by A. J. Thomas
Christopher stared at the rope in Belkamp’s hands, raised his own hands, his fingers spread wide, and stepped back. The serious expression on the man’s face was getting on Doug’s nerves. He was fully ready to admit he missed Christopher’s fake smile. At least with that damn smile Doug could catch a glimpse of the real Christopher in his eyes. This shut-down, still version of the man who hadn’t quit bouncing since they met was starting to freak him out. Christopher wasn’t looking at him, but was staring at the rope.
“Here.” Agent Shaffer pulled the camera off and draped the strap over Doug’s neck. “Just in case there’s something up there. Have you got gloves?”
“Right here.” Doug pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the stash he kept in the EMT kit in his day pack. “Bags?” he asked, glancing at the FBI agent.
The man passed him two folded Ziploc bags. Doug shoved them into the zippered pouch on his harness and started up a crack in the rock a few feet away. He climbed to about fifteen feet, wedged a nut into the crack he was also using for hand and footholds, and clipped his rope through the carabiner. He had to go up another ten feet before he found an easy path to climb over to the scrawled symbol. Above the symbol was another vertical crack. Doug set his feet wide against the wall, put his left hand inside the crack to hold him steady, and leaned back far enough to take a picture of the symbol.
He was about to climb higher to look for more, but when he set his right hand into the crack to get more leverage, his hand slipped over something smooth. He pushed himself up with his feet. There, wedged inside the crack in the rock wall, was a plastic bag filled with a stack of rewritable CDs.
Doug cursed. He wasn’t terribly loud, but the slack in the rope vanished anyway. “I’m fine,” he called down. “I just can’t get a glove on!”
Thirty feet below, the FBI agents were talking frantically.
He took a photograph of the crack itself, then zoomed in and took a photograph of what he could see of the Ziploc bag.
“Can’t you just set one of those things?”
“No,” he called down. “The crack’s too wide to hold. If I had a friend I could do it, but I didn’t bring any.”
“I could climb up,” Christopher offered. “The way you took didn’t look that hard.”
“I didn’t mean you. A friend is a tool. It’s a self-expanding piece of protection that can fit in wider gaps. Hang on, I’m going to go up higher and find someplace where I can set something up.” Doug had to climb another five feet or so before he found a gap thin enough to secure another nut. He clipped his rope through it and then worked his way back down. “Tension!” he shouted, then remembered that none of the men below him were likely to have any clue what he was talking about. “I’m going to let go for a minute! Brace yourself and hold on to the rope tight!”
He pushed his feet back and settled his weight in the harness before letting go of his handholds slowly. The rope tightened, then swung a little, but he didn’t slip down. He sighed and put on a pair of latex gloves. He pulled the Ziploc bag out of its hiding spot, then fumbled with the camera and took another picture of it. He was glad the camera was hanging around his neck, because he dropped it twice as he tried to adjust the focus. When he finished taking pictures, he got the entire thing into a plastic evidence bag and sealed it. Then, for lack of a better spot, he shoved it into his shirt.
He took hold of the rock again and climbed back up to get the nut out. Then he worked his way back down, pulling out the nuts as he went. When he got back to the last piece of equipment, he worked it loose, clipped it onto his harness, climbed down a few more feet, and then let himself drop.
“I took pictures,” he announced. “And bagged it.” He fished the evidence bag out of his shirt and handed it and the camera over to Agent Shaffer.
Both FBI agents donned gloves and opened the evidence bag. Inside the Ziploc bag were six CDs, all labeled with date ranges written in black marker. On top of the stack was a small square of notebook paper. It looked like the same paper that Peter Hayes had used to write his suicide note.
Agent Shaffer turned the plastic bag around while Agent Belkamp took pictures. “Another note,” he said quietly.
“I hope this isn’t turning into some kind of scavenger hunt,” Belkamp muttered. “What does it say?”
