by Kathy Reichs
“And now the field’s wide open.” Habit. My brain was already going to a dark place.
Reynolds shook his head. “Elon’s their new golden boy. If he ever gets back from Russia.”
Steele snorted. “Whatever. They can’t pick the dude who turned back before reaching the top.”
“Elon didn’t summit Everest with you?”
“No. And now he’s a finalist. Show’s a joke.”
It was the most emotion I’d seen from Steele. A sore point?
“So Brighton was your guide?”
“Are you kidding?” Reynolds mashed a fry into ketchup, downed it. “None of us is qualified to be a guide. We’re Seven Summits people.”
“The highest points on each of the seven continents.” I repeated my nugget of climbing knowledge. But something had bugged me since the subject had arisen with Blythe Hallis earlier. I’d gophered around in my freshman-year world geography memories. “Aren’t there only six? Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, South America, and North America.”
“Geologically, yes. Politically, no. Europe and Asia are considered separate, so you include Mont Blanc between France and Italy, and Elbrus, along Russia’s southern border with Asia. It’s actually eight, because you have to do two for the Oceanic continental mass. Kosciuszko is the highest point on the Australian mainland, but the Carstensz Pyramid of Papua New Guinea is technically taller.”
Reynolds might be obnoxious, but he wasn’t dumb. I started to ask a question, but he cut me off.
“The point is”—air jab with a fry—“that none of the Seven Summits are extreme mountaineering climbs. Even with the altitude challenges, Everest isn’t technical. We thought we were trained and in shape.”
“We really thought we could do it,” Steele echoed.
“So what happened?” I was growing less patient with their skirting and dodging.
“Altitude.”
“Go on.” Bunching and tossing my napkin onto my plate. Which was largely empty now.
“We didn’t really know what we were getting into. None of us were eight-thousanders.”
“Pretend I don’t read Outside magazine,” I said.
“Eight-thousanders are the fourteen peaks in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges with summits in the death zone.”
“Altitudes at which there isn’t sufficient oxygen to sustain human life.” There. I knew that, too. Tough on humans. Above eight thousand meters, oxyhemoglobin levels plummet.
“We were all death zone virgins.” As Reynolds answered, Steele shrank even more, eyes down, face still as a moth on a branch. I gathered she hadn’t enjoyed her visit to the death zone. “Everything’s a bitch above eight thousand meters. Breathing, eating, pissing, sleeping. Ever hear of HAPE and HACE?”
Reynolds used the acronyms for “high-altitude pulmonary edema” and “high-altitude cerebral edema.” In lay terms, fluid in the lungs or brain. Triggered by oxygen deprivation, HAPE and HACE are the primary causes of death related to high-altitude exposure.
“Is that what killed Brighton?”
“What am I, a doctor?” The retort carried some strong emotion. Anguish? Guilt?
Flash of insight. “You weren’t with her when she died. Neither of you.”
From Steele, a haunted stare. From Reynolds, a nervous thumb working sweat on his mug.
I pushed my plate to one side. Sipped my drink. Let the silence stretch. Reynolds broke it first.
“You don’t know what it’s like up there.”
“Tell me.” Waving off the waitress who was heading our way.
“Everything’s wrong—the air smells different, your clothes feel different, your food tastes different. If you can manage food at all.” He paused, struggling, dissatisfied with what he’d just said. “At the top, your brain doesn’t work. Taking one step feels like running a marathon.”
“I had to walk around a dead body,” Steele’s voice floated like smoke from her shadowy corner. “My brain was telling me to cry, but all I could think about was getting up, getting down, getting away.”
“Getting down is the hard part,” Reynolds said.
“That’s what got Bright.” Steele.
“We’ve no idea what got Bright,” Reynolds snapped, then refocused on me. “The last we saw her, we were going down and she was heading up.”
“Why didn’t you climb together?” I asked, nothing in my voice.
