“I’ll take that,” someone said, and Tor saw a man step out from behind Ms. Adams. He was wearing a heavy navy blue parka with a furry hood, and as he pulled the hood back Tor saw a tight-fitting blue cap on the man’s head. The cap held a patch that shone with gold. It was a badge.
“It’s about time,” Drake murmured, and blew out a breath that sent a cloud of white vapor into the sky.
“Who are you?” Tor said, although his heart was already beating with hope.
“Ford Graham, Colorado Bureau of Investigation,” the man said, and the words were the Excalibur sword that Tor wished he could have pulled from his jacket instead of the flabby little glove. Behind the CBI agent was Ms. Adams, who was nodding at Tor with a smile that made her look like a very satisfied little wood elf.
“I can take you to the blood, too,” Tor said. “If they haven’t moved it.”
“We’ll take a look,” the man said. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, son. We were worried about you. Can I have that evidence, please?”
Tor handed it over, and as he did he saw Rollins and the expression on the deputy’s face wasn’t fearful at all. Tor felt his heart sink like a stone.
“You aren’t getting anything off that paper!” Rollins hissed, in a voice so full of hatred that Tor felt Raine quiver next to him. “I wore gloves! You’re not getting anything off that paper!”
Tor felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. All the work he’d done! The risk he’d taken to keep the receipt safe, all that he’d been through. He’d snowboarded off a cliff, he’d nearly died, and the paper had turned out to be worthless. There would be no fingerprints, no evidence for the jury, and no arrest. He’d failed.
Then he saw Deputy Rollins’s expression. His face was shocked and he was no longer looking triumphant. He was instead looking at the CBI officer, who was staring back at him with an expression of profound satisfaction.
“Well, that was a stupid thing to say,” Graham said, smiling. “And in front of witnesses, too. Sir, it doesn’t matter if this receipt has fingerprints on it or not. With this, I can find out who paid for those blood bags. Care to let me know whose name I’m going to find at the end of that trail?”
Rollins looked down and wiped at his bleeding nose. He said nothing.
Mayor Malone stepped forward. Tor watched him. He’d thought the mayor was the killer the whole time, and he’d been wrong. The mayor was a creep, but he wasn’t a murderer, and the look on the mayor’s face said it all. His face was dead white. He looked sickened, as though he was about to throw up.
“You took blood from my son?” he said, his voice cracking. “You took my Jeff’s blood?”
The mayor lunged toward Rollins but someone abruptly blocked his way. Sheriff Hartman had on a big hat and a dark brown parka with a shield pinned to the front, and his face looked more than ever like a mournful basset hound’s.
“Move back, now, move back, Stanford,” Sheriff Hartman said. His voice was as deep and sad as his face.
“Some detectives we turned out to be,” Drake murmured to Tor, and he had to pretend to cough in order to keep from laughing out loud as the sheriff tried to keep the mayor from Deputy Rollins.
“Hold him,” the CBI agent said to the sheriff. Then he took silver handcuffs from his pocket and said the magical words to Deputy Rollins that made Drake and Raine and Tor smile like they’d each gotten a brand-new snowboard on Christmas morning.
“You have the right to remain silent….”
TOR’S MOM DIDN’T make a fuss over him, which was a relief. She stepped forward while Deputy Rollins was still being handcuffed and she took Tor by the arm.
“Let’s go, Tor,” she said in a low voice. “You too, kids.”
Drake and Raine nodded and they followed her. A German shepherd dog lunged forward and sniffed Tor so enthusiastically he stumbled backward. The handler was smiling, and she reached down to pet the dog as it sniffed at Tor’s legs.
“Give her just a second,” the handler said. She was a weathered woman with deep wrinkles around her bloodshot eyes. Tor realized she’d been up all night searching for him, too. “We hardly ever find them alive, and avalanche dogs get awfully depressed. Saber here needs to know she’s found her boy. Yes, you found him, good girl, good girl!”
The dog wagged her brushy tail back and forth joyfully as Tor reached down to let her sniff his hand, remembering what the pine tree had looked like as the falling avalanche crushed it. No, he didn’t suppose that Saber often found avalanche victims alive.
