by M K Dymock
“I’m so sorry.” Clint went on to explain about an accident with Grace, who was injured but had survived, and her mother, who did not.
She traded herself for me. That was the only thought that made it through the haze of Keen’s emotions. My mom found a way to trade her life for mine. She reached out a hand to grasp her father’s, whose return clench almost caused her to gasp. But she welcomed the feeling. The rest of her felt like she’d been doused in the Gorge’s cold rapids.
“Can I see her?” Daniel asked, his voice pleading.
Clint looked unsure.
“Please, let me see my wife.”
“She’s in bad shape, Daniel. I don’t know that you want to see her like this.”
“I need to be with her.”
Keen didn’t follow her father. Whether wrong or right, she wasn’t ready for that. She couldn’t fall apart, not yet. Too many things had happened with no explanation.
She sat on the papered bed as Clint returned to awkwardly stand beside her. “Can I get you anything?”
“Where’s Grace?”
“They took her by ambulance over to Summit; they’ve got the bigger hospital there. She’ll be okay.”
“Can you take me there? I need to talk to her.”
Clint dragged over one of the plastic chairs and sat. “She broke her arm and is fairly bruised up, so they’re worried about internal injuries.”
“My mom is dead.”
Clint flinched. “I didn’t mean … I’m sorry. Grace’s dad died last night; we’re thinking suicide. Maybe that’s why she missed the turn. The roads were still a bit wet, and with that little car …”
Keen tuned him out. More than a week ago she found a file making it look like her family was receiving cash outside the business, two days later someone tried to kill her, and a week later her mom was dead, along with the mayor of the town.
Three things involved her family, one did not.
Where did the money come from? Her first assumption had been her dad’s guiding activities; maybe he kept them off the books to keep from paying taxes on the income. So what? Lots of people do that. One of the sheets she saw looked like an inventory sheet, meaning product was coming and going. What product, and where was it coming from? Were other people involved, like Mayor Ackerman? That seemed a stretch, but his death was the day before her mom’s.
Her mom. Keen jumped off the bed and grabbed the plastic-lined garbage pan and hurled. Again and again, until all the food she’d stuffed down the last few days lay in a sticky heap. Clint jumped to her side only to stand there ineffectively. He reached out to hug her, but changed at the last minute to an awkward pat on the shoulder.
It was easy to forget in a second, and then in the next remember how wrong everything was.
She would have to forget, for now.
After rinsing out her mouth, she told Clint she was going home. She didn’t want to wait for her dad to face his grief.
“I’ll take you.”
“No, I’ve got a friend coming.”
Her mind attempted to yank all the errant events happening into something that made sense.
Her mom hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. After all the chaos of the last week, that was the thing that made the least sense. Her mom would literally pull off a freeway to remove her seat belt to reach something in the back seat. A woman who always used bikes, skis, and her own legs to carry her never fully trusted a machine.
Had someone messed with the car? Grace had survived, they said, injured but going to be okay. Her dad had died in a suicide. What the hell was going on?
49
Blake stood by his wife’s side.
She had refused all pain medication and demanded to be sent home. The doctors refused, a decision she would ensure they’d come to regret. Whiplash, contusions, broken ribs, and a long list of injuries, including a burned arm the doctors noticed was at least a week old, meant that Grace wasn’t well, but she would be whole again.
Her mother fussed around her until Grace sent her home to see about funeral details for her dad. She picked up the TV remote, pushed a few buttons, and threw it on the couch. The nurses had already started ignoring her call button until she pushed it about ten times, which she had. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said to Blake after the door closed on the last nurse.
“Where should I be?”
“You should be fixing this,” she cried. Her mother had pulled her red hair back in a braid, and that, coupled with her no-makeup face, made her look almost childlike. And like their child, she believed he could make everything right.
He sat on the edge of her bed and tried to hold one of her clenched hands. She relaxed her grip and they intertwined fingers. “I am, Grace, like always. But your dad made a decision I can’t undo.” A tear forced its way out of her closed eye. “But he did it for you, for us. Whatever happens now, the blame will go to him.”
She sat straight up and grabbed his hand. “He didn’t have to. I took care of—”
“No, you jumped in without thinking and made everything worse. Keen didn’t know enough to be a threat.”
“It wasn’t Keenley I was worried about; it was Elizabeth. She would waver as soon as her little girl had to be told. She always had one foot out the door.” Grace took a ragged breath but flinched at the exertion. “If Keenley found out, Elizabeth would’ve gone to the authorities and confessed everything, all the while making herself and Daniel look as innocent as possible.”
“If you had just talked to me before grabbing her, I—”
“I knew if she lost Keenley, nothing else would matter. All Keenley had to do was die in the wilderness, and you saved her.” Grace rolled away from him but gasped as she found her ribs.
“Didn’t I try? All week I’ve been leading a search going nowhere, and trying to find suspects to blame.”
“The rest of it was me, on my own, tracking her. Like always, I’m the one left taking care of things. You had the chance to end this.”
