I was sixty-two and fat, fully recovered from a quadruple bypass the winter before, but inclined to lie down and rest whenever someone mentioned serious exercise. I would do well to stumble my way back down to the campground, much less anything more strenuous. Even the grilled dinner was improbable. I knew damn well that when the time came, I’d settle for a couple of pieces of bologna on a hamburger bun, washed down with a beer or two.
And that’s exactly what happened. I made it off the mountain without falling on my face or even having another cigarette. The last hundred yards were easiest, following a well-packed trail with no grade.
Back at the campground I unlocked the Blazer, stowed my daypack, and popped a beer. The sun was already filtering through the trees, ready to drop behind the rugged mesa rim. I unfolded an aluminum lounge chair and settled back to watch the mountain colors fade and blend.
The campground was quiet for a Friday night…for about five minutes. Then a big Winnebago pulled in, one of those things with the canvas awning that folds down from one tall, slab side. Two elderly folks made home away from home in that monster…all thirty feet of it. In minutes they had a covered patio with a gas-fired barbecue grill sending up plumes of cooking chicken.
Two slots down was a Volkswagen bus, crammed to the gills with two young couples and an endless supply of noisy, scrapping children. They should have hijacked the Winnebago and had some room. Another Blazer, a couple years newer than mine, pulled in, and the first creature to emerge was a Dalmatian, nose to the ground and on a beeline for my peaceful corner. He snuffled up, tail wagging, expecting me to pat his wide, empty head.
“Get out of here, brute,” I said and waved a hand.
“Pokie, come!” his owner called and Pokie angled off to bother someone else. I opened another beer, just about ready to start sulking. Hell, I could have parked just as easily in a convenience store lot and had more privacy. I needed to find a rough old Forest Service road leading out to nowhere so I could vegetate in peace.
I scowled and looked across the large campground toward the highway. Several of the children from the Volkswagen were barefoot, and I wondered if their parents realized how much broken glass littered the place.
“Jesus, Gastner,” I muttered aloud. How the hell had I gotten so adept at minding other people’s business? Occupational hazard, I guess. By 8:30 I stopped fighting the fatigue that kept me from making any effort to move to a more secluded spot. I crawled into the back of the Blazer where the mattress was soft and cool. With windows cracked for air I was asleep in half a minute, despite the shrieks of playing children and the endless slamming of car doors.
And it seemed no more than half a minute before the first siren jerked me awake in the deep pitch of that mountain night.
Chapter 2
I sat upright in the Blazer and cracked my head on the roll-bar brace. I cursed and flopped back down, one hand clamped to my skull and the other scrabbling for my glasses.
The siren that had awakened me was just down-canyon, coming hard up the winding mountain highway. I heard the vehicle enter the sweeping curve just before the turnoff to the campground. The tires squawled on the pavement. The engine bellowed and then the car was past us.
I sat up more carefully this time and could see the red lights winking through the thick timber. Almost immediately the emergency vehicle slowed. They had reached the call, whatever it was. At the same time, far in the distance, another siren note floated up from the valley below.
After some more searching I found my flashlight and looked at my watch. I was surprised to see 3:18.
If there had been a collision, I hadn’t heard it. I snapped off the light and peered outside. No one else in the campground was stirring. Maybe someone had sailed their car off into the canyon… the road was ripe for it at any of dozens of places. If they had, they’d done it quietly since I hadn’t heard a thing.
I lay back down, listening as the second siren note pulsed and wailed. I didn’t have this county’s frequency on my radio, or my curiosity would have been easily satisfied.
But hell, it wasn’t any of my business. I had an invitation for dinner in another fifteen hours, and over the frijoles Estelle Reyes-Guzman could tell me all about whatever had happened. Maybe it was the state cops anyway.
“The hell with it,” I muttered and threw my sleeping bag open. I was wide awake now and would remain so. My biological clock didn’t take much monkeying with to be screwed up completely. In country like this somebody might need a hand.
I pulled on my boots, buttoned my shirt, and ran a hand through my hair before pulling on my cap. That would have to do. Mindful of the damn roll bar, I climbed into the driver’s seat of the Blazer, fumbled the keys, and started the vehicle. The fat tires crunched gravel as I backed out. I didn’t turn on the headlights until I reached the bridge across the creek, ready to climb the upgrade to the highway.
An ambulance roared around the corner of the state highway, and I waited until he’d shot past before I pulled out to follow northbound. The highway jogged left around a buttress of jutting rock, then eased along the river gorge with only a set of stubby guardrails keeping vehicles from zinging off into the void.
In another quarter of a mile I was greeted by a psychedelic display of colored lights bouncing off rocks, trees, and the tight walls of the canyon. A county sheriff’s car was pulled diagonally across the highway, blocking my northbound lane. The ambulance had pulled around that car and parked on up ahead, blocking the lane from the other direction.
I slowed to a crawl, obeying the flashlight signals of a man standing near the highway’s center yellow lines. Behind him, parked on the southbound lane’s shoulder and snugged right up against the rocks that formed the near-vertical embankment, was a dark-colored pickup. My headlights reflected off the white front license plate, and I guessed Forest Service even before the man stepped up to my Blazer.
I rolled down the window, held up my badge, and said, “I’ll park up ahead, behind the ambulance.”
The young man frowned and rested a hand on the door of my Blazer as if he were going to hold it in place with five fingers. I knew exactly what he was thinking. There were at least a million ambulance chasers in the country, many of them with Special Deputy commissions and pot-metal badges. They showed up like the goon squads at every serious accident or fire, making pests of themselves.
I held the wallet still until he’d focused the flashlight on it and read enough to be satisfied. “That would be fine, sir,” he said. “And we sure need someone up at the other end, catching cars coming down that way. There’s just a civilian up there.”
“You got it.” I drove around the patrol car, avoided the orange cones that straddled the centerline, swung past the ambulance, and parked in the center of the highway. I turned on the red grill lights. Their light pulsed on the anxious face of a middle-aged man who walked toward me from up the road. A Buick was pulled off on the shoulder fifty yards ahead. I took my red-head flashlight from the glove compartment and climbed out.
“Use this,” I said and handed the man the red light. “There’s not going to be much traffic this time of night, but if there is, we want ’em at a crawl. I’ll be back to give you a hand in just a minute.”
“Oh. Okay,” he said, then hesitated. He looked at the light as if it were about to bite him.
“Just wave ’em down. Another officer will probably be here in a minute or two anyway.”
I walked back down the highway, past the ambulance. The harsh spotlights from the patrol car converged on a spot near the guardrails where the ambulance attendants and the officer worked over a single figure crumpled on the ground. The victim was lying facedown. I could see one leg extended under the guardrail.