Читать книгу Mountain Rampage - Scott Graham - Страница 18

TEN

As he drove down the two-track, Chuck called Professor Sartore. In addition to the text he’d sent the professor in the morning, he had emailed Sartore a brief rundown of the previous night’s events before setting off for the mine after breakfast.

“What the hell is going on up there?” Sartore barked over the phone. “I’ve already heard from three different sets of parents.”

“You know college kids,” Chuck said. “They love drama.”

“How much drama are we talking about?”

“More than I’d prefer. But things are settling down.”

“That’s not the sense I’m getting. What’s this I hear about your brother-in-law’s knife?”

Chuck braked to a stop where the driveway reached the gravel road. He filled Sartore in on the appearance of the cop at the mine, picturing the professor’s bushy white eyebrows working up and down in consternation as he listened.

“You understand,” Sartore said when Chuck finished, “this is a multi-year contract we’ve signed with the park service. The plan is to start with Rocky Mountain and expand from there. Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone. The opportunities for Fort Lewis and the School of Anthropology—and for you, too, I might add—are significant.”

“I know, professor.”

“And this is the first year,” Sartore said, gaining steam. “The very first summer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This whole thing with your guy’s knife?” Sartore thundered. “And blood? And now you’re saying it’s human? It’s absolutely the last thing we need.” The professor’s heavy breaths came over the phone. “Don’t you have something else you want to tell me about?”

“I was getting to that.”

“Go right ahead.”

“A small section of the tunnel floor gave way. No one was hurt.”

“The parents who called made it sound like it was the end of the world.”

“College kids,” Chuck reiterated.

“I hired you for a reason, Chuck. I tracked you down after all these years. You’re my adult up there, my boots on the ground. There’s as much opportunity for you in the summers ahead as there is for the college. But not if things keep going the way they are right now. You’ve got to keep a lid on things there, understand?”

“Perfectly, sir.” Chuck hoped the professor was thinking the same thing he was: three more days, just three more days.

“Keep me up to speed on this situation with the knife,” Sartore said. “And make damn sure nothing else happens up there, because right now, your ass is on the line.”

“Got it, professor.”

Chuck pulled around the conference center and threw the truck into park, steaming. Who was Professor Sartore to put him on the spot for events beyond his control?

He cut the engine and sat behind the wheel while he calmed himself down. The truth was, he couldn’t blame the professor for being so concerned. A lot had happened in the last twenty-four hours, none of it good. If he wanted to work for Sartore again next summer, he had to do as the professor said—keep things quiet from here on out.

Besides, it wasn’t as if the professor’s outburst came as a surprise. His volcanic temper was legendary on the Fort Lewis campus. Chuck remembered Sartore ripping into students for unsatisfactory work two decades ago. The professor hadn’t changed in the years since.

Chuck took a steadying breath and got out of the truck, heading toward the conference center. The massive log building and the matching lodge next door had been constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression in the 1930s. A banquet room took up most of the first floor of the conference center. Smaller meeting rooms honeycombed the second. Chuck had texted ahead to set up the meeting in Parker’s office, which occupied a front corner of the building’s third floor.

Chuck climbed the steps to the top story, knocked on Parker’s office door, and entered when the resort manager called out for him to come in.

Parker’s large office was done up in L.L. Bean chic. A plaid Pendleton blanket lay over the back of a leather sofa against one wall. Lacquered rainbow trout on plaques hung above the couch. A life-size, chain-saw sculpture of a bear hewn from a thick stump of wood filled a corner of the room. The bear stood on its hind legs, paws upraised, mouth open in full roar.

The resort manager stood behind his desk at a wide picture window overlooking the fields and, across the expanse of grass to the south, additional resort buildings, including scattered rental cabins, rows of condominiums, a snack stand, and, off to one side, horse stables.

A few hundred yards farther south, two-story brick buildings lined three blocks of Elkhorn Avenue, comprising Estes Park’s compact business district. Beyond, on a hillside facing town, perched the famous, eggshell-white Stanley Hotel with its distinctive red roof.

