Authors: Mark Nykanen
“You really think so? Then we’re really in trouble,” the sheriff said gravely, “when you think about what we’re seeing on TV and in the movies.”
“I wouldn’t call most of that art,” Lauren said.
“What about Stassler? You’re a professor, do you think what he’s doing is art?”
Lauren paused, tried to hold back, but couldn’t: “No, I guess if I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t think it’s art.”
“What do you think it is then?”
“I think it’s a travesty of questionable intentions.”
“Really? Now that’s an answer I don’t get every day, ‘a travesty of questionable intentions.’ But then I don’t get a professor in here every day either. I’ll have to think about that one. Are you going out there to talk to him?”
“I plan to.”
“You might want to call first. We’ve had reports over the years that he doesn’t take too kindly to people showing up on his doorstep.”
“How would you feel about us talking to Nielsen?” asked Ry.
The sheriff’s hand worked his chin, but as soon as he started to speak Lauren decided it was an act, that he’d figured this chess move out long before he opened his door to them.
“I can’t stop you, but remember, if I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
“You’re on.” Ry made a scratching motion with his fingers. “Where do we find him?”
“The El Dorado, room 256.”
Ry stood to leave as a woman’s voice called from the doorway.
“Sheriff Holbin, I’m sorry to interrupt, but you said to come in as soon as we got here.”
Her eyes were teary, and the sheriff walked right past Lauren and Ry to lead the woman into the room. Her husband appeared behind her.
Lauren thought she looked a lot like Kerry, the same dimple in her chin and big eyes, the same youthful appearance too. She must have been young when she’d had her, a realization that reminded Lauren that she herself could have raised a child by now. In those brief seconds, the years of her early adulthood seemed to have vanished as swiftly as the girl they were all determined to find.
Jared Nielsen was loading his blue mountain bike on his Expedition when Lauren and Ry intercepted him in the parking lot of the El Dorado motel.
“Where you going?” Ry said.
“What? It’s against the law for me to go riding now? Who the hell are you? Another cop?”
“No, I’m a writer,” Ry said, pulling out his narrow reporter’s notebook.
“A reporter!” Nielsen spat. “I’ve got nothing to say to you. Any of you.” His eyes landed on Lauren with no less reproach.
“I’m not a writer,” she said evenly. “I’m Kerry’s sculpture professor.”
“
You’re
Lauren,” he said. “Lauren Reed?”
“Yes.”
Jared glared at Ry. “What are you doing with him?”
“He’s a friend.”
“I don’t care. Tell your friend to put away his notebook. I’m sick of reporters and their questions. You read the papers around here?”
“Not yet.”
“They make it sound like I did something horrible to her.”
“I’m not a newspaper reporter,” Ry said. “I’m writing a book.”
“One of those quickie things? Bet you’re hoping she’s dead.”
“No on both counts,” Ry said calmly. “It’s a book about sculpture, and I was working on it long before Kerry disappeared.”
“Where are you going now?” Lauren eyed the bike on top of the Expedition.
“I was going out to look for her, the same damn thing I do every day. I’ve been over every inch of trail we ever rode together. I’ve been back up Onion Creek twice now looking to see if maybe she took a detour, got herself stuck in some quicksand, but I haven’t found a damn thing. And come on,” he scowled, “she didn’t do some header into quicksand. That’s bullshit.”
“Header?” Lauren said.
“An endo. You know, flying headfirst over the bars.”
“You heard they found her bike?” Ry said.
“Yeah, I heard, and that’s the one place I wasn’t going because that’s a place she never would have gone. The detective was out here early this morning banging on my door, and I told him the same thing I’m telling you, that it doesn’t make any sense, her riding her bike all the way up that crappy jeep trail. For what? She liked single track, the gnarlier the better, and slick rock. The jeep trail’s nothing but a grinder for the altitude hounds. That wasn’t her style, any more than falling into a mine was. She never said word one to me about that either. I don’t know where they’re getting all this bullshit from. You’d think I would have heard something about abandoned mines from her, seeing as I’m the one she was spending all her time with.”
“Not all her time,” Ry said carefully.
“You got that right. She was working with El Creepo. You know that’s what she was calling him? Why aren’t they going through
his
stuff?”
