EVAN MCNAMARA

Berkley Publishing Group, July 2005
ISBN: 0-425-20390-5

Chapter One

Sergeant Richter left his boot in my ass. Even after three years out of the Army, I still can’t sleep past five in the morning. Waking up early suits my new job, though, so I don’t mind much, really, and the San Juan Mountains at sunrise aren’t so bad, either. Being a deputy sheriff of Mineral County, Colorado, isn’t quite as glamorous as army sniper, but I get to ride a horse and wear a cool hat. Sergeant Richter makes me run, too, not that I have to chase down many purse snatchers in bustling downtown Dumont. Running keeps me in shape, though, and I don’t make enough as deputy to afford bigger uniforms every year. The frigid pre-dawn air chilled my lungs and cleared my head as I ran up Deep Creek Trail behind my cabin.

Deep Creek is a narrow, shallow creek fed mostly by runoff from Snowshoe Mountain, one thousand feet up. The creek tumbles north down a narrow valley for nine miles before passing my cabin and dumping into the Rio Grande River. The valley walls are steep—rising sharply in granite cliffs and wooded ridges. Deer and elk run those ridges, and I’ve hunted both along their trails. The creek dictates the topography of the valley floor, alternating between wide beaver ponds and dense, dark patches of evergreen. Deep Creek is a quiet stream, hardly making its voice heard even during the spring runoff, but I always hear its easy murmur around my cabin and up the trail.

I found the body at the second horse bridge. The beavers had dammed the stream, swelling the little creek into a pond. She was floating face-up near the outlet, sideways to the current; a submerged branch must have held her fast. The force of the current made her rock gently; the fingers of her left hand, pointing downstream, bobbed rhythmically. I saw her eyes first. She looked up at me from under the bridge, and even in the spare light of the new dawn, I could see the amber flecks in her corneas and the black, charred hole in her left temple.

I am a dedicated deputy, but I don’t carry my radio when I run. I flew downhill to my cabin and called Marty Three Stones, our night dispatcher.

“Got a body here in Deep Creek, Marty.” I was out of breath.

“Elk or deer?” She answered as if her shift just started.

“Woman, white, approximately age thirty. Looks like a gunshot wound to the head.”

“Holy, shit, Bill. Did you hear the shot?”

I don’t know why Dale, the Mineral County Sheriff, doesn’t put Marty in the field. I hadn’t even thought of the shot. The body was only two miles upstream from my cabin. In my sleep, I can hear an elk whistle halfway up the valley, but I didn’t hear any shots last night.

“No, Marty, didn’t hear a thing. Would you please wake Sheriff Dale and ask him to meet me at my place? Have him bring Jerry, the horse trailer, and an evidence kit, too. I have the camera in my truck.”

I have an evidence kit in my truck, too, but this was the first unnatural death in recent Dumont memory, so I figured we would need two. I put some feed in Pancho’s trough and dressed while my horse ate. I wouldn’t get the same luxury this day, but I did get a cup of coffee in the saddle. I had time to clear my head and observe as Pancho walked back up Deep Creek Trail. About one hundred feet downstream from the bridge and the dead woman, the trail entered a stand of blue spruce and juniper. I dismounted, tied my horse, and looked around.

I approached the bridge with my head down, inspecting the rocky path. I run this trail every day and know every inch of it, otherwise I’d turn my ankle. Walking was different though, I saw details only passed over while running. I saw nothing fresh—no new footprints, other than my own Asics running shoes, no horse tracks, nothing. To my right was a small open patch of turf between the trail and the opposite wall. Alpine meadows in the San Juans are fragile and unchanging—any intrusion leaves an indelible mark impossible to cover. I saw no scars of recent trampling. The woman did not die downstream.

I reached the far edge of the juniper stand. Beavers dammed the creek near the bridge with an imposing structure of gnawed trees ranging from one to six inches in diameter—an amazing but routine feat for the industrious rodents. The trail ran along the west side of the creek uphill to the beaver dam. There it hopped the stream at the bridge and traversed the valley wall overlooking the large beaver-made pond to the right. This is where I found the body of the young woman.

She was dressed in day-hiker gear—khaki shorts, lightweight boots, long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her Camelback water sack was still slung over her left arm, floating above her head. Her shoulder-length brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail—I knew that because it was floating, too, blown downstream by the liquid wind of Deep Creek. She looked as though she was cooling off after a hot July hike, if it wasn’t for the hole in her head.