He crawled into the bed beside her and laid his arm across her, careful to avoid her ribs. “There was never a moment I was alone with her after her rescue, I …” He cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter now. There’s no Elizabeth to worry about, and Keen doesn’t know enough.”
A knock at the door ushered in a gray-haired nurse, and Blake retreated from the bedside into a nearby chair.
“How you feeling, honey?”
“Did you just come on shift?” he asked.
“Just a few minutes ago; thought I’d check on Mrs. McKenzie here.” That explained the kind tone. “Ready for some pain meds? I show you’re long overdue.”
“No, get out.”
The woman looked to Blake for support, but he didn’t offer any. He knew his wife, and when she shed her outer skin, you stayed out of her way until she grew a new layer. “I’ll try back in a few hours.”
“You do that, honey,” Grace said, and waited until the door shut. “Elizabeth came to me because Keenley, home for all of one day, was already going through those files and asking questions.” She pulled herself to sit upright. “You didn’t fix it. She still has the file, and she’s asking about it.”
Blake had tried, though. From the moment Grace attempted to kill Keen but failed, he had worked to get his family out of this with the least damage. His wife’s decision had been shortsighted, to say the least.
But now? Once again, Grace had left him no choice but to put it all right.
50
Keen paced the clinic parking lot, waiting for the promised ride. She’d left her father with her mom, not telling him anything beyond she was going home to rest.
A diesel engine roared into the lot, and she waved the driver down as he approached. Gauge jumped out of the truck to get her door. A bit of relief washed through her as he slammed the door between her and the world.
She’d called him because he was the only person she knew unconnected with everyone else. Talking to her mom had only killed her; she would
n’t talk to her dad.
“I liked your mom,” he said while throwing the truck in gear.
“Me too,” she whispered.
When they got home, Gauge trailed a few feet behind her and hesitated at the door. “I should wait ’til your dad comes, huh.”
“It’s fine.” Keen left him in the living room to get her laptop, where he stayed by the door as if in need of an easy escape. She sat on the couch and pulled up the file. He finally sat next to her, perched on the edge. “See?” she said, pointing. “That’s cash coming into the store, but we haven’t had sales like that, ever.”
He pointed at the bottom of the screen. “I know Lightning Ridge.” A sheet in the Excel doc carried a label with that name.
“Yeah, we run backpacking trips through it.” The ridge overlooked the river on the opposite side of the Pines trail.
“Not no more.”
“Since when?”
“A while.” He scratched the thin beard barely pushing out of his cheek. “Maybe not this summer but last, when your dad said we was moving the trips to be more in the backcountry.”
Keen had worked at the store so much in the last few years, she was out of the loop. “That’s odd. The ridge has good water and a good view. Tourists always like camping there.” She clicked on the tab in Excel and brought up numbers representing something coming about the ridge. Had her father been doing trips under the table to avoid taxes? But why would anyone care beyond her family?
“It’s, what, ten miles in from the nearest road?” she asked Gauge. “Could I take one of your horses in? See what’s there.”
“Don’t need horses. Last time I was up there I took a four-wheel trail in.”
“Tell me how to find it?”
“No, I’ll take you.”
The warmth of him sitting next to her was reassuring, but she didn’t want anyone else lost in the abyss with her, as lonely as she was. “Gauge.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what’s going on. Someone kidnapped me and came back to …” Blake had said the man in the truck had been a local rancher, an old man. Made her think she was crazy to consider anything else. That was no old man jumping over the side of the truck.
A few years ago, Grace had been organizing the funeral of a local resident who didn’t have family and she’d reached out to Elizabeth for help. “Nobody is born or dies in this town without Grace McKenzie having something to do about it,” her mother had joked.
The blanket in the SUV she’d been wrapped in had smelled of lavender. With Grace and her essential oils, you smelled her before you saw her.
“What’s wrong?” Gauge asked.
“I’m in trouble.” No amount of hiding in the closet could protect her from this. “I think the sheriff and his wife may’ve been the ones who took me.”
He scowled. “Why’d they do that?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t have any proof of anything.”
“Your dad know?” he asked.
“I told my mom and …” She shook her head to dispel that thought. “Nobody will believe me.” She climbed to her feet. “I’ve got to figure this out first. Where’s that road?”
“We going now?”
“No, I’m going.”
He stood and shook his keys at her before palming them. “Are we going now?”
51
Dusk descended before they left the house. Keen’s dad had called to say he was at the funeral home sorting things out and would be home soon. She let the phone go to voicemail, which was followed by a text message demanding an answer. “I’m asking Blake to send Clint or someone over to check on you.”
I’m fine. Crashing early for the night, she texted back.
She deleted his voicemail as they crossed the Old Bridge over the Gorge. Whatever name the miner who built the suspension bridge gave it had long since been forgotten, along with the mine it once accessed. Technically the county had closed it to cars, but the lock rusted through years ago. Any local knew how to access it.
Keen jumped out of the truck and undid the chain to open the gate. After Gauge pulled through, she returned everything to its place, including the chain. An unwritten rule in cow country requires if you open a gate, you close a gate. And another unsaid town rule expected the wrapping of the chain to indicate laws were being followed, even as everyone broke them.
