Читать книгу Rapid Descent - Gwen Hunter - Страница 14

A swift-water search and rescue was a risky business. Nell had seen a simple training run turn dangerous with a foot entrapment in two feet of water, or as a submerged strainer trapped an unwary swimmer. No team leader wanted to evac out a hiker with a broken leg or be forced to rescue one of the rescuers, but it happened, and a good team leader was prepared for it.

Nell watched Elton give instructions, making sure that each radio was on the same channel and assigning other channels for nonemergency chatter. He liaised with the sheriff’s deputy who drove through the lot. He chatted with the park rangers, two of whom drove up just before they hit the water, and the hyper guy who was leading one of the canyon wall hiking teams. Some of the hikers left by van and Jeep to start out from the takeout and work their way upstream. Three kayakers were on the water early, practicing rolls. It was bedlam, but it was structured bedlam.

Then Elton blew a piercing whistle and shouted, “We do a complete river run this morning, from put-in to takeout. We’ll be meeting up with Argonaut at the confluence of the Clear and the New, and taking the last rapids down together.” The teams nodded, recognizing the moniker. Argonaut was Jason Adams, river-named after the historical sailor. “Everybody keep an eye out for emergency signals, branches or rocks in an X shape, fire, equipment, even a person lying on a bank or rock.

“Remember to check clefts that might have been available to a boat in bigger water. Today it’s running at fifteen hundred. It was up to twenty-five hundred CFS earlier, so we’re looking at two feet of river we don’t have today. I want the kayakers to scout the shore as often as possible, but don’t get left behind. Stay with the group. I want to be down the river by 2:00 p.m. Hikers, take the paths. Watch for signs.

“In places where line-of-sight radio communication is impossible, three long whistle bursts means we found him. Everyone who hears the whistle, pass the word where we are, and move into place to get him out. Anyone not close enough to be of immediate assistance, get your butt back to a put-in or a takeout.

“Anyone who gets injured on the river but can paddle to a support site alone, get off the water. We’ll have support in four places. At Leatherwood takeout, of course—” Elton held up a finger “—at the confluence of the Clear and New Rivers above the Double Falls.” He held up a second finger and then a third. “At the start of the Narrows, but that one’ll mean a hike up to the old railroad road and no parking to speak of, so try not to get hurt there so we don’t have to stop and drag you up the mountain.” Everyone laughed and Elton held up a fourth finger. “And at the O & W bridge. Paddle to whichever support site is closest. Questions?” Everyone here knew the river and no one raised a hand.

Elton said, “The support teams will have food and water for anyone who needs it, and trucks to cart you out. We’ll have support people at each site by noon, but unless you get hurt, you’ll be carting your own boat and gear to the trucks. No princess rides today.” That got another laugh. Princess rides were raft trips with a pretty girl as one of the paddlers. She usually got to sit and look at scenery while the other rafters did all the work and the male guides ogled her.

“In the event that we don’t find Joe by two, we start a slower, more methodical search downstream from the confluence above the Double. The paddlers will rendezvous at Leatherwood at 6:00 p.m. There’ll be trucks at the takeout to haul your boats from the river upstream to the campsite at the confluence or back here to get your vehicles. We have permission to camp at the confluence for those interested.

“Hikers will meet up with a support team at 6:00 p.m. Same thing with regard to transportation.”

He looked around the gathered, meeting eyes. Making his most important point. “No fun and games today, people. No playing. Not until after Joe Stevens is found. Got it?”

A chorus of yips followed his question, and several boaters gave the Hawaiian “okay” sign of thumb and little finger in the air, the other fingers curled under, hand waggling. The hikers took off with long strides. The Ranger raft pushed off, into the sluggish current. The hardboat paddlers went to their kayaks and began the serious business of getting on the water. Those still onshore skirted themselves into their boats and slid into the water and under the old and new bridges.

Nell watched as they moved down the river and slowly out of sight. When they were gone, she surveyed the nearly empty lot. One of the two park guys pulled out, spinning gravel; the other one strode up to the second tier of parking.

Soon the rescue squad auxiliary organization would be bringing food for the searchers and organizing ways to make sure each hiker and boater had ample supplies of water and food. There would be coffee, doughnuts, trail mix, sandwiches, maybe some soup to ward off the chill at each support station. People who were willing to run errands. Medical personnel. News vans. But little of that would take place here. Most of it would be at Leatherwood at the bottom of the run, and at the two put-ins midway down.

Nell knew she would have to move soon to keep up with the search, and wondered if the RV could make it down the one-lane, steeply graded, sorta-maybe-could-be-a-road to the parking above the confluence near the Double Falls, or if it would be better to park at the top of the hill above the Narrows. Turning the RV around on any of the one-lane roads would be a bugger. The O & W would allow a turnaround, but if she met anyone coming, she would have to figure out how to back up. Maybe for a long way. She didn’t want to have to. That left Leatherwood or the confluence for her day camping.