“It’s to you,” Agent Shaffer said, looking at Christopher. “It says, ‘Chris, you’ll know what to do with this. Just to warn you, the local pigs will try to kill you if you take this to them. Don’t trust those assholes.’ I take it he didn’t know you had a… friend… in the local police department?”
“We’re recent acquaintances,” said Christopher, his fake smile firmly fixed in place again.
“You have a friend in the police department too?” Doug asked. “Well, now I feel jealous.”
“Police department, sheriff’s department, whatever!” Shaffer rolled his eyes. “Besides”—Shaffer glared between Doug and Christopher—“I thought you couldn’t say how long you’d known each other?”
“The weekend was a blur.” Christopher grinned. “What’s your point?”
Agent Shaffer sighed, his glare fading. “I don’t care, man, we have a problem. We have to seal this entire area. Get one of the vans with AV units out here.”
Agent Belkamp pulled out his cell phone and began making calls.
“I’m going to need paperwork from the two of you,” Agent Shaffer told them miserably. “Before you leave the site.”
“Sorry, I left my laptop in my other daypack,” said Doug, trying to keep his voice serious.
“I could tap something out on my phone,” Christopher offered.
“There are computers in the van,” Agent Shaffer informed them. “It should be down at the trailhead in a few minutes. We should head down there to meet them.”
“You guys go all out,” Doug said admiringly.
The FBI agents were eager to get off the trail, but Doug watched Christopher stop beside the gnarled tree. He squatted down and reached out his hand. The rope was dirty and the color had faded, so it blended in with the bark of the tree. Christopher touched the rope and left his fingers on the fibers for a long time. Doug watched him, wanting to give him time, but also well aware that the FBI agents were waiting for them.
“Christopher.” Doug knelt down beside him and wrapped his arm over the other man’s shoulders. “We’ve got to go. I can bring you back up here once it’s open again, if you’d like.”
Christopher snorted and shook his head. “I just want to cut this damn thing off and throw it away. I want to pretend it doesn’t matter—which is stupid, because if it really didn’t matter, I wouldn’t care.”
“Did you find something else?” Agent Belkamp asked, walking back toward them.
“No,” said Doug. He hoped his glare would be enough to stop the other man from intruding. Belkamp didn’t come closer, but he stood there staring at them. “Come on, Christopher,” Doug whispered. He pulled Christopher back slightly, quietly appreciating the fluid way he rose to his feet.
Down by the trailhead, the search-and-rescue team had been relegated to the far corner of the parking lot. Three matching sedans and two large vans had taken over, and men and women in FBI windbreakers were milling around aimlessly. They had taped off both the upper and lower trailheads, again, and put white-and-orange barricades up to block off the parking lot entrance. Doug wondered where the hell they had gotten the barricades, but then he saw Deputy Jackson’s patrol car parked along the road, lights flashing.
Their FBI agents took over one of the vans. They plopped Christopher down in front of a laptop so he could type an official report for them, then took over the van’s audio and video equipment themselves. They turned on a video camera, pulled out gloves and masks, and opened up the evidence bag right there in the van. While Christopher was tapping away on the laptop keyboard and Agent Shaffer was narrating every movement he made with the CDs, Doug sat down on the bumper of the van with a bottle of water. He
knew he shouldn’t have been listening to Agent Shaffer. The less he knew about what was in that plastic bag, the more credence any evidence they found would have. But he did listen.
“Contents of the first disc include seventeen video files, eighty-seven image files, and two file-type markers. Accessing the first video file….”
When the static from the video’s audio track began to fill the van, Doug held his breath. He cringed when what sounded like the cries of a little girl echoed through the van. They were soft, resigned cries. Not screams, but whimpers. Christopher’s quick typing stopped instantly. Under the girl’s cries was a quieter but unmistakable rhythmic sound of skin hitting skin, punctuated by heavy masculine panting. Doug felt his stomach rebel, twisting painfully, as his imagination filled in the blanks.
