Chapter 4
Clutching a mug of tea, Cody struggled to remember details of something she wanted only to forget. She steadied herself with a hand on the back of a cold aluminum chair, and then sat down on it slowly. The metal bit into her and muddy water from her rain soaked jeans dripped onto the cracked linoleum floor of the small conference room in the ranger station. The tall ranger sat nearby, elbows on knees, fingers buried in his hair, not speaking. One of the shortest women Cody had ever seen bounced on her tiptoes where she stood near the man. Coiled blonde springs danced against her shoulders with each skip, and her constant motion made the cold room feel even smaller.
A Native American woman with a no-nonsense black braid as smooth as oil sat behind a battered metal desk. She watched the bouncing blonde with a deep calmness in her dark eyes, but she tapped her pen on the desk as if it was full of jumping beans rather than ink.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
Cody shook her head.
“Can you answer some questions?”
“Yes.”
The woman stopped tapping the pen. “I’m Jess Hawking, detective with the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Department. Ranger Matt Tanner, Ranger Hailey Cutler with the Wallace Ranger Station. Let’s start with seeing if you remember touching anything.”
“I touched Kelly’s belt,” Cody said. “To find his radio.”
“What about Nate Johnson?” Jess asked, tapping the pen again.
“Who?”
“The man with Kelly.”
“Oh. I never knew his name. I covered him with my coat, but I don’t remember touching him.”
“And tell me again what he said.”
“I thought he was telling me to get help, but he said for me to get away." She twisted the mug back and forth between her hands.
“You never heard gunshots or saw anyone else?” Jess asked, taking notes instead of tapping.
Cody’s response must have been too slow in coming, as Jess looked up.
“No, I never heard anything, or saw anyone. But…well, I thought someone was watching me. Through the trees, uphill.”
“Wood jitters,” Hailey said. “It happens to people inexperienced in the woods. Probably a squirrel.”
“Or probably not,” Jess said. “We have a team combing the area. If someone was there, we’ll find something.”
“I’m wasting my time here,” Matt said, jerking his coat off the back of the chair so hard the chair rocked against the desk.
“Then go, Ranger Tanner,” Jess said, tossing her pen down. “I’ll continue from this end and we’ll meet late this afternoon." She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes a moment. “I know this is hard Matt, but procedure will solve this not rage.”
“Don’t patronize me, Hawking. I’m not some newbie.”
“I didn’t say you were, and we’ve worked enough cases together that you should know by now I respect your strengths. You’re better in the field. I’m better in the office. Besides, this happened on forest service land. You’re the lead agency. So get out of here.”
Matt’s green eyes passed over Cody and their lack of expression was as chilling as his voice. This was more than the casual dismissal she was used to. This was blame. Shivering in the frost emanating from him, Cody watched the door shut behind the man.
There was a moment’s silence as if the detective gave the air in the room time to warm up before she leaned back in her chair.
“He hired and trained Kelly.”
“I’m sorry,” Cody responded, feeling guilty without knowing why.
“Speaking of Matt,” Hailey said, finally holding still. “You shouldn’t have sent him out like that. You’re basically putting him in charge of the forest service end of this investigation.”
“Yes, Hailey. I am aware of that.”
“Then I assume you’re also aware of the mistake you’re making in not taking proper advantage of the resources available.”
Jess tilted her chair back, watching the ceiling. “No, Hailey.”
“Look Detective Hawking, this is a serious mistake. Use your resources.”
“No, Hailey.”
“Ranger Tanner has been doing this job too long. You and I both know he hates it. I’ve just finished my forensic training.”
Jess straightened and the chair thudded to the linoleum with a sharp exclamation. “I said no, Hailey. Matt’s experienced. You’re not. Plus, he’s your supervisor. You want to work an investigation as a lead someday, you should shadow Matt now and learn from him instead of going behind his back.”
Hailey bounced onto her toes again, hands on her hips. “Oh, I’ll shadow Matt. And when he screws up I’ll be there to fix it and solve this.” She bounced, spun, and stormed out of the room.
“You do that,” Jess said to the door that slammed behind Hailey.
The sudden stillness in the room was a relief. Cody stared hard at the scum forming over her cooling tea, wondering if she should ignore the conflict or try to come up with something to ease the fallout. Undecided and uncomfortable, she said nothing.
“God I get grumpy when shit like this happens.” Jess sighed heavily, planting her elbows on the table. “Okay, so what brought you to Wallace?”
“My grandfather was from here,” Cody said, realizing the deaths of two strangers had diminished her quest. “He died recently and I came here trying to find out more about him.”
“How long are you planning on staying?”
“I’d thought two weeks.”
“Fine. I’ll need you to sign this report then you can go for now." Jess pushed a form across the desk to Cody. “We’ll probably have more questions for you as things move along.”
“What are the chances of you catching who did this?” Cody asked, rubbing her thumbs over her fingernails.
“If Matt can keep Hailey under control we’ll have a better chance.”
Cody, again, didn’t know how to respond.
“Sorry,” Jess said. “That was unprofessional. She gets under my skin. But we’ll do our best to catch this person. Kelly was a great guy.”
Jess stood and Cody did the same, leaving the mug of stale tasting tea on the desk.
“Does she always bounce so much?” Cody asked, pulling her damp coat off the back of the chair.
A deep laugh bubbled up as Jess pocketed her notebook. “I think she’s trying to make herself taller. So what are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“I don’t know,” Cody said, distracted from thoughts of Hailey by the question. “I’d been thinking about going to the museum, but that doesn’t seem right." Death had tilted her universe, and its touch had trivialized all her hopes.
“No, it’s what you should do. Normal things. It helps, believe it or not.”