The news van she had run from pulled into the lot and headed for the lone park ranger. And then there’ll be the press, she thought. Nell escaped to the RV and headed out.

Nell was parked at Leatherwood near two groups of day campers with rowdy preschoolers, and bored high schoolers and the lone support vehicle to arrive so far, a beat-up pickup truck. The truck bed contained extra paddles, rescue ropes, and a rescue stretcher, the kind shaped like a canoe, with flex security straps and tie-offs for hauling a wounded victim up a steep hill. An old man was sleeping in the cab, his head tilted back, mouth hanging open, hogwashers and a threadbare white T-shirt the only parts of him visible.

She turned to the water. The river was still high, rushing over the low bridge kept open by the park rangers to show campers and tourists where the original Leatherwood Ford used by colonists and by the Indians before them was. Cars and trucks no longer used the low bridge, not since the construction of a steel and concrete bridge. The newer bridge was normally some twenty-five feet above the river flow, but the distance was less today, with fresh, dark high-water marks two feet higher.

The storm that had turned the river into a raging torrent had come out of nowhere. In forty-eight hours the high water would all be gone. But for now, it was a foamy blur in her tears. Nell wanted to be out there with them, on the water, helping with the SAR, but she knew that with her head pounding and her vision not quite steady, she would become a liability to the water team. It was the first time since she was sixteen that she hadn’t been on the water during an S and R.

She sat at the small dining table, staring across at the seat Joe should have occupied. Like most married couples, they had each chosen a seat and stayed in it for meals. Joe sat with his back to the driver’s seat. Nell faced him. Now his seat was empty, but there was evidence of Joe everywhere. His map of the river was unfolded on the dinette seat, next to his beat-up copy of Southeastern White Water, the out-of-print kayakers’ bible. His second-best sunglasses were open on the dash, but had slid into the angle between windshield and dash. She hadn’t noticed them when she drove to the put-in.

Joe collected sunglasses like some people collected dishes or furniture. He owned several pair of the kind with yellow lenses that claim to give the wearer the sight of eagles, several more that were polarized, others that were cheap dollar-store glasses he didn’t mind losing. His current favorite pair was with him, wherever he was.

A John Deere hat hung from the hook over the door. His Jeep keys dangled from the key hook. A T-shirt drooped from the hook in the hallway. The sheet draped out from beneath the bed’s comforter, left there when she had made the bed, the morning they took to the water.

She looked at the radio, sitting on the table. Silent. Nothing was happening on the water. By way of the radio relay, Nell had learned that the boaters had made it over the Double Falls, and Elton and Mike had sent the faster kayakers out to the shorelines around the pool at its base. Elton had inspected the campsite where Nell had woken. Mike and his crew had tied off above the drop and were checking for signs of passage.

At loose ends, Nell stood and walked through the RV, their new “summer home,” occupied by them exactly three times before this trip. She studied the small space. Touched the towel hanging off the tiny oven. Lifted Joe’s T-shirt hanging on a hook in the hall and held it to her nose, then she wrapped the shirt around her neck for comfort. Tucked the sheet under the mattress. Smoothed Joe’s pillow.

The RV was too small and compact for a large family, but it was just right for them. The queen bed was in the back, with storage hidden behind tension doors that thumped shut like cupboards on an oceangoing boat, keeping the contents inside during rolls and pitches on the road. The special cabinets lined the walls at the ceiling all around, along the walls, and even under the bed and beneath the dinette couches.

There was a tiny kitchenette and a bathroom with a shower so small that Joe bumped his elbows when he washed his hair, thumping and banging like a bass drummer. The miniscule bathroom sink and formed-plastic toilet looked like something from a dollhouse.

The dinette was situated across from the efficiency-size appliances, a narrow table between two bench seats. Because she would be here awhile, Nell leveled the vehicle with the automatic levelers and activated the slide that extended the dinette section of the RV out nearly three feet, giving her floor space. If she wanted, she could move things around and make the dinette into a couch or turn it into an extra bed. She swiveled the driver’s and passenger’s seats around to face back, making a place for seating. Nell wanted the “after-search decompression” to take place here.

And if Joe needed medical attention, the floor space would let medics work on him if there was a delay with the ambulance from Oneida. The vision of Joe lying on the floor, bleeding, a compound arm fracture needing attention, was so strong she had to blink it away. The image was replaced with an image of her husband lying dead on the carpet, pale and bloodless and blue. Acid rose in her throat.

She made it to the bathroom and threw up the cereal she had managed to get down. Curled on the small floor of the bath, she gave in to a hard cry, the sound of her sobs louder than the screams of the preschoolers only feet away. When the emotional storm passed, she crawled to her knees and flushed, pushed to her feet and brushed her teeth. Wiping her chapped face, she stood in the center of their summer home, alone and with nothing to do.

