  She waved off the beer. “I’m on duty, and that’s Ranger Eliasson to you,” she said saucily, but then she rolled her weight onto one hip and added, “Rain check?”

  “I’ll check you with a whole thunderstorm,” he purred.

  As another helicopter clattered overhead, Maryann jumped into action, shouting for everyone to stay at the camp. Backing off a hundred yards to open ground up the delta, she created an exclusion zone for the aircraft to land. I noticed then that she had already mounted a length of flagging that had been tied to a tree, a telltale for wind direction. She was expecting this helicopter: Why?

  Faye peered at the descending craft. “That’s not a commercial helo,” she said. “What the hell?”

  “It’s Park Service,” I said.

  The noise of the helicopter magnified as it bounced off the near walls of the canyon, and now we felt the downwash of the rotors. It turned and I could see the pilot surveying the ground through the Plexiglas floor of the cockpit, looking for a clear spot to settle.

  Maryann stood between the camp and the helicopter, waving her hands to guide it in, one hand, both hands, now crossing them in an X to indicate that it was down. Her hair blew back from the blast, but she stood still, waiting for the pilot to shut down the engine. The blades began to slow then, and the whine of their slices through the air descended and stopped.

  The passenger’s side door opened. A booted foot came out, then a leg, and then the rest of the man, decked out in a flight suit. He had some age to him, but he was fit and trim if a bit stiff along his spine. He moved down from the cockpit of the aircraft in one long step and settled a Park Service green cap on his head using both hands, straightened his flight suit with a tug, faced the campsite, squared his shoulders, and began to stride toward us. Maryann had to trot to keep up with him. She was saying something to him, her hands moving in a pleading gesture, but the grim expression on his face did not change. She led him straight to Fritz.

  The man spoke. “Are you Fritz Calder?”

  “The same. May I offer you a beer?”

  “No, thank you. I mean to place into evidence your mineral hammer.”

  Fritz narrowed his eyes in confusion. “My what?”

  “I believe you call it a rock hammer. Or perhaps it belongs to your wife, Emily Bradstreet Hansen.” He began to scan the faces in our group, limning which one might be me.

  I shot a look at Maryann, who now stared at the ground, curling up even tinier. “This is Ranger Weber,” she announced. “He is chief ranger for the park. As such, he holds a Class One Federal Law Enforcement Commission, and…”

  I stepped toward Weber. “You can have my rock hammer if you wish, sir, but would you please first explain why you want it?”

  He swung his face my direction. “I am investigating a homicide.”

  “The rock hammer’s right over there, sir,” Maryann said miserably, pointing toward our tent.

  Ranger Weber strode briskly to where she pointed, produced a plastic bag, turned it inside out over his right hand, and used it like a glove to requisition my hammer, flipping the bag right side out again and sealing it shut. Shifting the bag to his opposite hand, he then produced a felt-tipped pen and wrote the date and his name across the seal. Pulling out additional bags, he said, “Now I need your pocketknife, Mr. Calder. In a separate bag, please.”

  My stomach sank. I knew this behavior in a cop, and his reason for being here was all coming together in a flash: Wink’s body had been found, and judging by the beeline Weber was making toward that hammer, he’d
been killed with an object of that size and weight. But where? And when? And if Maryann Eliasson knew all of this, why hadn’t she told us?

  On the next mental click, all of that came clear to me as well: She had been sent that morning to locate us and keep an eye on us. For all I knew, there was no other group camping at Whitmore that night; she had wangled her way into our camp under orders from her superior, and she had done a damned fine job of sneaking her job in plain sight.

  “But—”

  Fritz fumbled his pocketknife out of his pocket. He seemed lost in inner space, his gaze staring inward, his face drawn. He hadn’t moved.

  Ranger Weber strolled back toward him with the slow deliberation of a bull. Five feet short of Fritz he stopped and held out a second bag.

  Fritz dropped his knife into the bag.

