by Blake Pierce
Mackenzie quietly got out of bed and grabbed up her phone. Not wanting to wake Ellington and not having her earbuds packed, she went into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet. She pulled up Charles Rudeke’s audio files and started to listen to them again. She had only a slight idea of what she was looking for and, quite honestly, wasn’t even sure she would find it.
She listened to the file where he spoke about the feeling of being followed. Mackenzie wondered if this might have been Brittany Lutz, again stalking after another climber. Or perhaps Brittany Lutz was a special case; maybe she had only followed Charles.
But why? There’s no obvious connection between the two…
This train of thought was derailed when she came to the sixth recording, one dated just over five weeks ago. When she realized the depth of the entry, she started it over and played it back from the start. She listened intently as Charles Rudeke’s voice filled the bathroom.
“Tamara never understood why I do this. And I wish I could explain it to her. I wish I could tell her how it feels like I’m conquering something, even on the smaller climbs. I know she views it as nothing more than a grown man sidestepping into childlike adventures. She thinks it’s immature. She’s never come out and said it, but I think that’s the case.
“I started mapping out the route to the top of Devil’s Claw today. I think it’s going to be relatively easy. I’m going up on the side no one else has really ever done before. The start of it is down this weird little path that arcs right back up on the eastern side of the rock face. It’ll probably add an extra twenty minutes to the climb, but there’s plenty of natural handholds along the way. Some guys at the bar were saying the climb on this side is a little harder, but I don’t see it. I think it’ll go well. Just need to practice the switch-over halfway up and work on getting back on track with my fingerboard training.
“This might be the last time I attempt to get Tamara interested in this. A few of the guys I’ve met at the meet-ups talk about how their wives and girlfriends are turned on by the fact that they climb. Tamara needs to hang with some of these women. I don’t know what her deal is. I wish I could explain to her the adrenaline rush, the sense of clarity…the realization that I’ve just done something that not everyone can do. I used to be one of those beginners that froze up ten feet off the ground and never made it back to climbing. To think of how far I’ve come and not being able to really share that with her…it sucks.”
Mackenzie stopped the recording and thought about the last few comments.
…the realization that I’ve just done something that not everyone can do…
…those beginners that froze up ten feet off the ground and never made it back to climbing...
Brittany Lutz had seemed like a strong suspect because she had been injured and something she loved had been taken away from her. Add a potential head injury, and she seemed to be a good fit. But still, the issue of her injured leg needed to be considered. And even if she had been stalking Charles Rudeke and other climbers, there was no evidence that she had done so higher up on tougher trails or at the peaks of higher climbs.
She went back out into the room and grabbed the case file. She glanced to the bedside clock, which read two thirty-seven, and then at Ellington. She kissed him softly on the forehead and then tore off a sheet of paper from the notepad on the bedside table. She scrawled a quick note—At the station—and set it on her side of the bed.
She walked back out into the night, toward the department car she had been fully prepared to return to the station in the morning. But as she got back behind the wheel, she had sinking feeling that she and Ellington might miss their flight in the morning, But that was secondary in that moment. Instead, she was thinking of climbers just starting out, climbers who realized several feet up that they feared the act far too much to go through with it.
She thought of someone so certain of themselves, suddenly paralyzed by fear, and what that must feel like.
By the time she was halfway to the station, this started to make a great deal of sense to her. And she started to think that Brittany Lutz was not the killer at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The station was quiet when Mackenzie got there. There was a small woman sitting at the dispatch desk and two policemen she had not yet met sitting at desks, going over files and casework. Mackenzie knew that at least three other officers would be out on patrol. It made her wonder if there was any officer on duty to manage the confinement and needs of Brittany Lutz.
Mackenzie took her case files to the back of the building to set up shop in the makeshift office she had been using. When she got there, she was surprised to see the door open and the light on. When she entered, she saw Timbrook sitting at the table. She was poring over a few files, one of which was a copy of the shoe print photos from Logan’s View and Devil’s Claw.
She looked up when Mackenzie entered the room. Surprisingly, she did not looked tired. If anything, she looked embarrassed to have been caught working at such an hour. Her nose was severely bruised from Lutz’s attack but the doctors had set it back quite nicely.
“Burning the midnight oil?” Mackenzie asked as she sat down at the table.
“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep.”
“I thought you were going to Tyler’s.”
“I did. I didn’t want to keep him up, so I came down here. I thought about going to speak with Lutz, but thought better of it. I’m still a little pissed about my nose.”
“I think we should stay away from her until she can undergo a psych evaluation anyway,” Mackenzie said. “So, what exactly are you looking for right now?”
“I don’t know. Something just feels sort of off. I feel like we missed something.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“What have you got?” Timbrook asked.