“They did. They didn’t find anything,” Ry said.
“I’ve got a mind to go out there myself and look around.”
“He doesn’t like strangers. I’ve been warned,” Lauren said.
“Yeah? Well, I don’t like the coolest girl I’ve ever met disappearing, and I sure as hell don’t like being made to look like the asshole who did it to her. Mines? Some stupid jeep trail? That’s a bunch of shit.”
“So where would you look?” Lauren said.
“The trails we rode, the ones I know she knows.”
“What do you think you’re going to find?” Ry said. “It’s not like you’re going to be riding along and there she’ll be.”
“But maybe I’ll find something of hers, like her watch or one of her earrings. You know, something that’ll lead me to her. I stare at the trail the whole time I’m riding. I’m not giving up.”
“So that’s where someone should look, the trails you two rode?” Lauren said.
“Someone? Or you? Because it depends on what kind of shape you’re in.” He looked her over.
“I haven’t been on a bicycle in years, but I run three or four miles every morning. Sometimes more.”
“You could handle it. But you got to have bikes. Unless you feel like doing a marathon. You want to rent them?”
Lauren eyed Ry, who nodded.
“Sure,” she said. “That sounds good.” Trail time with this young man might reveal more than an edgy conversation in a parking lot.
“I’ll take you down to Rolling Thunder. It’s a great bike shop, and I’ll show you what to rent. Then I’ll show you the trail I was going out to today, and then maybe somebody’ll start believing me.”
“Let’s do it,” Ry said, “but I’d like to ask you something first.”
Jared bristled.
“I was going to ask if you have a lawyer?”
“A lawyer? What for? You sound like my father. He wants to send out the family lawyer. I refused. No way. I’m not guilty of anything. I’ll answer a cop’s questions any time of the day or night. I told them I’d take a polygraph too.”
“They ask you to?” Ry said.
“No,
I
insisted. I told them, ‘Hook me up and quit beating around the bush.’”
“What’d they say?”
“They said they would.”
“When?”
“I think it’s tomorrow. I’m supposed to call. I don’t know why. They got that guy,” he pointed to a white car parked across the road, “watching me all the time. Him or someone else. Only time they’re not watching is when I’m on my bike. I think they’re too lazy to ride. They said the state police are sending some guy with the lie detector stuff from Salt Lake. I can’t wait to take it.”
“You’ve got a lot of faith in it,” Lauren said.
“More than I’ve got in them,” he said with one more glance across the road.
By the time they walked out of Rolling Thunder Bicycles, Lauren had bought a pair of bike shoes, bike pants, sunglasses dark enough for the desert, and the single most garish shirt she’d ever seen. Jared had assured her that she’d want it.
“Cotton’ll kill you. Soaks up your sweat and gives you the chills every time you start going fast.” He fingered the sleeve. “This stuff’s kind of techy but it’s worth it.”
She also rolled out a bike with a front suspension system to absorb the bumps.
“Don’t we ever look like the tourists,” Ry said.
“You two do look a little geeky,” Jared laughed. “Tell you what, I’ll just meet you at the trail head.” He made to get away quickly, and then laughed again. “Don’t worry, you look like everybody else who comes here, including me.”
They loaded the bikes on the Expedition, and headed out of town.
Lauren found herself enjoying the company of this brash young man, and couldn’t help wondering if he was really capable of murdering Kerry. Then she remembered that psychopaths succeed precisely because they are convincing, not because they go around casting suspicion on themselves. This little reminder did not prove particularly comforting, considering the doubts that Sheriff Holbin had about the young man. But why would Jared forego a lawyer, or volunteer for a polygraph test, and spend all of his free time looking for Kerry? Just to make it seem as if he’s innocent? If he were guilty, wouldn’t it make far more sense to accept his father’s offer of the family barrister, and stonewall at every opportunity? Everybody who saw the OJ trial, or grew up hearing about it, had learned its most painful lesson: if you’re rich enough, the only way you’re going to pay for your crime is when you write out a check to your lawyer.