  After repeating the performance of sealing the evidence, Weber stared up into Fritz’s face as if measuring his height. He spoke again, this time addressing him more formally. “Lieutenant Commander Frederick Calder?”

  I had never heard Fritz addressed by his military rank, but the term had a decided effect on him. He seemed to snap awake. He stiffened up into a military brace and nodded.

  “Will you come with me, please?”

  Fritz did not move. “If you will kindly tell me where are we going,” he said firmly.

  “To the South Rim. I am placing you under arrest for the murder of George Oberley.” He began the familiar drone: “You have the right to remain silent…”

  As the words of the Miranda rights tumbled past him, Fritz turned to Tiny, handed him his beer, said, “You’re in charge,” and then turned to me. His expression was blank, unreadable. “Take care of Brendan,” he said, then marched toward the helicopter with the selfless cooperation he had learned while in uniform.

  Weber marched after him, and I had to run to catch up. “But what’s the deal here? Are you going to be gone overnight? Won’t you need a change of clothes, or your toilet kit, or—”

  “A jacket would be nice,” Frtiz said levelly. “It might be cold at altitude.”

  We had reached the helicopter. I spun on Ranger Weber. “You wait a minute, okay? I’ve got to get the man his gear!”

  Weber nodded permission but kept his attention on loading Fritz into the helicopter.

  I ran and dove at the tent, thinking, This is ridiculous! Fritz didn’t kill anyone! If my rock hammer were still here I would use it to bash the engine on that machine so he could not leave! I tore into Fritz’s dry bag and pulled out his day pack, stuffed it with his jacket, hiking boots, the pouch that held his toothbrush, razor, and comb. I found a clean pair of socks and a T-shirt that wasn’t too bad. My hands were shaking. I was swimming in adrenaline.

  Outside, I ran to my husband to hand him the pack, but Ranger Weber snagged it out of my hands. I threw myself at Fritz then, leaning into the helicopter, and wrapped my arms around him.

  Ever so gently, he patted me on the back. “It’s better this way,” he said. “We’ll get it over with, and there will be less fuss.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just take care of Brendan,” he whispered into my hair. “Trust me, sweetheart.”

  I let go and stepped back. I could see Brendan standing by the kitchen stoves, holding on to the table like it was the only thing keeping him from sinking through the ground.

  Fritz said, “He loves you, and so do I.” Then he checked his harness, put on the headphones that Weber handed to him, and nodded to the pilot just as if he were in charge. Ranger Weber climbed into his command post in the front of the aircraft, gave the pilot his own nod, took off his hat, smoothed his thinning hair, and put on his headphones.

  Maryann drew me away, outside the exclusion zone. The engine started then, first the rising whine of the engine and then the great rotors beginning to move, spinning up into a blur, a disk that now tipped forward as the bird lifted, nose toward the river, rising higher and higher as it reached toward the east, dwindling finally into a dot and a distant thunder that faded into the darkening sky.

  APRIL 19: PARTY ENDED

  “You!” I shouted at Maryann Eliasson. “You tell us now what happened to that son of a bitch Oberley! I want to know why my husband and that boy’s father is being taken away like a criminal!”

  The rest of the group moved toward her, too, and Susanne McCoy moved in to take a protective place behind her. Susanne said, “Now, everybody, please calm down. Maryann did not like following the orders given to her, and she is as shocked as the rest of you that Major Calder has been removed from this beach.”

  Maryann found her voice then. “That’s true. I was told to keep him here for questioning. That’s the whole story, I swear it! But yeah, Wink Oberley’s body has been found. And he was murdered.”

  Chaos broke out then, everyone asking questions and demanding answers at once. Maryann had to raise a hand to ask for quiet. “This is serious business,” she said, “and I’m sure you all want to help get Fritz back here as quickly as possible. From my take on the man he is not a killer—or at least not a murderer.”

  “What in hell do you mean by that?” I demanded. My brain was running a million miles an hour.

