One Mile Under. Andrew Gross
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him up there this morning, and all those other poor people, was what … to keep that gerbil from running off his mouth off or something? To stop him from telling the world what he claims he saw. You did start this whole thing off implying they were connected.”
“I don’t know what I’m saying, Wade. But balloons just don’t fall out of the sky. A day after someone goes around saying that they’ve seen something. Whatever else you might want to say about him, Ron did know how to handle himself up there. He’d been doing it for a lot of years.”
“I don’t know, maybe there was a rip or a flaw in the fabric or something. Or maybe something flammable got caught in the gas jet. The right people will figure that out. Or maybe your poster boy there just did something stupid, which he was eminently capable of doing, Dani.” He shook his head.
“So tell me, where was Trey’s helmet, Wade?” Her tone was starting to grow a bit defensive now.
“I don’t know about Trey’s helmet. Maybe he wasn’t wearing a helmet. I mean the same guy would hurl himself off the summit of Aspen Mountain with only a sheet of nylon attached to him, so to me, it’s not much of a stretch that he would go out on the river without a helmet.”
“Well, you’d be wrong on that. Not since he had his boy. I saw him out there a dozen times. And yesterday you were sure he was either high or hungover. So what did toxicology come back with? I know the first thing they would have done was check his blood over in County.”
“Jesus, you’re sounding like a cop now. The river’s closed for a day or so, so maybe you can find yourself a whole new career.”
“He was a friend, Wade.” She kept her eyes fixed on him. “So I’m asking, what did they say? About his blood?”
“About his blood …?” Wade shrugged and rocked back in his seat. “They said nothing, Danielle. Hundred percent clean. I’ll give you that.” There was a pause, one that seemed to carry the weight of the many issues between them, until Wade shook his head. “C’mon, Dani, who the hell would possibly want to kill Trey Watkins? Honestly …”
“I don’t know.”
“And all this because of some news flash from a totally disreputable source that he wasn’t out there alone. Or your belief that he could handle that section of the river in his sleep? Or not finding any helmet?”
Wade stood up and came over, and sat on the edge of his desk. “Listen, Danielle, I get that he was a good friend, but what we have here are two tragic, but separate occurrences. Trey Watkins probably tried some ill-advised maneuver that got his head wrung up against a rock. That balloon, it’ll come out there was something going on. It imploded. That’s what the witnesses saw from the other balloon. Rare as it is, it happens. We get one shred of evidence that says it’s something different, I’ll be the first to jump on it. They got some team from the Parks Service in today and looking around the accident site. And I damn well know they’ll be going over that balloon shell with a fine-tooth comb to find whatever they can, though God knows what that would be as it’s nothing but a burnt-up mess, I’m afraid. How about you let me and Sheriff Warrick do our jobs. For God sakes, you’re as headstrong as your mother. And you saw how that went.”
“Seemed to go fine, Wade …” Dani said, her eyes flashing to the bourbon bottle on the credenza. “God knows how. Till those bottles were full and not empty.”
“Easy to blame me, I admit …” Wade nodded and frowned. “I know we got some unfinished business between us, Danielle, but I was always a friend to you.”
“Just look into it, Wade. That’s all I ask. Please …”
The female duty officer outside came in over an intercom. “Chief, Sheriff Warrick’s on the phone for you.”
Wade nodded and went back to his desk. “With your permission … I gotta take that now.”
Dani got up and headed toward the door. Her eyes went to the credenza behind his chair. “I meant to ask, how’s Kyle doing?”
“He’s fighting. They got him fitted up with a new leg. He’s learning how to get used to it. Thanks.”
“I know I should go and see him more.” She liked Kyle. For a couple of years, when she was twelve, he was like an older brother to her. Before he signed up.
“I’m sure he’d like that, Dani. And listen …” Wade picked up the phone and crooked it in his shoulder and held his finger on the waiting line. “I’m sorry about Trey. But how about you leave the police work to me and Sheriff Warrick. And when the river opens back up in a day or two, I know that’s where you’ll be.”
It continued to gnaw at her, no matter what Wade said: what Rooster said he saw. So the following morning, the river closed to traffic, Dani went back out along the stretch where she had found Trey’s body. There was a road that followed the river, paved at spots, mostly not, which the whitewater companies used to meet up with their rafts at the end of their runs, and cyclists and campers to head to the many trails and campsites in the park.
As she drove out, she reflected on yesterday’s meeting and her history with Wade. Her mother and her dad were divorced when she was six. He was in his residency at the Aspen Orthopedic Clinic, under a well-known orthopedic surgeon, and her mother, Judy, was the daughter of Tom Barnham, who owned the dry goods store on Galena, then bought the building outright, and then over the years, the one next to it and the one next to that, even becoming the mayor in town for eight years. When Dani was twelve, her mother married Wade, who’d had a few reversals in town, and who became the country sheriff mostly through his father-in-law’s influence. Whatever the glitzy veneer, Aspen was then and has always remained a small town at heart, where insiders matter. Dani recalled them happy at first, and Wade became kind of a sizable personality about town, strutting around alongside the rich and famous in his trademark cowboy hat, python boots, and flashy rings.
But when Dani was sixteen, a miscarriage made her mom depressed, and then she started getting headaches. And Wade, whose self-destructive nature took over, stopped taking the kids fishing and camping and started coming home drunk—from parties he used to call his “public responsibilities,” but then seemed to turn into all the time. Once he totaled his car and another time he got into a public fight with one of his officers right in the middle of town. He went into the program—even went away once for a month—but then he started using stronger stuff, which only came out much later, and which came to a head when he pilfered a couple of hundred OxyContin tablets from his own police evidence locker. By then it had all fallen apart for him and he was forced to resign. Her mother grew worse and worse, and Dani took a semester off to care for her. But in Dani’s sophomore year, Judy just suddenly seemed to give up and died. Complications from the disease, it was called. Her mom was taking her own share of medication back then, and Wade was mostly at his worst, and not much of a caregiver. But Dani still always pictured her in her mind, smiling and pretty, braiding Dani’s long, curly hair and singing “Sweet Baby James” and John Denver songs with her, with those Colorado blue eyes. Dani even tattooed an “Ai,” the Chinese symbol for love, on her shoulder, with her mother’s initials.
So maybe Dani did always blame Wade a bit for her demise. Or at least, for not helping. Dani was in the process of transferring back to Boulder when her mom just fell off a cliff. For years Dani blamed herself for not having been there at the end. The suddenness had taken everyone by surprise. Wade may not have actually killed her; Dani had finally come to terms with that. But his own problems surely sapped the strength out of her and helped her to decline.
Dani drove along the river to the spot at the Cradle where Trey was found, which was now blocked off by tape with a Pitkin County police van parked there. She continued down about a half mile to a spot they called the Funnel, where the various currents fed into a narrow channel, about a quarter mile up from the ford, where the rapids tour ended.
She parked