I started working my way up the trail, looking for any recent sign of human activity. A steep alpine meadow climbed up the valley wall to my left. Delicate purple lupine and white chickweed clung to the hillside low to the ground. To my right was a steep ten-foot embankment down to the pond. The beaver pond nearly filled the open area of the valley, tapering off on the uphill side at the inlet of Deep Creek, where the trail entered another dense stand of pine. The high cliffs on either side of the pond created a gorge more than a valley. I looked up the cliff wall to my left and couldn’t see the top, only the imposing granite overhang one hundred feet above me. This part of the trail, like the approach to the bridge, was an evidence canvas—footprints, drag marks, or signs of a scuffle would’ve stood out like spray paint on Mount Rushmore. There just wasn’t any sign.

I had just started snapping photos, wondering where her knapsack was, when I heard Sheriff Dale Boggett’s voice on my radio.

“Where are you, Tatum?”

“Upstream two miles at the second bridge. Saddle up
Pistol, and I hope Jerry brought his horse, too. Can’t get a truck up here.”

I could see Jerry Pitcher, the Other Deputy, wince all the way up the trail. Jerry grew up in Dumont but hates horses. He tried to convince Sheriff Dale to invest in all-terrain vehicles, but the Sheriff would have nothing of it.

Sheriff Dale and Jerry walked up the trail on foot thirty minutes later. I was glad Dale didn’t come riding up on Pistol like a friggin’ Mountie, but that’s Dale.

“What’ve we got, Tatum?”

“Female, white, approximately thirty years old, average height and build, dead. Gunshot wound to the head, left temple. She’s been here less than twenty-four hours, because I ran by here yesterday morning, and I would’ve seen her.”

“What’ve you done so far?”

“Cursory inspection of the downstream side of the trail to the site of the body, from where I left Pancho. Found nothing. I took about twenty-four photos of the approach, the bridge, and the body. I walked a bit upstream, but didn’t find anything.”

“What are you going to do next?”

“Well, I was going to walk up the trail again. I didn’t get a chance to go over it thoroughly, and I was hoping you and Jerry could work on the site at the bridge.”

“What do you think, so far?”

“Well, sir, it didn’t happen here at the bridge or down the trail. I don’t even think it happened in Deep Creek at all—I would’ve heard the shot last night.”

“Then how’d she get here?”

“Deep Creek isn’t wide enough to float a dead rabbit nine miles downstream, let alone a human body, not with all the beaver dams and deadfall. If she didn’t die here, she didn’t shoot herself.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Tatum.”

“I am speculating again, Sheriff, but this means whoever killed her had to haul her body nine miles down the trail from the Spar City trailhead, dump her in this pond, ride back to his vehicle, and drive away.”

“Looks that way.”

Jerry waited a little back down the trail, looking like a scared six-year old, standing behind his mother at the doctor’s office. Jerry spent most of his early years in front of a computer or a Game Boy instead of out in the hills surrounding the small town, and his pear shape and sallow complexion showed it. Still, he was a fair administrator; neither Sheriff Boggett nor I enjoyed filing or office work, so Jerry picked up the slack and kept the office running while Sheriff Dale and I were on patrol. He seemed to like the administration, and it meant we had someone to work dispatch when Marty Three Stones was off-shift. If I wasn’t careful, though, Jerry would administrate himself right into the County Sheriff’s office. His father owned the local Repertoire Theatre and two souvenir shops on Main Street. Thomas Pitcher was also the senior member on the Town Council, and his influence landed his son the position as the Other Deputy.

“Well, Tatum, unless you need to take any more photos, let’s get her out of the water.”

Sheriff Dale and I stepped into the pond and lifted her up to Jerry, who was standing on the bridge. She wasn’t heavy, no more than one hundred twenty pounds with wet clothing and full Camelback. It wasn’t until we turned her over and saw the gaping red hole in her back that I realized she’d been shot more than once.

The neat hole in her chest was obscured by her shirt. The bullet expanded after impact and blew most of her right lung out her back through a softball-sized hole.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Jerry stammered. He was losing it.

“Easy there, big fella,” said Dale, “Just ease her up there, then do your business.”

