Yosemite Fall (National Park Mystery Series)

by Scott Graham

  “I’m tempted to grab the camera from his helmet and smash it to bits,” Ponch said, “even though I know the investigators will want it.”

  “You think the footage will reach the internet?”

  “I bet it’ll go viral. The whole world will watch him die, over and over and over again.”

  “The investigators should keep it private. That’s their job.”

  “Huh,” Ponch scoffed. “Everything reaches the internet these days.” He lifted his phone. “It’s time,” he said grimly.

  Chuck took out his phone, too. “From way up here, it shouldn’t take long for one of us to get through.”

  “As twisted as this may sound,” Chuck said to Ponch as they walked down Four Mile Trail, “I’m not sure how much Thorpe would mind if the footage of his death made it to the internet.”

  They’d left Thorpe’s body thirty minutes ago. After getting through to a 911 operator, they had waited until an advance team of half a dozen YOSAR team members arrived before leaving the scene.

  “He lived his life in the public eye,” Chuck continued. “He made his living putting himself on display.”

  Ponch spun and walked backward, facing Chuck. “Him and all the babes he hung out with.” He turned forward and continued down the trail.

  “Hey,” Janelle warned from the front of the line. “That’s the second time you’ve used that word.”

  “Young ladies,” Ponch corrected himself.

  “Some of us ‘young ladies’—” she made air quotes with her fingers as she hiked a step ahead of Ponch “—don’t have a problem hanging out with older guys.”

  “Thanks,” Chuck said. “I think.”

  “Janelle’s right,” Ponch said over his shoulder to Chuck. “It’s no secret that Thorpe’s success as an older guy was the result, to a significant extent, of the young ladies who hung out with him.”

  “Success?” Janelle asked, an edge to her voice.

  “Remember,” Chuck told Ponch, “she’s the mother of two little girls.”

  “Who,” Janelle added, “are growing up way too fast.”

  “She’s already on her guard for them,” Chuck said to Ponch. “So am I.”

  “Thorpe figured out what you two already know,” Ponch said, “which is that boys like girls—a lot. He realized right away that nine out of ten extreme-sport viewers online are males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four. The best way to increase his viewership numbers, he figured, was to give those young males what they wanted.”

  “Babes,” Janelle said, biting off the word.

  “Young ladies,” Ponch agreed. “Thorpe made sure he included a scantily clad female in every one of his videos—hanging out with him in the back of his van, zipping him into his wingsuit on the edge of a cliff before he flew, cracking open a can of beer for him after he landed.”

  “How professional,” Janelle deadpanned.

  “If by professional you mean building a solid, money-making profession, you’d be right.”

  “He was that successful?”

  “He and Jimmy were pioneers in the whole idea of outdoor athletes making a living through sponsorships. At their peak, they had lots of sponsors—High Summit energy bars, Rinson ropes, Trongia harnesses, their backpacks, and all their clothes, from their long underwear to their hats to their rain jackets. They’d take anything that came their way. They even accepted a stake in MoJuice, the energy drink, when the company was just getting started. You know the one: For Renegades Only. The MoJuice people didn’t have any money, so they gave Jimmy and Thorpe some stock in the company to sell after it went public. Of course, MoJuice has stayed private while talking about holding its initial public offering year after year all the way through to this year.” Ponch shrugged. “What are you going to do? When Thorpe went off on his own, he got sponsorships as a flier—his wingsuit manufacturer and parachute company, even the maker of his landing shoes. He sold advertising on his website and YouTube channel, too.”

  “How do you know all this?” Janelle asked.

  “I’m an adjuster for State Farm in L.A., so I’m online all the time. It was easy for me to keep tabs on his new videos—featuring his latest, um, young ladies. He plugged his sponsors every chance he got.”

  Janelle glanced up, taking in the ridge above, as she continued along the trail. “You’re making me less and less upset about what happened to him up there.”

  “There’s never a lot of public grief for wingsuit fliers when they get killed. Most of them are estranged from their families. That was true of Thorpe, from what I gathered. I heard he’d gotten himself a girlfriend of late, but he never married. I can’t imagine the women he featured in his videos will spend too much time mourning his passing, either.”

