Yosemite Fall (National Park Mystery Series)

by Scott Graham

  Janelle drew a breath. “I’m not sure we’ll be able to stay, m’hija.”

  Carmelita’s eyes clouded. “What?”

  “Something happened last night, another—” Janelle appeared to almost choke on the next word “—accident. To Ponch, one of Chuck’s friends. I don’t know that they’ll even hold the last rounds of the competition.”

  Carmelita stamped her foot. “Yes, they will. They have to. I signed up. It’s just the two of us now. Fifty-fifty, that’s my chances. That’s what Uncle Clarence said. That’s really good. And we paid our money, right? Everybody did.”

  Chuck steadied himself where he stood, seeking mental footing as well. “Carm’s right,” he said to Janelle. “They’ve moved the Slam to this evening. The plan is to let the rangers secure the scene and conduct the initial investigation throughout the day and hold the competition later on. The park service is on board with the delay instead of calling it off. Two deaths in two days draws the kind of attention to the park nobody wants. Canceling the Slam would only draw more attention.”

  “See?” Carmelita said to her mother. “They’re gonna have the Slam. And I want to be in it. I want to finish.” She asked Chuck, “They’re doing it tonight?”

  “After sunset, at eight o’clock. Today’s going to be tough for a lot of people. Holding the competition at dusk gives everyone something to look forward to.” He said to Janelle, “Owen is going to interview me this afternoon. I can’t leave until after that even if we want to.”

  Janelle took Carmelita’s hand in hers. “We’ll have to see how the day unfolds.” When Carmelita’s upturned face brightened, Janelle hurried on. “No guarantees, understand?” She pressed the tip of her daughter’s nose with her finger. “We’ll try. That’s all.”

  Carmelita threw her arms around her mother’s waist. “Gracias, Mamá.”

  Chuck pivoted to watch with the others when the deep-throated chuff-chuff-chuff of a helicopter sounded from far down the valley. The beat of the chopper’s rotors bounced off the walls of the valley as the craft flew past Camp 4, a blue flicker between the tree branches, aiming for the upper reaches of Half Dome, where Ponch’s body lay. Throughout the campground, other campers stopped to watch, too.

  When the rescue helicopter was far up the valley and the beat of its rotors grew faint, Janelle turned to Chuck. “I won’t spend another night here. The minute the competition is over, we’re gone.”

  Blood drained from Carmelita’s cheeks at the harsh tone of her mother’s voice.

  Chuck rubbed Carmelita’s upper arm and said to Janelle, “There’s no proof of anything at this point. Besides, none of this affects you or the girls or Clarence. Or me, for that matter.”

  He hadn’t mentioned being bumped atop the dome before Ponch’s fall; he wasn’t sure where that fit in the scheme of things, if at all.

  “The boulder yesterday—that affected us,” Janelle pointed out. She gazed around Camp 4, the look in her eyes that of a caged animal. “I have to get away from here. I swear to God, I’ll go stark, raving mad if I have to stay here in the campground another minute.”

  25

  Chuck, the girls, and Clarence walked together up the paved path from Camp 4 to Yosemite Village, headed for the Village Cafeteria. Janelle roamed a few steps ahead, her head swiveling and her eyes probing, the fact that she shared the path with scores of other visitors providing her no apparent reassurance.

  Rosie pulled Chuck forward by the hand, struggling to keep up with her mother.

  “Why are we in such a hurry?” she asked Chuck.

  “Your mom is on a mission.”

  “Really? Cool. What kind of mission?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “¿Mamá?”

  Janelle slowed until the others drew even with her, but her head continued to rotate. “I’m just keeping an eye on things,” she told Rosie.

  “I’m hungry,” Rosie declared in response, still tugging Chuck forward.

  “You’re always hungry,” Carmelita said.

  Inside the cafeteria, they took trays and lined up at the head of the food line. The cavernous room smelled of ham and maple syrup and echoed with the clinking of silverware, the scraping of chairs, and the conversations of dozens of customers seated at long rows of tables.

