by Maddy Hunter
Not waiting for anyone to cut in front of him, Thor barreled up the skybridge more like a bull than a mountain goat, causing the slats to bounce from his weight and the ladder to ripple like incoming waves. “Can I keep going?” he asked when he reached the first platform.
Sydney Ann gestured toward the next ascending skybridge. “Be my guest. See you up there.” She glanced back down toward us. “Who’s next?”
I insisted that the three girls go next, so with deep breaths and great trepidation they crept over the bridge, shuffling so slowly that the slats hardly moved. Grover and Ennis followed, and when they’d cleared the bridge, I made my way across, feeling a bit like a pirate being made to walk the plank, only without the water.
“Excellent, y’all! Only three more to go.”
The first skybridge was the easiest. The next three rose at a steeper incline and the slats were wider apart, so the ladies proceeded at an even slower pace, stopping to catch their breath more than once.
“We’re really high up,” marveled Orphie in a tense voice. “Did I mention I’m afraid of heights?”
“Don’t look down,” suggested Florence.
“Whoever is making this thing bounce, cut it out,” urged Goldie.
“If you three don’t speed it up, we’ll never get to the top,” whined Grover.
But we eventually did make it to the top platform, where we met Mindy, whose eastern European accent was so thick, she might have done the voice-overs for both Boris Badenov and Natasha. “Goud for you,” she greeted us, gripping our orange straps as we stepped onto the platform. She immediately clipped our carabiners to a stationary cable that encircled the utility pole–like beam in the center of the decking, kind of like a hitching post. When we were all secured, Sydney Ann walked to the departure point at the edge of the platform and tapped a brick-sized block that was attached to the zipline.
“This block here is what’s gonna slow y’all down at the end of each zip. When your carabiners hit it, it’ll prevent y’all from crashing into the deck.” She nodded toward the fairly distant tower that was nestled in the trees opposite us. “That’s your first destination. I’m gonna zip over first so I can help y’all onto the platform when you arrive. Mindy’ll stay here to get y’all on your way. And just one word of caution: after she clips your carabiners to the zipline, don’t fiddle with ’em while you’re flying through the air. We don’t want anyone accidentally unfastening themselves, ’cuz that would do it”—she paused for effect—“and it’s a long way to the ground.”
Orphie grabbed my hand. “I’m not sure I can go through with this, Emily.”
“A little late to be having second thoughts now, isn’t it?” chided Thor. “What a wuss.”
“You’re going to be fine, Orphie.” I squeezed her hand. “Stay beside me and we’ll do this together, okay? I’m not crazy about heights either, but if we can master the first one, I know we’ll be fine. I bet we might even enjoy ourselves.”
Orphie looked skeptical. Thor smirked. “Take a good look at how far it is to the ground, Orphie. Awwwful long way to fall. Bet you’d make quite the splat.”
Ennis’s expression soured with disgust. “You really are a louse.”
“I’m a louse,” howled Thor. “I’m not the one whose wife left him. Sounds to me like you need to look in the mirror to discover the real louse.”
Noticing that Sydney Ann and Mindy were raising their eyebrows at each other, I let fly a long, shrill whistle that sliced through the air like a knife, rousing birds from their nests and causing everyone on the platform to cringe.
“C’mon, guys!” I warned like a kindergarten teacher to her classroom. “If you don’t care to listen to Sydney Ann and Mindy’s instructions, I’d invite you to leave right now.”
Sydney Ann smiled. “Now’s the only time you can leave, y’all, ’cuz there’s no stairs on any of the platforms. Only way down once you’re on the course is either by zip or by rope.” She nodded toward a wooden box that was nailed about nose-high on the center pole. “There’s a box like this on every platform with mountaineering rope inside, in case of emergency. But in all the time the course has been open, none of our teams have ever had to use it. Just one of those regulations we gotta follow.”
