Best Laid Plans (61 page)

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“They had time against them last fall. The storm was getting worse, and they concentrated on the area between the camp and where the boys had parked their truck. Scott was found on the opposite side of the mountain, nearly two miles southeast of the campground; they parked two miles north of the camp. I suspect that Chuck and his team would have found Scott in the next couple of days. I met them; they weren’t going to give up. I just—made it go faster.” She didn’t mention at this point that it had been her suggestion to check the other trail, because that really didn’t matter—not to Adele. It would matter when Max talked to the three boys who left Scott alone on that mountain.

“Are you leaving?” Adele asked.

Max had thought about it. She didn’t know why seeing Scott Sheldon’s thawing body had disturbed her so much. She’d viewed an autopsy before, seen crime scene photos, once researched a child abuse case that left a little girl in a coma. That small, unconscious body had unnerved Max on multiple levels.

But this—she’d never seen a body so exposed. So … vulnerable. So
dead.
An autopsy was clinical and scientific. She could separate the procedure from the person. Crime scene photos were two dimensional, violent and grotesque, but again, she could view them as a reporter and not with undue emotion.

But Scott … he was right there, and had been for nearly six months. In his sleeping bag, suggesting he knew he couldn’t get back to the campground where his friends had pitched a tent. He’d curled up against the tree, in his sleeping bag, and died. Had he known? Had he thought he would wake up in the morning and find his way back? She’d already checked—the average temperature in Colorado Springs that night was fifteen degrees. Chuck told her that would mean in the mountains where the boys had camped it would have been even colder, likely below zero. Scott’s sleeping bag wasn’t designed for subzero temperatures.

Had he wandered around and gotten lost? Why?

“I’m going to wait until the autopsy results come in, talk to the detective, then talk to the boys again.”

“Do you think—something else happened?”

“I don’t know, Adele. I think—” Max didn’t want to share her theories with Adele. Not until she had proof. “I’m not sure that the entire story has been told.”

“Call me. I—I’m going to have a funeral for him. Detective Horn said a few days and I should be able to…” Again, her voice trailed off.

“Let me know about it. If I’m still here, I’ll come.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” Adele hung up and Max was relieved. The grief of parents twisted her stomach in knots. She had a headache—she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She wasn’t hungry, but knew she needed to eat something or she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Especially when she couldn’t get Scott Sheldon’s dead body out of her mind.

She made a reservation at the Tavern, her favorite restaurant at the Broadmoor. She’d been to the resort many times in the past—it was one of her favorite places to relax—only this time, she didn’t feel relaxed.

Chuck called her cell phone as she was leaving for dinner. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. You were very quiet during the drive back.”

“It’s been a long day,” she said. “I’m dining at the Tavern, if you’d like to join me.”

He didn’t commit. “I’ll see.”

“You know where I am,” she said, and hung up. She didn’t want small talk; she didn’t really want to talk at all.

The restaurant was across the courtyard from the main building. She stepped out into pouring rain. The doorman handed her a complimentary umbrella, and she smiled her thanks, but had no energy to talk. Her thoughts were filled with images of Scott Sheldon dying alone—buried in snow, pounded with rain, covered with layers of mulch. Her melancholy turned to anger. There was no reason he should have died on that mountain.

She was seated immediately and ordered a crab cake appetizer and wine before she looked at the menu. The wine, thankfully, arrived first.

She stared at the fire across the room, sipped her wine, and tried to force her mind to go blank. It was something she had a hard time doing, turning off her thoughts. Either her mind had to be working or her body—preferably both. But today all she felt was cold, even in the warm restaurant and wearing her favorite cashmere sweater and snug wool slacks. She shouldn’t be cold, but even the hot shower after she returned from the mountain hadn’t warmed her.

The loss hit her. What had Scott been thinking those hours he lay in the cheap nylon sleeping bag? Had he known he was dying? How long did he stay there, too cold to move, too cold to call out? Was he disoriented? Severe hypothermia lowered the body temperature so much that victims got confused, often hallucinating and wandering, their heart rate dropping, their major organs slowly shutting down. Did it take a couple hours? All night? He would have lost consciousness before he died, but the hours leading up to that would have been full of fear and pain.

A miserable way to die.

But was there any good way to die?

By all accounts, Karen had been stabbed to death—how else could she have lost so much blood? Did she die faster than Scott, and did that make it some sort of blessing? Or was it more painful, more fearful? Did it matter? They were both young people, in college, with their lives ahead of them, and they were dead. One violently, and one by the stupidity of others.

Whether it was malicious or not remained to be seen.

Her crab cakes came and the waitress asked if she wanted to order dinner. “Not now,” Max said. “Another glass of wine, please.”

She nibbled on the crab cakes and watched as Chuck Pence crossed in front of the fire and sat across from her.

“Where’s Trixie?” Max asked.

“Home. Finding a body, even though she’s trained for it, is disturbing for her as well as us. My wife knows how to soothe her.”

“Have a drink with me,” Max said as the waitress came with her second glass.

He said to the waitress, “Scotch, neat.”

“Do you have a preference?”

“No,” he said.

“Top shelf, single malt,” Max told the waitress. “Thank you.”

“Reporting must pay well,” Chuck said.

“Not particularly.”

“Detective Horn told me you’re also a writer. Books.”

“True crime.” She didn’t feel the need to share more of her history with Chuck. “I’m sorry I was abrupt on the phone.” Apologies didn’t come easy to her, but she had been snippy, and Chuck had been helpful. “I appreciate that you took me out with you and the Callows today.”

