“I think it’s possible.” Wolf looked into the trees at Connell who still lay motionless. “There’s not much to go by right here with the granite rock. I can’t get an indication of struggle or not. But there were two others with him. I could see a lot of signs on the way up. Looked like a girl and a boy by the shoe prints at least.”
Wolf walked to the edge and looked over again.
“Jesus, what happened to you?” Rachette was looking Wolf up and down.
Wolf looked down at his uniform, dust powdered the whole left side of his body. A scrape on his elbow was draining blood down the length of his arm to his fingers, and his other elbow was covered in blood, not his own blood. His dark brown Carhartts were scuffed with dirt, a clump of burrs was velcroed to his leg.
“Oh, yeah, that,” He slapped the dirt off his pants. “Give me your handkerchief, will ya?”
Rachette gave him his ever present handkerchief from his rear pocket, and Wolf wiped the blood off his arm.
“Sorry, I’ll buy you another one at Sheps.”
“What the hell happened?” Rachette suddenly went wide eyed, then looked again over the ledge, then back to Wolf. “Where’s Connell?”
Wolf huffed and nodded towards the trees. Rachette took a second to find Connell’s form amongst the sparse underbrush.
“What the…” He swiveled his head back and forth. “Is that Connell’s blood?” He finally settled his eyes on Wolf’s forehead.
Wolf wiped his head, putting another dark spot on the handkerchief.
“Yeah. I think that’s from the head butt to his nose. He’s going to need some medical attention, but I suspect he’ll be able to walk his own ass down the mountain soon. I don’t know. Maybe not.”
Rachette unloaded a bit spit on the rock and laughed, “Whoa-lly crap! You gotta tell me what happened!”
“Hey, watch what you’re doing, don’t spit anymore. We’re treating this a crime scene. Connell and I already messed it up enough, no sense making it worse. And don’t worry about what happened here. He deserved it, that’s all you need to know for now,” he said, contemplating whether he should come out with it. “I don’t know what the heck happened, other than he started it, and I finished it.”
“Sorry boss.”
Rachette wiped his mouth and stepped into the trees.
“Who else is on their way up? Are Wilson and Blaine coming?”
Rachette was already halfway to Connell, “Yep, they’re right behind me!” He let out a long whistle as he looked down on Connell’s inert muscle bound form, “Yeah, that’s a broken nose… Hey Connell! Wow, he’s out.”
Officer Wilson clamored up the trail into view.
Wolf stepped towards the ledge again. “Alright, Rachette, you’re with me, we’re heading down. Wilson, come here.”
They all took another look over the cliff edge.
Wilson approached wheezing hard, and peeked over at the body below. “Good lord. That him?” He turned quickly away from the cliff and walked towards the pines.
Wolf grabbed his radio and checked its functionality. It was scoured deeply and dusted with dirt, but static emitted from the speaker as he pushed the button.
“All right everyone, we’ve found our victim, appears DOA, but we’ve gotta move fast in case he’s still got vitals. We need everyone moving with full medical north on the West Base Loop. He’s at the base of Skipper Cliff. We also have an officer in need of medical assistance on top of the cliff. Officer is unconscious, may need to be evac’ed off the mountain. We need to move fast. Storms are going to be popping up this afternoon. It’s going to be a lot of rain and lightning. Let’s move fast guys.” He put his radio back on his belt.
A cacophony of affirmative radio calls barked through all their radios. Wilson had hiked up, staring dumbly down at Connell, who’s forearm was now raised up lying against his forehead. He had come to and was starting to move around.
“Wilson, make sure he gets attention, make sure the guys on the West Base Loop trail find where they need to go down at the base of this cliff. We’ll have Blaine join you. Where is he?”
“Uh, he should be right here. He was behind me.”
“Let’s go,” he nodded at Rachette walking away from the cliff top and back down the trail. He stopped suddenly, “Give me one of those.”
Rachette dug in his back pocket and pulled his can of snuff out with a smirk, “I thought you were quitting?”
