They passed a dump site barely hacked out of the woods, filled with cracked pallets and bags of rubbish. One of those golf carts Ray had mentioned to Clare lay tipped over on its side. Russ made her get behind him, then drew his gun from its holster before approaching the pile of trash. He peered into an open barrel before retreating back to the trail. He shook his head and motioned to Clare to keep walking as he reholstered his gun.
She didn’t know if it was the quiet, or Russ’s behavior, or the tangled thicket of underbrush, which reminded her of where she had found Ingraham’s body, but she was getting seriously creeped out. When he paused at the sound of a woodpecker’s knock and searched the trees, she hissed at him, “Why are you doing that?”
“What?” He turned to her. “Doing what?”
“Acting like we’re about to come under fire. I ferried guys to the front during Desert Storm who were less tense than you are.”
“I didn’t know you were in the Gulf.”
“Cut it out. You’re making me more nervous than I already am.”
“Sorry.” A dried-up streambed cut across the trail, and they picked their way across the smooth stones. His eyes flicked across the trees.
“Do you really think that the guy who took Peggy is waiting to ambush us?” She kept her voice close to a whisper.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t know. It’s just…” He flipped his hands out. “The green. The heat. The humidity.”
“I thought you liked to go into the woods. Don’t you hunt?”
“That’s in the fall. Not when everything’s green.” He looked again, left, right, up. “I like the fall. And the spring. Nothing good ever happened to me in green leaves.” The trail twisted to the right, running parallel to a dense stand of hardwood. Clare could feel her calf muscles sigh with relief at the chance to travel on more level ground.
“Sometimes I have dreams,” he said. “Red on green.”
“Oh,” she said, and then, after a moment, “Tell me about them.”
He smiled at her, but his eyes were still far away. Lost in the green. “I would, but I’d have to have a bottle of whiskey while I was doing it, and then the folks at my AA meeting would be cheesed off at me.”
There was a sound from up the trail. They both stopped. She heard it again, a beat, or a rustle. Hard to tell. Not a sound made by nature. He motioned her to the side of the trail and she pressed herself into the underbrush, hardly feeling the sharp twigs and tickling leaves, her heart pounding. She had a second to wonder if he was just going to stand there in the middle of the track, and another second to start to feel irritation along with fear, and then he faded into the shadows of the big trees on the opposite side of the trail. She peered through the tiny branches to where the rutted track turned uphill again and disappeared from view.
Peggy Landry walked around the bend. Clare looked at Russ, but he held up one finger. She waited. Peggy was a mess, her arms scratched, a sleeve half-torn off her camp shirt, a reddening mark across her temple and eye that looked as if it would bloom into a very bad bruise. She was walking quickly, watching her footing on the trail, but not running. Clare looked over at Russ again. He was still holding up a finger, looking well past Peggy to the bend in the trail, clearly waiting to see if she was being pursued. Clare held her breath and tried to ignore an itchy trickle of sweat on her chest. Peggy walked past their concealed positions. She was almost at the next turn of the track when Russ stepped out from the trees. “Ms. Landry,” he said.
She screamed. Clare stumbled out of her hiding place. Peggy screamed again.
“Peggy!” Clare shouted. “It’s me! Clare Fergusson!”
Russ threw his hands up into the air. “And Chief Van Alstyne.”
Peggy staggered back, clutching her chest, and collapsed on the ground.
“Oh, my God!” They both ran toward Peggy, Clare reaching her first and skidding as she dropped down next to the older woman. “Peggy! Are you okay?”
Russ knelt on Peggy’s other side. “Let me take a look at her,” he said, brushing Clare’s hands away. Peggy was hunched over, panting so fast that Clare was sure she would pass out from hyperventilation. Russ took Peggy’s head between his hands and tilted her face toward him. Her eyes were wide and white-rimmed, like a spooked horse. “I don’t think she’s in shock,” he said. He brushed her hair away from her temple. “This looks nasty, though.” He looked at Clare. “Run your hands over her torso. Make sure she doesn’t have any puncture wounds.”
Clare did as he asked. “Nothing,” she said.
“Peggy,” Russ said slowly and clearly, “you need to calm down and tell us what happened. Was someone with you? Were you threatened? Did he injure you?”
“How…what…” Peggy gasped for air.
“We went to your house,” Clare said. “Mr. Wood told us you had left for the construction site after getting a phone call.” She glanced up at Russ, uncertain how much to say to the woman huddled between them.
“We had reason to believe you might be in danger from Jason Colvin.” Russ said. “He’s wanted for questioning in the Ingraham murder.”
Peggy buried her face in her hands and rocked forward. “Please, Peggy, tell us what happened,” Clare said.
Russ looked grim. “Ms. Landry, were you sexually assaulted?”
That seemed to reach her. She sat up straighter and pushed her hair out of her face. “No,” she said. She covered her eyes with her hands again. “But I think he was trying to kill me.”