  The Latina woman who’d fried plantains for everyone after Carmelita’s Columbia Boulder climb in Camp 4 stood behind the line of prepared breakfast items—eggs, ham, bacon, pancakes, and waffles in metal trays; dry cereal in portion-sized boxes; containers of yogurt stacked in glass-fronted coolers; and tall urns dispensing juice, milk, and coffee.

  “Hola, Juanita,” Janelle greeted the woman.

  The two spoke in rapid-fire Spanish. Juanita matched Janelle’s progress from the far side of the food line as Janelle sidled past the food, adding a muffin, sliced cantaloupe, and a hard-boiled egg to her tray. The faces of the two women darkened and their voices lowered as they talked. Chuck overheard Janelle say the word “Ponch.” In response, Juanita referred to “el Señor Hutchins.”

  Clarence joined the women’s conversation as he worked his way down the food line beside Janelle, loading his plate with bacon, ham, eggs, and a donut with chocolate icing. The threeway discussion grew animated. Chuck had picked up some Spanish in the years since he and Janelle had married, but the speed of the exchange between Clarence, Janelle, and Juanita was such that he caught only a handful of words, among them desconfiado, suspicious; and peligroso, dangerous.

  At the end of the food line, Juanita wished Carmelita luck—“suerte”—and bid all of them farewell in accented English. The woman disappeared through a swinging door to the kitchen. Chuck settled their bill with the cashier and they headed for the unoccupied end of one of the communal tables in the cafeteria’s eating area.

  “She’d already heard about Ponch,” Janelle reported to Chuck after they slid their trays onto the table and began to eat.

  “No big surprise there,” he replied. “News travels fast in the valley.”

  “She said she heard he was murdered.”

  Rosie looked up from sawing a syrup-soaked waffle with a plastic knife, her eyes round. “Somebody got murdered?”

  “No, sweetie,” Janelle said quickly. “It’s just rumors people are making up about what happened on Half Dome last night.”

  “About Chuck’s friend who fell, the one you told us about?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay,” Rosie said simply. She went back to her waffle.

  Janelle motioned Chuck and Clarence away from the table with a tilt of her head. They crossed the room and stood together near the front window.

  Chuck spoke first. “With Thorpe, Jimmy, and now Ponch, it makes sense rumors are flying around the valley.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Sometimes, in fact, it’s those who start the rumors who most need looking into.”

  Janelle huffed. “Not if you’re referring to Juanita.”

  “I heard her say Owen’s name.”

  “He’s the one you should be worried about.”

  Clarence said to Janelle, “You got that right, hermana.” He turned to Chuck. “I been talking with la gente in their campsites. They got their own worries, and all of them revolve around the ranger dude. He’s been all over them this summer, giving them a hard time.”

  “That’s to be expected, I guess,” Chuck said.

  “They told me he got himself put in charge of Camp 4. They said he doesn’t think the campground should be used by park workers, that it should be reserved for tourists.”

  “He’s wrong about that. It’s a public campground, open to all comers. Remember what the guy told us when we were eating plantains at their site? As crowded as the valley is these days, there’s no place else for them to stay. Besides, what Owen thinks doesn’t matter.”

  “He sees it different, I guess.”

  “What has he been doing to them?”

  “Whatever he can come up with, sounds like. Telling them t
o take down their clothes lines, even though there’s no rule against it. Busting them for doing laundry in the dishwashing sink in the bathroom—which, okay, technically they’re not supposed to do. Writing them up for leaving food out on their tables in the middle of the day, when the bears aren’t around, instead of in their bear boxes. Piss-ant things like that.”

  “Sounds like the same sort of stuff his dad used to pull on climbers in the campground back when I was here.”

  “They say he’s getting worse. He keeps writing them tickets for big fines, which they refuse to pay, so he writes them up for even bigger fines. The way they tell it, he’s crazy—as in, scary-crazy.”

  “That doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But it makes him out to be someone who might not want you and me here, doing our work for the Indigenous Tribespeople Foundation.”

  “How so?”

  “He seems like he’s someone who doesn’t like anything and anyone who rocks the boat, who’s unusual in any way. The fact that we’re looking into a couple of old murders in the valley? That’s unusual.”