Wolf took a pinch and threw the can back. “Yeah, not today.”
Chapter 2
Wolf led officer Tom Rachette down the slope towards the staging area. The trail was smoothed from the bouts of torrential rain of late. He went fast, following the original line of signs he saw on the way up with Connell, now obscured by the foot falls of four officers. Rachette followed silently for a good hundred yards, then went down in a loud thump and sliding noise.
“Ah!” Rachette bounced up from his butt and looked at the ground.
Wolf turned and gave Rachette an appraising look.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said brushing himself off. “So you think there were two others with the Wheatman kid when he fell?”
“Yep,” Wolf turned back down the hill. “There’s fresh tracks, after the rain from two days ago, and nothing else but a few deer from what I saw. Two teenage boys, one teenage girl. Wheatman drops off the cliff, and now we have left one boy, one teenage girl,” he said.
“And in a frantic hurry. Here.” He pointed, stopping suddenly at a steep slope of loose dirt.
There were two sets of footprints, obviously pointed downwards, heels digging in hard. One set of prints a boyish set of boots, one a smaller thin shoe model. They were stumbling and stopping, helping each other after falls.
Rachette bent down. “Could be a couple of boys, just a smaller boy.”
“Could be. But we both know who these three are. It was Mulroy’s girl, the Wheatman kid, and the Fitzgerald kid. They’ve been inseparable all summer.”
Rachette sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Another rumble of thunder shook the air, still many miles away. Wolf looked at the sky behind the peaks. It was pitch dark save the continuous flickering of lightning from within. There was a torrid downpour being unleashed. If the storm expanded over the peaks in the next hour it was going to be tough going for the boys. Wolf looked to the task ahead of him and Tom and envied them.
Chapter 3
Wolf climbed into the Explorer with a grunt, his body stiff, muscles stuffed with lactic acid. Living on a ranch in the mountains, at nine thousand plus feet, one tended to build up a strength and stamina seldom seen by most frequenters of exercise gyms. Tack on that he was an avid outdoorsman, and Wolf normally wouldn’t have felt the slightest bit of fatigue after climbing up and down a relatively short section of mountain. But this morning his adrenaline injected muscles had been tested to the point of failure numerous times within the span of a minute. Ten years ago, his Special Forces hardened body would have been accustomed to it. But this was ten years later, and he was downright sore.
“Jesus. I can’t believe you did that to Connell! I wish I would have seen it.” Rachette stared at him with revered awe. “Was that about next week or something?”
“Can you get me some coffee from that thermos at your feet?” Wolf held out his screw-lid cup.
Rachette stared at Wolf for a second and shook his head, picking up the thermos. “Dammit.” He patted a dark splotch of coffee on his pants.
“What the heck’s wrong with you today?”
“Psssshhh!”
Wolf chuckled inwardly. He was thirty five, ten years on the force, up for consideration to be appointed to Sheriff of the Rocky Points Police Department, but he’d found the one person on the force he really connected with to be this second-year twenty-three-year-old.
For too many years he’d come to disturbing realizations of the shortfalls of many of the department officers. Some didn’t step up when the going got tough. Some showed borderline psychotic behavior when given a badge and gun. Most of them were good men, he admitted. But would he entrust his life in their hands? Not with a few of them, and sure as hell not with Derek Connell.
Rachette was different. In one and a half years on the force, he’d shown Wolf, without a doubt, that he was one to be counted on above anyone else in the RPPF. He had the attitude, strength, coolness under pressure, reliability, confidence, intelligence, and the drive.
Thinking about all this, watching him wipe coffee off his crotch, he smiled as he turned his attention back to the winding dusty road to town.
The road turned back to the west and dropped in elevation through the dense forest for a couple miles. Gleaming-copper-trimmed, massive houses poked out of the trees on both sides of the road. They were well spread apart, leaving vast swaths of dense forest in between them. At least Wolf was grateful for that.
