The Gorge

by Ronald M. Berger

  “Of course not. Just show me that damned raft.”

  Marshall stood up. “Five minutes. Then I want you out of here.”

  The two men walked across the yard in the fading light and stood looking down at the remains of Sanders’s raft, buried under a foot of snow.

  Without bothering to put gloves on, Carlyle went down on his hands and knees and dug at the hard, crusty snow until he’d uncovered the raft. “You mind giving me a hand?” Both men bent over, dragged the boat away from the shed, and unfolded it.

  “What the hell are you looking for?” Marshall said.

  Carlyle turned over the raft, reached into the two-by-three-foot cockpit and, like a blind person searching for his house keys, moved his fingers slowly over the restraining strap’s coarse rubber fabric.

  Carlyle exhaled and sat back on his knees. “Look at it. Carefully.”

  Marshall stared at the strap. “It’s broken. What about it?”

  “It didn’t break. It’s been cut.” Carlyle brought the two ends of the strap together. “If it had worn out or Sanders had simply overstressed it, it would have ragged edges. The first four inches are perfectly smooth. Only a knife could have done that. It looks like a single stroke. Whoever did this left just enough for the strap to hold until Sanders really needed it.”

  Marshall didn’t take his eyes off the raft.

  “Since he was such a big kid,” Carlyle said, “I assumed it had pulled away or split.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “Two deaths in five days? I couldn’t accept they were both accidents.”

  “But how can you connect Blake’s death to the first one?”

  “At the hearing yesterday, you said how close you came to being hit. That log wasn’t meant for Blake.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were supposed to be driving this raft, and then on Wednesday, in the first raft, you narrowly missed the log that got Blake.”

  “How can you be so sure that Blake’s death was no accident?”

  “I had Simmons stop at Cedar this afternoon. The log is gone.”

  “It must have gotten washed out of the chute.”

  “A year’s worth of dead leaves are still there.”

  “An outfitter probably dumped it in the river to make sure nobody else ran into it.”

  “After we left Cedar Ledges yesterday, DEC blocked the entrance to the chute with yellow tape. And besides, if the tree had simply fallen, why would the stump end of it have been out over the river instead of the treetop?”

  Marshall leaned heavily against the boat shed. “You’re saying my guides were murdered?”

  “But they weren’t the targets. You were.”

  Marshall stood up and began shoving the raft close to the shed. Carlyle pulled him away. “Don’t touch it; it’s a crucial piece of evidence.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We call Bognor and Raines. They’ll contact the state police.”

  “If news gets around that my two guides were murdered, I won’t have another booking for years.”

  Carlyle stuffed his cold hands into his jacket. “This isn’t just some business deal gone bad. Someone may be trying to kill you.”

  “Me? Are you crazy?”

  “Do you have another explanation?”

  Marshall took two steps away from the shed. “What are we going to do now?”

  “I’ll drive over to Gus Burton’s place first thing tomorrow.”

  “Why Burton?

  “He’s the biggest outfitter around here. Maybe he knows something that can help us.”

  “Burton’s got no reason to help me out.”

  “He’ll talk once he figures out his empire will fall apart if DEC shuts down this river.”

  He had concealed himself on the north side of the Hudson directly across from the lodge in a grove of ice-covered pine trees. From where he stood, he could see Marshall and Carlyle move toward the shed and begin examining the remains of Sanders’s raft.

  If the two men discovered the strap had been slit, they’d immediately understand why Sanders had fallen out of his boat. Carlyle would then notify the sheriff, the state police, and lab technicians. Within hours, the region would be crawling with cops. As Carlyle turned over the raft, it was clear why the authorities had brought in a former guide to help them figure out what had caused these two fatal accidents.

  The sun dropped behind Crane Mountain and dark shadows began to creep across the valley. When Marshall and Carlyle went back inside the lodge, he hiked up the hill to his truck and drove off. He didn’t need anyone wandering down this road and wondering what he was doing out here at this time of day. Besides, there was still some daylight and he had more work to do.

