A Nest in the Ashes

by Christine Goff

  Lark shrugged. “Maybe he bent the park rules.”

  “He wouldn’t,” said Eric. “Not Wayne.”

  “You’re sure?” she asked. “Even if it meant stopping a burn he didn’t believe in?”

  Eric sat back on his heels. Bucking policy established to protect the land, in order to protect the land, smacked of “the end justifies the means” logic reserved for people like Forest Nettleman, not Wayne. Wayne was a man who played by the rules, even if it stacked the odds against him. He was a man of integrity.

  “Even then,” said Eric.

  “But didn’t you say you saw ATV tracks in the area where you found Wayne’s body?”

  “I did.” His thoughts flashed to the marks in the grass this morning at the Inn on 34. “And I saw them in front of Linda Verbiscar’s cabin.”

  Lark’s eyes widened. “In that case, which of the people on the suspect list own or have access to an ATV?”

  Eric tugged at a blade of grass. “We don’t have too many suspects left. Between Vic and I, we’ve bumped everyone but Nora Frank, Gene Paxton, and Forest Nettleman off the list.”

  Movement overhead drew his gaze. Above them, a hawk carved slow, wide arcs in the air. Dark bars marked the wings’ undersides. Reddish-brown with a streaked, creamy breast, the bird sported the characteristic speckled, reddish belly band and rusty-red tail of the red-tailed hawk. He hunted with abandon. Of all the birds, except maybe the woodpecker, the birds of prey benefited most from a fire. The barren landscape exposed the smaller, weaker creatures, serving them up for the larger animals that were higher up on the food chain.

  “Keeer!” called the bird.

  A shiver coursed along Eric’s spine.

  “You know, it could have been a tourist,” said Lark.

  From the tone of her voice, Eric knew she hated suggesting the obvious.

  “An opportunist,” he said, trying on the idea. Ruling out the Youth Camp boys, why would anyone bash Wayne over the head, light the forest on fire, and steal a psychrometer? The humidity gauge was the only thing missing. He pushed himself to his feet. “No, I think it’s someone more cunning and devious.”

  Lark stood up, too. “How about Nora, then? Would she have had access to an ATV?”

  “It’s possible.” Eric moved toward the truck. “The NPS owns several. Sort of a dichotomy of philosophy, but they’re used for moving stuff around in certain areas of the park. There is—or should I say was—a maintenance shed near the fire line. There might have been one there.”

  “How about Forest?”

  “I have no idea.” He doubted it, knowing Nettleman. Forest was more the limo type. “But Paxton had one. He kept it parked next to the Shangri-la office, with the keys in the ignition.”

  “Which means anyone could have borrowed it,” said Lark.

  Another wrinkle Eric hadn’t considered.

  He grabbed their gear from the truck, pitching Lark her day pack. In place of the heavy firefighter equipment, they had both gone smaller, packing only the bare essentials—bandana, granola bars, bottled water, sunscreen, lip balm, and binoculars.

  Eric stuffed his sweater inside his pack and slung it over his shoulder. Lark cinched her sweatshirt around her waist.

  It felt good to climb, and Eric set a brisk pace up the mountain. They headed south, hiking along the narrow deer trail that led away from the clearing. The well-trodden path wound in and around the pine trees dotting the hillside and through fields of columbines blooming in the mountain sunshine. Far below them, the Big Thompson River rumbled toward town, swollen with the runoff from an early spring.

  The hillside grew steeper. As the deer path veered away toward the valley floor, Eric wormed his way through the tightly packed lodgepoles on the north slope. Lark stayed close behind, and they climbed until the steep ground forced them to use the trees for handholds and pull themselves hand-over-hand toward the top of the mountain.

  Cresting the first ridge, Eric could see the burn one ridge ahead. He was awed by the stark contrast between the unburned and the burned; like someone had drawn a line across a canvas, then painted the lower half of the canvas in color, and the top half in black and white. Below the burn line, the trees grew tall, and birds flitted from branch to branch. Above the burn line, stick-figure trees, wearing ash-colored uniforms, marched like an army across the mountainside, storming the summit of Eagle Cliff Mountain.