“I’m getting him out of here,” Dr. Sinclair said to Sheriff Hartman, who was trying to lean past her and catch Tor by the arm. The CBI agent, Mr. Graham, was busy with the deputy and the crowd was closing in: Gloria and her Ski Patrol friends, dressed in red and looking both exhausted and happy; Ms. Adams; Mr. Ewald, the math teacher.
Tor felt Drake and Raine behind him, pushing him toward Dr. Sinclair, and then they were walking through the lodge. Someone tried to take his snowboard from his arm and he jerked back fiercely, protectively. Then he realized it was Mr. Douglas, Raine’s dad, who made a soothing gesture with his hands. Tor let the snowboard go. The street was too bright outside the lodge, and there were too many people crowding around. Mr. Douglas shoved ahead of them and opened a door, and Tor found himself walking up a flight of stairs, half-carried by strong arms. Things seemed too light and then too dark, but it didn’t seem important to ask any more questions.
Someone pushed a hot drink into his hands.
“Drink it,” his mother said gently, and Tor sipped at it. It tasted strongly of honey but underneath was some kind of bitterness that didn’t taste good at all.
“That’s awful,” he said, but Dr. Sinclair pushed it back into his hands.
“Drink some more, Tor,” she commanded gently, and he gulped it grudgingly down. There were hands all over him, it seemed—pulling off his boots, taking off his helmet, tugging at his snowboarding jacket and pants.
“No signs of frostbite,” he heard someone say, and realized it was Mr. Douglas. Something in the tea was bringing everything back into focus again. Tor was sitting on the couch in the Douglases’ apartment, and his mother had him undressed to his thermal underwear.
“Hey!” he said, as he realized Grandma Douglas was watching him. She was sitting in a chair that Raine usually curled up in, looking no bigger than her granddaughter. Her black eyes crinkled as she smiled at him.
“He’s not hurt a bit,” she said to Dr. Sinclair.
“I think you’re right,” Dr. Sinclair said. She was feeling Tor’s bare toes, examining them one by one with gentle hands. Mr. Douglas was also in the room, Tor saw. There was no one else there.
“Where’s—” he began.
“In the kitchen, getting some food,” Mr. Douglas said. He was looking at Tor’s fingers with the same intensity Dr. Sinclair showed, examining each finger as though he was looking for something. “They’re exhausted. They’ve been up all night waiting for word about you. We wouldn’t let them on the mountain until this morning, which didn’t sit well with either one of them.”
“We practically had to sit on them to keep them from going up with the search party,” Dr. Sinclair said. “It was a long night for us down here, Tor.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Oh, don’t say that,” Dr. Sinclair said, and touched his toes very gently with her warm, strong hands. “No sorrys, no tears, not on this day. No frostbite here, not a sign. I’ll keep an eye on your feet and hands for a few days to be sure, but there’s no white or green patches, and you don’t seem to be in any pain.”
“The mine wasn’t that cold, and I had my gear on,” Tor explained as his mother took his head in her hands and started feeling through his hair.
“How did you get cut?” Dr. Sinclair asked, looking at Tor’s forehead. He couldn’t remember for a moment, then he did.
“The tree,” he said. “When the avalanche crushed it, it shot splinters into the tunnel
entrance. I fell back and hit my head—with my helmet on, Mom!” he said, annoyed, as Dr. Sinclair felt his head again.
“I’ll get some fresh clothes for you, Tor,” Mr. Douglas said. “Dr. Sinclair, the sheriff is going to want to take a statement from Tor.”
“The CBI man will, too,” Dr. Sinclair said, her lips thinned. “He can just take Tor’s statement right here. I won’t let him take a sick boy to the police station.”
“I’m not sick!” Tor protested.
“I think that’s quite clear.” Mr. Douglas grinned and left the room.
Dr. Sinclair pressed an icy stethoscope to Tor’s chest. He gasped and then resigned himself as she listened to his lungs, felt his belly, and looked in his ears.
“Mom,” he said finally.
She sat back on her knees and looked up at him. She was smiling. “I know, overkill. I just have to know you’re okay. I thought you were dead, Tor. All night.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and his voice thickened so he cleared his throat.
