Drifted

by Jeff Carson

  Down the hallway, MacLean’s office window blinds were open, revealing a swarm of people inside.

  Wolf’s leather boots thumped down the terrazzo hall, out under the vaulted ceilings of the squad room, and into MacLean’s aquarium office.

  “There you are!” MacLean waved him inside. “Dr. Sheffield, this is Chief Detective David Wolf.”

  A man Wolf recognized well held out a hand. “Hello, I’m Dr. Steve Sheffield.”

  “Detective Wolf.”

  Dr. Sheffield wore a pair of nylon hiking pants, hiking boots, and a red North Face fleece. Frameless glasses perched on a triangle nose, magnifying intelligent brown eyes. He seemed wired, and from what Wolf had heard so far, he could understand why.

  “You know him, right?” Rachette thumbed toward the doctor. “Has all those radio and TV ads right now. Has the clinic in town.”

  Sheffield flashed a self-deprecating smile. “That’s right.”

  Patterson nodded to Wolf and stepped aside.

  Yates stood behind the doctor, looking over his shoulder, and Undersheriff Wilson took up post near the sheriff on the other side of the desk.

  Wolf turned back to the object of focus lying on MacLean’s desk: a cell phone.

  “Take a look,” MacLean said.

  Wolf stepped forward and looked down at the illuminated phone screen. The naked upper torso of a human corpse had emerged from shiny, glass-looking snow. The skin was jet black, sucked against the bone. The mouth was wide open in morbid hilarity, its lips shriveled, revealing white teeth. Patchy gray hair streamed from a misshapen skull.

  “Where is this?” Wolf asked.

  “Huerfano Pass.”

  “Huerfano Pass? That’s …” Wolf had been going to say so far from Preston’s house, but he left the sentence unspoken. They’d have plenty of time to discuss the nuances of the case when the civilian was gone. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

  “I was up hiking on the pass, just off the north side, by the gate, where they close the road for the winter.”

  Wolf nodded him on.

  “Anyway, I saw a flock of crows … a murder, I guess the correct term is.” The irony was obliviously lost on Sheffield. “And I was curious. I wanted to see what kind of animal the birds were eating.” The doctor exhaled hard. “And I was surprised to see this.”

  Wolf took off his SBCSD cap and scratched his freshly buzzed scalp.

  “I’m an orthopedic surgeon. The last time I saw a corpse was back in med school.” Sheffield looked mesmerized by his phone. “Anyway, it freaked me out. I considered covering the body because of the birds, but I had nothing to cover it with. I was going to put snow over it but thought that might be frowned upon by … well, by you guys. That, and the snow is really dense and icy right now.”

  “It rained last night,” Wolf said.

  “It looks like the storm uncovered the body,” Patterson said.

  Wolf looked at MacLean. “Lorber?”

  MacLean nodded. “Lorber and his team are on their way up there now.”

  “Again, I’m just in orthopedics, so I can’t tell. How old do you think this body is?”

  The room met his question with silence.

  “Dr. Sheffield, how are you?” White appeared from nowhere and strode into the office. “I just got word you were here,” he said, shooting MacLean a glare.

  “How are you, Sawyer?” Sheffield and the district attorney gave each other double handshakes and fake-looking smiles.

  “What in the name of heck is going on here?” White asked, looking down at the cell phone.

  Sheffield gestured. “I was up on Huerfano Pass and found … something interesting.”

  White stepped next to Wolf and looked at the phone. He straightened abruptly.

  “I was going to thank Dr. Sheffield for his discovery and quick action,” MacLean said.

  “Of course,” Sheffield said. “Anyone would have done the same. You can’t exactly ignore something like this.”

  “Detective Rachette, could you please escort Dr. Sheffield to the squad room and take his statement? After that, you’re free to go about your business, sir. Thank you again.”

  “And what about my phone?”

  MacLean nodded. “Yes, good point. We’ll get that to you while you’re filling out your statement.”

  The doctor looked apprehensive. “I could send the pictures to you.”