  “How are you doing?” he asked Lark, pulling out his water bottle and taking a swig. The cool liquid bathed his throat, dry from exertion.

  “I’m hanging in there,” said Lark, bending over and clutching her waist. Her single braid swung close to the ground. “This is brutal.”

  “Ja, but I can see our destination.”

  To get there, they simply had to work their way down the back face of the ridge they’d just climbed and hike up the north face of the next.

  The back face was a gentle-sloping south face, with a more open landscape of ponderosa pines and Douglas firs, and the going was easy until they crashed into a gully full of shrubs and bushes. There, the vegetation grew so dense in places they were forced to backtrack and search for another route. More than once, Eric wished he’d brought his Pulaski. Then, the vegetation morphed again, back to stands of densely packed lodgepole.

  When they reached the edge of the burn, Eric stopped. The forest spread before them, stripped of life, the ground denuded of all but charred soil and charred vegetation. Once-majestic trees stood like skeletons against a gray backdrop of ash. No squirrels scampered or chattered. No birds sang. Only the call of the hawk hunting broke the silence.

  The moonscape stretched to the left and right, and Eric struggled to get his bearings. “I remember rounding a large boulder near the bottom of a gully just before I found his body,” said Eric. “I think we’re still too far north.”

  Lark agreed, and they traced the lower edge of the burn. One hundred yards to the south, they found what they’d been looking for. The boulder rose like a ship out of a gray ocean and signaled another border. Below the rock, shrubs singed by the fire still grew in profusion. Above the rock, the charred, sepia-toned landscape stretched to the horizon.

  On the other side of the boulder was where Wayne had died. With the thought came a shortness of breath, and Eric forced himself to inhale.

  “This is it all right,” said Lark, pointing to a piece of yellow crime scene ribbon still anchored to a nearby tree.

  Eric stepped around the chunk of granite and stared at the small square of land where he’d found Wayne’s body. The ash and earth had been churned into waves of mud by the rescue workers, then frozen into stiff peaks of dirt. Eric had to close his eyes to remember the scene.

  Wayne had been lying on the ground a few feet from the boulder. The pack leaned against a tree slightly uphill and to the left of his body.

  “Let’s start here,” he said, pointing to a spot that best matched his memory of the area that had surrounded Wayne’s body. “We’ll work our way up the hill. Keep you eyes open for anything out of the ordinary.”

  The two of them combed the hillside, traversing the area back and forth, covering every square inch of ground. They found nothing.

  Finally, after they backtracked to the boulder and shrugged off their packs, Lark slumped to the ground and rested her back against the rock. Eric flopped down beside her.

  “I was so sure we’d missed something,” he told her. “Something to do with the—”

  “I know, I know. The extra fusee. You are obsessed with the fusee.”

  She’s right, thought Eric. He was obsessed. But Wayne had been anal, and Eric couldn’t shake the feeling they were missing something. Some key piece of evidence. He stared at the base of the tree where Wayne’s body had been found, willing his ghost to reveal its secrets. He had held the fusee in his right hand, slightly extended above his head.

  Eric twisted around and laid on the ground, positioning himself like the corpse.

  “He’s losing
it,” Lark remarked, toying with the end of her braid.

  “No,” said Eric, excitement driving him to his feet. “From where he fell, he couldn’t have lit the pile of slash. The fusee in his hand would have touched somewhere in here, and the pile of slash is there.” He pointed to the spot where the ash piled into a mound. “Going by the investigation team’s scenario, he set the blaze, then scrambled downhill, slipped, hit his head on a rock, and was caught in the fire.”

  “I can see that happening,” said Lark, sounding somewhat apologetic.

  “Except, based on the ash, the fusee in his hand was whole.”

  Lark sat up straight. “And you don’t just throw a spark on a pile of slash and start a fire.”

  “Exactly. Without a propellant of some sort, the fire would likely smolder a while.”

  “The investigation team didn’t mention any accelerant,” said Lark.