Mackenzie spent the next few minutes explaining how she was starting to think that the shoes matching up could be a coincidence. Until someone could take Lutz’s shoe to the sites and place them side by side, there was no way to be absolutely sure they were a perfect match in size. She then explained how she was starting to think the methods and victim selection of the killer were not the work of someone using envy as a platform, but fear—perhaps a fear of heights and climbing that could have turned into envy, but not an organic form of it. She ended with her speculation that even though Lutz admitted that she enjoyed hiking, they had no proof that her bum knee allowed her to take the more adventurous avenues that would lead to places like the top of Devil’s Claw.
“About the shoes,” Timbrook said. “Waverly left me a little note in the files sometime after my nose got broken. He said he did some digging and found out that the design on the bottom of the shoe print at those two sites probably is the same as the ones on Lutz’s shoes. But what he also found is that this particular pattern is found on the bottom of three different shoe designs put out by New Balance—and two of them were the most popular sellers for the company within the last year. Which means that even if they are an exact match, it’s not as significant as we thought.”
“So let’s say we start from scratch on this,” Mackenzie said. “If we assume that this new profile is the right one, where would we start to look?”
She had a few ideas of her own, but she wanted to give Timbrook this opportunity to come out of her defeated attitude. A loose case, a broken nose…she needed some encouragement.
“I think it would be someone who has at least tried to rock climb in the past but ultimately failed. And not failed like Lutz…but someone who maybe chickened out. And likely not someone with a very social attitude. Someone who is not going to go to someone for help. So probably someone who never really took lessons.”
“I like that. But I was thinking more along the lines of someone who took lessons, but maybe not for very long. Even if you don’t take lessons, you need to at least familiarize yourself with the ropes, the terminology, the safety standards.”
“So maybe we start looking a
round, asking instructors about student that never made it because they froze up.”
“Exactly,” Mackenzie said. “It makes me wonder how early our friend Lance Tyree wakes up. I think he’d be a reasonable place to start.”
“It’s only three ten in the morning,” Timbrook pointed out.
“So let’s give him three hours. In the meantime…you would prefer coffee or a nap?”
“Coffee. But look…anything that happens from here on out, I’m just a tagalong. The docs said I shouldn’t do anything strenuous for a couple of days. There were no signs of a concussion, but they want to play it safe.”
“No worries. It’s not like we’ll be climbing mountains or anything.”
The joke fell flat, resulting in only a soft chuckle from both of them as Timbrook set off to start a pot of coffee.
***
Timbrook placed the call to Lance Tyree shortly after six. Because he had already been awake (he was one of those types who woke up ridiculously early to work out), scheduling an early morning meeting with him was easier than either of them had expected. A meeting was arranged at a coffee shop a few blocks away from Tyree’s house. On the way, Mackenzie called Ellington—not just to fill him in, but to give him the common courtesy to let him know that her views on the case had changed.
“You do this a lot of the time,” he said. “Coming up with some swerve sort of reasoning near the end of a case, usually when most of the people working with you think the case has been closed and taken care of.”
“Oh, I know. But how often does it pay off?”
He chuckled and said: “Most of the time. So I take it we’re not making our flight?”
“Sorry.”
“Hey, this is your show. I just popped up to throw it all off course. What do you need me to do in the meantime?”
“Work with Sheriff Duncan to make sure Brittany Lutz gets a proper psych evaluation. If my hunch is correct, she’ll be released for the murder charges by the end of the day…though she’ll still be looking at charges for attacking an officer and a federal agent.”
“Okay. Keep me posted on this meeting with Tyree.”
They ended the call with Mackenzie still getting the sense that he still felt that she had perhaps been unfair to him after he had arrived yesterday. That was a problem for another time, though; they’d have the entire flight back to DC to work on those things.
They met Tyree right on time, sitting down in a corner booth with him at six forty-five. He seemed pleasant enough, apparently not bothered to have been called at such an early hour.
“Was I not enough help before?” he joked as they all settled in.
“That’s not the case at all,” Timbrook said. “We’ve got another avenue to look into and were hoping you could push us in the right direction.”
“I can certainly try.”
“Can you think back to anyone you worked with who only lasted a lesson or two?” Mackenzie asked. “Particularly someone who might have frozen up once they got off of the ground?”
“Well, there are plenty of first-timers who get a few feet off of the ground and go cold. The worst are the ones that are all gung-ho and confident until about one hundred feet or so and then decide it’s too much. It’s hell to get them down.”
“I’m looking for someone who might have taken it hard and never come back. Someone you can remember who was visibly upset or frustrated. Anyone like that stand out to you?”
“Actually, yes. A guy named Aaron Pinkett. He’s an older guy…sort of well-known around here because he’s one of these guys who tries to live off the grid.”
“What was your experience with him?”
“He hired me to be his instructor about a year or so ago. That first day we went over the basics. I taught him about ropes, a few basic knots, the sort of equipment he’d need to buy. But, like all of my first-timers, I let them get a taste of climbing to send them home excited. A simple little fifty-foot climb over on the western side of Exum Ridge. It’s super simple…a good training place for first-timers. But Aaron got about fifteen feet up and he froze. I mean, he went rigid. I had to talk him down. He came down and tried it again, to the same result. I told him we could come back to it later, maybe try some other time. But he said he just couldn’t do it.”
