The Dead Season (19 page)

Paul gave her a single dismissive look. “Get your pack on, Lourdes, or we’ll leave you behind. Talk is cheap, surviving a winter storm in the middle of the wilderness by yourself is another matter altogether. You know I’ll do it. Fall in.”

She responded lowly, “Fall in yourself, you son of bitch. It’s over.”

For a moment no one said anything. Paul stared her down. I was too astonished to move, and so, I think, was Rachel. Oddly, it was Angel who moved forward, putting herself between Lourdes and Paul, and said, obviously uncomfortable, “Come on, Lourdes, you’re only making it worse. Move back.”

Heather stared to move forward, and I could see a hint of panic in her eyes. “Lourdes…”

But Lourdes whirled on them all, her expression wild and furious, and she held up the object in her hand like a talisman, high for all to see. It was a smartphone. “Listen to me!” she cried. “We don’t have to do this anymore! I have proof! I have proof that will put him in jail! You don’t have to do this!”

Paul took a step toward her, scowling. “What’s in your hand? Where did you get that?”

Lourdes was breathing hard, her face dark red and voice hoarse. She locked eyes with Angel. “I used to hate you. I used to hate all of you, because you knew what he was doing to me and you made it worse. But then I realized it wasn’t just me.”

I saw a creeping stain of horror inch its way across Angel’s face and into her eyes, and Lourdes lowered her voice with tight emotion, staring her down. “The so-called strip searches, the cold showers with him watching, the other things… it wasn’t just me.” And her eyes suddenly swept the group as she demanded. “Was it?”

The shock and shame of truth that flashed across each of those young faces made me sick to my stomach. It was only an instant before anger and denial covered it, but it was there. Then Jess took a step back and muttered, “You crazy bitch. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

No one else moved.

Lourdes declared triumphantly, “Well, guess what? It wasn’t just us, either! This has been going on for a long time and I’ve got the video to prove it. This kid named Brian taped it all on his phone, but they killed him before he could get it to the police. He hid the evidence though, and this is it. It was his phone Cisco found this morning. The proof is here and now he’s going to pay.” She turned to Paul and shouted, “Did you hear that, you sick bastard? You’re going to pay and nothing you can do will save your sorry ass now!”

Rachel said in a low, harsh tone, “You lied to me.”

At first I was confused because I thought she was talking to Lourdes, but then I saw that her gaze was directed at Paul. Her face was frost white and pinched, and in her eyes was as much hatred as I have ever seen one human being direct toward another. She said, “You told me it was just that one time. You said it would never happen again. But you lied and you got caught. You killed that boy! You know you did! It’s on you, all of it!”

Paul shouted angrily, “Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about, either one of you! Give me that!”

He lunged at Lourdes and wrested the phone away from her, and after that everything seemed to happen at once. Lourdes screamed and Rachel cried, “You’re not going to do this! Not this time!” Paul turned back to the bridge and Lourdes lurched after him. Rachel caught his arm and he wrenched away. He was struggling with her when he stepped on the bridge. Lourdes grabbed at both of them, and Paul drew back his arm and threw phone into the gorge. The bridge swayed violently. Someone shouted, “Hey!” and one of the girls screamed. Cisco barked excitedly. I never heard a sound from Paul.

I did not have a clear view of what happened. I saw Lourdes stumble back, her eyes wide and terrified. Rachel fell to one knee, desperately clinging to the guide wire of the wildly bucking bridge, her mouth twisted into a silent oval of horror as she stared into the chasm below.

Paul was gone.

~

It was all so surreal that for a moment I did not even understand what had happened. And then Angel began to keen, “Oh my God, oh my God.” And Lourdes gasped in a strange, high voice, “He fell. He fell. He just fell.”

Suddenly my legs were moving, but it might have been because Cisco was pulling me forward. I shouted, “Cisco, halt!”

Dogs live almost entirely on an emotional level. Under any other circumstances Cisco might very well have ignored me, but the raw terror in my voice must have penetrated even his own hyper-excited state and he locked his legs. I unsnapped his lead, commanding, “Down.” Cisco sank reluctantly to his belly, his alert and anxious gaze taking in every move as I hurried to the edge of the gorge and looked down.

My breath stopped in my throat as I saw Paul’s crumpled form tangled amidst the snow-covered brush on a rocky ledge about ten feet below. The snow was coming down in thick fast flakes now and there was no way to tell how badly he was hurt, or if he was even still alive. I called, “Paul!” But I barely had enough breath to be heard over the sound of the wind. So I tried again, stronger now. “Paul! Can you hear me?”

I thought I heard a faint answering moan and saw a small movement of his arm in reply. I looked at Rachel, who was still kneeling at the edge of the bridge, clutching the wire. “He’s alive,” I said. I called over my shoulder. “He’s alive! Someone get my phone out of my pack and call 911!” I reached for Rachel’s arm, urging her to her feet and back to safety. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Lourdes was crying and Angel and Tiffanie were on their knees beside her with their arms around her, crying too. Cisco held his down stay, looking so anxious to be of help that he was practically quivering. The boys stood close together, stunned into silence. Heather was just turning away from my backpack, and I directed her breathlessly, “Tell them we need an airlift, and if they can’t get Life Flight, a forest service copter will do. I’ll go down and see how badly he’s hurt, but we can’t leave him there in the cold. We’ve got to have help. ”

Heather was not dialing, she was not speaking. She just stood with her back to me, staring at the phone. She turned slowly, the expression on her face weak and sick. She had a blue camp bag in one hand and a battered Smartphone in the other. She held both of them up to me wordlessly.

For a moment I didn’t understand. “Lourdes got the wrong phone,” Heather said dully. “This is Brian’s phone. Yours went over the cliff.”

And that’s when everything changed.