Wolf’s ears popped as he wound down further still, and finally out onto the dirt straightaway that slung out onto the vast valley floor. Barbed wire lined the road on either side, and cattle grazed in the bright green fields smattered with wild flowers. They reached the “T” junction of the main highway that ran north-south. They took a left towards town.
Rocky Points was a ski resort town first and foremost, but hadn’t always been. In 1883, some hard-nosed easterners came to Denver and kept walking uphill, past Black Hawk miners, past Central City miners, over the Continental Divide, and tried their luck. There they dug, sluiced, panned, found some gold, and set roots. They dubbed their new town Rocky Points. A fitting name referring to the Rocky Pointed 12,000-foot peak to the west of town that would later become the western most peak of the ski resort.
And it was a rough beginning, according to the history books in town. There was a good amount of gold to be found at the start, but as word got out, and more and more men walked over the divide into town, things got dangerous. Fighting, murder, and lawlessness ruled for a few years. That was, until a band of four men joined forces to bring law and order to the town. One of those men was Wolf’s great-great-great grandfather, or so the story went.
Wolf pulled into The Mackery gas station on the northern outskirts and got out to fill up. Ruth Beal, the owner, came out yelling at the top of her lungs, “Did you find the bastards?”
“Hi Ruth. What are you talking about?”
“The hippies who stole the gas!”
Wolf looked at her with a blank expression. “Uhhhh, I don’t know what you are talking about. I haven’t gotten a call about it yet.”
“What? I called it in just now! A couple hippies just drove off without paying for fifty bucks worth of gas! Probably too high to remember to pay. Dang hippies...”
“Ruth, did you get the license plate number?”
“No, I just went in back when they pulled up, came back out and they were gone.”
Rachette opened the door and leaned out with a concerned expression. “What kind of car was it?”
“A gol-darn hippie-mobile! One of those, gol-darn, mini-vans.”
“You mean a bus? Like a Volkswagon bus-type-van?” Wolf asked.
“Yeah, I guess. If that’s what they call em.”
The gas tank clicked to a stop. Wolf pulled the hose out and double-took a sign hanging from the tank. “Ruth, what’s this sign all about?”
All three stood frozen. Rachette got back in the car and shut the door.
“Pre-pay? Isn’t it impossible to fill up unless you turn on the tank after someone gives you money or they put in a credit card?” He pulled out his credit card receipt and waved it before putting it in his pocket.
Ruth stood with her mouth open, eye brows in a worried crease. “Huh. Oh mercy! What the hell am I thinking? I don’t know what happened then!” She burst into a sparsely toothed cackle ending with a ten second coughing fit.
“So, there weren’t any hippies who stole your gas?” Wolf opened the driver’s side door.
“No, I guess not… Sorry, I don’t know what the hell’s goin on…”
He smiled. “Talk to you later Ruth. Stay out of trouble and try not to harass too many people coming into town for the festival, alright? You are going to make a lot of money. They are going to be good for your business. Okay?” He chided her. She looked slighter than usual, which was less than twig-thin. “Where’s Bill? Is he around?”
“He’s in Frasier, he’s coming back today,” she said looking at the ground.
“Okay, well, take care, okay? I’ll come back and check in on you.”
Rachette looked in the side view mirror as they left. “Jesus. She’s not looking too good.”
“Yeah, when you get a chance later today figure out what’s going on with Bill.”
“Will do,” Rachette said. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I figure let’s stop at the Sunnyside to see if they came in yesterday morning, then off to tell the Wheatmans.”
“Fun stuff.”
“Yep. Fun stuff.”
The next two and a half hours were done with detached, depressing efficiency. The first hour they confirmed the three teens to be at the Sunnyside Cafe together the previous morning and got the expected news about the Wheatman boy from the team on the mountain. DOA.
The next hour and a half were spent telling and consoling the Wheatmans about their son and rounding up the two other teens. It was the third time in his years on the force that he’d had to break the news to a family about the death of their loved one. He couldn’t think of a more difficult thing to do as a cop. It was a despicable task.