Six Seconds (3 page)

5

Faust’s Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada

The boy’s face was flawless.
Almost sublime in death.
His eyes were closed. Not a mark on his skin. He

had the aura of a sleeping cherub as a breeze lifted strands of his hair, like a mother tenderly coaxing him to wake and play.

His resemblance to the girl was clear. He was older, likely her big brother. His jeans were faded, his blue sweatshirt bore a Canadian Rockies insignia, his sneak ers were a popular brand and in good shape. He looked about eight or nine and so small inside the open body bag.

Who is he? What were his favorite things? His dreams? His last thoughts?
Graham wondered, kneel ing over him on the riverbank with Liz DeYoung, the medical investigator from the Calgary Medical Exam iner’s Office.

“What do you think?” Graham raised his voice over the river’s rush. “Accident, or suspicious?”
“Way too soon to tell.” DeYoung was wearing blue latex gloves and, using the utmost care, she grasped the boy’s small shoulders and turned him. The back of his skull had been smashed in like an eggshell, exposing cranial matter. “It appears the major trauma is here.”
“From the rocks?”
“Probably. We’ll know more after we autopsy him, and the girl, back in Calgary. At this stage, Mother Nature’s your suspect.”
Graham glimpsed DeYoung’s wristwatch and updated his case log using the pen, notebook and clipboard he’d borrowed from the Banff members helping at the scene.
“No life jackets,” Graham said.
“Excuse me?”
“The girl didn’t have one. He doesn’t have one. Did anyone see life jackets?”
“No. But if you’ve got a reason to be suspicious, would you share it?”
“It’s just a feeling.”
“A feeling?”
“Forget it. I’m still thawing out. Did you find any ID? Items in his pockets? Clothing tags?”
“No. Except for a little flashlight and a granola bar, nothing. Look, you guys do your thing. Get us some names and a next of kin, so we can request dental records to confirm. You know the drill.”
He knew the drill.
“So we’re good to move him?” DeYoung had a lot of work ahead of her.
Graham didn’t answer. He was staring at the boy, prompting her to look at him with a measure of concern.
“Are you okay?”
DeYoung knew something of Graham’s personal situation and took quick stock of him, blinking at a memory.
“Dan, you know the only time I ever met Nora was last Christmas. We all sat together at the attorney general’s banquet. We hit it off. Remember?”
He remembered.
“I’m so sorry. I missed her service. I was at a con ference in Australia.”
“It’s okay.”
“How are you doing? Really?”
His gaze shifted from the boy’s corpse to the river, as if the answer to everything was out there.
He stood. “You can move him now.”
DeYoung closed the bag. Her crew loaded it onto a stretcher, strapped it in three areas, then carried it care fully up the embankment to their van. Graham watched the van inch along the trail, suspension creaking as it tottered to the back road. Then it was gone.
For a moment, he stood alone in the middle of the scene.
It had been cordoned on three sides with yellow tape. He was wearing latex gloves and shoe covers. Nearby, members of the RCMP Forensic Identification Section out of Calgary, in radiant white coveralls, looked surreal against the dark rocks and jade river, working quietly taking pictures, measuring, collecting samples of poten tial evidence.
All in keeping with a fundamental tenet known to all detectives.
A wilderness death can be a perfect murder. Treat it as suspicious because you don’t know the truth until you know the facts.

Graham resumed studying his clipboard, paging through the handwritten statements and notes he’d taken from the people who’d found the boy. Haruki Ito, age forty-four, photographer from Tokyo, was first. He’d flagged the women on bicycles. Ingrid Borland, age fifty-one, a librarian from Frankfurt, and Marlena Zimmer, age thirty-three, a Web editor from Munich. They all seemed to be pretty straight-up tourists.