C
HAPTER SEVENTEEN

I
looked up anxiously when the door opened again, but it was only a deputy with a pot of coffee. There was a slight relaxation of tension while cups were refilled and packets of sugar and artificial creamer dispensed. The deputy had brought a folder with papers in it, and I assumed they were statements from some of the other kids. Agent Brown and Detective Ritchie passed them back and forth. Sonny asked if I wanted to take a break. I shook my head.

Agent Brown leaned back and sipped his coffee, glancing over his notes. “So help me get a picture of this. How many people were actually on the bridge when Mr. Evans went over?”

“I don’t know for sure.” I was trying to be a good witness. I knew how important accuracy was. But I now also understood what strange tricks the mind could play when a person was in the very center of a crisis. I honestly had no clear recollection of the details of that moment. “Rachel must have been on the bridge, because that’s where I found her when I reached it. I don’t know whether Lourdes was on the bridge or at the edge of it. Paul couldn’t have been more than a foot or two on the bridge when he went over, which is why he hit the slope instead of falling into the chasm.”

“And how far away from the bridge were you?”

I thought about that. “Maybe three or four feet.”

“Close enough to reach it in one step?”

Mr. Willis said mildly, “Answered.” And Sonny added, “What part of ‘four feet away’ did you not understand, Mr. Brown?”

He looked annoyed. “That’s Special Agent Brown, Miss Brightwell.”

Sonny just smiled.

Detective Ritchie said, “Yet you couldn’t see what was happening on the bridge just…” He pretended to consult his notes. “Three or four feet away from you.”

“Maybe it was farther than that. I didn’t want Cisco too close to the edge.”

He nodded. “Did anyone else approach the bridge while Paul Evans was on it?”

“No. Just Lourdes.”

“And would you say that Mrs. Evans seemed surprised by Lourdes’s accusations?”

I tasted my coffee. It was rich and hot and tasted freshly made. I felt my spirits revive a little. “Surprised, maybe. More like angry at her husband.”

“Was there a struggle on the bridge after Mr. Evans threw your phone away?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t tell. There was a lot of yelling and Cisco was barking, and I must have looked away for a second to try to calm him down.”

“What did you think had happened to Paul Evans?”

“The wind was kicking up. The bridge was icy. I assumed he overbalanced when he threw my phone, and he fell off the bridge.”

“Evans didn’t scream when he fell?”

“No.”

“But Lourdes did.”

I thought about that. “Someone did.”

“Could he have been pushed?”

Sonny said impatiently, “Anything is possible, Detective. My client has already told you she didn’t see what happened.”

Detective Ritchie nodded noncommittally. “What would you say was Rachel Evans’s state of mind at this point?”

“She was in shock, I guess. To tell the truth, I didn’t pay much attention to her state of mind. I had too many other things to worry about.”

“Was she crying?”

“No.”

“Did she offer to help when you went down the cliff to check on her husband?”

“No.”

“What about the other kids? I guess they were pretty upset by it all.”

I nodded. “They were at first. But they got themselves together. They remembered their training.” I could feel the gamut of emotions flicker across my face: horror, disappointment, outrage, but at last, pride and triumph, as though I had actually been in some way responsible for their final performance out there. Which I suppose I was. “There were some rough moments,” I admitted. “But in the end they proved what they were made of. They did what they were supposed to. They’re good kids, down deep, and they‘d been through a lot. I don’t blame them for what happened.”

Agent Brown’s expression was unimpressed. “What was your state of mind when you realized Paul Evans had fallen, Miss Stockton?”

That seemed like a stupid question. I should have known by then to beware of stupid questions.

“I was upset, of course. Just like everyone else. I couldn’t believe it. I was afraid he was seriously—maybe even mortally—injured, and I didn’t know how we were going to get him to a hospital in time. These kinds of rescues are hard enough with a qualified team of medics and good weather. I was scared,” I admitted. “I was afraid the outcome might not be good.”

“And when you realized that Evans had tossed your phone—your only chance to get help, not only for him but for you and all those kids—how did you feel then?”

“I couldn’t believe it at first. I had to look at the phone Heather had found and make sure it was Brian’s. Then I tried to turn it on, but of course the battery had died months ago. Then I searched my backpack, hoping there had somehow been a mistake, but there hadn’t been.”

“You must’ve really been scared then,” Ritchie said. “And pissed.”

I said, “I was alarmed at first. But then I remembered Paul had a phone and I figured we would use it to call for help as soon as I could get to it.”

“So why didn’t you?”

I took another sip of my coffee to lubricate a suddenly dry throat. “His phone was in his coat pocket. It was smashed on impact.”

Ritchie nodded sympathetically. “And then what did you think?”

I stared at him incredulously. “What do you mean, what did I think? I was hanging by a rope off the side of an icy cliff in a blizzard with an injured man, five kids, two women and my dog depending on me and no way to get them to safety! I thought I was in trouble, that’s what I thought!”

Sonny placed a calming hand on mine, and I took another sip of coffee.

Agent Brown said, “How did you get to Mr. Evans?”

“I tied a rope to a tree and rappelled down. It wasn’t very far. I could have climbed the slope if it hadn’t been so slippery. The snow was really coming down, and by the time I reached Paul, he was almost completely covered.”

“But he was alive?”

I nodded, swallowing another gulp of hot coffee. “His leg was broken, and probably some ribs. He had a lot of superficial lacerations and the bleeding made them look worse than they were. He was in an awful lot of pain and kind of floating in and out of consciousness. I used an inflatable splint from my emergency pack to stabilize his leg, but I didn’t really have enough room to work so I probably didn’t do a very good job. I gave him some codeine tablets, wrapped him in a couple of blankets, and tried to figure out how we were going to get him out of there.”