It had been years. He had grown a little distant from Tom and the kids since the divorce and Tom’s move to Boston. Then Judy remarried. “I was really sorry to hear about your mom,” Hauck said. This was the first time they’d been face-to-face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it out for the funeral.” He was on a special case on the Greenwich force at that time and couldn’t leave. “She was quite a gal.”
“That’s okay. I know you had your own loss you were dealing with, too,” Dani said. “Dad told me. I never got to meet your daughter.”
Hauck had lost his youngest daughter, run over in his own driveway with Hauck at the wheel as he backed out of the garage after a spat with Beth. The moment that had altered his life, leading to the Dark Ages, as he called it, when he and Beth divorced and he was treated for depression for about a year.
“I think you would have gotten along. Anyway, let’s not get caught up in all those old stories, okay? You’re a whitewater guide. Boyfriend?”
Dani shrugged. “I see someone. No one exactly special. We like to keep it that way.”
“I get it. What about your brother and sister? They’re good?”
“Aggie’s in her residency in Austin. Burn trauma. And Tommy’s at Stanford. Total nerd material. Turns out, he’s the brainiac of the clan.”
“The game’s not over yet,” Hauck said.
Dani smiled and drank down the last of her juice. “Hopefully that will neutralize three days of Subway and Burger King …”
“So Chief Dunn gave me a sense of what happened, and why he felt he had to make a point to you.”
“Chief Dunn …? You mean Wade. Some point …” Dani rolled her eyes.
“All the same, I’d like to hear it from you.”
She told him about what happened. Trey. How she found him out there, and how he could handle that level of rapid blindfolded, and about Rooster, weird as he was, but what he said he saw, and then what happened to him.
“Hot-air balloons don’t just fall out of the sky, do they, Uncle Ty?”
“I don’t know.”
Then she went through how she had found Trey’s helmet, when no one else had even believed he was wearing one, all the way downstream.
“Which proves what?” Hauck asked, finishing up his sandwich.
“It proves that if he was wearing one at the time he hit his head hard enough to kill him, it should have protected him, right? At the very least it should have shown the effects of the impact. Not to mention, how did it happen to come off if he was in his kayak? To me, it all says he wasn’t wearing it when something hit his head.”
“Go on.”
She described the path she’d found above the river and the tire tracks by the road. And then the car that had been there not five minutes after Trey arrived—and then left forty minutes later. The same car Wade knew about two days earlier, and was just sitting on after he kept insisting that nothing had happened. “Why would there be a need to requisition these security tapes if all along he truly felt it was just an accident?”
Hauck shrugged. “Maybe he was just doing his job.”
“Or maybe hiding something.”
Hauck understood from his detective days how evidence can be slanted to look a certain way if you’re inclined to see it through that lens. Especially when that evidence is all totally circumstantial. “Why would anyone want to kill this kid?” he finally had to ask.
“I don’t know. Wade keeps asking me that, too.”
“Chief Dunn … I mean Wade”—Hauck caught himself—“said Trey didn’t have an enemy in the world. And this guy who was drunk …”
“He wasn’t drunk, Uncle Ty. He was sober. He’s back in rehab and I checked what he was drinking.”
“Nonetheless, according to Chief Dunn he wasn’t exactly someone who’d you’d put your trust in as a witness. And not to discount anything you say, but whoever did this, if it’s as you’re suggesting, would have had to go to some extraordinary lengths to execute it and then cover it up. So you’re talking about someone who not only had the means and the capability to get it done, and the knowledge of what this guy Rooster said and did for work, but also the will. This is pretty serious stuff.”
“I realize that,” Dani said.
“Which means this wasn’t some random act against your friend. But something far more organized. And likely with more than one person involved.”
“I know how it sounds, Uncle Ty. But you’ve handled dozens of cases. Just because it’s easier not to believe it, that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Am I right?”
Of all the big cases he’d been involved in, and some went high up into the government, it was always easier at first to doubt your reasoning. To even accept yourself that it was true. “You were a science major in college, if I recall?”
“Geology.” She shrugged. “I’m like an expert on rocks and things.”
“And in geology, if someone was pushing this theorem, one that had a way of making you believe it if you fit a number of things together, but was unsubstantiated by fact, only possibility, no matter how credible the thinking behind it seemed … what would you advise them to do?”
“I know where you’re going with this, Uncle Ty … I’d tell them to test it. To corroborate it. With evidence. Both in the field and in the lab.” She took out a pen and grabbed a napkin and wrote something on it, and passed it across to Hauck. “So there …”
It was a number. D69-416.
Hauck asked, “What’s this?”
“Your corroboration. It’s the license plate number of the car that went in there just after Trey. From the security film at the park gate. Just check it out. You can do that, can’t you?”
“I don’t exactly have jurisdiction to do anything out here. Plus, I gave your stepfather my word.”
“Ex-stepfather,” Dani said. “Look, Wade’s basically a good guy. I don’t know why he would have sat on this. But he’s not exactly his own man these days. He’s burned a lot of bridges and he’s got a son who’s in a VA hospital who needs every dime he has. I think it’s fair to say, there’s not another job for him after this one.”
