Andrew Gross - One Mile Under

Her blood surged. So she wasn’t wrong, at least, not about that part. Trey had been wearing it.

So maybe she wasn’t so wrong about all the rest of it, either.

Back in her car, following the river back upstream, she searched for the spot above the lower Cradle where she had found Trey’s body.

The road narrowed there, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, with dense brush crowding in from both sides. The aspens and pines were so tall here Dani could barely see the sky. She came up to the clearing where the rescue vehicles converged when they pulled Trey out. It hadn’t rained since, and tire tracks and footprints were still visible all over the dirt road.

Dani heard the roar of the river slashing against the rocks below.

It was clear, even in just Class Two or Three rapids, that Trey couldn’t have just nested to a stop here. His raft must have been carried down from farther upstream and come to rest in the eddy. She heard Rooster saying, You didn’t see what I saw. He wasn’t alone. Now she was even more certain he hadn’t been lying.

But just what did that mean?

Had someone been along with him on his run? That wouldn’t be hard to determine. The ranger station would know. But if it was all just a terrible accident, surely that person would have called it in. And if so, they surely wouldn’t have taken such a lethal reprisal against Ron in the balloon.

No, it had to be something else. It wasn’t no accident out there … Someone had to have stopped him.

The police vehicle was gone now. Dani made her way down the slope to the ridge above the river and scanned upstream. The cold spray off Baby’s Rattle lashed at her, the sun glinting off her shades. It was possible that someone else had climbed down here and intercepted him on the river. But that would’ve had to have happened farther upstream. Or they’d have to have made their way down along the shoreline in between the first two rapids of the Cradle where the currents slowed a bit, in order for his body to have ended up here.

There were rocks in the river near where Trey was found. The Raptor’s Teeth, they were called. Three sharp, pointed rocks that protruded out of the water, four to five feet high. If Trey had sustained a crash hard enough to cause his death, surely his helmet would show the impact. And it didn’t. So how did it come off? How did it end up all the way downstream?

Dani followed the rapids from the high rocks, twenty or thirty feet above the river. She had to climb up and then down in order to follow the edge, but she was pretty nimble, having done her share of trekking and climbing in these hills. Once or twice, she even had to jump from one height down to another in her Tevas. If she stumbled she could easily fall in and hit her head or break a bone and be carried away. It was slow work; it took about ten minutes to climb a hundred yards.

Finally she made it to the Teeth. It was calm enough here for Trey to have been pulled over by someone. If a person had come out, pretending to need help. Or with a gun maybe. Yes, it could have happened here, Dani imagined. But why …? It was Trey. Why would someone have wanted to kill him?

She turned and looked back up the shore toward the road, and spotted something in the woods.

The narrowest pathway, which seemed to cut through the thick brush, barely wide enough to even be called a path. Barely wide enough for just a single person. It wound down directly above Baby’s Rattle, the second rapid in the Cradle, right above the Raptor’s Teeth.

So someone could have climbed down there from here.

Curious, Dani went back and followed the narrow path from the river’s edge back up the slope toward the road. Thorny branches slapped in her face and scraped against her bare arms and legs. She was no scout or tracker, but she had the feeling someone had been here recently.

As she neared the road, she noticed something. She kneeled, sweating slightly in the sun, peeling back leaves and crushed branches on the ground to see.

It was like a small clearing had been made. Low branches were flattened against the ground, within a few yards from the road.

Not by hand, she could tell. It looked as if it was done by the front wheels of a vehicle.

So someone might well have been here.

She cleared away some of the leaves and brush on the ground. There were tire tracks. Something had pulled in—and whoever was in it had continued from the road via that pathway down to the Cradle.

To the very spot where Trey had been killed.

Her blood surged with vindication. It didn’t prove a thing. Any more than finding the helmet did.

It didn’t prove that Rooster was right. That, it wasn’t no accident out there …

But he was damn well right on one thing.

Trey hadn’t been alone yesterday morning. Someone had definitely been here.

“Who the hell would want to kill Trey?” Wade screwed up his eyes, staring at the helmet Dani dropped on his desk.

“I don’t know who’d want to kill him. But I told you he was wearing a helmet and he was. You see any significant dents on it anywhere? Don’t you think if he received a head injury severe enough to kill him, there’d be some evidence on it somewhere?”

Wade’s response was laced with impatience and rising frustration. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think.” He took off his glasses and looked it over. “And you’re saying this proves what …?”

“It proves he wasn’t wearing it when he sustained his head injury. And the next question would be, Wade, how do you explain it coming off?”

“Don’t teach me my job, Danielle. And I don’t know how the hell it came off. Maybe he hit his head aside a rock. Maybe he took it off himself for some reason. To breathe. To take a leak for all I know. But this is all starting to cross the line. You’re coming to me with this helmet, claiming it was Trey’s, and that someone made their way down the rocks and then did what, lay in wait for him, to kill him …? Not even knowing for certain if he’d even be there.”

“I know how it sounds. But Trey did a seven A.M. run a couple of times a week, so it wasn’t a long shot that he’d be there. And I was looking around on the ridge above where I think it all might have happened and I found something else.”

“You did …?” Wade’s look of impatience was now amped up into the range of exasperation. “Surprise me, Danielle.”

“I found a path. In the brush above the river. Leading back to the road. From exactly the spot where Trey had to have been killed.”

“You mean where you think he had his accident, Dani. And if I need to remind you, there are paths all over the heights above that river. You and I have been through dozens of them. I don’t see what one more proves.”

“This one leads directly from the road to the spot just above the Baby’s Rattle.”

“The Baby’s Rattle …?”

“It’s a rapid on the upper Cradle where I think Trey was killed. Look, I know how it sounds, Wade. But I also found fresh tire marks near the road where that particular path came out.”

“Dani.”

“Which means someone else was there, and—”

“ Dani! ” She stopped. Wade sat back down. “We’re dealing with a lot here. And this is starting to strain my nerves. Someone kills Trey in the river and then sabotages your pal Ron’s balloon to keep it covered up?”

“He’s not my pal, Wade. He wasn’t even a friend. But that’s not even the point. The point is … I don’t know what it is …” She sat down, trying to lay out her argument with everything swimming around crazily in her head. “The point is we all know Trey could have done that run with his eyes closed. So how does he just upend, lose his helmet, crack his head. And then couple that with what Rooster saw …?”