“Who?” Clare could hear Russ trying to keep a tight rein on his voice.
“Leo Waxman.”
Clare rocked back on her heels. “Leo Waxman?”
Russ spread his hands with a look of complete confusion on his face. “Who’s he?”
“The state’s geologist for the project. Remember I told you he showed me around the quarry when I was here Monday? That’s him.”
“What the hell does the geologist have to do with any of this?” Clare could empathize with the bafflement in Russ’s voice.
“He called me,” Peggy said. “He told me he had something very important to show me at the site. Something that could affect the project going forward. I met him at the spa area and he insisted on driving me way up here to show me something. He wouldn’t say what.” She hunched over again. “He took me as far as you can on this road, up to where it gets very close to the gorge. He—he demanded money from me. Told me Bill had promised him a job with BWI and a fat salary, and then Bill reneged. He was crazy. Furious.” She looked up at them. “I think he may have murdered Bill.” She closed her eyes. “I was terrified. He came at me. We fought. Somehow—I’m not sure how—he went over.” Her voice thinned out into little more than a whisper. “Into the gorge. I didn’t know what to do. So I started walking back. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Russ looked over her head to where the trail twisted out of sight. “How far from here?”
Peggy shook her head. “I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying much attention. Everything seems sort of unreal. Like in a horrible dream.”
“Peggy,” Clare said. “Is he injured? Is he dead? Did you get a good look at him?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He was near the stream, facedown, very still. I yelled, but he didn’t move or answer. I was going to call for help when I got back to my car. He was just lying there. It’s a deep gorge. My grandfather would never let us hike near it when we were kids.”
“How come you didn’t drive back down?” Russ said.
Peggy blinked. There was a pause, as if she was trying to remember her thoughts at the scene of the accident. “I can’t drive a standard,” she finally said. She looked up at them. “I’m sorry. I guess I should have tried.”
Clare looked at Russ. “What do you think we should do?”
“I gotta go up and see. Will you take Ms. Landry back down to the cars?”
“Do you want me to call for help?”
He shook his head. “It’ll have to be
Mountain Rescue. I want to be able to tell them if it’s a medical emergency or a body recovery. It can’t be that far, and I can travel faster without her. I’ll scope it out and get back to you as soon as possible.” He hunkered down to get close to Peggy again. “Did he park on the trail? Did you wander far from the vehicle?”
“No. I mean, yes, he parked on the trail. We walked from there to the gorge. You can hear—there’s still a bit of water running in the stream at the bottom. You can hear it.”
He stood up, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “I’ll meet you back there as soon as I can.”
Clare nodded. She watched until he disappeared from view. Then she stood up. “Do you think you can get up?” she asked Peggy, extending her hand. Peggy took it and let Clare haul her into a standing position. “Are you sure you’re not hurt anywhere? You’re going to have a bad bruise around your eye.”
Peggy touched her face lightly. “I’m not hurt. Other than this. I’m more shaken up than anything.”
Clare squeezed her arm. “You have every right to be.”
She led Peggy down the trail, murmuring assurances and encouragement, listening to her rattle on while keeping an ear cocked for the sound of Russ behind them. Peggy kept returning to Leo Waxman and how he was lying at the bottom of the gorge. “What if he’s still alive? Will the Mountain Rescue be able to help him? Won’t they take an awfully long time? What are his chances?”
“If that gorge is as steep as I think it is, yes, it’ll take a long time to rescue him,” Clare said. “They’ll have to rappel men and equipment down, fix him on a board, and then carry him out the long way, through the quarry. Either that or figure out a way to lift him back up the wall of the gorge without hurting him more. I think you need to prepare yourself. Unless he was only stunned when you looked at him, the chances are good that he’s not going to survive.”
Peggy moaned. “Oh, God.”
Clare looked ahead. They were getting closer to where the trail joined the rutted road leading from the quarry to the helipad. She recognized the rottingly sweet white-flowered vines running up the trees and—The force of her thought literally made her stop in her tracks. She whirled on Peggy. “I know how we can get him!”
“What?”
“Waxman. We don’t have to wait for the Mountain Rescue team. I can get him out. With the BWI helicopter.”
“What?” Peggy’s second “What?” was closer to a screech than a question.
“BWI keeps a helicopter right here at the site. I’ve been in it. It has a first-aid pack and, more important, it’s rigged with a cargo net and boom.” She looked up, as if she could see through the leaf canopy to the skies overhead. “It’s lousy flying weather, of course. The humidity will make it slow going, but there’s no wind. Once I’m over the gorge, I can just hover there and let Russ bring Waxman up.”
“You’re joking.” Peggy’s expression reminded Clare that declaring oneself capable of aerial extractions was not something most people did with confidence.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I was a pilot in the army. I’ve logged thousands and thousands of hours in helicopters.”
“You’re not joking.”
