One Mile Under. Andrew Gross
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You’ll handle it how, Wade? We already thought you had it all neatly bundled up. And now there’s another person going around making even more trouble. Some girl …”
“Listen …” Wade said, his stomach tightening as if it were squeezed into a ball. “How do you know about that?”
“Don’t you worry how we know about things. Just worry how you’re going to set it right. This was all supposed to go easy. First we find the kid on the river. The same route he always goes. Tuesdays and Fridays, right? Bright and early. No one around. Other than some fool flying in a goddamn balloon who goes spouting his mouth off. We both better hope he didn’t take pictures.”
“He didn’t. And you didn’t have to do it the way you did. Now I have all kinds of trouble here to factor in.”
“Sheriff, I promise you,” the caller laughed, “your little town doesn’t even know the meaning of the word trouble, if that’s what it is.”
“This time you stay out of it. I’ll take care of it,” Wade said. He also knew these were not the kind of people you lost your temper with. “I’ll make it go away.”
“Stay out of it …?” The person on the other end chuffed back a laugh. “How do you think you even got yourself reelected, Lieutenant Johnnie Walker Black? We stay out of it, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself appointed to the prom committee of your local high school.”
“It won’t go any further. I give you my word.”
“Damn right it won’t go further … ’Cause if it doesn’t, everything stops. Today. Not another dime. That boy of yours will have to find his own way back in life without our help. That understood?”
“It’s understood.” Wade gritted his teeth and swallowed the acidy taste back into his stomach.
“I want to be clear, Chief. Carbondale’s a cute little town. But if we have to make another stop down there, it might just be for you this time. So factor that kind of trouble into your thinking, Wade.” After waiting a moment to let the words sink in, the caller hung up.
Wade placed the phone back on the table, anger roiling inside.
He needed them off his back, but he had let them in. That he couldn’t deny.
Yes, one long set of rapids to run, he said to himself. No different than Trey.
Dani better keep her trap shut, that was all there was to it. Or he didn’t know what he’d be forced to do.
One thing he should’ve learned a long time ago, you deal with the devil, you better get ready for the temperature to rise.
Early the next morning Dani was back out on the river.
There was a ranger station at the beginning of the park road. Cammie was on duty. Dani knew her, of course; she was out here almost every day. She handed out maps and advised people on where to camp and the conditions.
And they also kept track of the car traffic. All day.
“No run this morning?” Cammie said as Dani drove up, leaning out of her hut. The river had just been reopened and Dani waited at the gate until a few vans and buses from both Whitewater Adventures and a few competitors went on through. There was no kayak strapped to the top of Dani’s Subaru.
“I’m doing the bus pickup later this afternoon. Cammie, listen, you mind if I talk to you about something?”
“Not at all.” The ranger leaned out and looked down the road, seeing no one behind them. “Lots of doings out here these past two days. What’s on your mind?”
Dani pointed to the camera at the gate that recorded the license plates of all vehicles going inside the park. “You keep that thing on, don’t you?”
“Twenty-four/seven. Even after the gates are closed. State law.”
“And you keep the film here? From the past few days.”
They’d known each other for years, even though Cammie was about ten years older. But she’d been part of the park detail for a long time and Dani had been coming here since she was a teenager. Her booth had a picture taped up with her and her female partner. “Just what date are you looking for, Dani?”
Dani looked at her. “Last Tuesday. The twenty-second.”
Cammie looked back at her. “Tuesday was the day Trey Watkins was killed, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“That must have been rough.” The park ranger stepped out of her hut. “I know the two of you were friends. He still came out here a couple of times a week. He always seemed like a nice young man. Always called me ‘Judy Blue Eyes.’ Like from Crosby, Stills and Nash.” Cammie kind of blushed.
“Everyone liked Trey. And, yes, it was rough.” Dani nodded. “Thanks.”
“Seems kind of hard to believe. Happening where it did. That far downstream. Some people are saying it must have happened up around the Falls, and the current took him down. It sure seemed he knew what he was doing.”
“He did know what he was doing, Cammie,” Dani said. “That’s why I’d like to take a look at that film.”
The ranger’s eyes widened a bit, as she got the sense of what Dani was asking. “Everything I heard said it was just a crazy accident. Even the state parks team was here.”
Dani shrugged. “Look, I know this may not be one hundred percent by the book …”
“I’m not so concerned about by the book …” Cammie said. “It’s just that, it’s not here. It’s been handed over.”
“Handed over? Handed over to whom?” Dani said in surprise. “The Parks Service?” If everyone was so sure this whole thing was nothing but an accident, why would it dawn on them to take the film?
“Not the Parks Service. It was Chief Dunn who came and took it. Day after it took place.”
“Chief Dunn?” Wade? Wade had it all along. All the while he was saying this was just an accident. Cut and dried …
He was either hiding something from her, or he believed it, too.
“But we take ’em when people leave here, too.” Cammie pointed to another camera, this one facing the exit gate. “And he didn’t ask for that one. It’s all digital these days. Fine with me if you want to come in and take a look.”
He had it. The realization twisted inside Dani. Wade had it when she went into his office yesterday. When he made that big scene about her overreaching and butting out. It meant either that he suspected she was right—that Trey’s death was suspicious, and then Ron’s, too. Or worse, that he was protecting something.
He’d had it all along. Before she even found the helmet.
Which, after what Dani and Cammie saw was on it, also meant he knew …
There was a meeting under way at the police station. Another officer Dani didn’t recognize was manning the front, and Dani went right past him, the officer going, “Wait! Hold on. You can’t—” And she pushed open the door and barged straight into the chief’s office.
Wade was at the head of the small conference table with his one and only detective and another officer around it.
“You took it.” Dani glared at him.
“What?”
The two others at the table looked up in surprise.
“The