Stomach in free fall, I stayed fetal, pulse banging in my ears.
“You okay?” Close to my ear, yet a million miles off.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Again the voice. Anxious.
Ten wild heartbeats, then my lungs relaxed a micron.
I inhaled. Inhaled again, deeper.
The oxygen helped. The trembling in my limbs began to subside.
“Were you hit?”
Still, I didn’t trust my voice to answer.
Lowering my arms, I pushed to all fours and ran a wrist over my mouth. Spit soil and muck.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head, mind still numbed by panic.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced sideways. Ramsey was up on his knees, face filigreed with shadow from the branches above. Dirt and dead flora decorated his jacket and cap.
“What the hell?” Rotating to my bum.
“I’m guessing a rock. Which is now at the bottom of the gorge.”
“How?”
Before Ramsey could answer, Gunner made his entrance.
“And where were you, chicken balls?” Still rattled, I fell back on humor.
The dog cocked his head but didn’t reply.
Ramsey got to his feet and extended a hand. I took it and pulled myself up. Tested my legs. Reasonably steady.
“You good to climb?” Ramsey looked genuinely concerned.
I nodded. Not sure that I was.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I jabbed a thumb at the bucket fragments and concrete. “What about—?”
“I’ve got it.”
Our ascent took close to forty minutes. Very tentative. Very cautious. You can imagine. I’ll skip the details. Once topside, Ramsey drove until we both had signal.
Reconnected with the wonders of wireless communication, I phoned the MCME. Took three tries. Still stoked on adrenaline, I kept fumbling the keys.
Larabee bounced me, as expected, to the chief ME in Raleigh. The directive was the same as before. Collect any small stuff and take it to Charlotte. If there’s big stuff, call for a van.
While we were talking, an incoming call lit up the screen. I recognized the number. Hazel Strike. I ignored her.
Ramsey phoned his boss. Briefed him on the bucket and concrete. And the rock.
The sheriff, Kermit Firth, unlike his predecessor, was a certified criminal investigator. Firth said he’d give a courtesy heads-up to Burke County but felt his department could best handle the situation. The Avery rescue squad would search the mountain, and Avery techs would handle any evidence recovered.
Listening to Ramsey lay out the plan, I sensed a wee bit of jurisdictional rivalry. Wasn’t sure, didn’t care.
By the time we returned to the Devil’s Tail, my stomach had settled and was voicing serious complaint. I offered to share my sandwiches and coffee. Ramsey accepted and threw in Twix bars.
We moved to the trailhead, where we could look down on the shed. Though far too much time had passed to worry about scene preservation, cop instincts die hard.
We ate in silence, eyes roving the shadowy little ledge below. The gorge. The distant mountains in their smokelike mist. Gunner stayed by Ramsey, not begging, just looking hopeful and alert.
I was jamming wrappers into my pack, idly skimming my gaze over my surroundings, when my hand froze.
“Jesus.” On a sharp intake of air.
I scrambled to my feet and crossed to the point on the promontory’s edge where Ramsey and I had stood early that morning. The boulder on which I’d braced my boot was gone. In its place was a gash in the earth, dark and moist, like a fresh wound on the edge of a lip.
Deep gouges marred the walls of the gash. Freshly turned soil littered its perimeter.
Hearing Ramsey approach behind me, I stepped sideways. He studied the hole, the scoring, the fresh sprinkling of mud. When his eyes met mine they were dark with anger.
“Someone put some effort into dislodging that baby.”
“Yes.”
“Not likely a coincidence that we were downslope.”
“No.”
“That thing could have killed—”
Ramsey’s thought was interrupted by the hum of engines. We both spun toward the road. The deputy signaled to his dog with a slap to the thigh. Gunner joined us and we moved into the shadow of the trees.
The hum grew louder, cut off abruptly. Doors thunked. Voices sounded.
We waited.
In minutes, six people appeared lugging a lot of equipment. Four wore jackets identifying them as rescue squad members. Two were in civvies. With them were a German shepherd and some sort of Border collie mix. Gunner eyed the dogs with suspicion but stayed with us as we stepped out into the open.
Two of the jacketed guys weighed maybe a hundred pounds bundled. One was in his late twenties, the perpetual frat-boy type. The other was older, with buzz-cut hair and one pierced ear. The third was fair and blond and, I suspected, an accomplished blusher. The female jacket wearer had spent a lot of time at the gym. Big eyes, greasy bangs, not yet on a first-name basis with thirty.
Both crime scene techs were short and wiry and, when eventually zipped into their hooded Tyvek suits, difficult to distinguish.
There wasn’t a smile in the lot. Not hard to guess the source of their displeasure. They’d been dragged from their big screens and the basketball matchup of the century.
As the squad strapped on complicated gear involving belts and ropes, I apologized for taking everyone away from the game. They were not quite surly but close.
I showed them the concrete mold and the bucket, and described the shed. Explained the body parts found at the other two overlooks, and the theory that the victim, whose name I withheld, might be a resident of Avery County.
I suggested a possible postmortem interval of three to four years, and warned that any remains would be fragmentary. No one made the mistake of asking why, after such a lengthy PMI, the hunt was so urgent it had to be today.
By two-thirty, the searchers were over the side, Ramsey and Gunner included. Turned out the deputy was AMGA certified. American Mountain Guides Association.
At Ramsey’s suggestion, I stayed at the trailhead with the CSU techs and a handheld radio. Made sense. I have zero climbing skills, but am kick-ass at crime scene recovery.
We took photos of the hollow vacated by the boulder, then mixed a batch of dental stone and poured a cast of the gouges left in the mud. Maybe useful if a suspect tool was recovered, maybe not. My best guess was crowbar, but that was reaching.
While the stone dried, the techs moved down to the shed. They’d dust for prints, collect the bucket fragments, shoot video and pics. No one was optimistic.
Once I’d bagged the cast stone, I sat with my knees up and my back against a tree. In less than an hour the techs returned, dropped at a pine five yards off, and alternated between smoking and chatting in low tones while the rescue squad continued their work below.
—
All afternoon I listened to voices floating up from the gorge. Shouted questions and instructions, responses, most too muffled to make out the words.
I’m not very good at staying on the sidelines. I get edgy and find it hard to sit still. Especially when the action is right at my feet.
I kept rising to pace. Pointlessly testing the radio. Thinking. About taxes and the IRS. About Mama and cancer. About the actual origin of Opie Taylor’s name.
Mostly, about Ryan and his impossible proposition.
I’d played the bride. Done the rings and flowers and white lace. Pete and I had spent decades together before his grand betrayal. But time heals. Eventually I’d allowed myself to love again. And then Andrew Ryan had shattered my heart anew.
Ryan had never married. Why now? Why me? Had he changed? Does anyone ever change?
I’d vowed no more vows. Was it wise to alter that pledge?
Round and round. Over and over. Like a loop in my brain.