“So maybe he did check it out. And it went nowhere.”
“If that’s the case, then what’s there to lose? Please, that’s all I’m asking. If you can bring down the secretary of the Treasury, I know you can manage to get an ID on a license plate. If it leads nowhere, I’ll drop it. I promise. I’ll be a good girl.”
Hauck nodded. He folded the napkin up and put it in his shirt pocket. “And if it does lead somewhere …?”
“If it does lead somewhere, it means that Trey and Rooster were murdered …”
“And we give it to Chief Dunn. That’s the only way I’ll do it. I’m not going around playing cowboy here, Dani. That’s the deal.”
“Fine.” She nodded. “I agree.”
“Good. So now that we’ve gotten past that, where does a guy stay in this place? On an ex-detective’s wage. I don’t need to bunk next to Jay-Z and Beyoncé.”
“You’re welcome to stay with me.” Dani shrugged. “If you don’t mind the company.”
“Roommates?” Hauck asked.
“No. Long tail. Four legs.”
“I love dogs, but maybe it’s better if we keep this a working relationship,” Hauck said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Brooke …?” Hauck called in from a room at a pleasant-looking motel not far from Dani’s apartment unit.
His secretary back at Talon was silent, clearly startled. “Ty …? Is that you?”
He hadn’t called into the office in almost a month. “The one and only.”
“Where are you? Still in the Caribbean? I have a ton of mail and some messages I was going to send in my weekly email.”
“I’m actually in Aspen.”
“Aspen? Colorado?”
“Nearby anyway. A town called Carbondale.”
“Jeez, you certainly win the prize on how to get the most out a leave of absence. What happen
ed to the boat?”
“It’s in a marina back in St. Kitts. An old friend called me to get involved in something, something to do with his daughter who got into a bit of trouble out here.”
“Everyone was expecting you to come back here.”
“I’m just checking out a few things and then I’ll be back. Which is the reason I’m calling. I need you to do something …”
“Ty, everyone here wants to know what’s going on. People come up to me, as if I have some inside information. Even Mr. Foley asked.” Tom Foley was Hauck’s boss, president of Talon, who Hauck knew was using him, his name recognition at least, to attract accounts. “I’m not sure how to respond.”
“Respond how I would respond myself. I don’t know. Soon. If Foley needs to reach me, he knows my number, same as you.”
“He said he’s tried, Ty.”
“Well, yes, in fact, he has,” Hauck admitted. “Somehow I always seem to be at sea.”
Brooke laughed. She’d worked at Talon when Hauck arrived there. But over time she had proven again and again how loyal she was to him. “Last I heard, Colorado isn’t anywhere near the coast. I think he’d be pretty mad if I didn’t connect you.”
“I’d be mad if you did.”
“Very nice of you to put your executive assistant in the middle between you. I didn’t take this call, okay? So what is it you need?”
“I have a Colorado license plate number. I want to know who it belongs to.”
“How do you want me to find out?” The company had several ways to go about it. Both above and below board. Proper channels was to put though a request through Motor Vehicles, but they would need to know why and that could take a few days. Hauck was hoping to clear this up and get back to his boat as quickly as he could.
Less transparently, they could lean on their various law enforcement contacts they had. In the police or FBI. That could get the information in an hour. Those kinds of favors were called in every day. But then there would be a trail. Someone would know. And sometimes, you didn’t want a trail.
The third way was to just pay someone off. There’d be no trail. No one would ever know. They’d get the information in a flash. Just a ledger in the company’s cash account.
“You choose. It’s all aboveboard,” Hauck said. “And it’s not that kind of getting involved. At least not yet. I just want it back as quickly as you can. Being on land is making me dizzy.” If Brooke was one thing, she was resourceful. And discreet. “Okay …?”
“I’ll have it for you soon as I can … And what about Mr. Foley …?”
Hauck paused. He could simply take Brooke off the hook and just speak with him. “Tell Tom it’s nice out here if he’d like to meet me for a drink at the Ajax Tavern …”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll appreciate the humor. I’ll be back with the information you’re looking for as soon as I have it,” Brooke said. “In the meantime, try and stay out of trouble. The mountains are beautiful out there. How are you spending your day?”
“On the water.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dani took him whitewater rafting. She took her normal shift on the afternoon run. There were seven people on board, a myriad of ages, and Hauck went along.
“I want to introduce my favorite godfather sitting up in front,” she said, as they coasted toward Entrance Exam. “Just want everyone to know, no special treatment for him … You gotta earn your place up there and paddle like everyone else …”
“Not a problem,” Hauck called back.
“Well, he’s just used to a desk job these days. So we’ll see. The rest of you are gonna have to make up for him. And by the way, that’s our first challenge up there.”
Hauck loved it. The reckless feeling of speed and that you might careen over at any point. The bumps, like doing the moguls on the slopes. The feel of icy whitewater against him. He even went in for a plunge at some point, at the end of the course when the water was calm.
“How’s that water feel, Uncle Ty? Not exactly like the Caribbean, huh? Funny how the jet stream doesn’t quite make it up here … The ol’ Arctic vortex does, though …”
Everyone laughed.
