One Mile Under (10 page)

And then this message came.

Ted Whalen was his roommate at Bates College, where they both played football. Hauck was a running back, set all kinds of school records; records long broken. Ted was a tight end who mostly blocked and rarely caught a pass. The two of them, along with Ted’s pretty girlfriend, Judy, were fixtures there. Eventually they married. Ted went on to become a successful orthopedic surgeon. At first out in Colorado, interning at some famous clinic out there. Then after their marriage fell apart, at Brigham and Women’s back in Boston.

The message said that his daughter Danielle had gotten into a bit of trouble in Colorado, where she was living. Hauck was Danielle’s godfather. He remembered the day she was born, though truth was, he hadn’t seen her in years. He had gotten word a few years back that Judy had died out west. Complications from cancer. The last, sad punctuation point stamped on his college career.

Ted wrote: “I’m in Chile on a teaching sabbatical, otherwise I’d be on a plane myself. But from what I hear this might be more in your field of expertise than mine. Please go, Ty, if you can. I think it’s urgent.”

The last time he saw Danielle she was doing snowboard tricks at Mad River Glen in Vermont, where she and her dad visited one year. She was maybe thirteen. He’d promised Ted and Judy he would always be there for her, should anything ever happen. And that was before Judy got sick. Then they all drifted apart.

He wrote him back. “I’m on my way.” He didn’t even ask for a reason. The mountains would be a welcome change, maybe help him figure it out. Plus he owed them; owed him. Once a Bobcat, always a Bobcat, right?

He had made a vow.

Anyway, he was ready. Hauck looked out at the lit-up, purple horizon. Another gorgeous sunset. His last. He felt the old flicker in his blood start up, like an old engine coming to life. That spark he always felt on the job when he suddenly saw the mosaic of something larger than what the facts showed start to come together; when through the fog of misdirection and cover-up he saw with total clarity where a case was leading. That second sense. His muscles ached; but suddenly they felt ready. He put down his Red Stripe and stretched out on the deck. He started doing crunches. One, two, three …

He stopped at a hundred. Then he went downstairs and looked at himself in the mirror and took out his razor.

It had been too long.

The following morning, Hauck left his boat at a marina he knew on St. Kitts, caught an eight-seater prop for the half-hour jaunt over to St. Maarten, where he was the last one on the 11:30
A.M.
to Miami, which connected late that afternoon to a United flight to Denver. He spent the night at the Aloft hotel near the airport, and by six the next morning, he’d rented a car and was on his way up Interstate 70 to Aspen.

He’d been out here a couple of times years before to ski. Once, back in college, where he and four friends crowded into a classmate’s family’s two-bedroom condo at Copper Mountain. Hauck’s folks were working-class people, and at Bates he worked a twenty-hour-a-week job on top of studying and football. Back then, he couldn’t have even afforded a cheeseburger in Aspen, never mind a place to stay or even the lift tickets. He remembered how beautiful the ride up was: the new airport cutting around Denver, passing Golden, where he always wanted to stop off and see the Coors brewery, then into the foothills with the old mining towns of Idaho Springs and Georgetown, their steep canyons and buffalo herd patches until he reached Loveland Pass at twelve thousand feet. Patches of snow were still visible as he emerged from the Eisenhower Tunnel.

He made it to Carbondale in just under three hours. Ted had said to talk to the chief of police there. A guy named Dunn. It was a small town in the shadow of a massive, lone mountain with outdoor shops and a ski-chalet-like Safeway on a quaint, main street. He’d put the location of the police station into his GPS, but after twenty years in law enforcement he didn’t need a satellite to help him sniff out a station. His nose led him right to the parking lot filled with parked green-and-white SUVs with
CARBONDALE POLICE
on them, outside a one-story, redbrick building attached to the Carbondale Town Center. He parked in a spot reserved for visitors.

Hauck’s beard was down to a growth, and in his floral Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and sunglasses, he didn’t exactly look official.

Inside, he went up to a female officer in a khaki uniform behind a glass partition, her hair in two long braids. She smiled pleasantly at him.

Hauck folded his shades into his shirt pocket. “Chief Dunn around?”

“He’s on the phone. I know he’s got to head into Aspen for a meeting there shortly after. Anything I can help you with?”