Sydney Ann tugged on her harness, readjusting the straps. “I think y’all are just nervous,” she teased. “That’s okay. Lots of folks are nervous their first time out. So…here we go.”
Mindy detached one of Sydney Ann’s carabiners from the hitching post and clipped it to the zipline. When both carabiners were in place on the cable, Sydney Ann let out an exhilarated “Wheeee!” and took a flying leap off the platform, sailing along the zipline with her arms thrown wide, head back, and legs splayed, as if she were doing a back float in zero gravity. When she neared the tower, she assumed a sitting position, slowed down as her carabiners hit the block, then cruised onto the platform, grabbing hold of a thick rope that dangled from the cable to pull herself in. Scrambling to her feet, she looked back at us and waved with jazz hands before detaching herself from the zipline and securing her carabiners to the hitching post. She then walked to the edge of the platform and encouraged us to join her with a huge “come on over” sweep of her arm.
“You.” Mindy stabbed a finger at Thor. “You go first. Stand here. No talking.”
She positioned him near the cable, attached his clips to the zipline, then gave him a little push off the deck. While Sydney Ann had back-floated along the zip, Thor spun around like a top, round and round, twisting uncontrollably in the wind, legs askew, hands pulling on his straps to stop the dizzying rotation. “Whoaaaa!” he yowled in semi panic.
“You not want to spin?” counseled Mindy. “Grab hold of straps just under clips.” She nodded toward Thor. “Not like heem.”
I detected a mischievous little sparkle in her eye suggesting that despite being from another country, she’d gotten Thor’s number very quickly.
“Frightened lady.” She curled her forefinger at Orphie. “You next.”
Orphie shuffled forward reluctantly, dragging me with her. “Goodbye, everyone. I’ve so enjoyed knowing all of you. If Al asks if I had any last words, tell him—”
“Stand here,” directed Mindy. “Let go woman’s hand. I tell from looking at you, you going to rock this.”
Orphie released my hand as Mindy sorted through the array of carabiners and straps on the hitching post, separating Orphie’s from the others. When both carabiners had been attached to the zip, Orphie took a deep breath, glanced over her shoulder at the rest of us with puppy dog eyes, inched close to the edge, and, by dint of will, pulled her legs up into a fetal position and propelled herself forward, which sent her skating down the zipline like a sled down a bobsled run.
“Oh my GAWWWWWWDddddddddddddddd!”
She spun around once, but by the time she hit the block, she’d gained enough control over her equipment to make a graceful feet-first landing onto the platform. “Now that’s the way it’s done!” Sydney Ann yelled back to us.
Mindy arched her brows in a smug smile. “I knew lady would rock. Woman with red hair, you next.”
Now that the ice had been broken, the whole idea of sailing above a strip of real estate fifty feet in the air seemed a lot less daunting. The rest of us completed our first zip with hoots, whoops, and laughter, and I even felt brave enough to let go of my straps and allow myself to rotate like a slow-spinning top.
Each zip presented a new challenge. Some were high off the ground with a short distance between towers. Others were closer to the ground with a longer-distance zip cable. And Sydney Ann and Mindy always made it interesting, setting up little competitions that had us vying against each other for who could yell out the word “Geronimo” to make it stretch for the entire length of the zip, who could scream the loudest, who could do the best imitation of an animal while flying through the air, and w
ho could traverse the length of the zip the fastest. And each platform was different. Some were rectangular-shaped with railings, some were square-shaped without railings. But one feature that remained standard was the stationary hitching post that circled the main upright pole of the tower with our carabiners always secured to it, like streamers in a maypole.
Platform number six was unique in that it reminded me of a crow’s nest set high on the mast of a clipper ship. It was perched at a dizzying height off the ground, and the decking around the central post was round and uncharacteristically narrow, with no guard rails around the edge. Eww. While Sydney Ann awaited us on platform seven, Mindy stood ready to attach our harnesses to the zip. “Who’s up?”
“Where are you from, anyway?” Goldie asked her as we huddled around the central post while checking out the next course. “I can’t quite place the accent.”