  MacLean deliberated, then nodded.

  Patterson cleared her throat. “Why don’t you send them to my phone?”

  MacLean and Wolf exchanged a glance while Patterson gave her number. Wolf knew that depending on the personal settings of one’s cell, pictures could be stored in many places. Who knew how many servers the images had already been uploaded to?

  “Have you told anyone else about your discovery, sir?” Wolf asked.

  “No. Not at all. I came straight here.”

  “No texts to anyone else? No phone calls?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Got them, thanks.” Patterson held up her phone.

  “Uh, Doctor.” MacLean held out his hand. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re going to need to erase those pictures from your phone.”

  Sheffield looked unfazed. “Of course. You don’t want me selling these off to the news channels, eh? Darn it. I was hoping to get a bonus payday.” He smiled.

  The room looked at him.

  “Sorry. Bad joke.”

  MacLean gestured to Patterson again, and she took the device from Sheffield.

  White raised a finger. “Uh, when Detective Patterson is done, why don’t you let me escort Dr. Sheffield, Sheriff? Detective Rachette, if you wouldn’t mind going out and brewing a fresh pot of coffee, we’d much appreciate it.”

  Rachette nodded curtly and left the office.

  They watched Patterson. Judging by the number of flicks and taps, she’d had the same thoughts as Wolf and was checking the nooks and crannies of the phone thoroughly.

  “There. Thank you, sir,” she said, handing back the phone.

  The doctor nodded, and Wolf thought the man looked slightly violated.

  “Come with me, Doctor.”

  Wolf watched White and Sheffield leave out the door.

  “So, how’s your county-council campaign going?” White’s question echoed around the corner.

  Sheffield’s signs were as numerous around town as Margaret’s, and the recent ads Rachette had mentioned were associated with the doctor’s bid for council and not his orthopedic clinic.

  According to Margaret, the DA was looking bad in the polls against Blair Hanquist. White’s nose planted firmly in the doctor’s ass suggested Sheffield’s political prospects were looking good. Wolf had seen less angles played by billiards champions.

  “Well?” MacLean asked. “What are you thinking?”

  Wolf blinked out of a stare, realizing the sheriff was talking to him. “I think we have to get up to Huerfano Pass.”

  Chapter 11

  Wolf twisted and looked back down the road snaking up the east side of the valley. The late-morning sun was high overhead, and spotty shadows slid across the green landscape below. He zeroed in on a cut into the mountains over Rocky Points and on the other side of the valley.

  Rachette stepped up next to him and followed his gaze. “That’s Wildflower Canyon, right?”

  Wolf nodded.

  “We’re pretty far from Preston’s house.”

  “Yeah.” Preston’s house was up the canyon. They were miles up the other side of the valley. The distance between the two points was exactly that: pretty far.

  Wolf’s boots crunched on wet, rocky earth as he turned and looked up the slope again. Just like behind his house, this mountain was shedding a lot of water to the valley below.

  Lorber was crouched on a snow bank with his CSI team. The ME stood to his full height and waved to Wolf.

  “It’s him?”

  Lor
ber nodded. “You wanna see?”

  Wolf did. He stepped up onto the snow and followed a line of footsteps. The snow was pitted and crusted with jagged daggers of ice, eroded artistically by the overnight rain.

  Daphne Pinnifield turned her mirrored glacier glasses toward Wolf and smiled. “Hi, Detective Wolf. How you doing today? I mean, besides the dead body.”

  “Not bad, thanks.”

  Wolf eyed the exposed hole beyond her. The snow surrounding the opening was stained reddish black. He caught his first in-person glimpse of the body. The birds had been feasting, and it was in worse shape than in the cell-phone pictures from earlier.

  Crows circled overhead and sat in the stunted trees a short distance away.

  Hungry beaks had torn and shredded the upper part of the body. The lower limbs—black, shriveled, and whole—had been dug out by the two other members of Lorber’s team.

  “Warren Preston.” Lorber waved a hand. “The myth. The legend.”

