Fatal Descent (14 page)

All of the rafts ran rapids Thirteen and Fourteen cleanly, but Rapid Fifteen held a special danger for rafters at low water levels.
Capsize Rock jutted out of the seething river. As water collided with it, rooster tails fountained into the air. The rock had a reputation
for seeming to reach out and grab rafts and wrap them around
itself. Cool had told Mandy to steer clear of it, so when she saw Kendra’s raft with the Anderson family aboard drift toward it, Mandy’s mouth went dry.

Kendra yelled frantically for her crew to paddle. She ruddered as hard as she could on her rear paddle to turn the raft away, but to no avail. The powerful water smacked the raft against the rock. It flipped, spilling out bodies.

For a heart-stopping moment, the raft clung to the rock. Mandy wondered if it was pinned. She hoped no one was stuck underneath it, which would be life-threatening. Then the raft slowly slipped off. It spun upside-down in the frothy brown standing waves below the rock.

Heads bobbed in the water on either side of the raft. Mandy tried to count them, but she couldn’t. She was particularly worried about Hal Anderson, whose health was already fragile.

Gonzo’s raft, just ahead of Kendra’s, moved toward one of the bobbing swimmers. Someone in his raft pulled the swimmer out of the water. Rob oared his raft toward a couple more swimmers on the other side.

Mandy pushed on her oars to propel herself into the maw of the hungry rapid. She aimed for swimmers while trying to steer clear of the treacherous rock. She managed to skirt it and catch up to Amy and Alice Anderson flailing in the water. She yelled at them to grab her ropes.

Alice snatched the rope right away, but Amy missed. She kept trying, while Mandy back-oared like mad to keep the raft abreast of her.

Mandy wondered why Amy was having so much trouble and why her sister didn’t reach out and help her. Maybe Alice was too afraid to let go of the rope, even with one hand. Finally, Amy managed to grab on.

With both women holding on, Mandy snatched a peek at Rapid Sixteen coming up. “You’ll have to ride it out through this,” she yelled to the women, “then I’ll haul you in.”

Neither one replied as they gaped wide-eyed at the looming waves.

The answer from the river was a smack in Mandy’s face with a wave of brown water. Mandy spit and blinked. Once she could see again, she hauled on her oars. Praying that the two women could hang on, she steered for calmer water to the side of the river.

She kept an eye out for pillows, water piled up on the upstream side of submerged boulders that might crash into her swimmers, and maneuvered the now sluggish raft to avoid a couple. She also scanned the water for more swimmers. She didn’t see any and hoped everyone had been rescued.

When Mandy reached a momentary break in the rocking waves, she abandoned the oars. She moved first to Amy, the weaker of the two sisters. She grabbed the shoulders of Amy’s PFD and quickly hauled her into the raft. Then she did the same for Alice, whose powerful kick helped propel her into the raft.

Mandy leapt back into her place between the oars, leaving it to the women to find seats and handholds on the raft. She steered them through Rapids Seventeen through Twenty, gaining a few more dousings in the process.

Then she aimed for river left, where she knew Big Drop Beach
awaited. She saw that some of their clients had already been dropped
off there.

Somehow Kendra’s raft had been righted. She and Cool were in it, paddling toward shore. Rob and Gonzo plied the undulating water with their rafts, with Les and Viv hanging over the fronts. They were scouting for loose gear and snagging it as it floated by.
That meant all of the people had been accounted for. Mandy
silently thanked the river gods.

Mandy hit the beach and hauled her raft onto the sand. Alice and Amy spilled out of her raft and helped her pull it in, then all three of them collapsed on the beach.

After sucking air for a minute, Mandy scrambled back to her feet. She scanned the others flopped down in the sand and found Diana and Hal. “You okay? Anyone injured?”

“What a ride!” Hal panted, but that seemed to be all he could get out. At least his face wasn’t white.

“We’re okay,” Diana answered. “We all made it out, but Les has a bloody scrape on his leg.”

“Why’s he back out in the raft, then?” Mandy asked.

“He’s frantic about finding the dry bag with his expensive camera gear in it,” Diana said.

Alice sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. “Oh shit. They’d
better find it.”

Mandy shielded her eyes from the sun and looked out at the river. Gonzo and Viv were paddling Gonzo’s raft toward the beach. Rob was oaring his raft back in, while Les cradled a dry bag in his lap. “Maybe he’s got it.”