“I wish there could have been a better outcome.”

“We both knew the outcome.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier.”

They sat in silence while the waitress brought Chuck’s Scotch. He sniffed, sipped, nodded. “Thank you.”

“Did you get the preliminary autopsy report?” Max was familiar enough with the process to know they wouldn’t get a final report until the exam and all tests came back.

“The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Amelia said she’d call me when she knew anything.” He paused, sipped some more. “She doesn’t usually do that, but she knows this has been bothering me. And she suspects I’ll inform you.”

“Why doesn’t she call me?”

“She’s uncomfortable talking to the press.”

“She talked to me on the phone the other day.”

“Curiosity.”

“And you? You deal with the press all the time?”

“Never. But you don’t strike me as a typical reporter.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I did learn something at the coroner’s office. The visual exam of the body shows no external cause of death. There were some scrapes on his arms consistent with tree branches or falling and skinning his arm, but other than that, no visible wounds. X-rays showed a fracture in his left fibula. He probably could have walked on it, but it would have been painful. Because the body was frozen for so long, and based on average temperature for the area over the last six months, the coroner hopes to get a good tox screen, see if he was on drugs. Alcohol will be next to impossible to find—it breaks down in the system in a matter of hours, but it also speeds up hypothermia.”

“If he was found Saturday, would he have survived?”

“I can’t answer that. He was in apparent good health, he should have been able to survive, though he’d have had extreme hypothermia. By the second night, I would put his chance of survival—given what he was wearing and the sleeping bag—at less than twenty percent. If he’d fallen in the creek we crossed to find him, that would have lowered his body temperature dramatically and he wouldn’t have survived even more moderate temperatures than what he had. Without those answers, I can’t speculate.”

He paused, sipped his Scotch. “You’re suggesting that had the boys informed the rangers on Saturday that he was missing, we could have found him.”

“Yes.”

He let out a long, slow sigh. “I don’t know.”

“We found him in a different area than you originally looked.”

“Correct.”

Max nodded.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, Ms. Revere, but you’re thinking.”

“Max. My friends call me Max.” He was right; she was thinking. “What if they deliberately misled search and rescue?”

“Playing devil’s advocate, why? There’s no physical trauma. No signs of abuse, no bruising, minor scrapes consistent with the environment.”

“If something else happened—maybe drug related, maybe something Scott knew—something that, if he were found alive, he would get the others in trouble.”

“That’s a mighty big leap, unsupported by any evidence.”

“There’s plenty of evidence,” she said bitterly. “It’s a matter of how we look at it. Is Detective Horn going to talk to them?”

“Not until after the autopsy report comes back.”

“They’ll have plenty of time to synchronize their stories.”

“I think it would be best if you stayed in the background. Amelia is a good cop. If there’s something there, she’ll find it.”

“She told me on the phone that there was no evidence of foul play then, and if there’s no physical evidence now, there’s not going to be an investigation. It’s not like I’m impeding an official police inquiry. I can get Tom Keller to confess. He’s the weak link.”

“Confess to what?”

She stared Chuck in the eye. “The truth.”

*   *   *

Max rarely found herself drunk, but she was tipsy when she walked back to her hotel room. She hoped the alcohol would help her sleep, but suspected it would more likely contribute to vivid and disturbing dreams. She drank water while checking her e-mail. Her editor—she filed it away to respond to later. Ben, again nagging her about the television show. She e-mailed him back.

If you keep nagging me, I will block your e-mails and never return a phone call. I’ll let you know when I make my decision.

There were several other messages she ignored or deleted, and then she saw the note from her computer genius in New York, Grant Malone.

I analyzed the image you forwarded. It was uploaded at 8:39 a.m. local time on October 31. The image was uploaded via Wi-Fi, the code was also embedded in the image. I’ve attached the GPS location and verification of the Wi-Fi code.

She clicked on the attachment. The photo had been uploaded from a hotel off the interstate that was nowhere near the campground. In fact, they were thirty-seven miles away, in a warm hotel room while Scott Sheldon died a slow and painful death, cold and alone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Max woke Thursday morning, she planned to go directly to the college campus and confront Tom Keller with the evidence, compel him to tell her the truth. But she needed more evidence than a photo she’d downloaded from the Internet. It convinced her, and it might convince Tom to talk, but Arthur Cowan was a wily bastard, and Max needed something irrefutable. Something else to sway Tom Keller that telling the truth was his only choice.

She doubted anyone at the hotel would remember three college boys after six months, but she might be able to convince one of the staff members to look up information for her. It was worth a shot.

And if they wouldn’t do it out of the kindness of their hearts, Max had enough cash to convince them. It had worked in the past.

The hotel was twenty-five minutes north of Colorado Springs, outside the city limits and off the interstate—the same road they used before turning up the mountain to get to the campground. On the drive, Max called the campus bookstore to talk to Jess, but learned she didn’t work Thursdays. Max couldn’t convince the person who answered to give her Jess’s cell phone number or her dorm room, and while Max couldn’t blame them for protecting Jess’s privacy, it was frustrating. She gave the person her contact information and said that it was urgent Jess contact her.

Urgent might be an overstatement, but Max had an idea, and Jess was her best bet to put it in action.

Then she called Chuck Pence, but he didn’t answer. She left a message on his voice mail. She considered calling Detective Horn, but feared the cop would tell her to stay out of it. Max had no plans to do that. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, Karen had always said. Max never agreed with her … until she became a freelance reporter. Asking for permission rarely worked.