“Elon turned back at Kangshung Face. He was feeling awful.” Steele’s pale face was all eyes and trembling mouth. “We lost Bright at the top of the Hillary Step. She—”
Reynolds cut in. “That’s a twelve-meter vertical face. The last challenge before the summit. Everyone has to ascend with fixed ropes, and it can turn into a bottleneck. But not that day.” Reynolds swallowed. Drew a deep breath. “Bright was ahead of us.”
“Always,” Steele interjected.
“She stayed at the top to help another climber who was ascending behind us.”
“We kept on and made the summit just before turnaround.”
“Turnaround?”
“You have to head down by two P.M. or you can’t make it back to camp by dark.”
I nodded understanding.
“Above eight thousand meters you need supplemental oxygen all the time. You can’t bivouac that high because you’ll run out. We each had just enough to summit and return.” Reynolds sounded defensive.
“We only stayed at the top ten minutes.” Steele’s saucer eyes were haunted. “No one stays longer than that.”
“Dial back the drama, Dara.” Reynolds gave a tight shake of his head. “On the way down we passed Bright, about a hundred meters below the peak.”
“With a guide?” I asked.
“You kidding? We were too cool for guides.”
The voice came down hard from outside our booth.
Startled, we all turned.
Chapter 5
The man was bearded and sinewy tall, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders. Holey tee underneath. Boots. Startling green eyes. Uninvited, he dropped to the bench beside me. Assuming this was the tardy Damon James, I slid left to make room.
Chilly nod to the new arrival, then Reynolds resumed his story.
“We used a semi-independent or ‘supported’ company, as they’re called. Sherpas who provide tents, food, supplemental oxygen, fixed ropes. But no guides.”
“Because we’re badass and can get ourselves up and down unassisted.” James was doing sardonic. Maybe his usual demeanor. “Bright’s choice. Or The Heights’s choice.” To me. “They told you about the climbers’ Holy Grail?”
“They did.” Back to Reynolds. “So Brighton should have been able to summit by turnaround? She had thirty minutes to go ninety meters.” The length of a short home run. Three NBA courts. One football field.
Just three sets of eyes, staring.
James spoke first. “Doubtful.”
“People don’t understand.” Steele, forward now, elbows on the table. “You’re dizzy all the time. Your brain doesn’t work. One morning I sat in my tent staring at boots for God knows how long, clueless which pair was mine. I had to rest twenty minutes between putting them on and tying the laces.”
“Imagine climbing a thousand stairs, carrying fifty pounds of gear, breathing only through a cocktail straw,” said Reynolds. “One step can take ten minutes. The rule is to never exceed sixty percent of your physical capacity.”
“Which is near zero up there,” offered James.
“The rule is to turn around by two P.M.,” Steele repeated, moving toward petulance.
“Rules meant nothing to Bright.” From James. “I tried to talk her into coming down with us but she’d have none of it. She was determined to summit. And absolutely certain it wouldn’t take her past time.”
“We should’ve made them turn around,” Steele said.
“Them?”
“She and the woman she stopped to help,” Reynolds said.
&
nbsp; “You couldn’t make Bright do anything.” James, now doing scornful.
Something didn’t ring true. “If Brighton was so focused on summiting, why did she stop to offer help at Hillary Step?”
“It was weird.” Steele’s voice trailed off.
“Weird?” I prompted.
“Bright always had to be first.”
“Maybe she did have HAPE or HACE.” Reynolds didn’t sound convinced. “It’s like being drunk. Causes you to make bad decisions.”
“It might have been fine, but for the storm,” Steele said.
“There was a storm?” Were these guys for real, or feeding me the plot from Into Thin Air?
“Squall.” James corrected. “It came up fast and slowed everything down.”
“We were half-frozen by the time we got to camp,” Steele said. “My oxygen regulator was choked with ice. Cash was hallucinating and nearly wandered off the side of the mountain.” Disgusted exhale from Reynolds. “We passed out in separate tents. It was after dark when Elon realized Bright hadn’t come back.”
Again, the feeling their story didn’t track. “Nap time over, everyone’s ready to share mountaintop selfies, and no one notices your ringleader’s not there?”