“Belarus.”
“Where’s that?”
“You know Russia? Belarus share border with Russia and Ukraine and Poland and Lithuania and Latvia.”
“Sounds like it’s landlocked,” said Orphie.
“Like pit in middle of peach.”
“Just like Iowa!” enthused Goldie. “Do you grow sweet corn?”
Mindy shook her head. “No corn.”
“What about hogs?” asked Grover. “Do your farmers raise pigs?”
“No pig.”
“How did you end up in Alaska?” Ennis followed up.
“Work visa. Spent summer as maid at lodge in Denali Park. Met Prince Charming. Got married.” She wiggled her ring finger to flaunt the gold band around it. “Plan to become citizen. Have many babies.”
“So you came for the work and stayed for the romance,” said Florence in a wistful voice. “That’s so sweet. It’s like a fairy tale.”
“I snagged the leading role in a stage play with a premise like that years ago,” Goldie reminisced. “It was called From Russia with Love.”
“That’s not a stage play,” corrected Ennis. “It’s a James Bond novel.”
“This was an original stage play,” explained Goldie. “The scriptwriter merely lifted the title off Ian Fleming to attract a wider audience. Titles can’t be copyrighted.”
“I remember seeing that play,” mocked Thor. “Florence dragged me to see it. It wasn’t about a spy with a license to kill. It was some girly type soap opera with a bunch of third-rate actors with bad accents flouncing around the stage. And if you played the lead, I hate to tell you, but you stunk up the place.”
Goldie dismissed him with a flick of her wrist. “If your opinion meant anything, Thor, I’d be crushed, but since no one values what you think, I’ll accept your words as high praise.”
“No more talk.” Mindy held up her hands. “You peoples hurt my ears. So…ladies first, yes?”
“How about guys first?” demanded Thor. He detoured around Florence on the outer perimeter of the platform, stepping wide to avoid running into her but so dangerously close to the end of the platform that if he hadn’t been tethered to the hitching post, he might have—
Losing his balance when Florence accidentally bumped into him, he stutter-stepped toward the edge and windmilled his arms, stumbling off the edge in unexpected freefall and plunging headlong to the earth below, his all-important orange straps and carabiners streaming outward like dangling appendages.
I shrieked in horror, the words he’d used to torment Orphie ringing prophetically in my ears.
He’d been right.
It was an awfully long way to the ground.
eighteen
“I realize you’ve all just witnessed a traumatic event, but I need to take preliminary statements while the details are still fresh in your minds, so if you’ll find a seat for yourselves somewhere, we can begin.”
We were in the equipment hut with Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Patrick Quinn, surrounded by an array of harnesses, helmets, carabiners, rope, rain gear, boots, cables, and winches. Quinn had arrived first on the scene after Sydney Ann had made the 911 call, but he’d needed his four-wheel drive to maneuver through the muddy access road and an assist from a couple of the other instructors to locate Thor’s body at the base of platform six on the course. Mindy and the rest of us had been left stranded at the top of the platform while Sydney Ann had rappelled to the ground from platform seven and raced to check on Thor’s status. But it had been apparent to me even before she arrived that he hadn’t survived the fall.
In the midst of the chaos and confusion I’d hammered out arrangements with Etienne to have him and Alison escort their groups back to the cabins to await Lieutenant Kitchen, urging them to return directly to our lodgings rather than stop at the roadside café we’d promised. I suspected no one would be happy about missing this fabled watering hole, but circumstances had changed, so we needed to adjust. After dropping the group off, Steele could drive back here to pick us up when the authorities were through with us.
Florence had remained remarkably calm throughout the incident. “She’s in shock,” Goldie and Orphie had confided to me as they’d comforted her atop the platform. But the level of calm that Florence was exhibiting smacked of more than just shock.
It smacked of relief.