Nothing unusual regarding their demeanor. The guy from Tokyo was a seasoned news photog rapher, having covered some terrible stuff like wars and tsunamis. He was fairly calm, philosophical, Graham thought. It was a different story with the women, who were left shaken by their futile attempt to revive the boy.
“That poor child. That poor, poor child.”
Static crackled from a police radio, pulling Graham’s attention to the man approaching. He’d emerged from the tangle of emergency vehicles atop the riverbank where members from the Banff and Canmore general investigations sections were with the witnesses. He stopped at the tape. A wise decision.
“Corporal Graham?”
Graham moved closer to the new arrival. He was in his midthirties. Maybe six feet tall, wearing jeans and a checkered shirt under a black leather bomber jacket.
“Owen Prell. Inspector Stotter sent me.”
“Got here pretty quick.” Graham shook his hand.
“I was already in Canmore.”
“Mike said you joined Major Crimes from Med icine Hat.”
“Worked GIS. They just set me up by your desk at the office. I’m looking forward to working with you.” Prell looked back to the patrol cars and uniformed officers. “The other members want to know if you’re done with the witnesses. The people would like to go.”
“We’re almost done with them.” Graham flipped his pages. “Get them to surrender their passports. We’ll run them through Interpol. Just say it’s procedure and we’ll return them soon.”
“Will do.”
As Prell turned, a helicopter throbbed overhead, skimming the river. The RCMP’s chopper out of Ed monton. The instant it disappeared, Graham heard his name. The FIS member processing the canoe was waving for him to come and see something.
Something important.
Wedged in the rocks where the canoe crashed was a small metal plate displaying the label
Wolf Ridge Out fitters.
The screw holes aligned with those on the canoe. It was a rental. Number 27.
Rental agencies kept records.
“Prell!”
The constable returned with his radio. An urgent request was made to the telecomms dispatcher to con tact Wolf Ridge and cross-reference its rental agreement for Number 27 with the park’s permits and wilderness passes.
It took twenty minutes for the information to come back.
The canoe was rented by Ray Tarver, of Washington, D.C.
Park permits showed Ray, Anita, Tommy and Emily Tarver as the visitors registered to drive-in campsite #131.

6

Faust’s Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada

Campsite #131 was upstream, deep in the backcoun try, secluded in a dense stand of spruce and pine, offer ing sweeping views of the river and the rugged cliffs of the Nine Bear Range.

When Graham arrived with the others, he saw no movement.
A late-model SUV was parked near a large dome tent. It was a typical campsite: propane camping stove, lawn chairs, four life jackets stacked neatly against a spruce tree, food kept a safe distance from the tent, and other items, including shirts and pants, hanging from a clothesline tied between two pine trees. Shouts for the Tarvers were answered by the river’s rush and the thud of the search helicopters.
The site was silent.
Lifeless.
Graham declared it a second scene and as Prell and the others taped it off and radioed for a request to run the SUV’s Alberta plate, he entered the tent alone.
Inside, he detected the pleasant fragrances of soap and sunscreen. There was also the sense that something had been interrupted but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Time had stopped here. To one side, was a sleeping bag big enough for two adults. Next to its left pillow, a Danielle Steel paperback. Next to the right, a large flash light.
Across the tent, two smaller sleeping bags, side by side. A SpongeBob comic was splayed open on one, while a pink stuffed bunny sat on the other, arms open, awaiting its owner’s return.
Graham picked it up, looked into its button eyes.
Children’s clothes in bright colors erupted from small backpacks: sweaters, small pants. The larger bags on the opposite side were also open, clothes spilled from them, but not in a disheveled way.
It was orderly.
Graham searched in vain for a purse or wallet. Camp ers often hid them or locked them away. After making notes, he stepped outside, where Prell updated him.
“The SUV’s a rental from an outlet at Calgary Interna tional. Customer’s Raymond Tarver, same D.C. address.”
“Anything inside?”
“It’s locked.”
“Get the rental agency to open it for us ASAP. Tell them it’s a police emergency. Then we’ll get forensics to process it and this site. Nobody tromps around here or touches anything.”
Graham nodded upriver.
“What about the people in the neighboring sites?”
“Some of the guys have started a canvas.”
“Good, I want statements, time lines, background checks.”

Six Seconds
49

“Will do. Corporal, what do you suspect happened to the parents?”
“I don’t know.” Graham surveyed the site again: the life jackets, the cooler of food kept at a proper distance from the tent, a pail of dirt near the fire ring—
did they cook hot dogs, toast marshmallows and huddle under the stars together? Did they die together?
“These people follow the rules, keep things safe, take no risks. I don’t know what happened.”
Later that night, after Prell had gone back to Calgary, Graham watched flashlights and headlamps probe the dark river valley as SARS teams continued searching. Graham was alone at his own campsite sitting before a fire, listening to transmissions echoing from the bor rowed radio next to him.
As the searchers reported, Graham reviewed his case.
After a mechanic from the rental agency had opened the SUV, Prell found more items, including a wallet, a purse and U.S. passports belonging to the Tarvers. The flames illuminated the faces of Raymond, his wife, Anita, their son, Thomas, and their daughter, Emily, the girl who took her final breaths in Graham’s arms.
What went wrong here?
Graham wanted to believe that this was your nice, average American family. But where were Ray and Anita Tarver?
Did they drown their children?
Or drown with them?
What happened?
Had they been having a blissful mountain vacation before a horrible accident? Or was something else at work? Was there stress in the family? What was going on in the lives of the Tarvers before the tragedy?
What about his own life?
The firelight also captured the urn visible through the screen door to his tent.
Graham ran a hand across his face.
It’d been a hell of a day. He’d come up here to one of Nora’s favorite spots, to distribute the rest of her ashes. He’d come up to quit the force. He couldn’t go on without her because he had nothing left.
Nothing.
Because it was his fault.
Then today happened. And in his darkest moment when he was in the river, certain he would die, he heard her, telling him not to give up.
To keep going.
And then came Emily Tarver’s final cryptic words.
How could he walk away from this?
He owed the dead.
The radio sputtered.
“Repeat, Sector 17—”
“We’ve got something here!”

