Mountain Rampage

by Graham, Scott

  Clarence approached Chuck after Kirina and the students set off. “The poacher—how many times you figure he’s been here this summer?”

  Chuck frowned, unclear where Clarence was headed.

  “He couldn’t possibly have made a successful kill every time he came,” Clarence said. “What do you figure, he shot one every fourth time? Every fifth?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Which means that, all told, this guy has to have driven through the East Entrance Station at least a couple dozen times this summer. Double that when you figure entering and leaving.”

  Chuck’s eyes grew wide with understanding. “The guy’s a regular,” he said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “We should talk to the East Entrance Station rangers,” Chuck said.

  Clarence shook his head. “What was it you told us at the beginning of the field school? Zillions of people visit the park every year, something like ninety percent of them in the summer. And of those ninety percent, most drive through the East Entrance Station on their way up Trail Ridge Road.”

  “So you’re back to saying it could be anybody.”

  “Just the opposite. We can assume the guy’s a local, right? He lives here, which is how he’s been able to keep doing this for the whole summer. And that means, even with all the cars coming and going through the entrance station, he’d likely be recognized, eventually, by the park rangers at the station, no matter how nondescript his car.

  “Whoever he is, he’s a known entity. He raises no suspicion, no matter how often he comes and goes.”

  Chuck clicked his tongue in approval. The deep tracks in the pullout were made by big, heavy tires. Who could enter and leave the park on a regular basis, in a large vehicle, without leading to questions?

  “An ambulance?” Chuck wondered aloud. Then he answered himself. “No.” An ambulance carried a crew of two, but the path up the mountainside, trodden by only a single pair of boots, indicated the poacher worked alone.

  “A passenger van like ours?” Clarence asked. “For hauling tour groups in and out of the park?”

  “I don’t think so,” Chuck said. “It would have to be filled with passengers to avoid suspicion.” He took a few seconds, thinking. “How about a park staffer driving a park vehicle?”

  “Afraid not,” Clarence replied. “The idea that a ranger could blow off his duties for hours at a time, day after day, over the course of the summer to poach Rocky Mountain sheep? Impossible.”

  Kirina appeared from higher on the mountainside. “There’s something up here I think you should see,” she called down to them.

  She led Chuck and Clarence to the well-defined drag path winding its way through the trees from the upper mountain. The students stood along the path, overturned rocks and logs demarcating the stretch of forest they’d already crossed, pristine forest floor beyond.

  Chuck and Clarence crouched beside Kirina at the edge of the path. She pointed at a small puddle of blood, no more than an inch across, pooled in a cupped portion of a broken tree branch lying on the forest floor. “There.”

  Chuck studied Kirina’s discovery. The bullet wound in one of the rams must have spurted a pulse of blood as the poacher dragged the animal to the meadow, and the brief cascade of blood had pooled in the cupped portion of the rotting branch. Three hours ago, Chuck had walked right past the puddle, focused on the fen ahead.

  The sun, breaking through the trees, lit the small pool’s viscous, red surface.

  Chuck peered at it. The blood should not be viscous, nor should it be red. It ought to be dried to a hard, dark sheen.

  He touched the surface of the puddle with a fingertip. His finger came away shiny red. He looked down the slope into the small, sunlit meadow a hundred feet away as he worked the blood between his finger and thumb.

  The poacher was still at it. He’d made his last kill no more than a day or two ago, just over the ridge from the mine site, at dawn or dusk when Chuck and the students weren’t at the mine.

  Chuck blinked, blind with anger. He rose and turned his back to Clarence and Kirina and the students.

  “Let’s go,” he called over his shoulder, his voice dark with fury.

  He strode down the mountain ahead of the students, his vision clearing but his rage continuing to burn white-hot in his chest.

  He could do little about Nicoleta’s murder beyond waiting for the police to act.

  But as for the sheep killer?

  That he could do something about.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Chuck pulled the van to a stop in front of Raven House.

  Half a dozen Estes Park police sedans lined the parking lot in front of the dorms. A shiny white recreational vehicle emblazoned with the words “Estes Park Police Department Mobile Command Unit” was positioned in the middle of the gravel lot. A group of uniformed officers stood outside the command vehicle, arms folded, observing the return of the van.

  The students stared, speechless, at the officers, prompting Chuck to say as he parked, “I’ll head over and see where things stand.”

  “What about Clarence?” Sheila asked from the back row.

  Clarence, in the passenger seat opposite Chuck, looked straight ahead and said nothing.

  “They’ll be talking to him, too,” Chuck answered.

  “But what about his knife?”

  Chuck gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. “There’s nothing at this point—nothing—linking the blood found between the dorms with what happened last night. For now, I’m sure, the police are focusing all their efforts on the murder.” He shut off the engine. “Straight to your rooms, please. Wait there until you’re called for your interviews. Then you can head over to the lodge cafeteria for dinner; I’m sure the dining hall will be closed.”