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault,” Dr. Sinclair said. “And I’m not going to wrap you up like a baby and keep you from that mountain and from your snowboard. I would never do that.”
“I know,” Tor said. He had never thought she would.
“I just would—I would have missed you, that’s all,” Dr. Sinclair said, and she sat down on the couch next to him and held him, hard, and she did cry a little, after all.
Mr. Douglas came into the room with an old pair of sweatpants and a soft jersey for Tor, and a box of tissues for Dr. Sinclair. He smiled and winked at her when he handed her the box. Tor pulled on the sweatpants and sat back down. Dr. Sinclair was blowing her nose when Drake and Raine pushed into the room, followed by Mrs. Douglas and her young son. Behind them came the round form of Sheriff Hartman.
Tor was pulling on his jersey and froze, seeing the sheriff.
“Son, I need to take a statement,” the sheriff said. He raised his hands in a peace gesture toward Tor, who sat back down on the couch. His sad hound eyes looked tired. Drake and Raine sat down firmly on either side of Tor. Dr. Sinclair stood up.
“You’re not moving him,” she told the sheriff. He sighed and looked around the room.
“The CBI agent is going to be here any minute. Let me know what happened so I know what’s been going on with my deputy. Can you tell me that?”
“I…okay,” Tor said.
“Start at the beginning,” Sheriff Hartman said.
Tor started with the fridge full of blood. He had come up with a story already—he was looking for his mom, who wasn’t at the office, and he knew that she and Mayor Malone had agreed to go out for coffee, so he went to the mayor’s office looking for them.
“I was just wandering around looking for them,” he said, as innocently as he could manage, “and I saw the fridge from the clinic in the back room. I knew it belonged in the clinic so I looked in it. I saw there were blood bags in there, so I left and talked to Drake and Raine about it.”
He looked at Drake, then at Raine. They nodded, as though they’d rehearsed the whole story and there was no nighttime break-in of the mayor’s office.
“We spoke to Ms. Adams at the school,” Tor said.
“Why Ms. Adams?” the sheriff asked. He had taken a seat and was writing in his notebook.
“Because she was friendly to me,” Tor said. “Everyone else treated me like an outsider. Like I was cursed or something.” He looked innocently at the sheriff and was pleased to see the big man shift his feet and look faintly ashamed.
“We couldn’t trust the mayor because we—I—found the fridge in his office. And I was afraid to go to you.”
“Deputy Rollins was my deputy,” the sheriff said. “Notice the past tense. There’s nothing worse, in my opinion, than a lawmaker who won’t uphold the law. Where are you going to turn if the lawman is bad? You young folks decided you couldn’t turn to me, so you talked to the choir teacher at the school. For heaven’s sake, the choir teacher.”
“Yes, sir,” Tor said slowly. If he’d gone to the sheriff, he’d never have found Leaping Water, either, or the—“My jacket!”
“Right here, Tor,” Raine said, picking it up from beside the couch. “What is it?”
“Later,” Tor said, taking it in his hands and feeling the slight crackle of paper. “Later.”
“Where did you go after Ms. Adams promised to bring in the CBI?”
“And here he is now,” Mrs. Douglas said as the doorbell rang. “We’re getting quite a crowd here. Hold on a moment.”
Mrs. Douglas brought back the CBI agent, Ms. Adams, and Mayor Malone. In the meantime Raine pushed a turkey sandwich into Tor’s hands, and he wolfed two enormous bites. He lifted the sandwich toward Ms. Adams in greeting as she entered and she smiled back at him. He didn’t smile at Mayor Malone.
“Here’s the choir teacher,” Sheriff Hartman said, standing up and hitching at his heavy belt. He reached forward to shake hands with the mayor, the CBI agent, and finally Ms. Adams. “The most trusted woman in town, I hear.”
Ms. Adams lifted her chin until she looked as regal as a tiny queen.
“That’s what I hear, too,” she said. “I trust you’ll forgive me for not coming to you?”
“Having the CBI called in over my head isn’t my favorite moment as a lawman, frankly,” said the sheriff. He nodded coolly at the CBI agent.
“I had three young people put their trust in me,” Ms. Adams said, a red blush climbing her neck, her chin held even higher. “Their lives were at risk. I did what I felt I had to do.”