She was frighteningly grateful when a knock on the door interrupted her. So grateful that when it was Claire, with the reporter just behind, Nell didn’t even care. She threw herself into her mother’s arms and held on for life. For once, Claire didn’t babble or berate, or even rebuke her for taking off and leaving her in the hospital parking lot. She seemed to recognize her daughter’s anguish and so she stood there on the gravel lot above the Leatherwood takeout and rocked her, stroking her hair. Saying nothing at all.

Orson stood beside Nolan and the unmarked car, watching. The girl was pretty torn up, all right. But her black eyes and beat-up hands, and the wounds on her chest that his dad had managed to find out about from a gossipy contact at the hospital, made them both think about domestic abuse and murder. And about the money. There weren’t many people who wouldn’t kill for that much money. Self-defense? Greed for sure.

“I’ll talk to the blonde,” Nolan said. “See what I can learn from Nell Stevens’s little pal.”

“You’ve always said that sometimes there are benefits to the job,” Orson murmured. “And the cute friend looks like one of them.”

Nell and Claire sat in the RV together, listening to the reports that were passed up and down the gorge on the radio. Claire had forced her to eat, and when the meal wouldn’t stay down, had fixed her a cup of tea and held her hand while she drank. Her mother didn’t nag or push her own agenda, as Joe would have said. Not exactly. But her few quiet comments eventually wore Nell down and she consented to talk to the reporter, agreeing to issue a statement. Issue a statement. Joe’s kinda talk, not hers. But Claire played on Nell’s burgeoning worry and guilt to get her on camera, saying she should be thanking the searchers and all the auxiliary helpers, which might not have worked had Nell not been on SARs herself and known how much a simple thank-you meant.

Just before two in the afternoon, in time for the news update on local TV, just before the boaters reached the takeout, Nell, wearing her mother’s makeup to cover some of the bruises, emerged from the RV and let the production guy hook her up to a clip-on microphone while standing in front of the RV. It wasn’t the on-camera interview that the reporter wanted, but it was all Nell would agree to.

Fidgeting, uncomfortable with the idea of the mic clipped under her shirt, and still unable to speak in more than a whisper, Nell looked at the reporter, Bailey Barnett, with her perfect, bobbed brown hair and her false expression of concern and said, “I appreciate all the help of the volunteer searchers who are giving up their free time. And the park service and the sheriff’s deputies and the rescue-squad auxiliary members who are providing food.

“My husband, Joe, tried to rescue me when I was hurt.” The tears she had not wanted to spill while on TV fell over her cheeks, burning. Joe was going to tease her unmercifully about that. “And now the good people of several counties are helping to rescue him. Thank you.” Fingers fumbling, she un-clipped the mic, handing it back to Bailey while the reporter was asking her questions she simply couldn’t answer.

Waving away the attention, trying not to sob, Nell once again vanished into the RV and the anonymity and safety it offered. Claire made her another cup of tea and Nell stared at the river. Waiting.

From the open doorway, Orson watched his dad. The older cop leaned against the file cabinet in his office and watched the news. The little wife wasn’t holding up very well. Her black eyes, even under the makeup, were looking more purple, evidence that the bruises were a couple days old at least, though a doctor he knew had confirmed that the cool weather and cold river water might have slowed the speed of healing.

A little blonde stood behind Nell Stevens. Her mother. Orson had expected an older woman. She must have had Nell when she was ten, because she looked all of thirty.

Without turning around or giving an indication he knew Orson was there, Nolan said, “I’m getting old, Junior. The mother of a twenty-one-year-old looks good to me.” He swiveled his head and met Orson’s eyes. “You gonna stand in the hall all day?”

“No.” But the blonde did look good. All perky and bubbly and full of life. The kind of woman his father favored, a woman not unlike his own mother, who had died shortly after he was born.

“Claire Bartwell answered all my questions without a qualm when I approached her at the Leatherwood Ford. Unlike the wife,” Nolan said. “’Course, the mother didn’t know I was a cop at the time.”

Orson had heard all about that interview on the way up, and didn’t know whether to applaud the girl or convict her. Either way, she was good. “This what you called me off patrol and made me drive two hours for?”

“Yeah, come on in, Junior.” Nolan said. “Take a look at all this river crap.”

Squatting in front of the desk, he watched as his father laid out the dry suit Nell Stevens had worn, or claimed to be wearing, when she was caught in the strainer.

“It took some doing, but I tracked down the boat, paddle and some of the gear she had on when she made it to shore,” Nolan said. “Sorry about taking you away from your first day on patrol, Junior.”

Orson half grinned at his father’s insincere apology and dropped down, resting his weight on one foot, an elbow on the other knee, his spit-shined black patrol shoes grinding on the grimy office floor. “You’re not sorry.”