Jerry did both. Luckily, he did it on the downstream side of the bridge, leaving the crime scene unblemished. Who said Jerry didn’t have an instinct for criminal investigation?

“Okay, Tatum,” said Dale, after we got back up on the trail, “go ahead and continue your inspection upstream. Jerry and I will work here.” Jerry didn’t look too happy about this, but he knew better than to argue. His heart wasn’t in it, anyway. I left them at the bridge and went upstream.

As I neared the south end of the beaver pond, I looked up from the trail and saw something in the spruce trees ahead—a swatch of color—red, not blood, but red, like a backpack, off the trail to the right, just inside the tree line. I took one step toward it, and the sharp crack of a rifle ripped through the gorge.

The shot came from behind me and to the left from the top of the cliff. I hit the ground and slid off the trail down the embankment, trying to put some terrain between the shooter and me. Sergeant Richter saves my ass again. When I heard the screaming, though, I realized I wasn’t the target.

“Jerry’s down,” I heard Sheriff Dale on the radio, “Stay low and get over here. I need you.”

“Roger,” I called back. Dale knew I had combat medical and EMT training in the Army and unfortunately had a chance to use it in Afghanistan.

The screaming continued, echoing off the rocks and drowning out the sound of falling water. At least he wasn’t dead, but it sounded like he would be soon. I scrambled along the steep bank back to the bridge. There, I found Sheriff Dale in the water under the bridge, and Jerry writhing in pain next to the body of the dead woman. The left leg of his uniform trousers was soaked red to the ankle from the hole in his thigh. I could see his blood dripping through the slats in the bridge and into the water.

“He is going to die very soon unless I get a tourniquet on him,” I said, hopping up on the bridge, undoing my service belt, “Call Marty and have the Lifeflight scramble out of Pueblo.”

Sheriff Dale made the call from the creek, still scanning the eastern ridge for a muzzle flash. As I cinched the belt around Jerry’s hefty upper thigh, I waited for another shot and a crushing impact. Jerry got very quiet all of a sudden and stopped thrashing.

“He’s in shock, Sheriff Dale,” I said,” We need to move him now.”

Dale and I were faced with a challenge. We had a crime scene to secure and a critical patient to evacuate. There was nowhere for the Lifeflight helicopter to land in the valley other than the municipal airport across the river. Luckily, the Deep Creek trailhead was only about a mile from the airfield, but we would have to leave the bridge temporarily to get Jerry back down the hill to the helicopter. In addition, I wasn’t certain I wanted to hang around with a sniper in a superior position—not only was he above us on the ridge, the morning sun was behind him as well, making it impossible for me to see a muzzle flash. The tree line was only thirty feet away and our horses one hundred feet down the trail. My own rifle was tucked in its scabbard on Pancho’s saddle, painfully out of reach.

The Sheriff was big, broad shoulders and raw-boned. He took one last look up at the cliff, got out of the water, hoisted Jerry up in a fireman’s carry, and started back down the trail toward the tree line. Just then, I heard an engine start from up on the ridge.

“Get the evidence and meet me at the station.”

I assumed he meant the only evidence we’d collected so far—the body. I wasn’t about to go back up the trail and reenter the field of fire to retrieve a backpack I may or may not have seen, so I picked up the dead woman and followed Sheriff Dale down the trail.

Bucko was none too happy about the dead body lashed across his back, so Sheriff Dale was gone by the time I got back to the cabin. I heard the roar of an engine and the sputter of loose gravel at the end of my drive. Sheriff Dale didn’t have time to unhook the horse trailer from his Bronco, so he took mine. He knew I kept the keys in the glove compartment. I secured the horses in the corral and took the body to the station.

As I crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande, I heard the Lifeflight helicopter coming up the valley from the east, over Wagon Wheel Gap. Jerry might make it, after all. I knew the medic on the Pueblo MEDEVAC—he was a real Army medic, learning his trade in Panama in 1989 with the Special Forces and in the Kansas City Knife and Gun Club after that. If Jerry were still alive when he got on Nick’s chopper, he would make it. The big, red Kawasaki BK117 swooped into the valley and raced up the river toward the airport.

MASS MARKET ISBN: 0-425-20390-5
Trade Paper: ISBN: 1-930486-51-0
eBook: ISBN: 1-930486-52-9

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