After the other two rafts landed and were pulled onto the beach, it was time to take stock. Kendra insisted on cleaning and bandaging Les’s leg, since it was “her fault” he had been hurt. Mandy and Rob double-checked the others to make sure adrenaline wasn’t masking the pain of any other injuries. Cool and Gonzo inventoried the gear they had salvaged and retied it into Kendra’s raft.

While the clients sucked on water bottles, the guides held a conclave. “We lost Kendra’s extra paddles,” Gonzo said, “but we recovered all the dry bags that were in her raft. Not too bad.” He put an arm around her shoulders.

Kendra looked crestfallen. “I messed up bad. Les’s and Alice’s paddles got tangled up, so that side of the raft wasn’t helping at all. But still, I shouldn’t have gone so close to Capsize Rock. I’m sorry. I remembered it from our scouting trip, but it’s so much bigger in low water.”

“Hey,” Mandy said. “None of us are perfect. And the whole team worked together well to recover from it. Don’t blame yourself.”

“The river gods were just out to get you today,” Rob said. “Tomorrow they’ll be after someone else.”

Hopefully not, Mandy thought. Hopefully tomorrow their motorized launch would meet them at Waterhole Canyon and extract them. They could contact civilization again and arrange for Alex’s body to be taken care of. And they could get away from the silent killer in their midst and leave it to the police to figure out who it was.

But first, they had to make it through the worst part of the river.

“Should we just camp here for the night?” Cool asked. “A lot has happened today, and folks might need a rest.”

“We need to make sure everyone can change out of their wet clothes before the sun sets and the temperature drops,” Kendra added.
“Already the river’s mostly in shadow.”

Rob’s brow furrowed. “You’re both making sense, but I’d feel a lot better pushing on to our rendezvous site. I wouldn’t want the launch to miss us, particularly since we have no way to communicate with it.”

“I agree,” Mandy said. She checked her watch. “We still have a couple of hours of daylight left. But some of our clients may be too tuckered out to paddle well. Especially Hal. Let’s offer them seats in our oar rafts.”

“Good idea,” Rob said. “We all agreed?”

Cool, Gonzo, and Kendra nodded.

Rob waved a hand toward the river. “Let’s move on, then.”

They broke up and gathered the clients around them. “We’re
about to head into the biggest water in Cataract Canyon,” Rob said.
“If anyone wants to get out of a paddle raft and sit this last section out in an oar raft, you’re more than welcome to. We’ll move gear if we have to.”

Diana raised a hand. “Hal and I would like to move.”

Mandy breathed a sigh of relief. She had been prepared to suggest it strongly to them.

Les stepped forward, holding onto his precious dry bag with one
hand and to his half-drowned precious wife with the other. “Amy and I would like to move, too. We’ll sit in your raft, Mandy.”

Mandy was surprised Les didn’t want to paddle the three Big Drop rapids, but she supposed that Amy’s swim had frightened her and she had talked him into sitting it out with her. “Anyone else?”

No one else wanted to move.

Rob took Diana and Hal to his raft and Mandy took Les and Amy to hers. They were soon all launched and heading down the long V of accelerating current leading to Big Drop One.

“Hey diddle, diddle, right down the middle,” Cool called out over the increasing roar of the squeezed funnel of water rushing over the horizon line.

Rob had coached Mandy to aim for the middle of the rapid to avoid the nasty pour overs and rock piles on both sides. That line also set the rafts up for an awesome ride atop the wave train at the end. She followed his lead, after Kendra’s and Gonzo’s rafts, and she heard whoops and hollers from the other rafts over the roar of the whitewater.

On her own raft, Les and Amy were silent, with Les clutching Amy tightly. Mandy concluded Amy must have been really traumatized by her swim.
Poor thing.

Mandy eddied out to the left above Big Drop Two. Rob’s raft cut right just below the large dome-shaped Marker Rock in the middle of the river. He aimed straight for Little Niagara, a massive falls to the right of Marker Rock. The goal was to ride the raft along the edge of its current, missing both the ledge hole below Marker Rock and “the Claw” on the left, a big hole with a huge wave curling over the top of it, ready to pounce on rafts.

It was a tricky maneuver, Rob had told her, and it would give their raft passengers a gut-clenching view of Little Niagara they would never forget. Mandy hoped Amy could stomach it.