Hauck saw what it was that spoke so personally to her out here.
On the ride back, he sat next to Dani on the bus and they talked about her life out here. She was pretty and funny, and seemed to cater to the younger kids, who no doubt thought she was about the coolest, sexiest counselor they’d ever had.
And she was sharp, pointing out some geological details—how the river was formed, the sturdy characteristics of the aspen trees that are always the first to come back after a forest fire and are all connected by the roots. The massive avalanche fields, and how they occur. Nothing like the brash, obstinate gal he had met in jail.
When they got back to the company headquarters, she introduced him to Geoff, the owner, who was behind the counter showing videos of the raft going over the falls, which his crew had already put on a disk. Hauck noticed how he looked at Dani in a certain way, and how he said, “Nice to meet you, mate,” in that likable Aussie manner, and how maybe they would run into each other later on. Outside, as Hauck and Dani went to get in her wagon, he asked leadingly, “So is that the ‘no one special’ …?”
Dani shrugged. “Geoff’s okay, really. Though it’s probably not the best thing in the world to take up with the boss, right?” She opened the door and stepped in, without giving him his answer.
He shrugged as he got in. “Seemed nice to me.”
Inside, Hauck dug into his jacket and took out his cell. He kept it there while they were on the river. He saw that an email had come in from Brooke with a note: “I think this is what you’re looking for. No worries about the trail.”
He opened the attachment.
“You know anyone named Colin Adrian?” he said to Dani.
She shook her head. “Who’s that?”
“The white Jeep you’re so interested in seems to be registered to him.” He looked at her.
“Adrian?” She leaned over and took a look. It was just a registration. No driver’s license. Nothing else. “We could ask Allie. But I think she’s already up in Trey’s hometown with their son. The funeral’s on Wednesday.” Dani handed the phone back to him. “I don’t know anyone named that around here.”
“No reason you would. It says his address is on Tuttle Road. In Greeley.”
“Greeley?” Dani’s eyes looked over at his.
“That mean something?” he asked.
“I don’t know …” But her face took on a pallor that suggested that it did. “But Greeley’s where Trey was from, Uncle Ty.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“It doesn’t prove a thing,” he told her, over a venison steak and a long-overdue beer at Allegria on Main Street that night. Dani was clearly excited about what they’d found. “I looked it up. Greeley’s got a hundred thousand people in it. There’s even a university there. It’s not exactly much of a coincidence that someone else might have come from there.”
“I’ll give you that,” Dani said, over salmon in a tamarind glaze, “if you tell me what that someone is doing at the river for literally only forty-five minutes. He pretty much followed Trey in. He probably had no idea his car was being recorded. And he didn’t stick around any longer than it would have taken to drive down ahead of him and head down to the river. He could have been waiting for Trey there. Not to mention everything else that doesn’t make sense: the spot where he was killed; the missing helmet, the path I found.”
“It could have been for any reason.” Hauck cut a slice of his steak. “He could have just been driving around. He could have been taking nature shots for National Geographic for all I know.”
“You’re starting to sound like Wade,” Dani said.
“Speaking of whom, it’s my intention to hand this information over to him in the morning, just so you know.”
“You’re kidding?” She put down her fork. “Why?”
“Uh,
because he’s the police chief in town … Not to mention I gave him my word I wouldn’t go around his back. I’m supposed to be keeping you out of this, Dani. Not getting you further in.”
“But Wade already has this information,” Dani said. “And if he doesn’t, he’s even more lame than I thought. He picked up a copy of that tape the day after it happened. The ten-thousand-dollar question is why …? If he thought this whole thing was just a stupid accident like he’s been saying. So why hasn’t he gone back up there to run this guy’s name by Allie, and see if it means anything to her? Or find out who he is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Truth is, Uncle Ty, he hasn’t gotten off his ass, except to take the parks inspector out to lunch, or go to Aspen and stand behind Sheriff Warrick and try and act smart while they’re looking at that balloon.”
Hauck dipped a bite of venison into a chipotle tomato sauce. “I sure hope when I leave you have nicer things to say about your godfather than you do your stepfather.”
“Uncle Ty …” Dani looked at him. “Besides, I don’t really even know you yet.” She gave him a crooked smile behind a bite of salmon.
“Gee, thanks.” They continued eating for a while. Hauck asked her, “So what are you thinking the right thing is to do?”
“I’m thinking the right thing would be to drive up there to Greeley, or wherever Trey is from—I think the town’s actually called Templeton, just outside of it. It’s up on the plains north of Denver.”
“And then do what?”
“And then see if this person Adrian has any connection to Trey. This is possibly a murderer, Uncle Ty. And like you said, look at what they did to try and cover it up. It might all be part of something much larger.”
“Sorry.” Hauck put a piece of venison in his mouth. “No way.”
“No way …?”
“I’m not on board with that, Dani. Anyway, I gave my word. Not just to the chief, but to your father, too. Your stepfather and your father. Besides, if I land you back in hot water,” he said with a grin, “I’ll be out of a job.”
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