The van rocked down as Christopher launched himself out of the van and took off at a sprint. It rocked again as Agent Belkamp jumped out after him. Several of the agents in windbreakers were watching Christopher run. They looked back at Belkamp for instructions. He met their eyes and shook his head. “Let him go,” he called out. He looked down at Doug, his expression pale and sickened. Doug imagined that he didn’t look much better. “Shaffer’s taking those discs down to the federal crime lab in Helena,” he said quietly. “Right now. Whoever the man in that video was, he wasn’t Peter Hayes.”
Doug managed to nod. He trusted that Belkamp had a reason to be so sure, and he didn’t want to know enough details to find out what that reason might be.
“Are you going to go after him?” Belkamp asked.
“I… I think he probably needs to run….”
Belkamp glared down at him. “Your weekend hookup suddenly has too many issues to make it worthwhile?”
That question didn’t help Doug’s attempt to keep from throwing up. He didn’t know why the man’s question made it worse, but it did. Something in the way he said “weekend hookup” broke through the nausea and made him angry. “Don’t call him that,” Doug hissed.
“That’s what he is, isn’t he?”
“He’s a friend,” Doug insisted.
“If he’s a friend, why are you still here?”
“I’m trying not to get sick,” Doug admitted with a half shrug.
“Oh. So what? Are you going after him? Or can I?”
Doug stood up and glared at the skinny FBI agent. The man wasn’t asking about chasing Christopher down the road. Doug pulled his keys out of his pocket and headed for his truck. He had to wait for Jackson to move the damn barricades, and by then Christopher was already nearly a mile up the road. Doug slowed down and rolled down his window. “You want a ride?”
Christopher ignored him.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. There’s a turnout a few miles up the road. I’ll wait there.” Doug drove on ahead, pulled into the turnout, and decided that he would wait fifteen minutes before he went looking for Christopher again. Ten minutes later, Christopher sprinted into the turnout and skidded to a halt a foot from his truck, panting but not quite sweating yet. Doug held his water bottle out the window. Christopher took it without a word.
Doug got out of the truck and fished through the cooler for another bottle of water.
“I’m sorry,” Christopher whispered.
“I nearly threw up,” Doug admitted. “Even that skinny fucker looked like he wasn’t feeling too hot.”
Christopher cocked an eyebrow at him. “You really don’t like him, do you?”
“He’s pinched your ass, used his investigation as an excuse to grope you… no, I don’t like him!”
“Grope me?” Christopher laughed.
Doug knew he was blushing, but he didn’t care. “I don’t like him. I know this sucks. I’m sorry it has to suck so much. Come home with me. No one drives on the roads around the ranch. You can run, I can shoot shit—we’ll both feel better.”
“Shoot shit?” Christopher perked up slightly. He flexed his right hand impulsively. “You’ve got a double-action revolver, right? I saw it Monday night.”
“I’ve got a couple of them. I like guns.”
“Could I give one a try?” he asked. “My captain suggested it. He thought the grip might work better for me than my Beretta.”
“Perfect! We’ll both go shoot shit. We can even type up the reports Shaffer was whining about at my place.”
Christopher dropped his head. “Do you still… fuck, I shouldn’t even ask… knowing what Peter was…. Knowing….” He shook his head miserably.
Doug took Christopher’s face in his hands and kissed him without hesitating. “You’re not him,” said Doug confidently.
“The only reason I’m not just like him is because of him,” Christopher whispered. “Everything I am… everything I have ever done… I ran away because of him. I went to school to prove I was better than he was. I put everything I had into being a police officer so I could stop him! And then, I didn’t do it. I just pretended he didn’t exist, and while I was pretending he didn’t exist, he was up here…. How many kids did he hurt because I didn’t stop him?” Christopher asked.
Doug stared into Christopher’s open and unguarded expression, finally recognizing the pain he kept glimpsing in the other man’s eyes. Christopher had said their minister had abused both of them, but Doug was beginning to doubt that. His own brother was the monster he was running away from. His own brother was the one Christopher had been thinking of stopping when he decided on the course his life would take. He had come all this way to mourn and bury the brother who had betrayed and abused him, and he had done it all with more self-control and strength than Doug would have ever imagined possible.