“That ever happen before with other clients?”
“Sure. A few try it out and decide it’s not for them. But the reason Aaron sticks out in my mind is because I saw him a few times after that. I’d be at the park with clients and see him just sitting or standing around popular climb sites just watching people climb.”
“Did he ever cause trouble?”
“None that I know of. But I will say this…only fifteen or twenty feet up and he was terrified. I’ve seen people get scared, but he was just out of his mind with fear.”
“You said he lives off of the grid. Do you know why?”
“No clue. The little bit of talking he and I did that one lesson, I got the sense that he’s just a recluse, you know? He wasn’t married, had no real friends to speak of. He said he was interested in climbing just to do something different. When I tried to sort of peel that back, he wasn’t big on details. I always like to know why people want to start rock climbing. It helps me cater to their personality when I teach them. But Aaron wasn’t a big talker. He was probably forty-five or so when we met. Sort of set in his ways already…just wanting to try something new.”
“Did you ever try talking to him on any of those times you saw him out and about?” Timbrook asked.
“Once or twice. But he was cold…distant. I just figured he was watching everyone else do something he wasn’t able to do, you know?”
The comment sent a chill through Mackenzie as she recalled the bit from Charles Rudeke’s audio recording that had set her on this current course.
“Any chance you might know where he lives?” Mackenzie asked.
“I have a rough idea, yeah. Like I said…he’s fairly well-known because he lives off of the grid. Sort of an in-joke with the locals, poor guy.”
“One more thing,” Mackenzie said. “When you deal with clients that end up getting scared once they’re up there…what percentage end up overcoming that fear and go on to keep climbing?”
“Honestly, I’d say half. Like maybe right down the middle.”
“But you’re saying Aaron Pinkett was more scared than anyone you’d worked with before?”
“Yeah…so much that he had me scared. When I finally got him down…”
“What is it?” Timbrook asked.
“Well, it was almost like he was gone…it was almost like the guy I had worked knots with just fifteen minutes ago had stepped out and someone else had taken his place.”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Once again, Mackenzie found herself a passenger in a patrol car, heading down rough secondary roads that wound around the mountains. The directions Tyree had given them to Aaron Pinkett’s residence took them in the same direction as Heinz Trail and Devil’s Claw, but slight farther south. The roads they traversed went from paved to dirt, then back to paved, and then, at one point, down a back road covered in gravel. Mackenzie assumed that some of the land was owned by Grand Teton National Park, only not actual park grounds, because of the small plots of land that contained mounds of gravel, dirt, and mulch for grounds upkeep. The park was, after all, only a mile or so away from the road they were currently on. The road seemed to border the property line of the park before dipping further away.
Tyree had told them to keep their eyes out for an old black Toyota pickup. Locals had identified it as belonging to Aaron Pinkett, though the cabin he was believed to reside in was about a quarter mile away from where he parked his truck. As Timbrook brought the patrol car around a partially graveled curve, they spotted the black truck just off of the road, parked on what looked like an old cutover of sorts, used for vehicles that had gone too far down these forgotten back roads and needing to turn around.
Timbrook pulled i
nto the small space beside the truck. As Mackenzie got out, she realized that it was a clever place to try hiding a vehicle. They had only spotted it because they were looking for it. Casual passersby would probably not even see it or, at the very least, just catch a fleeting glimpse of it while driving by.
There was an obvious footpath in front of the pull-over spot. It cut through a dense group of trees before the ground bottomed out into a barren little trip of land. There, smaller trees reached skyward, doing very little to hide the slightly overgrown field beyond. Because of the drop-off in the ground and the two different layers of trees, the field could not be seen from the road. And really, there wasn’t much of a field to see. It was perhaps thirty yards across and fifty feet in depth. As they walked closer toward it, Mackenzie saw that it wasn’t so much a field as a section of land that had been stripped by loggers at some point, given to ruin and overgrown by tall grass and vegetation.
But in the middle of it, there was a small cabin. Actually, to call it a cabin was being generous. It looked more like a shed. It was obvious that it had not seen an ounce of professional construction. The area where the roof met the front wall was covered in places by strips of what looked to be a black tarp. A small weathered picnic table sat to the side, along with a single plastic chair. A good distance away from the little dwelling, there was a hand-crafted fire pit made up of cinderblock fragments and large river rocks. A single pot sat next to one of the rocks, looking like something out of an old westward expansion documentary.
“Son of a bitch,” Timbrook said.
“You know this place?”
“No, but we’ve heard about a guy that lives out in the woods. No complaints, just rumors. We’ve been getting reports for a year or so but since he never caused problems, we never looked into it.”
“No complaints. Sounds promising.”
Mackenzie started to step forward but was distracted by a sound behind them. She wasn’t certain, but sounded like a car door closing. She turned in that direction, but the copse of trees made it impossible to see the place they had parked.