The truck crept along the bridge as it swayed in the wind enough to keep her perched on the edge of her seat. While the bridge was long enough to span the river, they could roll down the windows and touch a suspension cable on either side. The rising full moon reflected on the fast-moving rapids below, the sound drowning out the engine.
No one dared take more than one vehicle across at a time. When traveling in groups at night, etiquette required the person ahead of you to pull off the bridge and face the river to flash their lights to signal they were across.
Being alone, they didn’t stop to signal, but both slumped in their seats as the truck hit earth again. “Hate crossing that thing in the dark,” Gauge said.
Once leaving the broken pavement of the bridge, they climbed up a steep embankment and lost sight of the river below. The old road was no more than two ruts, still muddy from the storm. Gauge fought a losing battle to keep the old Ford from being sucked into the ruts, despite his four-wheel drive. The headlights sent tunnels of light into the black. With the lack of any other artificial light, it was like driving with flashlights duct-taped to the hood.
They pulled onto a side trail running parallel to the river, which bounced them around even more. Despite the chilly night, Keen kept her window down, trying to spot any sort of landmark.
“I see the Pillar!” she yelled out as the wind rushed through her hair. She pulled an errant strand out of her mouth. The Pillar of Salt, as it was called, was a rock tower formed by the wind, which marked the edge of the ridge. Each year as the trees around it grew taller, the pillar lessened in importance.
Gauge stopped the truck and pulled out a spotlight from behind the seat. She followed him with the Maglite she’d brought, only to have her small light swallowed up by his. “What we looking for?” he asked.
“A reason why we’d stop bringing tourists here and why it would bring us cash.”
It didn’t take long for them to stumble on a reason, or at least a garden. Furrowed rows of knee-high plants covered with green plastic caps stretched farther than the light could shine. Keen stepped to the nearest one and pulled the cap off, revealing a pointed plant covered with white fuzzy needles.
Keen knelt next to one. “Marijuana.”
Gauge squatted next to her. “How would you know?”
“Half the dorm rooms on campus have the pot flag on the wall.”
“Ain’t it legal now?”
She dropped the plant and walked farther in. “Not here, but there’s talk about the laws changing.”
After several feet, she still couldn’t see the end of the cultivation. Her dad smoked the occasional joint, maybe a few times a year and usually out of the presence of her mom, who despised the stuff. But this was no hobby.
“What do you want to do?” Gauge said.
The business major was a mistake; she should’ve gone for a law degree. “If we go to the police, they might arrest my dad.”
“They hurt you, Keen, hurt your mom.”
“I know.” She returned to the edge, and wrapped her arms around him, needing, at least for a moment, something to anchor her. For a second he stood like a pole before returning the hug. “At least we know what Feds to call.” Her voice broke and he tightened his grip.
“We need to call my dad,” she said after a minute. “Can you drive me to Rock River so he can meet me there? I’m not going back to town.”
Gauge kept the truck in a low gear as it slid its way down the muddy road. Keen gripped the armrest on the door as he cranked the wheels to keep from sliding. A tree loomed in front of them and he turned against the slip, barely avoiding a crash.
With her
heart still pounding from the drive, they pulled onto the bridge. A bright set of headlights flipped on, blocking the path.
52
Clint had a couple of busy days. The sheriff, his mentor, had taught him to look for the pattern, and when something deviates from that pattern, pay attention.
Every few months John Croft’s sheep break through his fence, almost causing or outright causing an accident, and Blake cites him. Every time except on Monday, Labor Day. That day Blake had arrested him, confiscated the truck he’d been driving, and charged him with endangering the public. The sheriff had just gotten off the phone with his wife and was in a pissed-off mood, something Clint could sympathize with. Figured that was the reason for finally coming down on Croft, which Clint had considered overdue. The deputy had driven the Tahoe back home for the night while Blake drove the old Ford.
When Keen had described the truck, he recognized the description. Clint knew that truck; he’d chucked the carcasses of too many dead sheep into it to forget it. But he wasn’t sure—maybe other ranchers drove something similar. He didn’t even understand what he suspected.
The day after meeting with Keen at the hospital, he drove out to Croft’s house to take pictures of the truck, which had been returned at some point. The old man yelled at Clint for keeping it so long, but Clint thought they’d only had it a day.
When back at the office, he asked Charlie when he’d returned it. “You returned it,” Charlie said, confused.
“I returned it?”
“That’s what Blake told me.”
Clint waited for the sheriff to return, still not quite believing anything could be amiss. When Blake came in, Clint tried to bring it up in a nonchalant way, but then the call came about the mayor. Clint swallowed his words but not his doubts.
That death alone meant another break in a pattern. And then another break in the pattern—Elizabeth Dawson was killed. As he helped the EMTs pull Elizabeth’s body out of the convertible’s wreckage, he couldn’t swallow the rage. He combed through the shattered remains of the car. Elizabeth hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, but the strap hung loose rather than sucked back in the car. While Grace’s air bag had deployed, the one on the passenger’s side had been deactivated. Grace survived relatively intact while Elizabeth never had a chance.