“We had no idea she was in trouble.” Steele was vehement. Too vehement? “She didn’t radio. After passing her below the summit we never heard from her again. It made no sense.”
“Another guide alerted our Sherpa.,” Reynolds picked up the thread. “Said the second late climber came down in bad shape, had to be escorted to Camp One and airlifted out. Damon wanted to go up after Bright, but it was impossible. We were exhausted, it was dark, and—full honesty—we lacked the skills to get the job done.”
“We couldn’t raise her on the radio. It was horrible.” Steele was either genuinely devastated or an Emmy-class actress.
“Nature one, humans zero.” James pantomimed marking a score sheet. “The next day, a Taiwanese group found her body in an alcove on the South Summit, about a hundred and fifty meters below the top. A couple of Sherpas tried to dislodge her but she was frozen in place. Not barely alive frozen, like Beck Weathers or David Sharp. Dead frozen.”
Seeing my look, Reynolds explained the reference. “Sharp was a climber who got frozen to the ground while still breathing and had to be left. His body’s now a trail marker, of sorts. Weathers, they genuinely thought was dead when they left him behind, but he somehow wandered into camp the next morning. They were able to get him off the mountain.”
“Most of him. He left behind a nose, an arm, and most of his toes,” James said. “But I saw the before pics. He wasn’t so great-looking to begin with.”
Jesus flipping Christ.
James rolled on, matter-of-fact. “Brighton was dead. There was nothing we could do. It was descend or die. Everyone knew the risks going in.”
“What do you think happened to Brighton?” Not barely alive frozen. Dead frozen.
James shrugged. “She was either too exhausted or too disoriented to work the ropes down Hillary Step. She sat down to rest and froze in place. It happens.” He paused. “She might have made it overnight if the temperature hadn’t taken a nosedive. But it was just too fucking cold and she had too little oxygen.”
Steele chimed in. “The other climber told the Sherpas that Bright insisted she descend Hillary Step first. Claimed she waited at the bottom but Bright never showed. Said she didn’t have the strength or oxygen to go back up, so she headed to camp to find help.”
“What was the other climber’s name?”
Ten seconds of nothing.
“She was Italian, I think.” Steele looked to Reynolds.
“No. Colombian.”
“She was a solo climber,” James said. “We didn’t know her.”
“You never tried to locate her? I mean later, after you were all down off the mountain?” These three were a piece of work.
“What was there to say?” Reynolds shrugged. “Bright was dead.”
The new silence was broken by Steele. “I’m sorry but I can’t keep kicking myself. It’s been three years. Time to let it go.”
By implied command, Reynolds swung his feet from under the table and stood.
Also rising, Steele said, “It was hard.” Almost pleading. “You just don’t know.” Then, Reynolds in the lead, bodies not touching, the two strode toward the door.
“Ain’t she a darlin’?”
My gaze swung to James. He was watching Reynolds and Steele, his face unreadable. But the venom in his tone was clear.
“You don’t like Dara?”
“If anyone had motive to leave Bright on that mountain it was Dara.”
I didn’t see that coming. “Seriously?”
“Dara hated Brighton. As in, wanted to be her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stand by your man.” The lyric half-sung, half-whispered.
“Dara wanted to be with Cash?”
James did something meaningful with his brows.
“She seems so passive.”
“Passive as a coiled mamba until it takes off your face.” At my look. “Fine. I shouldn’t single Dara out. Everyone verbally loooooooved Brighton, but they were all trying to score something off her. Even me.”
“Oh?”
“You know we were business partners, right?”
“Dara mentioned it.”
“Bright came up with the idea to start a nonprofit to help Nepali Sherpa. Called it Bright Ascents. Hidden agenda: boost our profiles and make us reality TV worthy. I had the Everest connections but Brighton had the charisma. She was the star power with the rich friends. In less than a year she raised over a million bucks.”
“Your role?”