Doug’s own nightmares were nothing compared to what Christopher had been through, and he wasn’t sure how the man had stayed as sane as he did.
“It wasn’t him,” Doug whispered against Christopher’s lips. “I didn’t see the video, but the skinny little bastard who can’t keep his hands to himself did. He said it wasn’t your brother. Even if you had killed him the day he got out of prison, if you had shot him in the head before he ever came to Montana, it wouldn’t have helped that little girl.”
Christopher shivered against him.
“You are nothing like him,” Doug continued. “I doubt that video would have made him sick or made him feel like running up a mountain.” Doug cocked his head to the side and managed a smile. Christopher shut his eyes and he nodded ever so slightly. “Right then, let’s go shoot stuff.”
“That was just pathetic,” Christopher declared, gesturing in frustration at the line of six beer cans that sat, untouched, on the wooden fence. Christopher reloaded the revolver, adjusted the fingers of his left hand on the grip, and raised his arm to fire.
“Use your right arm for support,” said Doug. “You’re allowed to qualify with a two-handed grip, aren’t you?”
“It’s allowed. I’ve never had to do it, though.” Despite his complaints, Christopher brought his right hand up to support the butt of the handgun. He raised the gun and tried to sight along the barrel. Even from his perch on the fence five feet behind Christopher, Doug could see the barrel trembling. Two hours of trying to shoot left-handed had worked the weaker muscles of Christopher’s left arm to exhaustion. Trying to shoot any more would be futile in terms of training, but Christopher seemed intent on continuing. During those two hours, Christopher had gone from effectively shut down to smiling and twitching again, so Doug was willing to let him keep going so long as he had enough ammunition to keep his service weapon loaded. Shooting definitely seemed to make Christopher feel better, and just watching Christopher smile and laugh was all it took to make Doug feel better, too, even if he knew that Christopher’s smile was just masking more misery.
“Maybe it’s an omen,” Christopher said at last.
“An atheist talking about omens?” Doug laughed. “That can’t be good.”
“No, no, think about it…. My physical ability to do my job”—he wagged his nearly useless fingers—“my reason for doing my
job….”
“Your brother,” Doug filled in on cue.
“Yes. And my trust in my partner…. All gone in less than a month. I think the universe might be telling me it’s time to become a teacher.”
“A teacher? Why?”
“I don’t know.” Christopher shrugged. “It’s another job. Does it really matter what it is?”
“You wouldn’t be in law enforcement if it didn’t matter,” Doug pointed out.
“Well, obviously, but I’m sure teaching’s not that bad….”
“What did you study in school?”
“Secondary education.”
Doug was surprised. “Not criminology?”
“No. My foster parents—the good ones, that is—were teachers. They were great teachers. Until I met Caleb, I thought I was going to teach too.”
Doug had to smile at that. At least Doug understood how Christopher had picked up on his Shakespeare reference. “Who was Caleb? Hot criminology professor?”
“He was a hot guy on the track team. Maybe not so hot,” Christopher admitted, leering at him. “He was a criminology major. He wanted to get on with the San Diego police, but he was nervous about the tests. I went along….”
Doug was very familiar with the employment tests most police departments required of applicants. He had taken several, both when he was first out of school and when he came back to Montana. He had applied with practically every department within two hours of his home, and they’d all required applicants to take the same tests. He must have taken the same written test ten times before Sheriff Brubaker called to ask when he could start. Most people assumed the tests were fairly easy, but most people assumed that they were being tested on traffic laws and safe decision-making, not grammar. Eighty percent of applicants failed the written test, even among college graduates, because they didn’t have strong enough writing skills to tackle the grammar section of the test.
“He didn’t pass?”
“He washed out on the first section. There must have been two hundred people there, and by the time we got to the obstacle course, there were twelve of us. Five guys and one girl passed the obstacle course.”