  “Bad timing for this to happen, though,” Chuck said. “At the start of the reunion.”

  “Or suspiciously good timing,” said Ponch.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “If you’d watched Thorpe’s most recent videos, you’d know what I’m talking about. There was a certain melancholy to his latest postings. Fewer babes and more scenic shots while he talked about how great his years of flying had been—in the past tense.”

  “You’re suggesting he might have killed himself?”

  “His last video really made me wonder what was going on with him. He was alone in his van, at night, talking to the camera. He started out defending the fact that he’d turned away from Sentinel Gap three times in a row, and he claimed wingsuit flying had become a cult of death. But then, in his very next breath, he swore he would shoot the gap the next time he jumped off Glacier Point. He said everybody should keep an eye out for his next video because it would be incredible.”

  The trail snaked through the trees, descending toward the valley floor. Chuck tripped on a rock protruding from the path and jogged a few steps forward, catching his balance.

  “And then I dealt the cards,” Ponch continued. “The message was so clear when I laid them out. By the end of the hand, there was no question. I planned to tell him when I met up with him this morning. After the tone of his last video, I figured I could for sure get him to stop. But he wasn’t at all like what I was expecting. He joked around, seemed perfectly happy. He was so jazzed to make his big entrance to the reunion and to see everyone again. I kept thinking, who was I to say anything? He’d been flying all these years. He knew what he was doing. I couldn’t bring myself to mention the hand I’d dealt.” Ponch’s breathing was in check now that he was walking down the path rather than trudging up it. “If I’d had any sense whatsoever he wanted me to talk him out of his flight, I would have. But he was stoked. He talked about how excited he was to shoot the gap and post the footage online right away, to kick off the weekend.”

  Chuck frowned. “So you don’t think he was suicidal, or you do?”

  Ponch glanced back at Chuck. “Based on the video he posted when he was alone in his van, I’d say yes. But based on how he acted this morning, I’d say no way.”

  “There’s that thing about people being really happy, almost euphoric, right before they kill themselves.”

  “Which is why, to be perfectly honest, I just don’t know.”

  Janelle said to Ponch, “I overheard you telling Chuck about your tarot cards when you first got to the campground this morning. You said they told you more than just that something bad was going to happen to Thorpe. You said the bad thing was going to happen to him at the hands of someone else.”

  “That’s right,” Ponch replied, subdued. “Me. I’m the ‘someone else.’ I didn’t tell Thorpe about my reading, and now he’s dead.”

  “I’m not convinced the cards were referring to you.”

  From the back of the line, Chuck waved his hands in exasperation. “One crazy card person is enough,” he said to Janelle. “There’s no need for two of you.”

  She stopped and turned to Ponch and Chuck. They halted on the trail. She circled her thumbs around the shoulder straps of her p
ack. “This isn’t necessarily about the cards. It’s about the loose thread and the separation in the wingsuit.”

  Chuck frowned. “That was from when he hit the cliff. It had to be.”

  “I might agree with you—if it weren’t for the cut in his ankle.”

  Chuck’s frown deepened.

  “You saw it,” Janelle said. “On his leg, in the tree.”

  “I don’t really want to think about what I saw up there.”

  “You owe it to him to think about it. There was a clean cut in his ankle, remember? It was deep and straight, and his sock and shoe were soaked with blood. The end of the plastic rod, sticking out of the bottom of his flying suit, had blood on it, too. I understand that the forces involved could have torn his suit and ripped the rod free. But the cut in his ankle and his blood-soaked sock and shoe tell a different story. Think about it. We all agree Thorpe’s death was instantaneous. He died upon impact in the gap.”

  “That’s obvious,” Chuck said.