In his Durango High School days, Parker had been a slight, fidgety student, prone to biting his nails and obsessing over girls, grades, and his bad acne. Chuck’s former close school friend hadn’t changed much in the intervening years. Parker was still given to quick, nervous gestures and to voicing seemingly every concern that crossed his mind. He was still thin, too, with a long, aquiline nose, darting eyes, and a close-cropped beard that almost hid his acne scars.

Parker waved Chuck toward one of the horseshoe-shaped club chairs in front of his expansive oak desk. The resort manager wore jeans and a bright blue polo shirt, the Y of the Rockies logo on its breast.

He turned to look out his office window, his fingers drumming the top of a binocular case on the windowsill, before pivoting back to Chuck. “Jim called me.”

“The police officer?”

“He told me about the knife. Said it belongs to your foreman.”

“My crew leader, Clarence.”

“He’s your wife’s brother, right?”

“That’s him. He’s worked for me for a couple years.”

“He’s not that old, as I recall.”

“Twenty-five. Out of the University of New Mexico School of Anthropology. Says he had nothing to do with it. I believe him.”

“Like you have any choice—your brother-in-law.” Parker dropped into his suede-leather office chair, its arms outlined by brass rivets. “You know I did you a favor, having you stay here this summer, setting you up with your own cabin, letting your students room in Raven House.”

“We’re paying you good money, and you know it. Besides, you didn’t seem to think this whole thing with the blood was that big a deal last night.”

“That was before I heard about the knife.”

Chuck sat forward. “No crime has even been alleged at this point.”

“You have to understand my position. The owners…” Parker’s voice trailed off.

“The owners what?”

“They’re new. A couple of oil-and-gas guys, brothers, out of Texas. They kept me on as manager, even gave me a raise. Just in time, too, with Joanie off to Colorado State next week. But they’re control freaks. They don’t like it when things get messy. They’re all about ‘standards.’”

“Name one thing my students have done this summer that has not lived up to your ‘standards.’”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Chuck pressed on. “You and I both know the source of your problems.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Clarence and Kirina, my other crew leader, have had to call me more than once this summer on account of your people in Falcon House.”

Parker straightened in his chair. “You never told me anything about that.”

“It was always late, past midnight. A little too much drinking, a little too loud with the partying. They settled down when I talked to them. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“But you’re telling me now.”

“You’re the one accusing my people of whatever’s going on over there. You need to remember that this pool of blood on the ground wasn’t necessarily found next to Raven House. It was found between Raven House and Falcon House—between your people and mine.”

“But it’s still your brother-in-law’s knife we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“All I’m asking, Parker, is that you give Clarence the benefit of the doubt until we learn more from the police.”

The resort manager steepled his fingers in front of him, his elbows on the arms of his chair. “Your wife’s brother.”

“My wife’s brother.”

“You want me to sit around and wait for whatever the police decide to do.”

“Not much else we can do, the way I see it. I got the sense from the officer that it’ll be a while before they get any official lab response on the blood they found. The field school ends Friday. Three days and we’ll be gone.”

“Three days.” Parker folded his hands in his lap. “I’ll be counting.”

Chuck descended the main stairway, his footsteps echoing in the building’s cavernous central hall with its enormous support beams and huge, elk-antler chandeliers hanging from thick chains. He pushed through the heavy, wooden entry doors and stood aside as a troop of chattering Girl Scouts, green sashes over their shoulders, filed into the lobby.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and walked toward a pair of Adirondack chairs arranged on the covered porch at the front of the building. He lowered himself stiffly into one of the chairs, its high back creaking as he leaned against it. A couple leaned on the railing and looked out at the fields, where a group of youngsters played kickball, another bunch of kids shot arrows toward a tall, wooden backstop on the far side of the expanse of grass, and, just across the conference center parking lot, a dozen adults stood in line at the edge of the yellowing grass, fly poles in hand, honing their casting skills under the tutelage of a gray-bearded man wearing a multi-pocketed fishing vest and a hat ringed with feathered flies.

Chuck texted Clarence. Any word from the police?

Clarence’s reply was immediate. Nothing yet. I’m thinking tomorrow.

Stay close. Don’t go anywhere.

Wouldn’t think of it.

Chuck checked the time on his phone. Coming up on four o’clock. Clarence was probably right—the cops, having been up all the previous night, were finished for the day.