  He climbed out of the van without waiting for anyone to respond. The gathered officers parted as he approached the command vehicle. At Chuck’s knock, Hemphill opened the door and motioned him inside.

  The new-vehicle smell of off-gassing plastic filled the interior of the vehicle. Everything was bureaucratic gray and off-white. Formica cabinets and countertops lined the walls except where a small table and facing bench seats were bolted in front of the vehicle’s sole window. A built-in television, tuned to a news channel and muted, glowed from the wall of cabinets opposite the table. Below the television, a two-way radio sat on a small counter.

  Chuck recognized the only other person in the vehicle, the older cop, Harley, who’d come to Estes Park from St. Louis. Harley sat in a wheeled office chair at a counter running the width of the rear of the RV. He nodded at Chuck before going back to studying a pair of laptop computers arranged in front of him. A wire led from one of the computers to a small microphone on a plastic stand.

  Chuck took in the high-tech interior of the vehicle. “Pretty nice setup for a town your size,” he said to Hemphill.

  The officer waved dismissively. “Homeland Security money.” He slid into the bench seat on the far side of the small table and motioned Chuck to the seat opposite him.

  Chuck slid behind the table. “Arrested anybody yet?”

  Hemphill opened a narrow notebook on the otherwise empty table and pulled a pen from his front pocket. He laid the pen on the notebook.

  “I take it that’s a no,” Chuck said.

  “Correct.” Hemphill pointed out the window at the students, who worked with Kirina and Clarence, unloading the gear boxes and tools from the roof of the van and carrying them into Raven House. “Your crew, how well do you know them?”

  “They’re good kids, if that’s what you’re asking,” Chuck said. “Friendly, outgoing. Nothing about them suggests any involvement in what happened last night.”

  Hemphill put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Nothing?”

  The hair on the back of Chuck’s neck stood up.

  The officer cleared his throat, still sitting forward. “Parker tells me this is the first time he’s ever had a college
group like yours stay here for the summer. Said he didn’t think much about it to begin with. It was extra income for the resort, making use of the old dorm. He says he’s had the international college student worker program for several years now, so he figured American students would be fine.” Hemphill paused. “But he says your kids have been pretty active—at night.”

  “Active how?”

  “He used the term ‘cross-pollination.’ Said that, from what he’d heard—” and from what he’d seen, Chuck thought, remembering the binocular case on Parker’s windowsill “—there was lots of movement back and forth between the two dorms, between your students and the international workers.”

  “Huh,” Chuck said. He’d caught enough snippets of conversation between the students over the summer to know Parker’s report had an element of truth to it. The students and the international workers ate together in the dining hall behind the dormitories, and they socialized together in the evenings outside the dorms as well, tossing horseshoes and sharing music playlists. It made sense that the commingling between the Raven House and Falcon House residents extended beyond Clarence’s start-of-summer hook-ups with Nicoleta.

  Hemphill continued. “Parker says he thinks the most active one of all was your brother-in-law.”

  “You’ve been after Clarence from the start, because of his knife. But he’s got nothing to do with this.”

  Hemphill lifted a hand. “You have to understand. If we—”

  “You’re supposed to be working on finding the real killer,” Chuck broke in. “Clarence isn’t him.”

  Hemphill spread his hands. “I’m just giving it to you straight. Do you really think I’d be telling you this if I believed Clarence was the perpetrator? You know good and well if I thought he was the guy, I’d take him in without telling you a thing.”

  “Okay,” Chuck said grudgingly. “Fine. Am I to understand that, based on what Parker told you, you’re going to focus on my entire group, not just Clarence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have at them, then.”

  Hemphill’s brows came together in question.

  “I want this thing settled as much as you do,” Chuck told him. “I was there. I held her in my arms. I saw what happened to her.” He worked his jaw. “I want to see whoever did that to her brought to justice.”

  “Fair enough,” Hemphill said. “How about we start with you?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Chuck gripped the edge of the table as Hemphill said to Harley, “Come on over, would you?”

  The older officer cradled one of the laptops and the microphone in the crook of his arm and rolled his chair down the narrow aisle. He slid the microphone to the center of the table and set the computer on the end of the tabletop in front of him. A wire ran from the mic to the laptop.

  “You’ve already interviewed the workers from Falcon House?” Chuck asked.

  Hemphill nodded.

  “Learn anything useful?”

  “You know I can’t comment on that.”

  “But you told me what Parker had to say.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but it involved your students.”

  “And me, by association.”

  “And you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Chuck descended the metal steps from the command vehicle. The officers outside had dispersed. He stood for a moment, gathering himself.

  He’d offered as much additional detail as he could to the brief description he’d provided at the scene of the killing, taking as his own Clarence’s initial sighting of Nicoleta with the presumed killer behind the dorms, and describing to Hemphill, with Harley tapping away on the laptop, what had sounded like a quarrel between the two before they left the walkway and headed up the slope into the forest.

  He headed across the parking lot to Raven House to summon Clarence for his interview, per Hemphill’s request. Kirina was to follow Clarence, then each of the students.