With no place to pull out between Big Drop Two and Three, Rob continued on. Kendra’s and Gonzo’s rafts followed Rob’s expert line and made it through cleanly, then bobbed down to Big Drop Three. Finally, it was Mandy’s turn.

She took a deep breath and pulled on her oars to position the raft. The river grabbed hold of her raft and shoved it down the steep drop beside Marker Rock almost before Mandy could react. She quickly hauled on the oars, heading right for Little Niagara.

While the falls crashed and thundered in front of her, her belly tightened. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could survive in the thrashing whitewater at the bottom. She felt the current grab the raft and send it in the right direction. She was about to line up to miss the ledge hole when the raft bounced hard.

What was that?
She glanced at the front of the raft.

Amy was gone.

fourteen

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

—
paulo coelho

Mandy glanced at the
base of Little Niagara. Amy bobbed face-up in the churning water, arms and legs dangling loosely as if she was unconscious.
Shit!

Then the raft shot past, heading straight for the ledge hole. Mandy shoved on the oars, spinning the raft away from the hole. Her mind was spinning, too. How was she going to rescue Amy?

Les pointed at Amy and hollered. “Amy fell in!”

Mandy yelled back, “I’ll head for her. You get ready to pull her in!”

Les nodded and got on his knees in the front of the raft.

Mandy spun the raft to face upstream. She oared against the current as hard as she could to slow the raft’s downriver progress and ferry it across the river. The cross currents and boils made the raft buck like a rodeo bronco. She struggled to make corrections and keep the raft on course. She had to get in the right position to catch Amy once the boiling mess below Little Niagara spit her out.

After a few more muscle-straining hauls on the oars, Mandy saw Amy come out of the foam. She bobbed down the undulating river directly toward them.

“Grab her!” Mandy shouted at Les.

He reached out and snatched the shoulders of Amy’s PFD, exactly as they had trained the clients to do. He dunked her in the water, a little deep, Mandy thought, but again, they had told them to do that. The swimmer’s natural buoyancy would work together with the rescuer pulling from the raft to pop the swimmer out of the water.

Then Les fell backward into the raft. “Christ! I lost her!”

“We’ll try again,” Mandy shouted.

Les shook his head while he righted himself.

Thinking he was giving up hope, Mandy said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get her!”

Using his paddle as a third balance point, Les started climbing back in the bucking raft toward Mandy.

What was he doing? Mandy wondered if he had tried to say something to her and she missed it. He was probably worried to death about his wife.

Mandy yelled at him, “Sit down, Les! I’ll go back for Amy!”

She glanced behind her, peering for Amy’s body in the water.

When she turned back, Les was standing right in front of her. Before Mandy could register what he was doing there, he whacked her on the head with his paddle.

Reeling and confused, all Mandy could think was,
Why did he do that?

As he lifted the paddle again, Mandy dropped the oars and instinctively raised her arms to protect herself.

He whacked her again on the shoulder, sending her flying into the river.

She smacked into the brown water and was instantly alert. Water filled her mouth, and the current pushed her underwater. Her body was churned and spun until she didn’t know which end was up.

Mandy desperately searched for light and clawed her way toward it. Just as her lungs were about to burst, she popped out of the water. A standing wave smacked her in the face. Then another. Finally, she was able to spit out the gritty water in her mouth and suck in a breath of air.

She got oriented with her feet downstream, fended off a couple of boulders and rode out a few more head-crashing waves. When
she could see something other than roiling brown water and white
caps, she looked downstream. Les was at the oars of her raft, heading for Big Drop Three.

Not
coming back for her or Amy!

Amy!
She spun and searched the river.
There.
In the water behind her, Mandy spied a bright orange PFD.

Mandy turned and swam toward Amy’s motionless form. She
kicked and kicked and cycled her arms as hard as she could until
inch-by-inch she made progress toward Amy’s slackened body. Thankfully, the collar of the PFD had done its job, turning Amy’s face up and out of the water so she floated on her back.

Mandy reached for Amy’s leg first and grabbed hold of it to
pull
herself closer. She shook the woman’s shoulder and shouted, “Amy!
”

But Amy’s eyes were closed, and she was unresponsive.

Mandy looped an arm through the shoulder strap of Amy’s PFD
so she wouldn’t lose her, then glanced downstream. They were headed
straight for Big Drop Three, home of the infamous Satan’s Gut, a huge, deadly whirlpool.