Outside, the rain had eased to a fine lacy mist and Cody raised her face to the fresh coolness. Why was she alive? Why did she deserve to stand here looking up at shrouded mountains, when Kelly and Nate would never again do so? Looking for stories about her grandfather seemed frivolous, but she didn’t know what else would fulfill the need to seek out connections with him. The unfairness of death was overwhelming and fueled an anger she didn’t want and had never known what to do with. It was a loss of control, and she was better at burying emotion than dealing with it.
She could so clearly picture the three men in death. Her grandfather, who had meant so much, two who had so briefly touched her life, and all three become nothing. She could feel heat inside, flames that scorched a lump in her throat, that burned behind her eyes, that made her understand the iciness of the tall ranger.
The afternoon stretched out in normality that seemed somehow indecent. How could Cody go about her plans as if nothing had happened to shift the essence of the day? Life had ended, lives of those left behind had been shattered, and here she stood, shivering in the dampness. She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her jacket, and the stiff material where Nate’s blood had dried scraped her knuckles. She jerked he
r hands back and ripped off the coat, holding it by two fingers as mist collected on her gray tee shirt. She stared at the blood stains then gently touched them. It was all that remained of Nate. Slowly, she pulled the coat back on. She felt too disjointed and lost to forge on to the museum like she planned, so she walked to the old gas station, crossing the pocked pavement and going behind the building.
The trail was a green sentence marked with a broad yellow highlighter stripe of caution tape, the hue obscenely bright and cheery on a gray day. Matt stood next to an old Bronco with a Forest Service insignia on the side, listening to Hailey and making notes on a clipboard.
At a loss, Cody stood silently.
“Can we help you?” Hailey asked.
“I wondered if you’d found out anything yet, or if there was anything I could do,” Cody said, flustered. “It’s hard to go on with daily plans as if nothing has happened.”
“This is an investigation in process,” Hailey said. “We aren’t able to tell you anything.”
“Maybe you can answer a question for me,” Matt said.
“If I can.”
“I don’t get the timing here,” he said. “You say you met Kelly and Nate as they were going down the trail. You then had time to hike all the way up to the cirque, hang out for what, ten minutes? Yet you still managed to catch up with them before they made it to the trailhead.”
“Yes?” Cody crossed her arms over her body, cupping her elbows.
“Don’t you think two healthy guys should have been able to hike all the way out in the time it took you to go up and come back down?” Matt gripped the clipboard so tightly his knuckles became pale moons. “They died too quickly to have been shot right after you left them. So they weren’t lying on the trail bleeding until you came back down.”
“For all I know, they stopped to pick flowers,” Cody said, cut by the accusation in his tone. “Or maybe they were talking to whoever shot them. How the hell should I know what delayed them?”
Profanity slipped out in anger, and it caught her breath away. Mad and swearing, it was as if her mother’s voice blurted from her mouth and the similarity horrified her. She stepped back, as if distancing herself physically could somehow reduce her shame.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that." If only the apology could reach out, grab her words, and pull them back inside.
“Apology accepted,” Matt said. “But not your answer. We’re missing something and since you can’t help us, we need to get on with our investigation.”
He pulled a backpack out of the Bronco, and turned away from Cody, as if in dismissal, but Hailey blocked him.
“Ranger Tanner, I need you to see the mistakes you’re making here. You’re allowing emotion to interfere with doing the job.”
“Which detective novel did you read that in?” Matt asked, stepping around Hailey and starting up the trail.
Hailey stared after him for several seconds, hands on hips, before pulling out a small journal covered in a tiny floral print. She wrote rapidly, filling a page before shoving it into a pocket and approaching Cody.
“Have you remembered anything more?” she asked.
“No, sorry.”
“Call me if you do.”
“The detective, Jess, wants me to call her.”
“And you do that." A deep intensity cemented the blue eyes, the curls, and the soft features into hardness. And that hardness looked like it was going to be around awhile.
“I wish I could help more,” Cody said.
“So do I,” Hailey said. “It’s too bad you don’t have observation skills like I do. That’s part of all the training I’ve had. But whatever. I’m pissed because Kelly didn’t deserve this. And because I know what to do and Ranger Tanner won’t listen." She pulled a pack similar to Matt’s out of the Bronco and shouldered it on. “And now I’m going to have to follow him and take orders while he screws everything up. If you want to help solve this the right way, you’ll call me first.”
Silent, Cody watched the young woman duck under the caution tape. She was glad Hailey hadn’t seemed to expect a reply because she didn’t have a clue how to respond. How could words from a bouncing petite blonde feel like a threat? Cody returned to the street. Heavy clouds were sinking over mountain edges, filling gorges and obliterating trees from view. It wouldn’t be long before the rain dropped twilight and created an early evening. Tomorrow she would start early with a trip to the mining museum, and use that as an attempt to refocus.
Cody knew there was no way she could put these deaths behind her, even though she had known Kelly and Nate so briefly they could not even be called acquaintances. Yet in some way the loss of these two strangers seemed to connect her to her grandfather. Maybe it was simply death binding them. Or maybe it was because Kelly had touched her, and that brief, casual gesture had shown him as someone she could have been friends with. With friendship a scarcity in her life, and male friends even more rare, a potential connection had been taken from her that would never be able to develop, but would forever remain an unresolved future. Just like with her grandfather.
That was the link, she realized, binding the three men together in her mind. The thought of what might have been, the amorphous idea of family and friends, now vanished before she could grasp it and hang on. Maybe it was selfishness to think of their deaths in terms of what she had lost, but if so, she would mark herself as selfish.
And then she would find out if there was a way to honor their lives and make sure she never forgot them.