Mountain Rampage (20 page)

“What are you looking at?”

“Don't you mean, ‘
Who
are you looking at?'” Hemphill let a
beat pass. “You reported it. You found her.”

“Which rules me out.”

“Or rules you in.”

Chuck's stomach lurched. He pointed at the microphone. “I thought you said that was only for show.”

Hemphill said nothing.

Chuck lowered his head and spoke straight into the microphone. “The picture you have of me should be pretty clear by now. I run as tight a ship in my personal life as I do in my professional life. I've been in my cabin, up in the woods, with my wife and daughters every night this summer.”

The muscles around Hemphill's eyes relaxed. “Everything you're saying is exactly what I've learned about you.”

“Playing the tough cop? Seeing if I'd crack?”

The officer shrugged.

Chuck worked to corral his anger. “My students, you've got nothing on them, right?”

“So far.”

“And, despite what Harley here thinks, you've got Clarence tagged as innocent, too.”

“So far as well.”

“And me.”

“Yes.”

“Leaving the focus of your investigation on the residents of Falcon House.”

“Or an outsider.”

“Which means my students are free to go.”

“Day after tomorrow, Friday, as we discussed, if nothing changes. Except, possibly, for your brother-in-law.”

“You're going to name him as an official suspect or something, to keep him from leaving?”

“At this stage, to be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure.”

Chuck pointed toward Falcon House. “Your murderer is sitting
right over there, in his room. Figure out which one of those guys did it, and we can all go home.”

T
HIRTY
-T
WO

Chuck glanced over his shoulder at the employee dormitory as he headed across the parking lot toward Raven House upon leaving the command center.

As he'd told Hemphill, the murderer had to be one of Parker's workers.

Right?

Chuck slowed.

The male workers living in Falcon House were Mexicans who, by all accounts, maintained low profiles and sought only to send their earnings south to their families—not exactly the murderous type.

But who else could it be?

He stroked his chin as he walked.

What about the librarian, Elaine? Immediately upon hearing about the black material in the mine, she'd sent Chuck back to retrieve a sample of the stuff for her. Why had she been so intent on sending him back to the mine? And why, ten years ago, had she retired from Denver to the cold, wintry Colorado mountains rather than the warm, sunny Arizona desert preferred by just about every other Denver-area retiree?

What of the emergency room doctor, Gregory, ogling Janelle at the hospital, then showing up unbidden at the cabin, ostensibly to check on Rosie? Who makes house calls these days? Did Gregory's big, showy SUV require truck tires? And did those tires have lightning-bolt-shaped treads? Chuck couldn't recall.

The Elk Foundation sticker on the SUV's bumper indicated Gregory was a hunter. How often, Chuck wondered, did the young doctor drive into the park to go “mountain biking”? Enough to poach half a dozen trophy rams over the course of the summer?

Gregory's irregular hours in the emergency room would
provide him the opportunity to visit the park whenever he wished, and as a hunter, he knew his way around a rifle. Still, as a well-paid doctor, what need could he possibly have for the extra income he would derive from selling Rocky Mountain sheep horns on the black market? Or could he be poaching simply for the thrill of the illicit game?

And as for the puddle of blood spilled between the dorms, who could get their hands on human blood more easily than a night doctor with the run of the Estes Park hospital?

Then there was Parker. How well, after all these years, did Chuck really know the resort manager? And what of the binoculars sitting on Parker's windowsill? What might Parker have seen through them that he hadn't admitted to Chuck—and that might have led him to murder one of his young, female employees in the dark of night?

Chuck shook his head.
Parker?
he chided himself.
Gregory? Elaine?
What were the odds any of them was involved in Nicoleta's murder, the puddle of blood, the hidden mine shaft, or the poaching of the bighorns?

He entered Raven House and found Clarence, along with Samuel, in Jeremy's room. Jeremy slouched on his twin bed as if it were a couch, his back to the wood-paneled wall. Clarence leaned against the worn bureau opposite the bed, while Samuel sat on the room's desk chair.

Other than a poster of a curvaceous female skier flying off a snow cornice somewhere high in the mountains wearing only skis, boots, and a bikini, the walls of the upstairs dorm room were bare.

Chuck stood in the doorway. “You made it through your interviews, I see.”

Jeremy muttered from the bed, “Like we had any choice.”

Chuck turned to Samuel. “They fed you dinner at the lodge cafeteria?”

Samuel's head bobbed up and down like that of a puppy. “The manager, Parker, stopped by our table. He said he was checking in, making sure we were doing all right.”

Jeremy's lips curled up in a sneer. “He'd better be making sure we're doing all right, with his employees getting murdered right outside our dorm.”

Ignoring Jeremy, Samuel asked Chuck, “Are we getting out of here tomorrow?”

“I still get the sense no one's going anywhere until Friday.”

Samuel and Jeremy moaned.

Clarence, sounding fully sober, spoke up in Chuck's defense. “Someone's been killed. They need time to investigate.”

Jeremy shoved his tongue against the inside of his cheek, making it protrude rhythmically a couple of times, then snickered and mouthed the word “
someone
” to Samuel.

Samuel squirmed and glanced away. Chuck glared at Jeremy. Clarence, to his credit, said nothing.

Samuel looked at Chuck. “What's up for tomorrow, then?”