  “The body,” Daphne said.

  “The body,” Lorber repeated.

  “How do you know?” Wolf asked.

  “Dental.” The ME held a cell phone in one hand and pointed with the other. “See?”

  The corpse’s teeth and shiny dental-work were on display, lit by the overhead sun.

  “It’s a perfect match.” Lorber held his phone out for Wolf.

  He waved it away. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Lorber pointed. “See his skull?”

  Wolf took a closer look at Preston’s head. At first, he assumed he was looking at part of the decomposition process or damage from the birds, but then he saw that the man’s skull was caved in.

  “I see it.”

  “That’s a major blow to the head,” Lorber said. “Looks like last night’s rain washed enough snow off for him to emerge. Lucky for the crows. And lucky for us, he didn’t wash off the mountain. His lower body anchored him down.”

  “I’d say he was dumped,” Daphne said. “The angle of his body? The way he looks like he’s in the middle of a sit-up, with his arm over his head? It looks like he was killed elsewhere to me. Rigor set in, and then he was dumped here.”

  Lorber shook his head behind her.

  She snapped her head around. “What? Did you just shake your head?”

  “You tend to jump to conclusions early, my pupil.”

  Wolf had seen some doozy-arguments between the student and teacher, and another one ensued as Daphne raised her voice and pointed out some more nuances of the body position. The two forensic technicians thought opinions needed to be vocalized at all costs, and usually theirs differed greatly. And Wolf suspected they were sexually attracted to one another and had probably acted on their attraction, but that was none of his business. He left them to argue and walked away from the hole.

  He stretched his neck and surveyed the crested horizon to the west. His eyes latched onto the top of Aspen Mountain. Out of sight, below the undulating sea, sat the town of Aspen. And Lauren and Ella.

  “Hey, Wolf.”

  He blinked, pulling his thoughts back thirty miles in an instant. “What?”

  Lorber was bending over, pointing at the wispy gray hair surrounding the hole in Preston’s skull. “See this?”

  Wolf walked back and bent down.

  Daphne ducked in next to them and Wolf caught the scent of patchouli oil from her white suit.

  “Look at that. See that little piece of red rock embedded in the skull?”

  Wolf nodded.

  A noise floated to them on the breeze.

  “What is that?” Lorber stood up and looked at the sky. “Oh, no.”

  The crows flapped their wings and took flight to the south.

  A helicopter’s rotors flitted in and out of earshot, then Wolf spotted something coming straight for them from the north.

  “News copter,” Lorber said. “They must have heard something on the scanner. Who mentioned Warren Preston on the radio? I’ll murder them!”

  Wolf thought of Sheffield.

  “You did,” Daphne said.

  Lorber’s mouth dropped open. “No, I didn’t.”

  “You said his name on the way up. Right into the radio. ‘Get the DNA bag, Johnson. I want to know if this is Preston by lunch.’ That’s exactly what you said. I remember thinking, I hope nobody’s combing our scanners right now and figures out what we’re doing.”

  Another technician nodded.

  “Bullshit.”

  Wolf slid down the snow and stomped his feet on the dry ground. He eyed Yates. “Get on the horn to MacLean and see what you can do about that.”

  Yates broke off and moved fast down the hill.

  “Geez, boy can move.” Rachette watched him leave and turned to the approaching helicopter.

  As it neared, the rotors biting the air echoed off the mountains. It sounded like there was more than one.

  “Blunt-force trauma to the head,” Patterson said. “Is that what I heard?”

  “Yep. Lorber says there’s rock embedded in his skull.”

  Wolf started walking down the muddy path back to the road.

  The helicopter was on them now, straight overhead.

  “—coincidence!” Patterson said.

  “What?”

  “I said, rocks—that’s quite a coincidence!”

  Wolf nodded, not bothering to answer over the noise.

  They stepped fast down the slope toward the road.

  Wolf felt a vibration in his pocket and pulled out his phone.

  The name on the screen made his heart leap. He felt like he’d stepped off a cliff.

