Ashton was a survivalist and outdoorsman and conditions like slippery foliage would have been just one more factor he’d have tucked into the equation on a trek, like gauging the dependability of ice on a pond or how fresh a bear paw print was and how big the creature that had left it.
As for suicide, Ashton Shaw’s essence was survival and Colter couldn’t envision any universe in which his father would have taken his own life. Mental issues? Sure. Yet as mad as he could be, his affliction was paranoia — which is, of course, all about protecting yourself from threats. He was also carrying a 12-gauge shotgun. If you want to end your life, why not just use a beloved weapon, like Papa Hemingway? Why tumble over and hope the fall will kill you? Colter and his mother had discussed it. She was as sure as her son that the death was not self-inflicted.
So, an accident.
To the world.
But not to Colter Shaw, who believed — around eighty percent — his father had been murdered. The killer was the Second Person, who had followed Ashton from the cabin and who had then become the pursued — after Ashton’s clever canoe trick at Crescent Lake. The two had met atop Echo Ridge. There’d been a fight. And the killer had pushed Ashton over the edge to his death.
Yet Colter had said nothing to the police, to anyone, much less to his mother.
The reason? Simple. Because he believed that the Second Person was Colter’s older brother, Russell.
Ashton would have been following the shadowy figure along the rocky ground of the ridge, the bead sight of his weapon on his back. He’d have demanded to know who he was. Russell would have turned and a shocked Ashton Shaw would have seen his eldest son. Dumbfounded, he would have lowered the gun.
Which is when Russell would have grabbed it, flung it away and pushed his father over the cliff.
Unthinkable. Why would a son do that?
Colter Shaw had an answer.
A month before his father died, Mary Dove was away; her sister was ill and she’d traveled to Seattle to help her brother-in-law and nieces and nephews while Emilia was in the hospital. So very aware of her husband’s troubles, she had asked Russell to drive up to the Compound from L.A., where he was in grad school at UCLA and working, to look out for her younger children in her absence. Colter was sixteen, Dorion thirteen.
Colter’s brother, then twenty-two, sported a full beard and long dark hair — just like the mountain man he was named after — but wore city slicker clothes: slacks, dress shirt and sport coat. When he’d arrived, he and Colter had embraced awkwardly. Quiet as always, Russell deflected questions about his life.
One evening, Ashton looked out the window and said to his daughter, “Graduation night, Dorion. Crow Valley. Suit up.”
The girl had frozen.
Colter thought: She was no longer “Button.” Ashton’s daughter was, in his mind, an adult now.
“Ash, I’ve decided. I don’t want to,” Dorion said in an even voice.
“You can do it,” Ashton said calmly.
“No,” Russell said.
“Shh,” their father had whispered, waving his hand to silence his son. “Mark my words. When they come, it’s not going to do any good to say, ‘I don’t want to.’ You’ll have to swim, you’ll have to run, you’ll have to fight. You’ll have to climb.”
Graduation was a rite of passage Ashton had decided upon: an ascent, at night, up a sheer cliff face, rising a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of Crow Valley.
Ashton said, “The boys did it.”
That wasn’t the point. When they were thirteen, Colter and Russell had wanted to make the climb. Their sister didn’t. Colter was aware too that Ashton had only proposed this when Mary Dove was away. She supported her husband, she sheltered him. But in addition to being his wife, she was his psychiatrist too. Which meant there were things he couldn’t get away with when she was present.
“There’s a full moon. No wind, no ice. She’s as tough as you.” He started to pull Dorion to her feet. “Get your ropes and gear. Change.”
Russell had then stood, removed his father’s arm from his sister’s and said in a low voice, “No.”
What happened next seared itself into Colter’s memory.
Their father pushed Russell aside and grabbed Dorion’s arm once more. The older son had learned well and, in a flash, he slammed his open palm into their father’s chest. The man stumbled back, shocked. And as he did, he reached for a carving knife on the table.
Everyone froze. A moment later Ashton took his hand off the knife. He muttered, “All right. No climb. For now. For now.” And walked to his study, lecturing an invisible audience. He closed the door behind him.
A burning silence ensued.
“He’s a stranger.” Dorion looked toward the study. Her eyes were as steady as her hands. The incident appeared to have affected her far less than it had her brothers.
Russell muttered, “He’s taught us how to survive. Now we have to survive him.”
It was two weeks later that Mary Dove awakened her middle child in the predawn hours.
Colter. Ash is missing. I need you...
Yes, Colter suspected Russell had killed their father. That was only circumstantial speculation. The hypothesis would move closer to theory, if not certainty, at their father’s funeral.
Mary Dove arranged for a modest ceremony three days after her husband’s death, attended by close family and colleagues from their former lives as academics at Berkeley.
Russell had flown back to L.A. after his mother returned from her sister’s hospital stay. He then returned to the Compound for the funeral. And it was when the family had gathered for breakfast before the memorial that Colter heard a brief exchange.
A relative asked Russell if he’d flown in from L.A. and he said no, he’d driven. And then he mentioned the route.
Colter actually gasped, a reaction nobody else heard. Because the route Russell had described had been closed recently because of a rockslide; it had been clear on the day of Ashton’s murder. This meant that Russell had been in the area for several days. He’d driven up earlier, hiding out nearby, maybe because his reclusive nature kept him from seeing family. Maybe to murder their father in the chill morning hours of October 5, for the purpose of saving his younger sister from any mad and dangerous “graduations.”
And for another reason too: to put his father out of his misery.
For food or hide, for defense, for mercy.
Colter resolved at the funeral to wait and confront his brother later. Later never came, because Russell had left abruptly after the service and then went off the grid entirely.
The thought of patricide haunted Colter for years, a constant wound to the soul. But then, a month ago, some hope emerged that perhaps his older brother might not have been the killer after all.
He was at his house in Florida, sorting through a box of old pictures his mother had sent. He found a letter addressed to Ashton with no return address. The postmark was Berkeley and the date three days before he died. This caught Shaw’s attention.
Ash:
I’m afraid I have to tell you Braxton is alive! Maybe headed north. Be CAREFUL. I’ve explained to everybody that inside the envelope is the key to where you’ve hidden everything.
I put it in 22-R, 3rd floor.
We’ll make this work, Ash. God bless.
What could he make of this?
One conclusion was that Ashton — indeed “everybody” in Eugene’s note — was at risk.
And who was Braxton?
First things first. Find Eugene. Colter’s mother said Ashton had a friend at Cal by that name, a fellow professor, but she couldn’t remember his last name. And she’d never heard of a Braxton.