At this moment, I do not know if Mr. Cockrell was responsible for killing my daughter in a hit-and-run six years ago. I plan to meet the Cockrells tonight and find out. To be clear, I intend no physical harm to Mr. Cockrell or his wife. If Mr. Cockrell is responsible, however, we will see if I’m so lucky. Does a man who runs down a young woman and leaves the scene contain it within him to murder in cold blood in order to hide his crime and his shame?
I suspect he does.
The Cockrells will be thorough in disposing of my body, tent, backpack, etc., which makes this last bit of business a little tricky.
My camp is in a small glade in the rhododendron thicket on the east slope of Shining Rock Mountain, approximately a hundred vertical feet above the meadows of Beech Spring Gap. The glade is twenty yards across, with a large boulder in the middle. Look for a flat, shiny rock in the grass. My tent now stands over it, and I’ve made a tiny rip in the tent floor and dug a small, shallow hole in the ground under the rock.
Late tonight, if Mr. Cockrell admits his guilt, into this hole, sealed and safe in plastic, I will drop a tape recorder, and hopefully rebury it before he murders me.
An introduction to “Perfect Little Town”
I live in Colorado and frequently travel in the high country. It’s beautiful, which is why I live here, but I occasionally get creeped out. There are a handful of small, scenic towns in the Rockies which sit in high valleys, where the only way out of town is to drive over 12,000-foot mountain passes. These towns can actually become snowed-in during major winter storms. I was in one such town a couple years ago on a snowy night. Walking in the cold through the quaint, empty streets, I was overcome not only by the beauty, but the haunted isolation of the place. My mind starting racing—what if the passes were closed and I couldn’t leave? What if no one would rent me a hotel room? What if I’d had the misfortune of getting stranded here on the worst night possible, when this perfect little town unleashed its very dark secret?
perfect little town
-1-
They arrive midmorning, the Benz G-Class rolling down Main Street with its California tags and rear end sagging under the weight of luggage, and though the windows are tinted, we bet the occupants are smiling. Everyone smiles when they come to our town, population 317. It’s the mountains and fir trees, the waterfall we light up at night and the clear western sky and the perfect houses painted in brilliant colors and the picket-fenced lawns and the shoppes we spell the olde English way and the sweet smell of the river running through.
Parking spaces are plentiful in the off-season. They choose a spot in front of the coffeehouse, climb out with their smiles intact, squinting against the high-altitude sun—a handsome couple just shy of forty, their fashionably-cut clothes and hair in league with their Mercedes SUV to make announcements of wealth that we all read loud and clear.
We serve them lattes, handmade Danishes from the pastry case, and they drop dollar bills into our tip vase, amused at the cleverness of the accompanying sign: “Don’t be chai to espresso your gratitude.” They lounge for a half hour in oversize chairs, sipping their hot drinks and admiring the local art hanging on the walls. As they finally rise to leave, the woman shakes her head and comments to her husband that they don’t make towns like this anymore.
-2-
They wander through the downtown, browsing our shops as the sky sheets over with leaden clouds.
From us they buy:
a half-pound of fudge
five postcards
energy bars from the hiking store
a pressed gold aspen leaf in a small frame
They tell us what a perfect little town we have and we say we know. Everywhere they go, they ask exuberant questions, and we answer with enthusiasm to match, and in turn solicit personal information under the guise of chitchat—Ron’s a plastic surgeon, Jessica a patent attorney. They drove from Los Angeles, this being their first vacation in four years.
We ask if they’re enjoying themselves.
Oh yes, they say. Oh yes.
-3-
They each have a camera. They shoot everything:
The soaring, jagged mountains in the backdrop
Deer grazing the yard of a residence
The quaint old theatre
The snow that has just begun to fall and frost the pavement
They ask us to take pictures of them together and, of course, we happily oblige.
-4-
The day wears on.
The light fades.
It snows harder with each passing hour.
Up and down Main, Christmas lights wink on.
It is winter solstice, the darkest evening of the year, and when the Stahls attempt to leave town, they find the highway closed going both directions, the gates lowered across the road and padlocked, since what has become a full-blown blizzard is sure to have made high-mountain travel exceedingly dangerous.
Or so we tell them.
-5-
They approach the front desk.
“Welcome to the Lone Cone Inn.” And we smile like we mean it from the bottom of our hearts.
Ron says, “It appears we’re stuck for the night in Lone Cone. Could we have a—”