  “What is it?” Patterson shuffled around him. “What?”

  Only then did he realize he’d come to a stop. He sucked a breath and put the phone back in his pocket. “Nothing.”

  “What?” Rachette asked.

  His heart raced. He felt a shortness of breath. He’d experience it once before but couldn’t put a finger on when exactly. When he was a kid? No. It had been a few months ago. Right after they had left, and the drinking began.

  “Sir?”

  “Yeah. Hey, head down and help out Yates if he needs it. I have to …” He pulled out the phone and held it up. “I have to take a call. I’ll be right down.”

  He walked off the trail, out into a field of boulders and wind-warped trees.

  When he was certain he was alone he pulled the phone out again and tapped the message to open it.

  He read, and as he did it felt like a giant’s hand was squeezing him tighter with each breath.

  The screen spun, like he was drunk. The tightness in his chest amplified, turned to dagger-like pain.

  The phone dropped from his hands into slush. He hadn’t even realized he was standing shin-deep in wet snow.

  He ripped off his cap and sucked in deep breaths, but the air was thin. Too thin.

  Were his lungs even working?

  His chest.

  He felt like he’d been buried alive. Like the mountains surrounding him had risen up and crashed onto his back, smothering him, pressing him into the earth.

  He clutched a hand over his chest.

  “Sir!”

  Somebody grabbed him.

  He felt flecks of ice hit his face.

  He opened his eyes and saw feet scurrying around him, crunching in the snow. He felt his body being lifted. Saw Rachette’s face, then Patterson’s, then Charlotte’s. They carried him.

  “You’re okay!” they told him between yelling at one another.

  The pain intensified. His jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, his eyes from clamping them shut.

  Then there was wind and dust stinging his skin, and the sky above him, and he was set on his back and strapped into a leather cushioned chair. A gruff man wearing earphones yelled something back at him, and then Rachette was there, right in his face.

  “You’re okay!” he said. “You’re gonna be okay!”

  The cushion pushed up into Wolf’s back and he felt himself
being lifted again.

  “It’s okay!” Rachette’s eyes told him he was anything but okay. “We’re flying you to the hospital! Hang on!”

  Wolf passed out.

  Chapter 12

  Heather Patterson’s hands were numb from gripping the wheel.

  An hour and twenty minutes had passed since she’d begun the frantic drive from the top of Huerfano Pass. With flashers and siren still blaring, she sped along I-70 into the eastern side of Vail Valley.

  This place always felt claustrophobic. The valley was too narrow, threaded with the interstate highway. She preferred Avon and Eagle only a few miles back. There one could breathe.

  “Take a right here,” Yates said. “West Vail exit. Then hang a left at the traffic circle. Then right on the frontage road. It’ll be on the left.”

  She logged the directions in her mind and slowed the vehicle at the West Vail exit. That’s why she liked Yates—the guy knew how to think ahead. And knew when to shut up. Those had been the first words out of his mouth in thirty minutes.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She flicked off the siren.

  Never in her life had she seen David Wolf with that look twisting his face. It was so strange. He’d been eating healthily, exercising daily.

  But, then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange.

  “Right here!”

  She cranked the wheel, almost missing the exit. Geez, how had she done that? She felt her face redden as she jammed the brakes and pushed into the seatbelt.

  “Left at the traffic circle.”

  “Yeah. And then right on the frontage road, then it’s on the left. Sorry. Just … a little freaked out, I guess.”

  “Rachette said he’s fine.” Yates said. “We’re just lucky that chopper was overhead.”

  Patterson nodded.

  They swung onto the frontage road and turned into a parking lot behind a modern wooden building that was all boxes and right angles.

  Whereas County Hospital, down over Williams Pass to the south of Rocky Points, sat in the middle of a wide valley surrounded by sage and air, Vail Medical Center was socked in by evergreen trees on all sides. A red sage-covered mountain rose on the horizon to the south. The mountain to the north was a carpet of pines. Ski runs gouged the forest, dipping down into Vail Village.