  Five

  Saturday

  When Carlyle drove up to Warrensburg the next morning, he found Burton smoking a cigar on the second-story balcony of the house he’d just had built.

  “You ever think of calling first?” Burton said.

  A decade ago, after a trip down the Colorado, Carlyle realized that driving a raft had to be better than spending the rest of his life teaching college students how to do regression analysis. When he got back to Albany, he’d called Burton. “How about letting me train as a guide?”

  “I tried a professor once,” Burton had said. “He wasn’t worth shit.”

  Marshall, who’d just opened his business and was looking for cheap help, had agreed to hire Carlyle, but Burton never stopped referring to him as “that professor.”

  “Since when did you start requiring invitations?” Carlyle said.

  “Since your storm troopers started crawling all over this goddamn valley. What the hell do you want now?”

  “Ten minutes of your precious time.”

  “The front door is unlocked. Don’t forget to wipe your feet.”

  Carlyle walked into the kitchen, where three books sat on the counter: The Flame Thrower in World War I, The World’s Most Dangerous Snakes, and History of the Guillotine. “That’s quite some library you’ve got.”

  “Bedtime reading.” Burton was forty-nine years old and still hadn’t an ounce of belly fat.

  “You look in great shape.”

  “Don’t ever listen to doctors. Human growth hormone works just fine.”

  Carlyle wandered over to a huge picture window looking out over the Screaming Eagle Ski Resort and, in the distance, the Mackenzie Range. “Jesus, this is some place.”

  “It took me three years to buy the hundred-and-fifty acres. The house is four-thousand square feet, with three bedrooms, one for each of my failed marriages. There’s a large bunkroom for my kids, who never show up, a sauna, and weight room. You should see the garage.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You ever see a Ducati motorcycle, a ‘56 lime green Fairlane, a brand-new Range Rover, and a Toyota Land Cruiser all lined up?” Burton glanced down at his watch. “But you didn’t come this far to admire the architecture.”

  “I want to talk to you about what’s happened to Marshall.”

  “The answer’s no.”

  “How do you know what I’m going to ask?”

  “A fat guy with a badge on his chest stopped by last night. He said you wanted my cooperation. I told him no, too, goddammit.”

  Carlyle decided to remain calm. He enjoyed watching an uncontrolled eruption now and then, as long as he wasn’t its target. “You don’t even know what this is about.”

  “Let me guess. You want me to let cops ride in my boats.”

  “No.”

  “Encourage my guides to snitch?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “You want me to tell you why someone would be attacking Marshall.”

  “Not that either.”

  “Then why the hell are you wasting my time?”

  Carlyle told Burton about the foot strap that had been sliced. “I want you to help me find out who killed those kids.”

  “You’re compl
etely nuts. If it was murder—and, by the way, I think your evidence stinks—I want this person hung in chains as much as you do. But the answer is still no.”

  “You mind telling me why?”

  “Sure, if it’ll get you out of here. First, it’s none of my business why someone’s taking out his rage on Marshall. And second, I don’t want my people involved in a witch hunt in this valley. It can only hurt my business.” Burton stood up, picked up a fly swatter, and slammed it against the picture window.

  “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “Bullshit. You’ll ask my employees who hates Marshall and they’ll say that some competitor was behind it, meaning me.”

  “Don’t be silly. They’re too afraid of you to say that.”

  “Okay, then, how’s this? You’re not a cop or a lawyer. How am I going to sue your ass off when you drive all my clients away?”

  “You still haven’t heard what I’m asking for.”

  Burton glanced at his watch. “You’ve got ten minutes left.”

  “I want some background on the people who work for you. Guides, kitchen crew, bus drivers, maids, and cooks.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then let us put a park ranger, incognito of course, in one of your boats.”

  “Never. It would make me a target for that asshole you’re chasing.”

