I looked away, at the ribbon-like bands of blue ice on the schrund wall, shimmering in the glow cast by Stobie’s spotlight. Beautiful. And then the wall seemed to lean in and all I wanted to do was escape.
But she was still bound here.
When Walter and I finished our collection, we all worked together to chip away the last bonds of ice. Then we eased our arms beneath the body. It was like lifting some valuable piece of furniture you dare not drop. And now that we held her I could not deny who she was. We eased her onto her back.
There lay our mayor.
My heart plunged.
Arms and legs askew, she looked as if she were trying to run. She was iced all over, smooth in some places and rough where chunks of her glacial bed still clung. Her face was abraded and there was damage to the forehead. The ice on the right side of her face was sheet thin and the texture of the skin there was apparent. White and waxy, like boiled fat.
Walter bowed his head.
Eric pulled out a notebook. His face was pale as hers. “Overt marks of trauma to the head,” he said, voice not his own. “No apparent lividity in the visible skin of the face and neck. Suggesting she didn’t die in the position she was found, face down.” He grimaced, and wrote it down.
I said, fury rising, “Suggesting someone put her there, after she died.”
“Aw shit,” Stobie said. “Shit.”
“Dear God,” Walter said.
None of us took it particularly well.
We had made our collections on her anterior side — more wool fibers, another horse hair, a few more mineral grains — and we were easing her into the body bag when Walter noticed a bulge in her parka pocket. Eric unzipped the pocket, fishing out a small clutch bag. Shiny vinyl, wild tropical print, pure Georgia. I recognized it. She carried it in place of her big purse, when convenient. Eric unzipped the clutch, dumping the contents onto the ice. Keys, cell phone, comb, lipstick, micro-wallet, pen, small notebook.
Walter said, “What’s the notebook?”
I looked. “Weight Watchers — her pocket guide. Calories and all that.”
Walter indicated the pen. “She wrote in it?”
Eric picked up the notebook and flipped through it. “Yeah. What she ate, some kind of point system.”
I asked, “When’s the last entry?” thinking that might pinpoint the day she died because I knew Georgia damn well wouldn’t have skipped a meal or skipped holding herself accountable, and I waited while Eric flipped to the last written entry and read it, while his face closed up tight. “What?” I said. “What?”
Eric passed it to me. Walter and Stobie crowded in. I read the inked notes, then read them again. It looked like she’d been trying different ways to word something. Mostly cross-outs. Nearly blotted-out, the way you’d slash your pen angrily because you can’t get the words right. I could decipher just found out and then, at the end of the slashed-out section that nearly tore the page, she’d found the words she wanted.
No way out.
CHAPTER TWO
On the way down the mountain Stobie took the lead and Eric roped the sled from behind, holding it in tension. Walter followed and I stayed close on his heels.
At the last ridge before the final descent, a sled strap came undone and we had to stop. While Stobie fussed with the litter, I went to look at the view eastward, way out in the distance.
I found what I was looking for: the mountain ranges and ridges that join to erect a giant loop around the high desert floor. The loop closes against the wall of the Sierra, embracing Mammoth Mountain and enclosing our hometown of Mammoth Lakes.
What it is, in fact, is a cleverly camouflaged volcano.
Seven hundred thousand years ago it blew the hell up, blowing so ferociously that it sank a fifteen-by-twenty mile block of the earth’s crust a mile and a quarter deep. The eruption left a hole so vast that people passing through today see desert and mountains and don’t recognize it as the bowl and rim of a volcanic caldera. Beneath the bowl, the magma chamber has been refilling. Six months ago, within the span of a day, four big quakes hit this area. With these abrupt shivers, the volcano awoke.
That was five months before Georgia disappeared. Her last five months were her best. She rose to the occasion. She’d downplayed the volcano through four mayoral terms, as it sporadically stirred. Don’t spook the tourists. She simply told us what we wanted to hear — which was that things would quiet down — and she was always right. But this time was different. This time, seismographs and tiltmeters said time to worry. To our utter amazement, Georgia called in the feds. If an eruption was coming, she was going to get us ready.
Stobie called “fixed” and I abandoned the view and rejoined the team.
I said, “About Georgia’s notes…”
“We keep that quiet,” Eric said.
I shrugged. That was a given; we don’t discuss case details with anyone not authorized. I glanced at Stobie, the only one of us not involved in criminalistics, but he was official Search, Rescue, and Recovery and I assumed they followed the same code.
Stobie held my look. “We don’t know jack about what she meant. Who says it has anything to do with anything?”
“This is what needs to be established,” Walter said.
“In the meantime,” Eric said, “we don’t need the whole town speculating.”
We resumed our descent.
Two switchbacks down, it began to snow. Snow like white cement stuck to the body bag until it looked like we were transporting a snowman. Snow woman. The wind picked up and drove wet slugs into my face. If I cried now, snow would hide the tears. I had no tears. Just cold misery and a hot poker in my gut.
I stared at the shape on the sled. What did you find, Georgia?
You mind me talking to you? I talked to my little brother Henry for years after he died. Nothing woo-woo, I don’t believe in ghosts, just in talk therapy. So explain yourself, will you? What did you just find out? And what in the name of all that is logical does no way out mean? Does it mean you couldn’t dodge the volcano issue this time? Couldn’t pat us on the head and say ‘there, there’? You just found out how serious the unrest is? You couldn’t see any way out of that predicament?
I can almost raise your voice Georgia, but, sad to say, I can’t put answers in your mouth. All I can do is read the message you left behind. I’m not talking about the notes, now. I’m talking about the bits of the earth embedded in your boot soles. I’ll track that soil and find out where you died, how you died. And why you wrote no way out.
So long, Georgia. I swear we’ll find whoever did this to you.
CHAPTER THREE
A small crowd watched through curtains of snow as we dragged into Red’s Meadow. Eric had radioed ahead and it looked like the entire police department had mobilized — and a few town officials, to boot.
Afternoon was fading but the scene was lit with huge police department lanterns.
We halted and I knelt to unfasten my iced bindings, fumbling with cold gloved hands. There was such a din that I jumped when someone touched my shoulder. I turned. A man stood over me, so close I had to crane my neck. I couldn’t make out his face, which was recessed in the depths of a parka hood. I must have shown my shock, for he dropped to a crouch like a large animal making itself smaller so as not to cause alarm.
“Hell,” he said, “it’s me, Adrian Krom.” He threw back his hood and showed his face. “I don’t bite.”