  “When do we tell them I texted you?” Clarence asked from where he sat on his bed when Chuck stepped into his room.

  “And that it was me who first saw her, or, them?”

  Chuck closed the door behind him before he spoke. “They’re still working the scene. It’d be better if they come up with a suspect first. A lot better.”

  “All hell’s gonna break loose when we tell them.”

  “If they figure out who did it soon enough, we won’t have to.”

  Clarence twisted his hands in his lap. “I dunno.”

  “I told them everything you told me, so they know everything you know. All we’re doing is protecting you from their preconceived notions.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You have to remember what Hemphill said to you at the mine site, the way he’s been gunning for you.”

  Clarence pushed himself from his bed. “My story is that I didn’t see anything. Nada. Right?”

  “You can do this, Clarence.”

  “I hope.”

  “Just get through the interview and we’ll move on from there.”

  Chuck laid out his plan to Clarence before following him downstairs to the lofted common room where Kirina was sorting cardboard boxes of finds from the mine. Heavy wooden tables, lined with folding chairs, took up half the room. A sagging couch and worn easy chairs surrounded a mismatched pair of battered coffee tables in the other half. Tools and plastic storage bins were stacked in a corner.

  Chuck waited until Clarence was out the front door before turning to Kirina. “The officer who came to the mine, Hemphill, is conducting the interviews. He wants to talk to you after Clarence.”

  Kirina stood at one of the tables, her hands resting on an unopened box. “How’d yours go?”

  “I told them you were the only one from Raven House who came up the hill to see what was going on.”

  “Everyone was milling around in the halls. I ordered them to stay put.” She looked straight at Chuck. “I saw Clarence when I went outside, before I went up the hill into the forest.”

  Chuck sucked in his cheeks. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure they were alone. “You saw what?”

  “He was coming back down out of the woods, from farther over.”

  Chuck closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember ever being more tired. “Clarence was at the scene,” he admitted to Kirina, opening his eyes, his voice low. “I told him to get out of there because of how the cops had been after him, with his knife and all.”

  “You’re lying to the police?”

  “I’m protecting Clarence. People say everybody’s treated the same these days. But guys like Clarence, with his earrings, his accent, the color of his skin…” Chuck let the end of his sentence dangle.

  “There’s been a murder, Chuck. The killer is still out there somewhere.”

  “I told the police everything Clarence saw, everything he heard. We’re not withholding anything from them.”

  “Except who actually saw it.”

  “The truth is, he didn’t see that much.”

  “I take it you don’t want me to tell them I saw him sneaking back into the dorm.”

  “I’m not asking you to lie. I’m just saying, if you don’t tell them that one part, he’ll appreciate it, and so will I.”

  She took a deep breath and held it. “I like Clarence. I like him a lot. Still, I’m not saying I’ll tell them, and I’m not saying I won’t.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Chuck left Kirina and walked down the first-floor hallway past the students’ rooms and out the back door. Up the slope behind Raven House, just visible through the trees, a pair of police officers knelt within the circle of crime-scene tape, sifting the forest floor with their fingers. Another officer stood back, tablet computer in hand, jotting notes. Nicoleta’s body had been removed from the scene. The officers’ meticulous work wasn’t so different from his own as an archaeologist, as if both the past of an ancient society and the modern-day death of a young woman could somehow be reduced to dry, recorded notations and a collection of
evidence bags.

  He swallowed hard. Nicoleta murdered, no one yet arrested for her brutal killing, and here he was, withholding information from the police. But he was doing it for Clarence, he reminded himself. He would come clean the instant the situation warranted it.

  He followed the paved path past the shuttered dining hall and the back of Falcon House, using the building as a screen to remain out of sight of Parker’s office. He would talk with the resort manager soon enough, and with Professor Sartore as well, but he wanted, needed, to see Janelle and the girls first.

  Janelle had texted during his interview that she and the girls had returned to the cabin without him after all—a good sign. He angled into the forest to the driveway and followed it up through the trees to the cabin, where Janelle met him at the front door. Behind her, the girls sat facing one another on the living-room floor, game computers in their laps, engaged in an interactive contest.

  Rosie glanced up long enough to tell Chuck, “I’m beating her! I’m beating her!” before returning her focus to her tablet, her fingers flying.

  “Not for long,” Carmelita responded, her own fingers tapping frantically at her computer.

  Janelle stepped onto the deck, closed the door behind her, and leaned against it. “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “About what I expected. I told them all I could.”

  “What about Clarence?”

  “They didn’t get that specific.”

  “They will, though.”

  “Kirina may be telling them about him right this minute.”

  A quiver entered Janelle’s voice. “Kirina?”

  “She saw Clarence coming back to Raven House after I sent him away.”

  “And if she tells?”

  “They’re going to find out at some point. It’d just be better if it was after they catch somebody, or after we’re out of here on Friday.”

  “They’re still focused on Clarence?”

  “Hemphill tried to make it sound like they aren’t, but I’m not sure he was telling the truth. Can’t really blame them, you know.”