  “Stay with me here,” said Janelle. “The definition of death is the cessation of bodily functions—brain, lungs, and muscles, including the heart.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s what is critical in this case. If, as we all agree, Thorpe died the instant he hit the cliff in the gap, then that’s the instant his heart would have stopped pumping blood through his circulatory system. That means the blood soaking his sock and shoe couldn’t possibly have pumped out of the cut in his ankle after he died, which tells us the injury to his ankle wasn’t the result of the blunt force trauma from his hitting the cliff.”

  Ponch asked Janelle, “That kind of injury would be rough and bruising, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. Like his leg being torn off. Whereas the cut on his ankle, up in the tree, was a clean slice, like from a knife. No way was it the result of blunt force. Much more important, though, is the fact that his sock and shoe were soaked with blood. That’s what proves the cut had to have happened before he hit the cliff.”

  Chuck began, “I don’t see—”

  Janelle broke in. “There’s something about the cut and the separation in Thorpe’s suit that, together, don’t add up. One of the things they stressed in every one of my classes is that part of a paramedic’s job is to be observant. An ambulance call may not necessarily be for the reason given. Plenty of times, the patient is a victim of a crime. It’s up to us, as first responders, to be aware of that and bring in the police if necessary.”

  “You honestly believe Thorpe was the victim of foul play?” Chuck asked. “With Ponch up there filming him when he jumped?”

  “My classes were all about following particular protocols. If patient A is suffering from medical condition B, then we provide medical care C.”

  “Which is to say, you don’t believe what a hand of tarot cards might say.”

  “Except that my teachers always said there’s still a place for intuition, for what your gut tells you.”

  “I don’t think I like where this is headed.”

  Janelle turned to Ponch. “The cut in your friend’s ankle was caused by something in advance of his striking the ground. That’s the only way that much blood could have pumped from the laceration before his instantaneous death and equally instantaneous cessation of heart activity. The only thing I saw that could have caused the cut on his ankle is the rod sticking out of the bottom of his wingsuit, with blood on it.”

  “Which,” said Chuck, “could have happened accidentally.”

  Ponch said, “Except for what the cards told me.”

  Chuck held up one palm to Janelle and the other to Ponch. “That’s enough, you two. I’m willing to accept the notion that the seam in Thorpe’s suit could have come unraveled and the rod may have cut his ankle, and maybe even caused him to lose control and contributed to his death. But that’s as far as I’m willing to take it. He was participating in a dangerous sport. He had an accident, like lots of fliers before him. And that’s all.”

  Janelle aimed her chin at Chuck. “You can think what you want. As for me, I think somebody may have cut his suit. What are the odds it would have come apart on its own?”

  “I’d go a step further,” Ponch said with a firm nod to Janelle. “I’m not sure my cards were referring to me anymore.”

  6

  Dale Bowles raised one of the bottles from the several cases of craft beer he’d brought to the reunion. “To Thorpe,” he said.

  The others raised their drinks along with him. “To Thorpe,” they echoed.

  They sat in camp chairs, circled in the reunion campsite, the tall trees of the campground shading them from the afternoon sun. Chuck stood at the edge of the circle, having just returned from Sentinel Ridge.

  The final three reunion attendees, Dale, Caleb Holt, and Mark Sansoni, had arrived at Camp 4 while Chuck, Janelle, and Ponch were away on the ridge. Dale had driven up from San Luis Obispo, Caleb had made the shorter drive south from Lake Tahoe, and Mark had flown from Seattle to Modesto and driven to the valley from there.

  Dale was head sommelier for Zanstar, the famous mid-coast eatery overlooking the Pacific on its own windswept knoll halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. He wore flip-flops and cargo shorts. A Cal Poly Half Marathon T-shirt hugged his lean torso. His face and legs were bronzed, his hair sun-bleached.

  Three beer-filled coolers were stacked next to the picnic table, but no wine was in evidence; twenty years on, Dale still knew his crowd.

  Caleb sat forward, a can of MoJuice in hand. Despite the fact that Jimmy and Thorpe had to date received no payoff from the company, their names remained closely associated with the popular energy drink. Caleb lifted his can, displaying it to the others, who held bottles of beer. “This is what we ought to be toasting Thorpe with,” he said. “But I guess me and Jimmy are the only renegades left these days.”