“I’m looking for a Danielle Whalen. I hear she’s a guest at the spa here.”

“The spa?” The officer looked up at him with a laugh. “You her lawyer?”

“Do I look like a lawyer?”

She laughed again. “Some of the lawyers here, why not? Hell, in this town you could be the mayor. Why don’t you take a seat; I’ll see if the chief is off. I know he was expecting someone. What did you say your name was?”

He gave her his card. “Ty Hauck.”

She got up and went to the back of the station past a couple of compartmentalized workstations. Hauck didn’t see any detectives. It was a small department. She knocked on the door of a glass-lined office with drapes restricting the view and poked her head in. A minute later she came back. “Dani’s a nice kid, but it’ll be a boon to all of us, the sooner you get her out. You can go on back.”

“Thanks, Officer.” He smiled.

He went back to the glassed-in office and knocked on the door that was left ajar. A stocky, middle-aged man in a uniform top over jeans stood up from behind his heavy wood desk.

“Come on in. Wade Dunn,” he said as he held out his hand. Despite the salt-and-pepper flattop, he looked no more than sixty, with a round face, a flabby jawline, a reddish complexion. He had an ornate belt on his jeans. His hands were thick, his grip was firm, authoritative, with a large turquoise ring. “Officer Jurgens said you were here about Dani …”

“Dani …?”

“
Danielle.
Sorry.” He motioned Hauck to a burled wood conference table. “I thought Ted might have mentioned I was married to her mother for a while.”

“No, he didn’t tell me that,” Hauck said, surprised. “He just said to look you up. I knew Judy a bit myself, back in college. In a way, I guess that makes us all kind of related.”

“How’s that?” The police chief crossed his legs. Hauck’s eyes went to the fancy python-skin boots.

“I’m her godfather.”

“Well, I’ll be damned! I guess that does make us all something.” The chief seemed pleasantly surprised. “Hell, I didn’t know she even had a godfather. Can I get you something to drink? Water? Or a soft drink maybe?”

“Nothing.” Hauck waved politely. “I’m fine.”

“So where’d you come in from, Mr. Hauck?” The duty officer had given him Hauck’s card. “Says Greenwich here. But you look kind of relaxed. L.A., maybe. You look kind of L.A., if you don’t mind me saying.”

“The Caribbean, actually. I was on a boat yesterday morning when Ted got in touch with me.”

“
Caribbean?
” Chief Dunn’s eyes widened. “Well, I have to say, you certainly do take the godfather role pretty seriously.”

Hauck smiled back. “Ted and I go back a long way. He said Dani was in some kind of trouble. There was no breeze. Here I am. So is she …?”

“Is she what?”

“In some kind of trouble.”

“Ty Hauck …” The chief leaned back and crossed his legs, and looked at Hauck’s card. He narrowed his gaze back on Hauck. “Jeez, I know who you are. I saw you on CNN or something. You’re the guy who was part of that investigation that led to that Treasury secretary’s arrest.”

“Thomas Keaton.” Hauck filled in the blank for him. “But I was only the one who got shot up a bit. Others did most of the work.”

“Not from what I heard. You look a little different,” the chief said, drawing a hand across his chin, “maybe because of the …”

“Midlife crisis,” Hauck said, referring to the growth.

“Well, I sure as hell know a lot about those.” Wade Dunn laughed. “Though mine landed me in this job. I used to run the force over in Aspen. Well, how about that, Dani has a celebrity godfather. So you knew her dad?”

“Ted and I went to college together. Back east.”

“Only met him a couple of times,” the chief said. “You’re one helluva friend to have, Mr. Hauck, if you don’t mind me saying. To drop everything and come out here.”

“So what’s Danielle done? I understand that she’s being kept here. Ted wasn’t quite clear.”

“It’s a bit hard to explain exactly what she’s done. Nothing really, when it comes to the law, except make my life a living hell. Professionally speaking. Personally, I like the gal. Practically raised her. But I guess you could say it’s sort of for her own good, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Look.” Dunn let his chair come back up. “We’ve had kind of some misfortune in the valley in the past week. Two things …” He told Hauck about the tragic, but likely unrelated, accidents. Dani’s friend, Trey, on the river, and the hot-air balloon that caught on fire in the air.

“That’s terrible …” Hauck winced. “How many were aboard?”

