Andrew Gross - One Mile Under

Now he thought of her diving naked into the turquoise sea or dancing in cutoff jeans and a bikini top. He had the time of his life with her. Free. Neither wanted any attachments. She was a rising star with the world in front of her. He … he’d been around a bit longer and had cheated death more than one time.

Then the texts grew shorter and less frequent. She got involved in new cases. Told him to come back. And still he drifted. He’d received a ton of emails from people who wanted to meet with him. From Tom Foley, the CEO of Talon: When are you coming back? From his daughter, Jessie. Now sixteen: How long will u b down there, Dad? Have you gone mental??? Now he only checked his email once a week. He stopped doing his push-ups and crunches. His beard got thicker. If it was another month, then it would be another month. He just fished and sailed.

And then this message came.

Ted Whalen was his roommate at Bates College, where they both played football. Hauck was a running back, set all kinds of school records; records long broken. Ted was a tight end who mostly blocked and rarely caught a pass. The two of them, along with Ted’s pretty girlfriend, Judy, were fixtures there. Eventually they married. Ted went on to become a successful orthopedic surgeon. At first out in Colorado, interning at some famous clinic out there. Then after their marriage fell apart, at Brigham and Women’s back in Boston.

The message said that his daughter Danielle had gotten into a bit of trouble in Colorado, where she was living. Hauck was Danielle’s godfather. He remembered the day she was born, though truth was, he hadn’t seen her in years. He had gotten word a few years back that Judy had died out west. Complications from cancer. The last, sad punctuation point stamped on his college career.

Ted wrote: “I’m in Chile on a teaching sabbatical, otherwise I’d be on a plane myself. But from what I hear this might be more in your field of expertise than mine. Please go, Ty, if you can. I think it’s urgent.”

The last time he saw Danielle she was doing snowboard tricks at Mad River Glen in Vermont, where she and her dad visited one year. She was maybe thirteen. He’d promised Ted and Judy he would always be there for her, should anything ever happen. And that was before Judy got sick. Then they all drifted apart.

He wrote him back. “I’m on my way.” He didn’t even ask for a reason. The mountains would be a welcome change, maybe help him figure it out. Plus he owed them; owed him. Once a Bobcat, always a Bobcat, right?

He had made a vow.

Anyway, he was ready. Hauck looked out at the lit-up, purple horizon. Another gorgeous sunset. His last. He felt the old flicker in his blood start up, like an old engine coming to life. That spark he always felt on the job when he suddenly saw the mosaic of something larger than what the facts showed start to come together; when through the fog of misdirection and cover-up he saw with total clarity where a case was leading. That second sense. His muscles ached; but suddenly they felt ready. He put down his Red Stripe and stretched out on the deck. He started doing crunches. One, two, three …

He stopped at a hundred. Then he went downstairs and looked at himself in the mirror and took out his razor.

It had been too long.

The following morning, Hauck left his boat at a marina he knew on St. Kitts, caught an eight-seater prop for the half-hour jaunt over to St. Maarten, where he was the last one on the 11:30 A.M. to Miami, which connected late that afternoon to a United flight to Denver. He spent the night at the Aloft hotel near the airport, and by six the next morning, he’d rented a car and was on his way up Interstate 70 to Aspen.

He’d been out here a couple of times years before to ski. Once, back in college, where he and four friends crowded into a classmate’s family’s two-bedroom condo at Copper Mountain. Hauck’s folks were working-class people, and at Bates he worked a twenty-hour-a-week job on top of studying and football. Back then, he couldn’t have even afforded a cheeseburger in Aspen, never mind a place to stay or even the lift tickets. He remembered how beautiful the ride up was: the new airport cutting around Denver, passing Golden, where he always wanted to stop off and see the Coors brewery, then into the foothills with the old mining towns of Idaho Springs and Georgetown, their steep canyons and buffalo herd patches until he reached Loveland Pass at twelve thousand feet. Patches of snow were still visible as he emerged from the Eisenhower Tunnel.

He made it to Carbondale in just under three hours. Ted had said to talk to the chief of police there. A guy named Dunn. It was a small town in the shadow of a massive, lone mountain with outdoor shops and a ski-chalet-like Safeway on a quaint, main street. He’d put the location of the police station into his GPS, but after twenty years in law enforcement he didn’t need a satellite to help him sniff out a station. His nose led him right to the parking lot filled with parked green-and-white SUVs with CARBONDALE POLICE on them, outside a one-story, redbrick building attached to the Carbondale Town Center. He parked in a spot reserved for visitors.

Hauck’s beard was down to a growth, and in his floral Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and sunglasses, he didn’t exactly look official.

Inside, he went up to a female officer in a khaki uniform behind a glass partition, her hair in two long braids. She smiled pleasantly at him.

Hauck folded his shades into his shirt pocket. “Chief Dunn around?”

“He’s on the phone. I know he’s got to head into Aspen for a meeting there shortly after. Anything I can help you with?”

“I’m looking for a Danielle Whalen. I hear she’s a guest at the spa here.”

“The spa?” The officer looked up at him with a laugh. “You her lawyer?”

“Do I look like a lawyer?”

She laughed again. “Some of the lawyers here, why not? Hell, in this town you could be the mayor. Why don’t you take a seat; I’ll see if the chief is off. I know he was expecting someone. What did you say your name was?”

He gave her his card. “Ty Hauck.”

She got up and went to the back of the station past a couple of compartmentalized workstations. Hauck didn’t see any detectives. It was a small department. She knocked on the door of a glass-lined office with drapes restricting the view and poked her head in. A minute later she came back. “Dani’s a nice kid, but it’ll be a boon to all of us, the sooner you get her out. You can go on back.”

“Thanks, Officer.” He smiled.

He went back to the glassed-in office and knocked on the door that was left ajar. A stocky, middle-aged man in a uniform top over jeans stood up from behind his heavy wood desk.

“Come on in. Wade Dunn,” he said as he held out his hand. Despite the salt-and-pepper flattop, he looked no more than sixty, with a round face, a flabby jawline, a reddish complexion. He had an ornate belt on his jeans. His hands were thick, his grip was firm, authoritative, with a large turquoise ring. “Officer Jurgens said you were here about Dani …”

“Dani …?”

“ Danielle. Sorry.” He motioned Hauck to a burled wood conference table. “I thought Ted might have mentioned I was married to her mother for a while.”

“No, he didn’t tell me that,” Hauck said, surprised. “He just said to look you up. I knew Judy a bit myself, back in college. In a way, I guess that makes us all kind of related.”

“How’s that?” The police chief crossed his legs. Hauck’s eyes went to the fancy python-skin boots.

“I’m her godfather.”

“Well, I’ll be damned! I guess that does make us all something.” The chief seemed pleasantly surprised. “Hell, I didn’t know she even had a godfather. Can I get you something to drink? Water? Or a soft drink maybe?”