Mandy frantically tried to remember what Rob had told her about running Big Drop Three. It was a river-wide boulder field. She sure didn’t want Amy and herself pinging off rocks. Rob had said there was a narrow chute, the “Highway to Heaven.” But where was it?

River left!

Mandy rolled onto her back. She pulled with one arm and
kicked with her feet toward the left side of the river while dragging Amy with her other arm. Then she remembered that the chute was between a huge green rock named Big Mossy and Satan’s Gut itself. She spied Big Mossy’s green bulk jutting out of the water and aimed for it.

While she huffed and puffed and swam all out, Mandy wondered if she should have gone right instead and taken her chances with the boulder field. If she couldn’t reach the chute before the two of them were swept over the drop, they would wind up churning in Satan’s Gut.

Too late.
She had committed to this course of action. She just
had
to make the chute.

Mandy swam until her muscles screamed in pain.
Hell, this is it. We’ll both die in that whirlpool.

Then a calm, masculine voice spoke in her head. “You can do it, Mandy.”

She felt a renewed surge of strength and swam some more, gritting her teeth against the burning in her arms and legs. Big Mossy loomed closer and closer. Mandy prayed she would make it.

With a whoosh, the current swept them over the drop. They bounced and rolled. Mandy’s arm looped in Amy’s PFD felt like it was being ripped off, but she held on tight. Water splashed in her face. She couldn’t see where they were.

Please, not in Satan’s Gut.

Soon they were bouncing down a wave train at the bottom of the chute—the Highway to Heaven. Relieved, Mandy spit out a mouthful of water and sucked in a deep breath. They had made it! She remembered the voice, and silently thanked her late Uncle Bill for buoying her up once again when she was in trouble in a river.

She took a moment to gather her strength, then swam to the left again. She had to get Amy to shore before they were swept into rapids Twenty-Four and Twenty-Five, which roared downstream.

Finally, when Mandy feared she couldn’t lift her arm one more time, she felt river bottom beneath her dragging feet. She pushed off, angling toward shore. When they reached still water less than knee-deep that was safe to stand in, Mandy stumbled to her feet. She grabbed Amy under the armpits and dragged her to shore.

Once they were out of the water, Mandy flopped down beside Amy, panting, and checked Amy’s vitals. She was breathing but still out of it. Mandy shouted Amy’s name and patted her arm until the woman’s eyes fluttered.

“Wha?” Amy’s eyes opened and searched unfocused around her. Then she moaned as if in pain and closed her eyes again.

Mandy gently shook her arm. “Amy! Amy, wake up. Where does it hurt?”

“L-leg,” Amy mumbled.

Mandy scooted toward Amy’s legs and ran her hands along each
one. Then she felt it. A bump on Amy’s calf signaled a bone break that hadn’t broken through the skin. It was starting to bruise and swell, too, from internal bleeding.

Mandy looked around and spotted a pile of driftwood. Too tired to walk, she crawled over on hands and knees. She gathered a few strong straight branches that were at least a couple of feet long in one arm.

She crawled back to Amy and laid the smoothest two branches on either side of the break, then reached into her first-aid fanny pack. Mandy always kept some large rubber bands there. She looped the bands around the branches and Amy’s calf to hold the splint in place.

By the time she finished, Amy’s eyes were open again. Her gaze roamed the beach. “Where am I?”

“We’re on a beach below the Big Drop rapids.” Mandy searched downriver to see if anyone was coming back for them, but she saw no people or rafts.

Amy shifted slightly, eliciting a grimace and moan.

Mandy held her in place. “Don’t move.”

After a couple of breaths between gritted teeth, Amy asked, “What happened?”

“I pulled you out of the river after you went overboard in Big Drop Two. Do you remember how you fell in?”

Amy frowned as if thinking back, then her eyes grew wide. “Les!”

“What about Les?”

“I don’t know why, but he stuck a needle in me just before we went over the first Big Drop.” Her hand moved to touch her neck.

Mandy bent over Amy’s neck. She saw a needle prick mark, with
reddened skin around it, much like the one on Alex’s neck.

A stark realization jelled in her mind. Les had killed Alex, making it look like an accident, and he had just tried to kill his wife the same way. And herself ! When he realized that Mandy wouldn’t give up trying to rescue Amy, Les must have decided he had to get rid of her, too. He probably hoped to stun her by whacking her in the head before he knocked her in the water. He wanted her to drown along with Amy.