  “One look at him,” Janelle added, “and you can tell he’s someone who might go to extreme ends to make his point—like rolling a boulder down on us.”

  “We should focus on him,” Clarence declared.

  Janelle tipped her head in agreement.

  “But he wasn’t up on Half Dome last night,” Chuck said.

  “Maybe he’s got an in with one of your reunion guys,” said Janelle.

  “Or Alden,” Clarence added, “the rock-gym dude. You said he was up there with you.”

  “Why would anyone have wanted to kill Ponch up on Half Dome last night, though?” Chuck asked. Or me, he added to himself, thinking of the blow that had knocked him off balance after the second explosion.

  Janelle glanced at the girls across the room. They giggled as they jousted with each other using their plastic utensils.

  “I keep coming back to the boulder,” Janelle said. “Everything else—Thorpe, Jimmy, Ponch—might or might not have been an accident. But the boulder was for real.” She looked at Chuck and Clarence. “The thing I can’t figure out is why somebody would do that—why someone would be against your doing the survey for the foundation. Any ideas?”

  Clarence massaged the unshaven bristles on his chin and shook his head.

  But Chuck snapped his fingers, his thoughts on the Yosemite Museum archives. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  26

  Outside the cafeteria, throngs of tourists made their way along the wide, paved walkway through the center of Yosemite Village. Families posed for pictures in front of the museum, with its river rock exterior and sloped, pine-needle-carpeted roof backed by the soaring north wall of the valley.

  Chuck followed his family up the walkway toward the museum. His feet dragged. The morning already was warm, the heat adding to his exhaustion. His legs ached from his long trek up and down Half Dome, while his heart ached for Ponch.

  Rosie skipped beside Clarence. “Museums are boring,” she announced.

  “I’m with you,” Clarence said. He winked at her. “I think we deserve a payoff if we have to go in there.”

  “A payoff?”

  “He means,” Janelle told Rosie, “a bribe.”

  “If you consider an ice cream cone a bribe,” Clarence said.

  “Ice cream?” Rosie asked. “Like yesterday? Yea!”

  Carmelita stopped in the middle of the path and planted her hands on her hips. The others stopped with her. “You just finished breakfast,” she scolded Rosie. “I can’t believe you.”

  “Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream!” Rosie cheered. She looked at her mother. “Deal?”

  Janelle glowered at her brother. “I hope you get to be a parent someday.” She sighed and said to Rosie, “Deal.”

  They set off once more. As they climbed the steps to the museum, the building’s front doors swung open, and Dale and Owen exited together. Deep in conversation and taking no notice of Chuck and the others, the two men descended the wide, flagstone stairway and walked away from the building.

  “Go on in,” Chuck said, waving Janelle, Clarence, and the girls on up the steps. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Our plan is to stick together today,” Janelle said. “Remember?”

  “I’ll be right back. I just want to see what they’re up to.”

  Chuck hurried down the steps to the walkway without giving Janelle the chance to protest further. Ahead, Dale and Owen crossed the central village plaza, their heads bent toward each other. They passed the sprawling Visitor Center complex while continuing their conversation.

  Chuck remained fifty feet back as they turned off the main pathway next to the village post office, made their way beneath the widespread branches of a black oak beside the building, and passed from sight.

  Chuck slowed, not wanting to come upon the two men unexpectedly. He reached the near corner of the post office and peered around it. No sign of them. He walked beneath the oak to the building’s far corner and leaned around it.

  A parking lot stretched behind the post office. Cars filled the lot, glimmering in the late morning sunshine. Dale and Owen stood next to a light green ranger sedan parked in the middle of the lot, a bar of emergency lights bolted to its roof. Owen gathered himself and slammed Dale in the chest, shoving him hard against the passenger door of the car. The ranger pressed Dale to the sedan, his elbow to Dale’s throat, his face red.

  “Enough?” Owen demanded of Dale, his raised voice carrying across the parking lot to Chuck. “Or do you need more convincing?”