“There’s no blame attached to this,” the CBI agent said, his face as calm and still as a carved block of granite. “Ms. Adams did the right thing, and so have you, sir. We have Rollins in custody and the evidence safely in hand, and no one’s been hurt. You’re not hurt, are you, son?”
“Nope,” Tor said.
“I’m Mr. Graham, Tor. I’m very glad to see you’re okay. I’m going to need a statement—”
“You can take a formal statement after he’s had a meal and some rest,” Dr. Sinclair said firmly.
Mr. Graham looked at Tor, who took another huge bite of his turkey sandwich.
“How about coffee and sweet rolls?” Grandma Douglas chirped. “I want to hear the rest of Tor’s story.”
Mr. Graham sighed and took a seat in a chair. He looked exhausted. “We found evidence of foul play in the death of the Slader boy,” he said. “We’d just opened the investigation when Ms. Adams’s husband, Joe, called me. I spent the night up here looking for you. I thought you were dead, and you show up alive and hand me the killer.”
“You’re welcome,” Tor said through his mouthful of sandwich. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Graham said. Everyone leaned forward. “I’ll take his statement in a few hours, after he’s had some rest.”
“But what about us?” Grandma Douglas wailed.
“Well, he can talk while he’s resting,” the CBI man murmured, looking out the window and scratching his chin. “That is, if he wants to.”
“I want to,” Tor said. He noticed Mr. Graham fiddling with his shirt pocket after he scratched his chin, and he thought perhaps Mr. Graham had a recording device in that pocket. He didn’t mind. He wasn’t trying to keep a lie straight; he was simply going to tell the truth.
He talked himself hoarse, while Mrs. Douglas and Grandma served coffee and a sweet sticky pastry, while Sheriff Hartman wrote busily, and Mr. Graham finished his pastry and then rolled a toothpick slowly from one corner of his mouth to the other. The mayor sat quietly with his hands folded over his big belly.
Tor tried to explain how he’d been so happy to make it through the trees that he wasn’t aware he was in the White Gates, and how he’d figured out too late that Jeff and Max were screaming at him to stop.
“They said ‘stop’?” Sheriff Hartman asked, raising his head from his notes.
“They tried to stop me,” Tor said. “They really did. I don’t think they meant to chase me into the White Gates, and I know they didn’t mean to set off the avalanche.”
“My boy,” Mayor Malone said huskily. He cleared his throat, but said nothing else.
“We know they were trying to save you, Tor,” Dr. Sinclair said. “They told everyone where you were so we could search for you.”
“They might tell you about the blood doping, too,” Tor said. “If you ask them, I mean. I don’t think they knew that’s why Brian died. Deputy Rollins, he—”
“Just plain Rollins, if you please,” Sheriff Hartman said.
“Rollins, I think he talked them into blood doping,” Tor said. “I don’t think they knew Brian died from the blood doping. They thought his death was my mom’s fault, and Rollins, he wanted them to believe that, too. They were mean because they were scared, that’s what I think.”
“That doesn’t excuse their behavior,” Ms. Adams said sternly. “They knew what they were doing. They knew it was wrong.”
“Your son never told you about the blood doping, sir?” the sheriff asked.
“Not a word,” the mayor said heavily.
“They’ll be quite a help, I think, now that they know the truth,” Mr. Graham said through his toothpick. “You went through this…gate?”
“Over a cliff,” Tor said with satisfaction. “But the snow was so deep I didn’t get hurt. I was stuck in the snow for a bit until I worked my way loose. Then I heard the avalanche siren and felt the rumbling.”
Dr. Sinclair gripped the edge of the desk as Tor explained how he’d scooted back to the cliff, trying to shelter in the rocks, and had seen a dark space that might hold him. When he explained about the avalanche crushing the tree to bits, everyone leaned forward intently, hanging on his every word. It was very gratifying.
“I found Raine’s flashlight in my pocket,” Tor said. “From…from walking home the other night.” He’d almost said when they’d broken into the mayor’s office.
“My flashlight!” Raine gasped, and gave a little sigh. “I’d forgotten you still had it.”
The White Gates Page 16