  “So, now, we’re looking at more than one extra fusee.” Eric paced the clearing. “Nora would be the only one who’d routinely carry fusees with her. Or another firefighter. Unless . . .”

  Eric retraced his footsteps to where Wayne’s hand had rested on the ground. If he was right, they would find it here. He kicked the dirt with his boot, loosening the packed soil.

  Lark scrambled to her feet. “What? What are you looking for?

  “A nail.”

  Most flares had one. Firefighters used special fusees, ones that linked together in chains making it easier to light a fire. The average motorist or police officer just wanted to signal trouble. They needed to be able to jam the fusee into the ground and make it stand up, hence the small spike at the bottom. A nail would be rock solid evidence that someone other than Wayne had started the blaze.

  It took them a few minutes to find what they were looking for. The small, shiny object had been pounded into the ground beneath the boots of the firefighters.

  Bending down, Eric pried the nail free of the ground and held it up, end to end, between his finger and thumb. “I’ll lay odds, if we look, we’ll find more.”

  “I guess this clears Nora Frank,” said Lark.

  “Bummer,” said Eric, drawing a laugh from Lark, though deep inside he was glad. He couldn’t deny that Nora was ambitious. Or that her drive had clouded her judgment at times. But, he hadn’t wanted to believe her capable of murder. He hadn’t wanted to believe he was that bad a judge of character. “That leaves us with Gene Paxton and Forest Nettleman.”

  The idea Nettleman might have murdered Wayne wasn’t much more palatable than believing Nora Frank responsible. While Eric didn’t know Paxton well enough to form an opinion, he knew Forest Nettleman. The one-time powerful U.S. Representative held a passion for the environment. A passion that had clouded his judgment in the past.

  The sunlight receded, and Eric glanced up. The afternoon clouds carried no threat of rain, but at this altitude, without the sun’s rays, it grew instantly colder. The shadows deepened, and the trees seemed to close in.

  He heard a click. It took a moment for his brain to register, to process the sound. Metal striking metal. The sound of a gun hammer striking an empty chamber.

  Diving for Lark, he knocked her to the ground before the second pull of the trigger drove a bullet into the granite above their heads. A section of the stone splintered, showering them with fragments. He hovered over Lark, ignoring the tiny shards of granite nipping at his skin, aware of her trembling. Where was the shooter?

  His eyes swept the hillside above them.

  “Eric?” Lark whispered, as though believing her whisper somehow offered protection. The fear in her voice penetrated his calm, and he pushed her closer to the ground. The shot had come from the north.

  “Hey, hold your fire,” he shouted, urging Lark to move around to the back side of the boulder.

  Another bullet whizzed over his head in defiance of his order. This was no small game hunter, and these weren’t random bullets. Someone out there was shooting at them. But who? And with what type of gun?

  “Stay low,” he told Lark, urging her forward.

  “Don’t worry,” she replied. “Can you see anyone? Who’s shooting?”

  Their eyes met. It had to be either Nettleman or Paxton.

  “Forest, is that you?” yelled Eric.

  Another bullet slammed into the rock, this time from the west. The shooter was moving counterclockwise along with them.

  “Go,” Eric ordered Lark. “Keep moving.”

  They scampered around the end of the boulder, adrenalin driving them through the shrubs and brush on the downhill side of the rock. Squeezing between the boulder and a gnarled mountain mahogany, Eric felt a tad safer. It would be hard to see them in this cover. Harder yet to hit the target.

  “Lark,” he whispered, drawing her in close beside him. “I’m going to distract him. I want you to head down the mountain. Go as fast as you can. When you reach the road, get to the truck and radio for help.”

  Lark clutched his arm, her eyes bright with fear. “I won’t leave you.”

  Eric’s hand stroked back an errant strand of her hair. The curl soft in his fingers. “I want you to go.” Bending down, he swiftly kissed her. “Please.”

  She brushed the back of her hand across her lips. “I’m scared.”

