Stephen White - Cold Case

Phil Barrett was explaining this otherworldly phenomenon to Kimber along with the news that Dorothy's body had apparently been found somewhere in the blow down I was astonished that her body could ever have been discovered there.

Salvage loggers had cleared what they could from almost two thousand acres of the rugged terrain starting in the fall of 1998, but the majority of the blow down was too dangerous and too remote to permit even salvage logging. I'd seen photographs and videotapes of the un logged areas. If Dorothy's body was hidden up there, finding it would have been like trying to find a grain of rice in a chopstick factory.

"Where are Flynn and R-uss?" Kimber asked.

"They've been kind enough to offer their assistance to Sheriff Pilander. He has his hands full up there." Barrett hooked his thumb across the road, in the direction of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness.

"Flynn is helping to secure the crime scene. Russ is doing an initial examination of the body. Pilander is lucky to have them; there aren't a whole lot of people with their skills on call around Routt County, you know." Kimber said, "There aren't too many people with their skills on call anywhere, Mr. Barrett."

"Of course. Speaking of experts, Mr. Lister, where is Dr. Gregory? I was told he'd be with you."

I used that as my cue to step out from behind the tree and walk toward Phil Barrett's wide back. Kimber said, "There he is." I said, "Hello, Phil. Heard you drive up. I needed to take a leak."

He spun on me as though he were afraid I was going to hit him from behind. I was impressed at how fast he moved. With some inventive costuming, I thought, he could have another career as the mascot at a swine farmers' convention.

"Dr. Gregory, hi. I'm supposed to drive you guys up to where the body was found." I shook my head and said, "No can do, Phil. I agreed to ferry Kimber up here to see Flynn and Russ. Now that I've done that I'm heading back down the hill and I'm going back to bed. I'm sure I'll hear all the details about finding Dorothys body sometime tomorrow. That's plenty soon for me."

Barrett stepped back and leaned against the car.

"Flynn asked for you specifically, Doctor. She even actually predicted that you might be reticent to join us up there. That's her word by the way." He smiled with his mouth closed.

"Reticent."

I thought about Flynn's request for a moment.

"She was right. I am reticent.

When you get back up there, Phil, please tell Flynn she was Prescient." I smiled.

"That's my word. Prescient."

Kimber took a solitary step forward as though he wanted to be recognized. He said, "I won't insist that you accompany us, Alan-actually I can't-but… if Flynn Coe has reason to believe your presence might elucidate something, I would beg that you reconsider your position. We've come quite far, literally.

What're a few more miles?" As he was speaking, I was assessing him clinically.

His symptoms seemed to have totally remitted.

I couldn't imagine what I could offer Flynn Coe at this particular crime scene other than a quick identification of Dorothy's body. Reluctant, I decided I would offer to do that much and then return to the bed-and-breakfast.

"How far is it from here?" I asked Phil Barrett.

"Not far, but dirt roads. Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."

"Okay. I'll drive up there in my car. When I've done whatever Flynn hopes I can do, I'm leaving. Fair enough, Kimber?"

"I'm grateful, Alan. Thank you."

Phil spoke.

"Where we're going, it's not an easy drive. The last section is definitely four-wheel country. Why don't you drive up with me, and I promise I'll bring you back down to your car whenever you're done" It didn't feel right. I wasn't sure why.

"No," I said.

"I'll follow you."

The dirt road was a well-maintained public access path that wasn't much of a problem at first. The ruts were manageable and the steep sections were short.

Along the way we passed at least a half dozen ghost cabins of homesteaders whose dreams had died in the heavy drifts of long-ago Colorado winters. Phil stopped briefly at a Forest Service signpost about ten minutes from Clark. I drove alongside his Explorer.

"This is where it gets dicey," he said.

"Why don't you leave your car here? I'll bring you back whenever you're ready." I said, "Lead the way, Phil."

As soon as I raised the window Kimber said, "You don't like him."

We started downhill. I adjusted the transmission, dropping it into second.

"I not only don't like him, Kimber, I don't trust him. If we succeed in finding who killed those two girls, its not going to look very good for ex-sheriff Phil Barrett. You know exactly what I mean. And if it turns out that anyone associated with the Silky Road is implicated, which is looking more and more likely, it's going to look even worse for him."

Kimber stared out the side window at the darkness of the forest. He asked, "I wonder who discovered the reporter's body." I said, "It's a good question. Given the terrain we're about to enter, my best guess is that there's a good likelihood that the person who discovered Dorothy's body is the one who put it there."

We drove the next five minutes in silence. I decided to let someone know where we were and checked my phone. This far into the wilderness it didn't have a signal.

As the vehicles cleared a sharp ridge-top my headlights suddenly illuminated the perimeter of the blow down As far as I could see in the narrow beam of light the once majestic section of backcountry forest was now nothing more than a jumble of tree trunks and branches piled at least as high as my car.

Kimber said, "Wow" I was breathless.

Barrett pulled right off the Forest Service access road. I followed him for another quarter mile or so down a deeply rutted lane that skirted the edge of the natural disaster. The mass of fallen trees on our left was a long unbroken wall that was almost as tall as I was. At no point was the mesh of trunks and limbs less than four feet high. When Phil stopped and got out of his car Kimber and I did the same. Barrett pulled a heavy daypack over one shoulder and said, "It's a short walk from here. Have to climb over a few trees, though." He waved at the skeletal forest.

"This is something, isn't it?"

It was something.

"Where are the other cars?" I asked.

In a voice that sounded almost too natural, he said, "The others came in the hard way, from the north. We didn't discover this access until after the fact.

Once you're in there," he said, pointing at the blow-down, "especially at night, it's like trying to navigate in a box of toothpicks. Everything looks the same.

You'll see" The winding path we followed through the blow down wasn't exactly a trail. It was more like a tunnel, never more than three feet wide, at times no wider than my shoulders. In numerous places fallen logs seemed to almost cover us in a thick canopy. The aspen and fir trees hadn't just fallen where they were knocked over; instead, the ferocious winds had actually blown them like snowflakes into drifts, creating immense impassable mounds of unstable lumber. The fallen timber that carpeted the steepest slopes seemed to be staying in place despite the law of gravity.

I assumed that the salvage loggers had cleared the path we were traversing. I kept thinking of chopsticks and Lincoln Logs. I didn't have another context for what I was seeing. The terrain was as foreign and foreboding as if I had suddenly been transported to the bottom of the sea.

Our cars had disappeared from view behind us after we had hiked no more than thirty seconds. There was no opportunity at all to perceive any clues about where we were going. Phil's flashlight beam illuminated fallen trees.

Thousands.

Millions. Nothing else. There seemed to be as many downed trees around us as there were stars in the sky above us.