  While Chuck and the others had dedicated themselves to climbing during their summers in Yosemite two decades ago, Caleb had devoted himself to the social side of the Camp 4 lifestyle. He’d made no secret of the fact that he preferred hanging out with climbers in Yosemite Valley far more than the act of climbing itself.

  Generally, groupies like Caleb were shunned by the tight valley climbing community. But Caleb had offered something other groupies had not—a steady supply of pharmaceuticals. Access to the prescription pad of his father, a Bay Area surgeon, had enabled him to supply valley climbers with all manner of painkillers. He also had served as a ready conduit to recreational drugs through connections in the Tahoe area, where his family had a second home.

  Caleb had liberally sampled his own wares during his summers in Yosemite, leaving him in a near-constant state of contented befuddlement. Unsure what Caleb did for a living these days, Chuck had trouble picturing him doing anything besides sitting cross-legged on the dusty ground of a campsite rolling the tight joints for which he’d been well known.

  Caleb plopped his can of MoJuice behind him on the picnic table’s bench seat with a thump, causing liquid to splash from the can’s top. Despite his drug-addled past, he appeared healthy enough, seated across from Chuck in jeans and a T-shirt, his eyes the same washed-out blue, his hair still dark and curly. “Thorpe sure figured out how to make an exit, I’ll give him that.”

  “Sounds like you saw his last video,” Ponch said.

  Caleb shook energy drink from his fingers. “I’m hurting for him, that’s for sure. And this whole thing with Jimmy, too.” He turned to Chuck. “What’s the latest on our broken leader?”

  “It looked to be just his foot and ankle.”

  “Bernard’s with him?”

  Chuck nodded. “He’ll get a call through to one of us at some point.”

  “That is, he’ll call if he manages to take a break from counting how many times the nurse comes through the door to Jimmy’s room, or how often the air conditioning turns on and off.”

  The others chuckled.

  “Is he still as nutty as always?” Caleb asked Chuck.

>   “I barely got to talk to him.”

  Mark leaned back, his beer resting on his belly. “People don’t change.”

  Caleb picked up his can and tilted it at Mark’s bulbous stomach. “You sure did.”

  More laughter crackled around the circle.

  Mark managed a string of cafeterias that served organic fare to high-tech workers on corporate campuses in the Northwest. Thin when Chuck last had seen him, Mark these days carried more extra weight around his midsection than the extra pounds of Bernard and Clarence combined. Mark’s short-sleeved shirt blanketed his large belly, which cascaded over the waistline of his baggy jeans. A bushy blond beard covered his face, and wraparound sunglasses hid his eyes.

  From the stream of pre-reunion emails, Chuck knew Dale had been assigned by Jimmy to provide drinks for the weekend. Mark, in charge of food preparation, already had grumbled to the group about his lengthy stop at a Modesto grocery store on his way from the airport to the valley.

  “I meant, inside,” Mark said, leaning forward in his seat to hide his paunch. “People don’t change who they really are inside.”

  “Talk about things changing,” Caleb said. “Jimmy and Thorpe, the safest of the safe, both in one day.” He looked at Chuck. “The guy in the campground office told me the rangers grilled you about Jimmy’s fall.”

  “Just one ranger,” Chuck said. “Owen Hutchins, Jr. Old Ranger Hutchins’ kid. He’s convinced I tampered with the auto-belay. It was in the release position when Jimmy fell.”

  Mark chortled. “Sure. Straight-arrow Chuck tried to kill Jimmy. What’s that guy thinking?”

  The corner of Caleb’s mouth turned down. “He’s thinking like his dad. How many times did Hutchins, Sr., kick me out of the park? And he took my stash every single time.”

  “But you kept coming back,” Mark said. “We couldn’t get rid of you.”

  “You didn’t want to get rid of me.” Caleb pulled a thin case made of shiny silver metal from his back pocket. “On account of this.” He flipped the case open to display a row of half a dozen marijuana cigarettes, the paper at each end twisted closed. “I still have a connection or two, even with it all legalized these days.”