7

Blue Rose Creek, California

It was nearly 1:30 a.m.

In the quiet, Maggie was losing hope of ever meeting Madame Fatima. As she got ready for bed, she consid ered all the messages she’d left. All unanswered.

She’d try again tomorrow.
Maggie drew back her bedsheet then froze.
What was that?
She’d heard something. Down the hall. In the study

area off the living room. She glanced around, listening for a moment.
Nothing.

She was exhausted, dismissed it and tried to sleep but a million fears assailed her.
Were Jake and Logan dead?
Why hadn’t she heard from them? She ached to hold Logan, to talk to Jake.
Just pick up the damn phone and call me, Jake. Let me know you’re all right.
Why are you doing this?
Why?

For much of her life, Maggie had been a loner. But tonight she wished she had a friend, someone to talk to. When Maggie was six years old, her mother commit ted suicide after a drunk driver killed Maggie’s older sister, April, as she was riding her bike. Maggie’s dad raised her alone until she married Jake. Then her father took up with a younger woman, a drug addict he’d met in rehab.

He moved to Arizona and Maggie hadn’t spoken to him in years.
She’d called him to see if he’d heard from Jake, but it had been a short conversation.
No.
Jake had no family either. His parents divorced after he’d left high school. His father died of cancer five years ago. His mother died three years back.
Maggie and Jake had always kept to themselves, happy to have each other. Able to handle any problem together.
Until this.
What really happened to Jake in Iraq?
Maggie knew he’d driven on secret missions and that his convoys often came under fire, but he refused to tell her anything as she worried about his brooding, his nightmares, the outburst.
One day, Jake went with her to the supermarket where they’d bumped into Craig Ullman, Logan’s soccer coach. As they talked, something icy flitted across Jake’s face. A few nights later in bed, he turned his back to her.
“I know you slept with Ullman when I was over there.”
She was stunned.
Not only was Jake wrong, he scared her because it seemed as if he was losing it. Then came the scene at one of Logan’s games. Jake had been out of town and arrived late. Logan waved from the field, Maggie waved from her place among the parents in lawn chairs on the sideline.
Jake ignored them, marching up to Craig Ullman.
“I know, asshole,” Jake said.
Ullman looked up from his clipboard, bewildered.
“Is something wrong, Jake?”
“You were banging my wife while I was away.
I fucking know it!
”
“What?”
Jake drew back his fist and Maggie grabbed it.
“No, Jake! Stop it! We have to go home. Craig, I am
so sorry.
”
Jake stared at her, at Logan who’d watched it all, along with everybody else. Jake just walked off, drove away, and spent the night in his rig, parked in the driveway of their home, exiled from the people who loved him.
She and Logan endured the humiliation and, in the days that followed, Jake refused to speak of the incident. He went on several long-haul jobs while Maggie called anonymous crisis lines to find a way to fix their lives.
She did all that she could for her family.
Maggie opened her eyes.
There it is again.
The noise.
A bit louder this time.
She got out of bed to check.
She went into the hallway and looked around. Un ease rippled through her as she headed for the living room and the study area. Nothing obvious. Yet some thing
felt
wrong. She went to the bathroom, checked behind the shower curtain.
Nothing.
She went to Logan’s room. Nothing. She went back to the living room and this time she went deeper into the study area where she kept her computer and her records on Jake and Logan.
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Her papers had been shuffled, some had spilled onto the floor.
Had someone been in her home?
Maggie looked at the patio door just off the study at the back of the house. It was open by about four inches. She closed it. Locked it.
Did she leave it open?
She’d been careless before when she was lost in her thoughts.
If she did, it would explain her scattered file. It was breezy tonight.
What’s that?
A faint trace of something. A lingering scent she couldn’t identify.
Maybe it was nothing.
Was she so stressed her mind was playing tricks on her?
This is stupid. She couldn’t handle this right now.
No. It was strange, but she could feel a presence.
Maggie jumped as her phone rang.
Who’d be calling at this hour?

Hope fluttered in her stomach then fear clawed at her. “Hello?”
Silence swallowed her answer. The incoming caller

was BLOCKED, according to her caller ID. “Hello? Who’s there?”
Nothing. No breathing. No background noise. Only

silence.
“Who are you calling, please?”
Through the window Maggie saw a car whisk down

the street with only its parking lights on.
What’s happening?
She hung up and thrust her face in her trembling

hands.

Was she losing her mind?