  “Then do us a favor. Hire Marshall’s guides. You already know them all.”

  “Sure. If Ryan pays, I’d love to have them in my boats.”

  Carlyle ignored the insult. “Let me interview your guides. When I’m done, much as I’d like to avoid this place like the plague, I’ll tell you what I’ve found.”

  Burton shook his head. “People around here still haven’t forgotten how you let them down. Why should I help you now?”

  Carlyle had begun driving rafts through the Hudson Gorge a decade ago. Wanting to make his new colleagues look good, he wrote an article for one of those glossy second-home magazines on the glamorous lives of whitewater guides. He listed all the risks they faced, unpredictable river levels, treacherous rapids, hypothermia, severe weather, and clients who didn’t know a paddle from a pisspot, and then sat back waiting for the letters of congratulations to come pouring in.

  When his story was published, Burton was the first to call him. “What the hell were you thinking?” he yelled. “You made those trips seem like just one endless ordeal. We get just ten weeks in the spring to make enough to last until skiing season. Are you trying to ruin all that?”

  Carlyle had felt like a fool. Instead of winning the respect of people he admired, he’d made them think he was naïve and disloyal.

  “Your clients aren’t risking their lives for the scenery,” he’d said. “They go because it’s the most demanding thing they’ll ever do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They say they only feel really alive when they’re on that river. And want to come as close to death as they can without flinching.”

  “Are you nuts?” Burton had said.

  “You should emphasize the hardship.”

  “It’s our goddamn livelihood,” Burton had said that day almost ten years ago. “You can write whatever you want when you really understand what we’re up against.”

  “I apologized for that article,” Carlyle said.

  “Makes no difference. People around here’ll crucify me if I cooperate with you.”

  “Get serious. You own a fleet of school buses, three convenience stores, two sporting-goods shops, a pizza palace, a twenty-four-unit motel, and a two-bay gas station. Who’s going to crucify you?”

  Burton hurled a book against the wall. “Listen to me. My father died in a paint factory fire when I was two years old. When my mother recovered from a nervous breakdown, she dumped me on her relatives for a year. I worked every summer on a potato farm and ran away from home a half-dozen times. So stop bitching about Marshall’s problems. I’ve got my own shit to deal with.”

  As Carlyle listened to Burton’s life story, he remembered how little empathy the guy had. One April four years after Carlyle had retired from the business, Burton had invited him up to Warrensburg to run the Hudson Gorge one final time. It had rained for three straight days and the snowpack, unable to absorb another soaking, had begun pouring off the slopes. When Burton’s crew took off, the river was at near-record levels.

  When he heard that he would be in a raft with a rookie guide, Carlyle knew he should have backed out, but admitting his fear in front of Burton and his former colleagues was unimaginable.

  His luck ran out in Mile-Long Rapid. When he got caught in the backwash pouring off Big Nasty, his raft hit a huge boulder sitting midstream just east of the Narrows, flipped, and dumped him into the middle of the longest continuous Class IV-rapid on the East Coast.

  The thirty-four-degree water and unstoppable waves quickly overwhelmed him. Unable to pull himself into an eddy, he was swept downstream like a rag doll in a tornado. His dry suit came apart and water just this side of slush turned his skin blue. Tumbling downstream and caught in the trough in a seemingly endless series of waves, Carlyle realized that unless help came soon, he was going to drown.

  Leo Wells, who’d been waiting at the bottom of Mile-Long, managed to snag Carlyle just as he was about to plunge into another set of rapids. Two hours later, shivering uncontrollably and unable to believe he was still alive, Carlyle found himself back at the take-out in North River.

  As he was about to get in his car, Burton walked up. “I heard you decided to swim the Narrows. Pretty ballsy move for a guy your age.”

  Carlyle was almost speechless with fury. “You have any idea at all how long I was in that fucking river?”