  She turned scarlet. “I mean that he was in the military, and he dropped bombs, right? So in a manner of speaking—”

  “Stuff it right there!” I told her. I wasn’t going to tolerate that kind of thinking. “This whole mess makes no sense, so let’s all calm down and figure out how to deal with it.”

  Brendan broke his own stasis of shock. “My dad didn’t kill anyone!” he said. “If anyone killed Wink it should have been me!” He made a fist and pounded his chest for emphasis.

  My brain filled with words: Look after Brendan, you said … but what does that look like, Fritz? What exactly do you do for a thirteen-year-old boy on the brink of manhood whose dad has just been arrested for the murder of a monster who’d been terrorizing him?

  A weird thing happened: I got an answer. Inside my head, I heard Fritz say calmly, Call the bluff.

  The bluff. Things began to snap together in my mind. I said, “Wait, our life vest went missing, remember? What if Wink swiped it, swam to Havasu, and hiked out? The man walked around in shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops when the rest of us were up to our chins in fleece, and he knew this river like a second skin, so he could have survived that swim, and he knew that sharp turn in the current he’d have had to make to get into the side canyon. And there’s no way he was as drunk as he was trying to make us think.” Turning to Mungo, I said, “He took your Scotch to the latrine and probably dumped it in the bushes, and he was spilling as much beer as he was drinking later on, maybe all of it. His behavior was over-the-top awful for days before he disappeared, like he was consciously trying to provoke Fritz. And he hardly seemed to be trying to keep that dory afloat anymore. It was like he was planning to disappear and wanted to make it look like Fritz killed him.”

  Brendan let go of the table. “He kept going over to that church group that was camping near us,” he said. “And the night at Nevills I saw him hiding in the tamarisk. When that woman with the wrong sandals came by, he whistled to her like a little bird. They thought no one was watching them. When he tried to touch her she pushed his hand away, but she smiled at him.”

  The kid has the makings of a spy, I thought. I said, “There has to be a connection there, Maryann. When did that group come off the river?”

  She knit her brow, thinking. “I think it was the fourteenth. I’d have to check.”

  I said, “The fourteenth. The next night Wink disappears. Don’t you see it? He was staging his own death, and maybe someone in that group was in on it.”

  Brendan said, “This book I was reading says a lot of the people who die here are never found, so this is the perfect place to look like you’ve died.”

  Maryann shook her head ruefully. “It would be just like him. Always starting things rolling and never taking an ounce of responsibility for a
nyone he hurts in the process.”

  Faye said, “And he’d been run out of Princeton. And his wife wanted him to get a damned job and feed his kids.”

  Maryann said, “But wait, he is dead. It’s not just an act!”

  I said, “Then something went wrong with his plan. Come on, tell us what you know. Where was he found?”

  She closed her eyes. “Right here,” she said, “or more precisely, just beyond those tammies at the upriver edge of the gravel bar. Seth Farnsworth saw him. Saw it. Said it was pretty gross.”

  “Right here?” said Jerry. “Seriously? That man messes up the evening even when he’s dead! So okay, he disappears from Ledges on the fifteenth and is found here when?”

  “Yesterday.” Maryann shook her head. “The whole park’s been humming with it. You’re right, Brendan, people die here, but we never get used to it, and this time it was someone a lot of us knew, and even if we weren’t all exactly happy with him … well, it’s got everyone upset.”

  Jerry said, “Can you call Seth Farnsworth on your radio?”

  “The radio won’t work here.” Maryann threw her hands wide in exasperation. “Listen, you’ve got to understand also that this is an official situation. Weber takes his position really seriously, and if he thought I was making investigations without his say-so, well…”

  Brendan said, “That’s my dad who just got arrested!”

  Jerry said, “Maryann, you probably don’t know that Em here is a detective. You’ve got one of the finest forensic minds on the planet right here at your disposal. She’s famous for the work she’s done.”

  Maryann looked at me like I’d just grown a second nose.

  I said, “I’m a geologist, but yes, I do a lot of forensic work with the local police.”