Per Trooper Quinn’s request, the six people in my group sat down on folding chairs and metal footlockers while Sydney Ann and Mindy sat cross-legged on the floor, looking even more stunned than the rest of us. Seating himself on an available folding chair, Quinn removed a pen and notepad from his shirt pocket, and after jotting down all our names, he put a bead on Florence.
“So let me start out by saying that I’m very sorry about your husband’s accident, Mrs. Thorsen.”
Florence nodded. “Thank you.”
“And since I’ve never ziplined, I’d like to have one of the instructors tell me how the process is supposed to work.”
Sydney Ann jumped in with the information about the guest harnesses, the stationary cable that served to anchor everyone, and how guests’ carabiners were always tethered to a hitching post until an instructor attached both clips to the zipline. “It’s against our regulations to allow any guest to be present on a platform without being anchored by two carabiners.”
Quinn canted his head. “And yet Mr. Thorsen fell to his death because neither of his carabiners was attached.”
“I attach him to center cable when he finish fifth zip,” argued Mindy. She pantomimed the motion of detaching his first carabiner from the zip and fastening it to the hitching post. “Click.” And then the second. “Click.” She held Quinn’s gaze. “Impossible for him to fall.”
“So how do you explain what happened?”
“I no explain. Man must have fiddled with carabiners. Detached himself. But Sydney Ann warn before first zip, ‘No fiddle with carabiners. Very dangerous.’ Maybe he not listen.”
“Why would he want to detach himself?” prodded Quinn.
Mindy shrugged. “This man act like beeg shot. He not like following instructions.”
Quinn glanced at the rest of us for confirmation. “Is that true? Did Thor Thorsen take pleasure in acting like a big shot?”
Glances fired back and forth between the five remaining book clubbers. “Thor was…difficult,” offered Goldie, “and quite hard to like.”
“He didn’t think rules applied to him,” added Orphie, “so he always ignored them.”
“He was obnoxious,” said Ennis.
“He didn’t like me,” confessed Grover. “In fact, he always went out of his way to insult me. Anything he could say or do to ruin my day, he’d do it. He thrived on making me feel miserable. Made him feel powerful.”
Quinn’s face softened as he regarded Florence. “I’m sorry you have to listen to this, Mrs. Thorsen.”
“I don’t mind, Officer. It’s all true. Thor was toxic. My one regret is that I didn’t discover his sho
rtcomings until after I married him. He kept the real Thor under wraps until I had a ring on my finger.”
“There’s always divorce.”
Florence shook her head. “There was no divorcing Thor. Even if I’d gone through with it, I’d never be rid of him. He would have found a way to torture me until I died.”
“So…his death today,” questioned Quinn. “Would you label this a way out for you?”
Goldie sucked in her breath. “Are you suggesting that Florence might have had a hand in killing her own husband?”
He kept his gaze riveted on Florence. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what transpired right before your husband fell, Mrs. Thorsen?”
She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her eyes to focus on a random spot on the floor. “We were all bunched together on the platform, listening to Mindy tell us how she’d ended up in Alaska. And as usual Thor demanded to be first across the next zip, so he circled around me on the outside edge of the platform, but we accidentally bumped into each other. I remember him throwing his arms in the air to regain his balance, but the next thing I knew he wasn’t brushing past me.” She looked up from the floor to make eye contact with Quinn. “He was tumbling over the side.”
“You accidentally bumped into each other?” pressed Quinn. “Or did you give him a well-placed push on purpose?”
“No, I didn’t push him,” cried Florence. “He was the one who did the initial shoving so he could get to the front of the line.”
“So you deny being the person who unfastened his carabiners, Mrs. Thorsen?”
“Of course I deny it. I wouldn’t dare monkey with those things. Besides, they looked so tangled, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out which carabiner went with which harness.”
“Carabiners not tangled,” challenged Mindy. “I know which clip belong which guest.” She made a V of her index and middle fingers and directed them at her face. “I have good eye. Never make mistake with harness, even if woman say straps tangled.”