  Dale lifted his hands in surrender. He did not struggle. Owen released him. Stepping back, the ranger tucked his gray uniform shirt into his green slacks, then smoothed the front of his shirt with both hands. He pulled out a key fob and pressed it. The headlights of the ranger vehicle blinked as the car unlocked.

  Dale stood still, his eyes on Owen. The ranger glared at him, waiting. Dale’s shoulders fell and he opened the passenger door and lowered himself into the ranger car without speaking.

  Owen slid behind the wheel and they drove off, disappearing among low administrative buildings arrayed in haphazard fashion behind the post office.

  Chuck backtracked to the central village walkway. Pausing in front of the Visitor Center, he squeezed his temples with his thumb and forefinger. It made no sense that Dale and Owen were together. It made even less sense that Owen had assaulted Dale, and that Dale had not retaliated.

  No possible explanation came to him. He set out for the museum, his thoughts turning to his scheduled interview with Owen. When the time came for his questioning on the subject of Ponch’s fatal plunge, Chuck would have to be strategic with his own questions, aimed at the ranger, as well.

  Upon his return to the museum, Chuck found his family standing with Caleb, Mark, Bernard, and Jimmy at the back of the entry lobby, near the stairway to the museum’s basement archives. The group was gathered in front of a display depicting naturalist John Muir’s initial years in Yosemite Valley, when Muir had worked in a valley sawmill, producing lumber from wind-felled trees, and had roamed the nearby canyons and mountains on his days off.

  For two decades after first coming to the valley in 1868, Muir had championed the creation of Yosemite National Park, leading to its approval by Congress in 1890. Muir cofounded the Sierra Club two years later, in 1892, in large part to protect Yosemite from those who sought to profit by overdeveloping the newly declared park.

  “We caught the shuttle bus here,” Jimmy explained to Chuck as he walked up to the group.

  Caleb pressed the flat of his hand to his forehead. “None of us could sleep.”

  Jimmy pivoted on his crutches to face Janelle, Clarence, and the girls. “I want you to know how sorry I am about your visit here,” he told them. “I know you came to Yosemite with Chuck to see what the rest of us love so much about this place, not. . .” His beard quivered and he fell silent.


  “Where’s Dale?” Chuck asked him.

  Jimmy pressed his mouth shut, his mustache meeting his beard over his tight lips.

  When Jimmy didn’t speak, Mark said to Chuck, his tone bitter, “He sold out. He’s with Owen.”

  “Sold out?”

  “He was the first to be questioned, in the campground office,” Mark explained. “I was supposed to go second, but they came outside and drove off in Owen’s car. They didn’t say a word to me. I waited for a while, but they didn’t come back.” He glanced at Jimmy, Bernard, and Caleb. “We decided there was no point in hanging around. Owen has our phone numbers and there’s good signal strength in the village. He’ll get hold of us when he’s ready.”

  Chuck tucked his fingers in his pants pockets. Mark and the others clearly hadn’t seen Dale leaving the museum with Owen. “What brings you guys here?” Chuck asked, thinking of his own reason for visiting the museum.

  Bernard’s hands fluttered like butterfly wings at his sides. “We went through the Visitor Center yesterday.”

  “This is the first time I’ve ever been in this place,” Caleb admitted. He cracked a wan smile. “I wouldn’t have been caught dead in museums back in the day.”

  Rosie tugged Clarence’s arm. “I’m bored. Can we go get ice cream now?”

  “It’s fine by me, but you need to ask your mom.”

  The corner of Janelle’s mouth twisted downward. She said to Rosie, “You lasted ten minutes in here, m’hija. That’s a record for you.” She took her hand. “Okay. Vámanos.”

  Jimmy lifted a crutch from the scuffed flagstone floor of the museum and aimed it at Carmelita. “Are you all set for tonight, little lady?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re quite a climber, you know that?”

  Carmelita’s eyes lit up.

  “There’ll be a huge crowd tonight. You and Tara will start things off.” Jimmy lowered his crutch. “Just between you and me, I think Tara’s a little scared of you.”

  Carmelita’s face reddened.

  Chuck asked Jimmy, “Did you say Carm and Tara are going first?”