Lucky thing I have a thick skull.

Mandy checked Amy’s pupils. They seemed somewhat dilated, but they were at least the same size. “What happened after he stuck you?”

Amy wiped a hand across her forehead. “I got real sleepy.” She yawned. “I’m still woozy. Head hurts, too. And my leg.”

“I put a splint on your leg. You’ve got a break, probably from hitting a rock in the river. I bet your head hurts from whatever sedative Les used.”

“Sedative?” Confusion wrinkled Amy’s brow.

Mandy hoped the sedative wouldn’t have any long-term effects. “Do you remember what happened next—after you got sleepy?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t talk. I remember him holding me and the raft bouncing. Then wham, I was in the water and all wet, but I couldn’t stay awake. I kept drifting off.”

“Do you think Les pushed you in?”

Amy looked at Mandy in alarm. “No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have.”

Taking a deep breath, Mandy decided it was time to be blunt with Amy. “He may have been trying to kill you.”

“What?”

“I didn’t see how you got in the water. But when I moved the raft over to you, so Les could pull you out, he dunked you under the water instead, then let go.”

“Why would he do that?”

Mandy shrugged. “I’m confused about why, too. Rob and I figured Alex might have been murdered by someone in the family for your father’s inheritance. But—”

“Murdered? I thought a bear mauled him!”

“No, Alex had a needle mark on his neck—just like you. The
claw marks were suspicious, too. They were from a grizzly paw, and
only black bears live here. And all the paw prints were from the same
paw—the front left. We think the whole bear attack was staged, including sabotaging the radio, so we couldn’t call out for help.”

“Staged? I don’t understand.” Amy tried to prop herself up on her elbows, then fell back onto the sand. “Whoa, dizzy.”

“Don’t get up. But try to stay awake.”

Amy frowned. “Wait, you’re saying Les killed Alex and tried to kill me? That’s crazy! I’m his wife. Les would never hurt me.”

“Yes, it sounds crazy, but that needle mark in your neck says different. Les drugged you, pushed you overboard, and knocked me in the water. Then he took off in the raft and left us both to drown.”

“Ohmigod!” Amy fingered her neck as what Mandy was telling her finally seemed to sink in. Her eyes reddened. “But why … ?”

With a nod, Mandy said, “That’s what I don’t understand. Why would Les try to kill you? Are you two having problems?”

“Yeah, some, but … murder?”

“What about money problems?”

“I don’t know. Les handles our finances. But I don’t think so. He hasn’t told me to cut back on shopping.”

“Does he have a big insurance policy on you?”

Amy shook her head.

Mandy chewed her lip while she tried to think. “Maybe he’s after the share of the estate you’ll get after your father dies. But wait, that doesn’t make sense. If you die before your father, Les doesn’t get any of the inheritance.”

Amy blew out a breath. “God … maybe … but no.” She shook her head then winced. “They wouldn’t resort to killing.”

“They? Who’s they?”

Amy stared at Mandy for a long while, and Mandy could almost see the gears turning in her mind. Finally, Amy blurted out, “Alice and Les. Les is having an affair with Alice.”

This new revelation sent Mandy reeling. She sat back on her heels. “What?”

Amy nodded. Tears welled up and ran down the sides of her face.
“I saw them together last week, and, and
…
” She put a hand over her
mouth to stifle a sob.

Mandy rubbed Amy’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

Sucking in a deep breath, Amy looked up at the strip of blue sky between the sheer canyon walls, obviously trying to pull herself together. She sniffed and continued. “They were having lunch together at a restaurant in the mall. I was supposed to be at a massage appointment, but my therapist was sick and had to cancel. So I went to the mall to look for these.”

She raised her unsplinted leg to show off her water sandals. “I saw Les and Alice in the restaurant just as they stood to leave. I was going to go over and join them. Then they kissed. It wasn’t a quick peck, like brother to sister, it was
passionate
! Tongues and everything.” Amy made a face.

“Did they see you?” Mandy asked.

“Oh no.” Amy shook her head furiously. “I didn’t know what to do
, so I ran off and hid behind a big planter. They walked right past
me, and he said to her, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.’”

Amy grabbed Mandy’s hand. “The next day was Wednesday, Les’s poker night. He plays at eight—or he’s supposed to be playing poker at eight. So, I didn’t say anything to him, but I followed him the next night. He drove right past his poker buddy’s house and went straight to Alice’s.”