  “Me, too,” said Eric, then he looked her square in the eye. “Do you remember how the green-tailed towhee operates? He runs along the ground, with his tail held high, creating a diversion. Like a fleeing chipmunk, he scampers into the bushes and hides. He’s safe. But more importantly, he’s drawn the predators away from the nest.” Eric gripped her shoulders. “Our best chance is if you go and get us some help. Will you do it?”

  Lark pursed her lips and nodded.

  “Good.” Eric positioned himself near the mountain mahogany. “Go on the count of three.”

  He lifted one finger at a time, his hand gripping a branch of the gnarled mahogany. On three, he signaled to Lark and shook the tree.

  A shot ricocheted off the rock above him, and Eric moved, praying that the shooter wouldn’t realize Lark had bolted in another direction.

  “Nettleman?” He shouted, drawing the attention to himself. “Or is it Paxton?”

  Crouched near the rock, his back pressed to the boulder, Eric waited, knowing he had to move. The shooter had been pushing him in a circular motion. Another fifty feet, and he would round the boulder and be on the side where he and Lark had started. He had cooperated up until now, inching along the rough rock away from the attacker. But, at some point, the shooter would double back, making Eric a sitting duck.

  Unless . . . What if the diversion hadn’t worked?

  The thought paralyzed him. Then a bullet slammed into the rock next to his head. A shower of granite pelted his face, and relief washed over him. He was still the target, which meant Lark must have gotten safely away.

  Another shot came on the heels of the last, and Eric realized he had to move—or die. Somehow the shooter had gotten below him. For the first time, Eric realized he couldn’t continue to move counterclockwise around the rock. A large pine tree snuggled up close to the boulder, preventing him from shinning around the granite. If he tried stepping out and moving around the tree, he’d be an open target.

  How many shots had been fired? Not that it made any difference. Without knowing the type of gun being used, it was impossible to know how many rounds the shooter had available. Even if Eric found one of the spent bullets, he didn’t know types of ammunition well enough to determine the kind of gun being fired. And there were a variety of magazines available.

  Face it, Linenger. You’re screwed.

  That determined, it was better to do something than die cleaved to the side of a rock. Still squatting, he groped the ground for loose rocks, his fingers plunged deep in the duff. Pine needles and twigs bit his flesh, and rough granite scraped his knuckles. Finally he located three or four softball-sized rocks. He hadn’t grown up playing baseball, but he’d learned to pitch softball in college,
and he had a pretty good arm. Good enough to make someone think twice about coming too close. Even better, he might be able to convince the shooter he was on the run.

  Eric pitched the first rock downhill and to his left.

  A bullet slammed into the tree below him.

  He pitched another rock, aiming slightly below the spot where first one had landed. The gun fired, chipping a branch off the silver maple fifteen feet below him.

  Eric repositioned himself. The bushes around him crackled, and he sucked in a breath. It was now or never.

  He pitched another rock and moved down around the base of the pine tree, staying low to the ground. He heard the shot, then felt the searing heat of the bullet skim his forehead. Blood gushed into his right eye, blinding him momentarily.

  Realizing he had to keep moving, Eric clambered to his feet and ran for the safety of the trees on the opposite hillside. Shots rang out. He heard the sound of glass shattering.

  Dull thuds in the dirt behind him drove him farther into the woods, until, spent, he dropped to the ground near the summit of the ridge.

  Blood puddled and caked on his shirt. The world turned.

  He listened, hearing only the static in his head and the sound of blood pounding in his ears. He forced himself to lay quietly, forced his breathing to slow. Closing his eyes, he waited for the world to right itself.

  The catch of an engine shattered the calm. The engine revved. He heard the sound of dirt spinning off a wheel, splatting against the bark of a tree. The noise receded, and Eric rested his face on the sun-baked dirt.

  Chapter 22

  Eric had no idea how long he’d been lying there when he heard Lark call his name. He jerked, scraping his face on the hard earth. The sudden movement made him reel, and he fought the nausea that accompanied the pain.

  “Eric,” she shouted. He could hear the anxiety in her voice.

  “Up here.” He barely choked out the words. Lifting his head off the ground, he tried again. “I’m up here!”