The Divide (3 page)

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“Here! I’m here!”

The boy’s heart lurched.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Be careful.”

“I saw blood.”

“I cut my face. I’m okay. Don’t come too near the edge.”

But it was too late. There was a deep cracking sound and the boy felt the snow tilt beneath his skis and in the next instant he was falling. He caught a brief glimpse of his father’s bloodied face staring up at him as the lip of the crater crumbled and then he saw nothing but the white of the snow cascading with him.

The next thing he knew, his father was hauling him out of the wreckage, asking him if he was hurt. At first the boy didn’t know the answer but he said he didn’t think so. His father grinned.

“Good job, son. You just made us a way out.”

He nodded and the boy turned and saw what he meant. The collapse had created a kind of ramp for them to climb. They sat staring at each other, his father still grinning and dabbing his cheek with a bloody handkerchief. There was a long gash but it didn’t look deep and the bleeding had almost stopped. The boy shook his head.

“Didn’t think I’d find you alive.”

“Hope you got that picture.”

“Wow, Dad. That was some fall.”

The walls of the hole in which they sat were layered with shelves of bluish-white ice, which their two falls had shattered. It was like being in the cross section of some giant frosted wasp nest. The floor felt firm and when the boy brushed away the snow he saw they were on solid ice. His skis had come off when he fell and lay partly buried in the snow. He stood and gathered them up. His father slowly stood too, wincing a little as he did so. The sun was just creeping in on them.

“I guess we ought to have a look for my skis,” he said.

His pack was lying on the ice just next to where the boy had brushed away the snow. A shaft of sun was angling onto it. The boy stooped to pick up the pack and as he did so, something caught his eye, a pale shape in the translucent blue of the ice. His father saw him hesitate.

“What is it?”

“Look. Down here.”

They both kneeled and peered into the ice.

“Jesus,” his father said quietly.

It was a human hand. The fingers were splayed, the palm upturned. The boy’s father paused a moment, then brushed away a little more snow until they saw the underside of an arm. They looked at each other. Then, without a word, they got to work, brushing and scraping and pushing away the snow, creating a window of ice through which, with every stroke of their gloves, they could see more of what lay encased.

Tucked beneath the upper arm, half-concealed by a naked shoulder and peering shyly up at them with one blank eye, they now could see a face. From the swirl of hair, captured as if in a photograph, it looked like a young woman. She lay at an angle, her legs askew and slanting away into the darker ice below. She was wearing some kind of crimson top or jacket that was rucked and twisted and seemed to have torn away from her arm and shoulder. The fabric trailed from her as if she had been frozen in the act of shedding it. Her flesh was the color of parchment.

S
heriff Charlie Riggs looked at his watch. He figured he had about fifteen minutes to get through the stack of paperwork that lay menacing him from the only clearing in the jungle of his desk. If he didn’t get away by two, he wouldn’t be able to drive into Great Falls and be back in time for his daughter’s tenth birthday party. He had to go to Great Falls to pick up her present, which he should have done yesterday, but as usual a dozen damn fool things had popped out of nowhere and he hadn’t been able to. The present was a custom-made, hand-tooled saddle that he’d ordered in a fit of extravagance a couple of months back. How he had ever believed he could afford it, he had no idea. The thought of how much it was going to cost made him wince.

He heeled his chair closer into the desk, shoved aside a couple of stale coffee cups and picked up the first file. It was a draft of yet another report on the use of methamphetamine in Montana. The door to his cramped little office was open and out in the dispatch room all the phones seemed to be ringing. Nobody was answering them because it was Liza’s day off and the new girl, Mary-Lou (who hadn’t really gotten the hang of things yet), was at the counter talking with old Mrs. Lawson, whose dog had again disappeared. The old biddy seemed to have left her hearing aid at home because Mary-Lou was having to shout and say everything twice. Through the window he caught sight of Tim Heidecker, one of his not-so-sharp deputies, parking his truck. It was odds on that as soon as the boy stepped inside he’d come barging in with a whole bunch of dumb questions. Charlie slipped from behind his desk and quietly closed his door. It was ten to two already.

It wasn’t so much his daughter’s disappointment that he worried about. He and Lucy got along just great and he knew she’d understand. What bugged him was that he would be handing yet another weapon on a plate to her mother. He and Sheryl had been divorced nearly five years now and she had remarried, happily, by all accounts, though how anyone could be happy with the slack-jawed jerk she’d shacked up with was a mystery. What continued to amaze Charlie was how, even after all this time—and even though it was she, not he, who had walked out—Sheryl could never resist the slightest opportunity to take a jab at him. And she seized on anything that involved Lucy with thinly disguised glee. It wasn’t enough that Charlie should have been a lousy husband, he had to be a useless father too.

The use of methamphetamine is on the increase,
he read. Well, well. Who would ever have guessed? He often wondered how much the people who wrote these darned reports got paid for restating the blindingly obvious. Hell, you could spend five minutes on the Web or go down to the bookstore and find out how to make the stuff in your own kitchen. Maybe he was just getting too old and cynical.

“I’m sure he’ll show up, Mrs. Lawson,” Mary-Lou was saying out at the counter.

“What was that?”

“I said, ‘I’m sure he’ll show up.’”

He heard Tim Heidecker answering one of the phones. The chances of his being able to handle whatever it was on his own were about a million to one against. Sure enough, within a minute there was a knock on the door and, before Charlie could hide, it opened to reveal the boy’s irritating face.

“Hey, Chief—”

“Tim, I’m real busy right now. And please don’t call me Chief.”

