Free Fall (21 page)

"I don't know who you are, but and I mean this in the nicest possible way fuck you."

"I just told you who I am." Beamon pointed to one of the abandoned beach chairs at his feet.

"You mind?" He flopped into the more comfortable looking of the two before Jared or any of his friends could say any thing.

"I'll tell you, Jared, I figure you owe me. I've been looking for you for three hours, and that's cost me six hundred and twenty-five dollars." Beamon had calculated his five-thousand-dollar a day penalty for not turning up Darby at two hundred and eight dollars and thirty-three cents per hour.

"So you can understand that I'm already in kind of a bad mood."

"This is all just a bunch of bullshit," Palermo said, his voice raising in pitch and volume.

"Darby did not kill Tristan. No matter how much and how long you West Virginia assholes hassle me, it won't change that."

Beamon crossed his legs and locked eyes with the young climber.

"Tell me, Jared. Do I look like I'm from West Virginia to you?"

Palermo tried for a few seconds to stare him down, but soon lowered his head and concentrated on his feet.

"No."

"Look, I don't want to turn this into a fight. I'm getting into this thing independent of the cops and all I want is a little bit of your time. What I can offer you in exchange is a hell of a lot more of an open mind than you'll get from the sheriff's department."

That actually might have been a slight exaggeration, but it sounded good. Beamon was better than eighty percent certain that Darby had found out Tristan was sleeping with the local high school cheer leading squad or something and aerated him with her ice tool. This kind of thing happened every day and the killer's neighbors always said things like, "He/she was so quiet and polite" or "They seemed to have such a great relationship." Love could make people crazy. Hell, it was on the verge of doing it to him.

"I can guarantee you she didn't kill him," Jared said to a uniformly affirmative murmur from his minions.

"Unless he died of sandstone poisoning "Of what?" Beamon hadn't heard that term before.

"Unless he decked died in a fall, man. Think about it. Let's say Darby, for no apparent reason, decides she wants Tristan dead. What would she do? She'd wait for him to get sixty feet up on a climb and when he falls, she'd let go of the rope. No one would ever be able to prove a thing."

"Maybe it was a crime of passion. Maybe it was two o'clock in the morning and he told her she looked fat or something."

Jared put his hand out to silence the chorus of "Pleases" and "Yeah rights."

"Look, man. Darby and I have been friends for a long time you know that or you wouldn't be here talking to me. As far as I know, she and Twist hadn't even seen each other in two years he decided he wanted to be a lawyer and then got some fuckin' government job. She was probably passing through D. C. and needed a place to stay and convinced him to go climbing for the weekend. Where's the passion in that?"

Beamon nodded thoughtfully and leaned back in his chair. In his experience, passion could be spirited from thin air. People were just fucking nuts. And that probably went double for people who chose to dangle off cliffs and obtained half their personal possessions from a Kmart dumpster. He looked around him, lingering on the anxious young faces that made up the semicircle. Despite himself, he had to like what he saw just a little bit. They were kids who did what they wanted and ignored what society told them they had to do. After spending an unfortunate amount of time with some of the older children of his friends, he'd been wondering if any of the members of this generation could think for themselves. Apparently, some could.

"Why don't you come back to the sheriff's office with me, Jared. You could take a look at a few things for me. We could talk a little,"

Beamon said as he struggled out of the low-slung chair. Not surprisingly, Palermo didn't move.

"Come on, Jared. Your friends can hold down the fort on their own for an hour."

"Do I have a choice?"

Beamon shrugged.

"Everyone has a choice. But I expect you'll be a lot happier in the long run if you grant me this one favor."

Palermo rose slowly to his feet, grabbed the shirt that had been hanging on the back of his chair and started toward Beamon's car. He had to push a stack of climbing books and magazines onto the floor in order to fit his thin frame into the passenger seat. When Beamon turned the key in the ignition, John Krakauer's audio book Into Thin Air started in the tape deck.

"Been studying up, huh," the young climber said, picking up an issue of Rock and Ice magazine and turning to a page marked with a paper clip.

Beamon glanced over at the glossy photograph after he had bounced safely onto a smoother section of the dirt road. It depicted Darby with her ice axe wedged into a fissure on an ice-glazed cliff face. A heavy bank of clouds had formed a thousand feet below her but thinned out enough in the distance to reveal a bright blue ocean. The only text on the page was printed in small letters along the bottom. The North Face. Never Stop Exploring.

"Quite a photograph," he said.

"Thanks," Palermo responded absently.

"I took it."

Beamon waved a greeting to the cops sitting around in the sheriff's office but didn't stop. At the back of the station, he grabbed Jared's arm, pulled him into the storage room, and yanked the door closed behind them.

"Jesus," Jared breathed as he gazed down at the contents of Darby's van organized neatly on the floor and on shelves against the wall. A good half of it was encrusted with Tristan's blood.

"I'm sorry, Jared, I guess I should have prepared you for this." The truth was, he hadn't because he needed the shock value. That, combined with separating Jared from his friends and the support they provided, would hopefully throw the young climber off balance and improve Beamon's chances of getting some straight answers.

Jared's eyes crinkled up and the color that had drained from him started to slowly come back.

"What the fuck, man. You can't even think Darby did this. What the hell happened?"

"Shotgun," Beamon lied.

Jared shook his head in disbelief.

"This is so incredibly stupid. Where would Darby get a shotgun? The girl's probably never fired a gun in her life!"

Beamon gauged his reaction carefully. The details of Newberry's death had been kept extremely quiet. If Jared had heard whisperings about the ice axe, then his reaction would have gotten him an Oscar nomination.