“I'm afraid I haven't gotten that far.” He turned to Clarence. “Can we talk?”

Ignoring Jeremy, Chuck nodded a goodbye to Samuel and headed down the hall with Clarence.

When they were in Clarence's room with the door closed behind them, Clarence asked, “What'd you get out of Hemphill?”

Chuck spun the chair from the desk and sat down with his back to the window. “He doesn't think you did it. The other cop, Harley—the one with all the homicide experience—disagrees.”

Clarence perched on the edge of his bed. “He made it clear he couldn't believe it when Hemphill let me go after my interview.”

“Learn anything from your visit to Falcon House?”

“Not really. They're scared, like everyone else. They didn't want to do much talking. But they loosened up after a bit.”

“The girls or the guys?”

“Both. We compared notes. They claim they're as in the dark as we are.”

“Nothing more specific?”

Something flickered in Clarence's eyes. He leaned back on his elbows in an unconvincing display of nonchalance. “It wasn't all wine and roses over there, let's just put it that way.”

Chuck waited.

Clarence cleared his throat. “The old cop isn't the only one who thinks I'm guilty,” he explained. “I was hanging in the hallway, just talking, when Nicoleta's roommate, Anca, came out of her room. She came after me when she saw me, screaming, yelling. The others had to hold her back.”

“She knows about you and Nicoleta, from earlier in the summer?”

“They're in doubles over there, two to a room. She had to stay out of the way when Nicoleta and I were doing our thing. So yeah, she knew. No way she couldn't.”

Chuck pointed toward Jeremy's room. “Everybody else knows, too.”

Clarence sat up. “I was with her at the start. But it wasn't just me. People pretty much lined up at her door as the summer went on, from what I heard.”

“How much of that did you tell Hemphill?”

“Everything. I said I liked her, didn't know why anyone would want to hurt her.”

“The line of people at her door could have resulted in hurt feelings somewhere along the way, don't you think?”

“I heard some of the guys at Falcon House weren't exactly pleased—not that they turned down any opportunities with her or anything. And I imagine Anca got tired of sleeping on the floor in other people's rooms.”

“You really told Hemphill all of that?”

“Yes.”

Chuck frowned. Hemphill hadn't shared any of that information with him. What else had the officer heard in the course of his interviews that he hadn't told Chuck?

Clarence continued, “I told him the truth about everything except…last night.” He paused. “They're pretty fixated on you, too, you know.”

“He asked about me?”

“Sure. Plenty.”

“What'd you tell him?”

“I told him you were the most stand-up guy I knew, that there was no way you would ever have done it.”

Chuck nodded his thanks.

Clarence went on. “I think you're right. It's one of those Falcon House guys. As far as which one, though, how's anyone ever going to know?”

Chuck hung his head and spoke to the floor. “We really don't know anything yet, do we?”

“We know it wasn't you or me—or any of our guys. They're partiers, sure. Drinkers, skirt chasers.”

“Like you,” Chuck said, looking up.

“Like just about every warm-blooded male I've ever known. But they're not killers.”

“I want you to stay as close as you can to those Falcon House guys. Keep your eye on them. One of them did it. That has to be it. We just have to hope they'll slip up at some point.”

Chuck left Clarence and moved on to Kirina. She opened her door at his knock, crossed the room to her bed, and settled her computer on her lap.

He closed the door behind him. “What's the latest from the outside world?” he asked, eyeing her laptop.

“Sartore is freaking out. He's posting stuff online, asking questions on the one hand and trying to smooth things over with the parents on the other. Basically, he's making a total
mess of everything.”

“You've been sending replies?”

She shook her head. “Nothing I could say would help the situation.”

“I just talked to him. He was pretty fired up.”

“He already posted that you told him we're stuck here till Friday.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“I knew Nicoleta. Sure, I'm okay with it, if it means finding out who killed her.”

“You knew Nicoleta?”

“Of course, I did. She was pretty social. She knew everyone in Raven House. But I have no idea who might've wanted to kill her.”

Chuck sighed. “Sartore told me he's going to drive up here tomorrow.”

“You should be glad. It'll take some of the pressure off you.”

Chuck hadn't thought of it that way. He nodded. “How'd your interview go?”

“The officer was kind of gruff. But it went all right, I guess. Didn't take too long.” She tilted her head toward her room window, its curtains open. “I saw you go back into the command post with him a few minutes ago. What'd he want?”

“Thanks to you, he had nothing to say about Clarence sneaking back into the dorm.”

She waved off Chuck's gratitude. “I understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. Clarence didn't kill Nicoleta. We all know that. Better to keep the cops' focus where it should be.”

“They're going to zero in on Falcon House tomorrow, sounds like. On the workers.”

“That's good to hear. What do you have in mind for us for tomorrow?”

“I'm not sure. Any thoughts?”

“I guess we could stay here, finish up cataloging the last of the finds, see if we can spot anything with the Falcon House workers ourselves.”

“We can make like Sherlock Holmes,” Chuck said. “Sniff around, solve the case on our own.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

T
HIRTY
-T
HREE

“Let's just leave,” Janelle said when Chuck returned to the cabin. “
Ahora mismo
. They haven't charged Clarence with anything. Or you. We can be out of here in fifteen minutes and back in Durango by dawn.”

The girls were settled in their twin beds in the back bedroom. Janelle sat on the living-room couch next to Chuck.