“Just got a call from the Drummond place, you know, up there on the Front—”

“I know where the Drummond place is, Tim. Can you tell me later, please?”

“Sure thing. Just thought you ought to know.”

Charlie sighed and let the report flop on his desk.

“Tell me.”

“Couple of skiers just showed up out there, say they found a body up Goat Creek. Young woman, frozen in the ice.”

 

 

 

Ned and Val Drummond’s ranch was a small spread that lay close by the north fork of the creek. Beyond them, apart from one or two cabins that only got used in summer, there was only wilderness. It took the best part of an hour for Charlie and Tim Heidecker to drive out there and the best part of another to interview the two skiers. They seemed good people and were well aware how lucky they’d been. If they hadn’t managed to find that other ski, the father would have had a hard time getting out. His son would have had to come down alone to raise help. But they were smart and well prepared, which was more than could be said for a lot of the idiots who got into trouble up there and had to be rescued.

The father was able to pinpoint on the map where they’d found the body. Charlie had brought out a couple of snowmobiles on the trailer and for a while he toyed with the idea of going up at once to take a look. But the sun was already getting ready to disappear behind the mountains and when it did, the light would go fast and the temperature would plummet. If it was frozen into the ice like they said it was, the body wasn’t going anyplace. Better leave it till morning, he figured, work out a plan and go up with all the right gear. In any case, he wanted the father to come along too and though Val Drummond had done what she could to patch it up, that cut on his face needed stitches.

They all sat drinking mocha coffee in the Drummond’s dark, log-walled kitchen. Charlie had known Val since they were kids and had always had a soft spot for her. In fact they’d once had a little romantic moment after a high-school dance. Even now he could picture it clearly. In her early forties, she was still a fine-looking woman, tall and athletic in that kind of horsey way. Ned was shorter and ten years older and talked too much, like people with a lot of time on their hands tended to, but he was okay. Val had volunteered to drive the boy’s father to the medical center to get some stitches and had said he and his son were more than welcome to stay the night. Both offers had been gratefully accepted. Everyone agreed to meet at eight the next morning when they would go up and check out the body.

Just as they were saying their good-byes, with a sinking feeling in his gut, Charlie remembered Lucy’s party. There was no signal on his cell phone up here so he asked Val quietly if he could use the landline. She showed him into the living room and left him there. Charlie figured the party would still be going on but there was no way he was going to get there before it finished. He dialed Sheryl’s number and steeled himself.

“Hello?”

She always sounded quite pleasant until she knew who was calling.

“Hey, Sheryl. Listen, I’m really sorry. I—”

“Nice of you to call, at least.”

“Something cropped up and I couldn’t—”

“Something more important than your daughter’s tenth birthday party? I see. Well, there you go.”

“Can I speak to Lucy?”

“They’re all busy right now. I’ll tell her you called.”

“Can’t you just—”

“Are you bringing the saddle over?”

“I . . . I didn’t have time to—”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll tell her that too.”

“Sheryl, please—”

“Nothing changes, does it, Charlie? I’ve gotta go. Bye now.”

They heard the snowmobiles long before they saw them. At last the headlights eased into view, strobing through the trees far below them, then climbing the steep slope out of the forest and bouncing up alongside the creek toward them, the yellow beams shafting the dying blue light of the valley.

The closest they had been able to park the search-and-rescue vehicle was at a trailhead nearly three miles down the valley. It was a converted school bus decked out with a lot of fancy equipment. Ordinary radios weren’t reliable in these steep canyons so the bus had one with a 110-watt booster, powerful enough to relay messages between those in the mountains and the sheriff’s office thirty miles away. Everything they needed had to be ferried up from the trailhead by snowmobile. The two that were heading up toward them now were bringing chain saws, blowtorches, and some powerful lamps so Charlie and his men could go on working into the night.

He had a team of ten, three of them his deputies and the rest search-and-rescue volunteers, apart from the Forest Service law-enforcement guy who meant well but was young and new to his job and mostly got in the way. Protocol, however, dictated he be there because the girl’s body had been found on Forest Service land. They had worked in shifts, going down to the bus every few hours for rest and food and drink—all except Charlie, who stayed with the body the whole time. They brought him food and hot drinks every now and then, but he was tired and cold and by now more than a little grouchy at having to wait almost an hour for the equipment.

They had been at it all day. First, they had cordoned off the whole area, then systematically searched it, photographing and videotaping the scene from all angles. They hadn’t found a single clue as to how the body might have come to be there. With all that snow and ice Charlie hardly dared hope for one. Maybe when the thaw came they would find something. Clothes or a shoe or a backpack, maybe. Even footprints in an underlayer of snow or mud, if they got really lucky.

The two skiers had brought them here at dawn and showed them where the body was. Floating down there in the ice, she was as ghostly a sight as Charlie had ever witnessed and as the county coroner as well as sheriff he’d seen his fair share of bodies over the years. The skiers hadn’t hung around longer than they had to. The father had fifteen stitches in his cheek, which had bruised up like a beetroot. He was keen to get home. The boy had looked pale and still a little in shock. He’d be going home more of a man than he left.

It wasn’t until the early afternoon that they were ready to start trying to cut the girl out. It turned out a whole lot trickier than Charlie had figured. The body would have to be driven over the mountains to the state crime lab in Missoula, a journey that would take a good three hours. With warmer weather forecasted, they all agreed that the best way to preserve it was to keep it encased in ice. Until now they had been working with spud bars, carefully chipping the ice away fragment by fragment so as not to miss any item of evidence that might be frozen there. But it was like mowing a hayfield with a pair of scissors and Charlie decided that unless they changed their method, they would be here for weeks.