“Nope. I’m not. I need an expert and you’re the closest thing to it. What can you tell me about this equipment?”

Orson flicked the dry suit to him and studied the punctures. “These are consistent with being caught in a strainer.” He turned the water-repellent kayak skirt over and pulled off several of the upper layers of duct tape so he could examine it too. He lined the skirt up around the dry suit.

“Huh. The skirt fits up that high?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah. These repaired puncture sites in the skirt match up with two in the dry suit. This other one in the dry suit is higher up, in an area of the chest that would have been protected by the PFD. But notice the angle of the tears.” Orson stuck a finger through the dry suit. “All at an angle, up, as if a branch wedged up under her vest and caught her chest. She got wounds consistent with that?”

“E.R. doctor says yeah.”

“Crap,” Orson said. “You check the underside of the tape for fingerprints? If not, you’ll have to run them against mine.” His dad grunted, unconcerned. Orson pulled the PFD to him and examined the inside of the bright orange Kitty vest, a vest made for women, specially shaped to allow room for the extra padding God gave most females. He pointed. “Scratches are consistent with branches.” He pulled the rescue knife from its sheath in the front of the PFD. “You checked it for blood?”

“Clean.”

“It’s a Gerber. They make several styles of rescue knives.” Orson held the blade to the slashes that had opened the dry suit’s limbs and torso. “Whatever cut the dry suit looks like it had a few serrations on the blade, maybe up near the haft. See?” He offered the suit and Nolan fingered the ragged spot on the fabric. “This knife’s straight. No serrations. So unless she had another knife, she didn’t cut up her own suit, except for here. Looks like she cut a strop off. I wonder why.” He inspected the vest. “Someone cut the bottom strap. Maybe to get her out of it.”

Nolan stood, sat his butt against the desk and gestured to the other equipment. “What else can you tell me?”

Junior looked at the boat. It was a bright yellow and orange Pyrahna 230 Micro Bat. Not new but not beat all to heck either. He turned it over and a dribble of river water ran out. “Scratches indicate it’s seen a lot of use, but it’s not ready for retirement yet. It’s a fast, responsive creek-boat. It can take anything up through a class V if the paddler is any good. It’s too small for my tastes, but I like a more stable boat. It’ll roll easily, but if a small paddler gets into squirrelly water it’ll toss him around like a cork.”

“I could carry the wife around under my arm all day and not get tired.”

“Sounds painful for her,” Orson said. His dad snorted softly. Orson removed the rescue bag and went through the equipment. “Whoever packed the equipment was thorough.” He held the duct tape from the emergency kit up to the light, comparing it to the tape that repaired the holes in the skirt. “Seems to match. You sending it off for comparison?”

“Yeah. If we find a body. Or if we find reason to charge her.”

Orson rubbed fingerprint dust off the roll of tape and looked the question at his father. Nolan shrugged. “Collected. Not run. I’ll send them in if I need to. Later.”

Orson looked at the kayak seat and found a section of hip pad was missing. In its place was a rolled-up section of dry suit. “Here’s the missing dry-suit parts.” He removed it and compared the knife cuts on that portion to the knife cuts on the dry suit where the girl had cut it. “Definitely two different knives.” He found a meal pouch and opened the Ziploc bag, sniffed and quickly closed it. “Looks like she prepared a cold meal and never got a chance to eat it.”

“Cold meal?”

“Yeah. Dehydrated food is intended to be prepared with hot water and eaten fresh, but you can eat it cold—it just tastes like crap. Survivalists will put a little water in a meal packet and let it sit to make it soft enough to eat. This one’s gone sour. It won’t stink a lot but you might want to double bag it.”

Orson pulled the sleeping bags out of the boat. They were packed one inside the other, tightly rolled, stuffed into a waterproof bag and tied with bungee cords. He opened the waterproof bag and spread the sleeping bags out on the floor. “If she was caught in a strainer, injured and shocky, her husband might have put one bag inside the other like this and gotten in with her to keep her warm.”

“Matches her story,” Nolan conceded.

“Or indicates she’s very well organized and planned ahead.”

Nolan grinned. “Junior, the girl I talked to in the hospital? Even beat all to heck, she kept her head together. Emotional, but not to the point of hysteria or even confusion. She was sequential with her story, not jumping from event to event, like most people I interview. She’s organized. Too organized. Knows her rights. If I get a reason to use county money, I’ll send all this to the lab. For now, it’s just conjecture.”

Orson stood, and his father stood with him. “So, you think maybe she’s been planning it, waiting for the right opportunity. The river trip gave it to her.” Orson shrugged. “Bust her ass, Pop.”

Nolan shook his head. “Not yet. Waiting to see what the SAR turns up. But I didn’t call you back just to look at this river crap. I have a job for you, Junior.”

Orson didn’t like the gleam in his father’s eyes. Not one bit.