“My handsome face and boyish charm.” Getting no reaction from me, he went on: “I knew the climbing community. Could navigate Nepali red tape. If we ever started a project, I was going to grease the wheels. Until then, I was just along for the ride.” Winsome wink. “Looking pretty.”
“And a small salary?”
“Do you work for free?”
I dipped my chin, acknowledging he had a point.
“Elon Gass?”
“Poor Elon never had a dime to his name. Bright funded his trip. He owed her upwards of thirty thousand dollars.”
“Pretty steep for a walk up a mountain.”
Too late I realized my bad pun. James ignored or failed to catch it.
Derisive expulsion of air. “And that’s the budget version, ma’am.”
“Depends on how you count costs.” My reply was acid. Brighton Hallis had paid the highest price possible.
James scooched right and stood in one quick, controlled move, all angles and knees and sharp shoulders. A long meeting of our eyes. Then, “There’s no love lost between Dara and me. My view? She’s not the brightest bird in the cage. But she’s got one thing right. You weren’t there, you can’t judge. Brighton put herself at risk and ‘paid the price.’ ” Air quotes like angry little hooks. “Hell, she put the whole team at risk. We all could’ve died. I’m sorry she’s gone, but it wasn’t our fault, and I refuse to feel guilty just because she was a pretty blonde with the last name Hallis. Case closed.”
With that, he stalked off.
In a short forty-eight hours I would learn how wrong they all were.
Chapter 6
It was Tuesday before my informal “knee therapy” yielded results. At 10:47:22 EST, I was finally able to fully extend Brighton Hallis’s right leg. I checked in with Larabee.
“You’re doing fluoroscopy?” His muffled voice told me he was shoulder-snugging the phone, doing something else.
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to work alone.”
“Fine.” It wasn’t.
“Ditto if you’re ready to roll her for prints.”
“I think the fingers are thawed enough to rehydrate.”
“Any thoughts on what happened to her?”
“Hypothermia, hypoxia, HACE
, exhaustion, exposure, head trauma…” I ticked off the lineup of suspects. “A brain scan may be in order if you want to nail specific cause of death.” Soft tissue and organs are Larabee’s department.
He grunted and hung up. Or dropped the phone. Hard to tell.
Suited and gloved, I organized my approach. Prints first. Then radiography. Then. I wasn’t quite sure about the next then.
Maneuvering free the accessible hand, I clamped the shears around the thumb and squeezed firmly, using both palms as before. The blades slowly bit into the desiccated flesh. Severed the bone. The thumb dropped to the table with a soft thup. I repeated the process with each finger. When finished, my palms felt bruised inside their layer of latex. But five partial digits lay on the table, dark and hard as petrified twigs.
I placed a stainless-steel bowl in the sink and filled it with a tissue-enhancing solution, the kind used by morticians to plump up Grandpa or Aunt Dee. After submerging the digits, I stepped back and stared, “watched pot” style. Pointless. The process would take hours, perhaps even days.
On X-ray, superimposed bones can be difficult to interpret. Horizontal bodies are easier to sort. Applying cautious but steady pressure, I eased the bent figure toward a supine and fully extended posture. Not easy, but I got the job done. Except for the boots, which were still frozen solid, giving new meaning to the expression “died with her boots on.” For now, they had to stay. Cursing inwardly that every tech was tied up elsewhere, I wheeled the body out of autopsy room five and down the hall to X-ray.
Fluoroscopy is a type of real-time imaging in which X-ray images are sent to a monitor. Overly simplistic, but you get the idea. I hoped a full-body scan would reveal any abnormalities, trauma, or evidence of disease in the skull, skeleton, musculature, or gut. The technology would also allow me to make hard copies of specific views that might prove useful for comparison to Brighton Hallis’s antemortem medical records.
After rolling the gurney next to the apparatus, which looks sort of like an open-air MRI or CT setup, I muscled the body across onto the platform, head and shoulders first, followed by legs and booted feet. Then I donned a lead apron and radiation glasses, set the dials as I’d seen scores of technicians do, and stepped to the viewing monitor.