"I don't know where she got the gun," Beamon said, looking down at the gear littering the floor.

"Hopefully, I'll figure that out eventually. In the meantime, let's play a little game. You tell me what stuff in here doesn't belong to Darby."

Jared sniffed loudly and stood his ground.

"Why the attitude?" Beamon said.

"We both want the same thing. We want Darby found. If you're right and Tristan's killers have her, sooner is better than later, right? And if the sheriff's right and she killed Tristan, then shouldn't she have her day in court?" Beamon leaned against a low table and motioned toward the floor again.

Jared contemplated his position and loyalties for a few more seconds and then nudged at a pile of climbing shoes with his foot, separating out a couple of pairs.

"These aren't hers." Next, he hooked the toe of his sandal through a climbing harness, careful not to let his bare skin touch the blood dried on it and gracefully flipped it out onto a bare spot on the floor.

"Neither is this."

"You're sure," Beamon said.

"Yeah. Darby was sponsored by Boreal, North Face, and Black Diamond.

Those shoes were 5.10s and the harness was a Petzl. She'd get in trouble if she wore those."

"From her sponsors?"

He nodded.

"There isn't a lot of money in climbing. It's not like you join a team and get a ten-million-dollar signing bonus even if you're the best in the world. The only way to make a living is from guiding jobs or from sponsors companies that pay you or give you free gear so that you'll do ads for them and such. They also pay for expeditions and travel sometimes."

"And that's how Darby supports herself?"

Jared shrugged.

"I don't know if you could say Darby makes much of a living. She never wanted to be on a payroll 'cause she doesn't like being tied to a schedule. Mostly she just got gear and trip money."

Jared continued through the equipment, toeing out various articles of clothing, a rope, and some quick draws that had all belonged to Tristan.

The young climber's conclusions were no great revelation. Beamon had spent a fair amount of time pouring over recent climbing magazines and matching up the gear brands in the pictures and ads to what was strewn across the floor. He'd missed the rope, but caught pretty much everything else. It seemed that Darby bought almost nothing. Even her underwear came from some gear manufacturer or another.

"That's it, man." Jared said finally. He fell into a chair, exhausted, as though he'd just performed a grueling athletic feat. Unfortunately, he hadn't said a word about the item that Beamon was really interested in.

"You know, I've walked around the cliffs here and figured out what most of this stuff does," Beamon said, nodding at the floor.

"The shoes, belay devices all that." He pointed to the ice axe hanging on the wall.

"But what the hell do you do with that thing?"

"It's an ice tool, man. You use it to climb ice. Or to protect yourself on snow."

Beamon kept his voice casual, not wanting to tip Jared off that the shotgun story was a fabrication.

"What ice? It's eighty degrees outside.

Could it be Tristan's?"

Jared leaned forward to get a clearer view and shook his head.

"This year's carbon fiber Black Prophet. It's the one Darby uses. I do too. Looks new; she probably got it as a replacement for one she broke or some thing."

Beamon nodded with calculated disinterest. He'd thought it was strange that the murder weapon would be the only cold weather piece of gear in the van his overly suspicious nature at work again. Black Diamond, the manufacturer of the axe, hadn't returned his calls yet.

"So you can use that on snow, huh? Like when you're skiing? I heard Darby's a hell of a skier."

"Fuckin' amazing, man. She's good at everything climbing, skating, tele marking kayaking " Beamon smiled.

"Impressive. Where is it all?"

"What?"

Beamon reached over to the desk behind him and handed Jared a stack of ads and photos he'd torn from various magazines. The young climber shuffled through the pictures of Darby in huge parkas, on skis, in tents, astride expensive-looking bicycles.

"She's got more toys than any human being I've ever met," Beamon said.

"Where you figure she keeps them? Not in her van."

Jared dropped the stack onto the chair next to him.

"I dunno."

Beamon looked at his watch. Another two hundred and eight dollars and thirty-three cents were gone. That was forty-five attorney minutes.

"Bullshit, Jared. Didn't we agree that we both wanted Darby found?

That that's what would be best for her?"

The young climber's face hardened.

"You agreed, man."

"You say she didn't do it, Jared. You sound pretty sure. Help me find her and let's find out if you're right. What're you afraid of?"

"You want me to help you find the psycho that killed Tristan and kidnapped her, fine. You want me to help you dig into her life, no way."

"What can it hurt?"

"Darby has the best judgment of any person I've ever met. If I'm wrong and for some reason she's running from you, maybe I'm not going to sit here and second-guess her."

"You realize what kind of consequences that could have for you?"

Beamon said, staying intentionally vague. He was on too thin ice to be making threats. The sheriff was still under the impression he was working for the FBI.

"You want to do something to me," Jared said, just as Bonnie Rile peeked her head through the door.

"Then fuckin' do it."

Beamon took in a deep breath and let it out as the sheriff stepped silently into the room.

"Okay, Jared, fine. Why don't you go across the street and grab a sandwich. I'll be out in a few minutes and I'll give you a ride back to your campsite we can talk a little more in the car."

Jared didn't move from his chair, instead he sat looking around the room uncomfortably.

"You know, I didn't really bring any money with me," he said finally.

Beamon rolled his eyes and pulled out his wallet. He handed the young man a ten-dollar bill.

"I could really use a beer after this," Jared said.

"Jesus." Beamon sighed, digging out another ten. He held it out, but pulled it back when Palermo reached for it.

"In most of the pictures from those magazines, Darby doesn't have any scars around her nose. Where'd she get them?"