As they hit the highway, she learned that his father had started a chain of stores specializing in imports from Asia and Polynesia. She knew the chain well; she’d furnished her first apartment with a lot of that ticky-wicky junk. Part of it had undoubtedly paid for Jared’s pricey education at USC. Film major. He and Ry shared the common ground of the camera eye, though Jared’s view of the news business had grown greatly jaundiced by his recent experience.
“You know one of those Salt Lake stations actually had a helicopter follow me up a ridge trail two days ago? You know how dangerous that is? They could have blown me into the canyon, and that’s about a thousand-foot drop. I gave them the finger after they got so close a gust had me death-gripping the handlebars. So guess what they used that night on the news, right over the words that I was the ‘prime suspect’?”
He glanced from the road to Ry.
“I’ll tell you, it pissed me off plenty. That’s why when I saw you pull out a notebook I thought,
No way, not another one.
I tried talking to them at first, but I learned my lesson.”
Jared turned off the highway, eased the Expedition over railroad tracks, and parked next to a VW Vanagon.
“This is the trail we did last week. I’ve been back over it once, but I want to check it out again. At first it’s nothing but desert riding, and you’ll be wondering why we even bothered, but in about two miles we’ll hit slick rock, and it gets totally fine.”
He said “fine” the way Lauren’s first sculpture professor used to say a student’s work was “fine,” with the accent on every letter, practically spelling it out with appreciation.
She’d hit her water bottle three times already, but otherwise she felt pretty good. The helmet was snug, but not suffocating, and riding a bike made her feel like a kid again. The shifters took some getting used to, but she was accustomed to working with tools, and got the gearing down easily. Ry must have done some riding at some point because he experienced no adjustment at all.
Now they began a switchback that filled her legs with lactic acid, and notably dampened their enthusiasm for talking. After the turn, they climbed until she saw formations of red rock that appeared to stretch all the way to the horizon.
“Wow,” she said.
“Kerry loved it up here. Made me promise to come back with her. I told her I would. I never thought I’d be coming back looking for her. I’ll show you why she liked it so much, what made it so special to her. It’s a little farther.”
A little farther in young Jared’s case turned out to be about five miles of moderate uphill riding before he veered off the main trail, and took them down a dogleg. It ended at a clear desert pool hidden behind boulders as big and brawny as earthmovers.
“That’s so beautiful,” Lauren said. She pointed to a five-foot waterfall, more a trickle, really, that ran down a length of moss hanging over the rippled surface.
“Cool, huh?”
Lauren had to restrain herself from hurling her hot, sweaty body into the water.
“I’m amazed no one’s here,” Ry said.
“It’s not on the tourist maps, and the locals want to keep it that way. The day we came out, we had the place all to ourselves for a whole hour. Nice and private, if you know what I mean.”
Another young man might have made that comment sound sleazy, but to Lauren’s ears, Jared seemed mournful.
They returned to the smooth sandstone trail and rode for another hour, mostly uphill again, but without too many leg-cramping climbs. Jared jumped off his bike as he came to the edge of an abyss that looked out over the Colorado River, which could have been a length of loden ribbon drifting across the land.
“This is it?” Lauren said between breaths.
“We’ve been riding for over two hours,” Ry said.
“We have? You’ve got to be kidding.” But she checked her watch and was surprised to see that he was right. She would have guessed half that much time. “I can’t believe it.”
Jared smiled. “Riding’s great, isn’t it? Look at that.” His hand took in what looked like miles and miles of incredible mountains.
It
is
great, thought Lauren, who stayed a good five feet from the edge of the canyon wall; any closer and her palms would have turned into ponds.
“When Kerry and I came up here, we sat over there.” He looked at a rock roughly the size and shape of a bench.
Lauren watched him swallow deeply and turn away. He’s no more guilty than I am, she said to herself. Guilty only of having been one event in a long series of them that brought Kerry to whatever and wherever she is.
“Sometimes I think I’m going to look up, and there she’ll be telling me to get the lead out of my butt.”
“Did she say that to you?” Lauren asked softly.
“Yeah, she was one helluva rider. She could smoke my butt. No way she went riding into some abandoned mine,” he said with sudden vehemence. “Or went flying off some cliff.” He kicked a rock the size of a baseball off the edge, and watched its long flight down to the river.