  “Oh, please. We’ve all gone through shit like that. Don’t get all weepy on me. We were watching your clown act the whole time. You had nothing to be afraid of. My insurance policy discourages me from letting my employees drown.”

  Carlyle now said, “Listen, are you going to help Marshall, or not?”

  “Not a chance. Guess who’s going to buy up his seat licenses if he goes under?”

  “His guides are living in trailers and unheated cabins. If we don’t stop this person, they’ll all be out of work for good.”

  “Not my people. They’ll always have jobs.”

  “I hate to ruin your dream of a motel and laundromat empire, but if one more person gets hurt on that river, the DEC and the police are going to close down every operation up here. Including yours.”

  “You think they’re going to tangle with someone who creates almost two hundred jobs in this county?”

  “Do you have any idea what’s really been going on just ten miles from here?” Carlyle told Burton that Marshall’s father had spent the past five years buying up pretty near all of Johnston Mountain. Private investors and hedge funds were supporting his plan to turn the place into a ski area that would rival anything that could be found in Utah. They’d begun evicting locals and bulldozing the valley so they could put up a huge base lodge, thirty shops, a golf course, and several hundred town homes and condos. The development would transform the economy of the entire region. “These guys are thinking Las Vegas plus snow. The last thing they want is headlines about some murderer running around loose in these woods. If I were you, I’d do everything I could to catch this guy.”

  “No one’s going to push me out of here,” Burton said.

  “Do you seriously believe that if the Governor wants this project built, and he knows that logging interests and the unions are backing it, he’ll let people like you stand in his way?” Carlyle walked over to the large window that dominated Burton’s living room. “What do you think will happen once they discover there isn’t enough natural snow up there to generate the kind of profits they require? Phil Marshall and his partners have plans to throw up a dam across the Narrows that’ll divert ten thousand cubic feet of water a second into a holding pond for their snow guns. They’ve already submitted a permit to DEC and t
he federal government. Do you know what will happen to the rafting business if it gets in the way of a two-hundred-million-dollar project for that mountain?”

  “Where’d you find this out?” Burton said.

  “Bognor handed me a copy of the building permit applications and the environmental impact statements.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “A day, maybe a bit more.”

  “What’s the goddamn rush?”

  “Betts called me last night. He said that Marshall had two other serious incidents last season that went unreported. If the press gets hold of that story, they’ll claim that a serial killer is on the loose in this region. And then everyone’s reservations, including yours, will simply vanish.”

  Burton reached into a refrigerator and tore the top off a can of Bud. “You’ve got one week to interview my people. Then you leave me alone.” He started to take a gulp of beer and suddenly stopped, slopping a little onto the floor. “But not the guides. You don’t go near them.”

  “I need to talk to the guides more than anyone.”

  “Stay away from them. If I let you chase all my guides away, I might as well close up shop right now. Now get the hell out. I’ve got to fire two cooks and a waitress who’ve been stealing me blind.”

  An hour and a half later, Carlyle jogged across the desolate central plaza of the university. Albany’s traditional architects, tenacious defenders of the Romanesque, had labeled the campus “a modernist nightmare” when it was built thirty years ago. Three decades later, after weathering two dozen ice storms, the concrete-clad buildings were beginning to resemble the Chernobyl reactor. Four ten-story student dormitories, each surrounded by soulless glass and steel “teaching and learning centers,” stood guard over the bleak, nearly treeless campus.

  The political hack who designed the university had never given much thought to what it would be like to work here during the brutal, five-month upstate winters. Unprotected corridors between buildings funneled Arctic storms into fierce whirlwinds. Faculty and students were forced to sprint between classes in the poorly lit, dust-chocked subterranean tunnels rather than brave exposed, ice-coated walkways.

  After picking up his mail, Carlyle went to his office, made coffee, and waited for his first appointment of the day. He’d come in this afternoon for one reason only—to terminate the career of a diligent but poorly prepared graduate student.