“Five.” Dunn shook his head. “Including the pilot. Who Dani claims wanted to tell her something about the rafting accident before his balloon went down.”

“What was that?’

The chief shrugged. “Claims he saw something on the river, but she never got to hear. The guy was a bit of a lone steer to me, if you know what I mean. Not all there. But Dani seems to think it was important. Look, these two events would be terrible for any community to undergo …” The chief lit up a cigarette. “Hope you don’t mind if I smoke, Mr. Hauck. Only real vice I have left,” the chief said. “The rest have all been legislated out …” Hauck nodded for him to go ahead. “But for us, here … Aspen may seem like a big, worldly place, Mr. Hauck, with all the glitzy stars and private jets, but truth is, this whole valley is just three small Colorado towns. Everyone knows everyone else. I know Dani was close to that young man who was killed on the river. Seems she’s gotten it in her head that these two terrible accidents weren’t exactly that.”

Hauck cocked his head. “Not sure I’m following you. Weren’t exactly
what
?” he asked.

“Accidents,” the chief said, taking a drag. “Worse, that they’re both somehow connected.”

“What do you mean by ‘worse’?”

The chief seemed to be taking a read on Hauck, his granite gray eyes settling on his. “Look, we’re both law enforcement professionals here … I may not have had the headlines you have on your résumé, and this is kind of a sleepy job now, but up in Aspen as you can imagine, I’ve seen a lot in close to thirty years …”

“I’m not sure I’m following.”

“What I’m saying, sir, is we turned over both of those incidents from hell and back—there’s been a state parks investigator on the river and a national safety team all over every part of that balloon, or what was left of it. And so far there’s not a stitch of evidence that says there’s been any foul play.”

“But Danielle is convinced that there is?”

“Dani’s like a mule. She gets on something and … You said you knew her mother?”

“For many years. I was the best man at their wedding.”

“You don’t say … Bowdoin, right …?’”

“Bates. Nearby, though. It’s—”

“I actually know where it is … I took Dani on her college trips when Judy took sick. I think she applied there, too. Could’ve gotten in anywhere she applied. She always had the quickest brain I knew. Maybe too quick for her own good. But there’s another part of her. That’s kind of her enemy. We all have those parts of us, don’t you agree? If you knew her mom, then you know what I’m talking about, Mr. Hauck.”

“Might as well call me Ty. If we’re related.”

Chief Dunn laughed. “Ty it is then … and I’m Wade. But what I’m saying is, that woman never once let anything stop her or get in her way if she had her mind set on it. Hell, I ought to know, I was married to her for eight years. Except the cancer, maybe.” Wade shrugged. “That stopped her. Cold. And Danielle …” He shook his head wistfully and ran a hand across his hair. “Well, she’s got her father’s smarts and her mother’s temperament. And I guess it’s worth saying, she’s never been the keenest fan of me.”

“And why’s that?” Hauck asked him.

“’Cause I was there. When her mom died. And best to say maybe I wasn’t the most caring person to have around at that time of my life, going through some weak moments of my own …”

“I hear you,” Hauck said. “I was sorry to hear what happened.”

“Years ago now. But anyway, Dani’s stirring up some wild accusations. Threatening to take what she found to the press, or to the police chief in Aspen. That’s just not helpful now. It’s not the way we do things here. I thought it would be better if we just took her out of the picture for a day or two, while the investigators were here. If you know what I mean?”

“You put her in jail?”

The chief shrugged. “We were fully vacant. The rooms were there.”

“They still around?”

“Who?” the chief asked.

“The investigating teams.”

Dunn shook his head. “Nope.”

“I think I get the picture. Ted only said she was in some kind of trouble. Can I see her?”

“
See her?
You can take her if you want, be my guest. We’re all hoping you will. Hell, for such a pretty thing, she eats more than I can afford anyway … You can see, we’re only a small department.”

Hauck stood up.

The chief stood up, too. “Try and talk some sense into her, would you? No one gains by her stirring things up like she was. Maybe let her show you the state for a few days. Until this all quiets down. I don’t know how long you have, but it’s beautiful country out here. Sorry to drag you off your boat, Mr. Hauck. For such a mundane reason. Can’t say I’d be a happy camper if it were me.”

“Show me the way. I’ll see what I can do.”