“Hurry up.” Clare quickened her pace. “Let’s get down to the site and get your cell phone. We can call ahead to the hospital and find out what to do for him. Then I can run back up to the helipad and do a preflight check.” She frowned. “I hope Mr. Opperman didn’t fly it back to Baltimore or anything.”
They trotted along at a fast pace. Peggy looked drawn and ashy, and Clare felt a wash of guilt at pushing her after her ordeal. But no matter what Leo Waxman had done, he didn’t deserve to die all alone at the bottom of a gorge. Not when she had within her the power to help.
She sighed with relief when they reached the turnoff to the spa site.
“Wait,” Peggy said, clutching at Clare’s arm. “Let me go get the phone. And maybe get a couple bottles of cold water from the office fridge?” She smiled weakly. “You go ahead and do what you have to with the helicopter. I’ll join you there. It’ll be quicker.”
“You’re right,” Clare said. “Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own?”
Peggy smiled, more forcefully this time. “I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”
Clare threw her arms around the older woman and hugged her quickly. “You sure have. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” She jog-trotted the rest of the way to the helipad, arriving there slick with sweat and breathless.
The Bell was right where she had left it last, center stage on its tarmac square. She tried the door. Unlocked. Key still in the ignition. “Thank you, Lord,” she said. She flicked the key switch on, grabbed the fuel pipette, which the previous pilot had left wedged in the off-side seat, and hopped out to check the fuel.
It wasn’t full up, but there would be more than enough to get her safely to Glens Falls, or even Albany, if necessary. She drew down some fuel into the pipette and held it up to the colorless sky, looking for water or sediment that could spell a serious problem. It looked clean.
She climbed back into the cockpit and checked the buss and batt switches. She tapped the control panel. She knew she should test all the lights, since this was a new ship for her, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary, and right now, time was of the essence. Reflexively, she did verify that the fire extinguisher behind the pilot’s seat was full before clambering outside again to untie the Bell and do the exterior preflight check.
She had finished the right-side fuselage check, had untied the main rotor blade, and was closing up the tail rotor gearbox when she heard sounds coming from the track.
“Hey! Clare!” Russ emerged from the woods, closely followed by Peggy, who was carrying a large sailcloth L. L. Bean bag. Clare ducked under the tail boom to talk to them. Russ’s shirt was clinging to his chest in damp patches and his hair was plastered to his scalp. Peggy reached into the bulging bag and handed him a bottle of water dripping with condensation. He unscrewed the top and dumped half the contents over his head, shaking his shaggy hair like a dog.
“Is he still alive?” Clare asked. Peggy pulled an identical bottle out of the bag and handed it to her.
Russ swigged most of the rest of his water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes. He didn’t answer me when I called to him, but he shifted a bit. He’s about twenty, twenty-five feet down. Ms. Landry says you have some cockamamy idea about using the helicopter to get him out?”
Clare swallowed a mouthful of the almost painfully cold water and turned back to the ship. “It’s not a cockamamy idea.” She moved to the left side of the fuselage to check the engine compartment and the transmission.
“The hell it’s not. It’s not that I doubt you can fly this monster, but how do you think you’re going to rescue him?”
She looked up from the hydraulic servos. “I’m not going to do it alone. You’re going to help me.”
He held up his hands. “Whoa.”
“The chopper is fitted out for cargo. I fly over to where Waxman is and hover. You get in the net, I lower you to the bottom of the crevasse, you get Waxman, and I pull you both up.”
His face was set in a mask of denial. “That’s insane.”
“No it’s not. I admit that I wouldn’t want to try it on a gusty day, but it’s perfectly calm. The winch can be controlled right from the cockpit. I can do it all without getting out of my seat.” She secured the transmission cowling and climbed up to the top of the fuselage to check the hydraulic reservoir.
“What if something happens? What if you have a choice between leaving the cockpit and…and me falling?”
She looked up from where she was examining the main rotor system. He sounded almost panicky. “It has a four-axis autopilot, Russ. If you need me, I’ll be there.” She gestured toward the locked shed at the edge of the clearing. “I didn’t see any headsets in the cabin, so I suspect they’re in there. We’ll have to break in, I’m afraid. But with those on, we’ll be able to communicate
with each other the whole time.” She swung herself down and crouched under the ship’s belly to check the landing gear.
Russ crouched down across from her. “I can’t do this.”
“Sure, you can.”
“No. You don’t understand. I can’t do this.” He spoke each word slowly and distinctly.
The import of his words finally sank in. “Are you afraid? To fly?”
His jaw worked. “Helicopters,” he said.
“You’re afraid to fly in helicopters. You were in the army, for heaven’s sake. You must have used helicopter transport before.” She stood up on tiptoe to check the wind-screens. He stood up as well, leaning across the Bell’s pointed nose.
“I had a bad experience.” His voice was barely louder than a rumble. He obviously didn’t want Peggy to hear anything. “A very bad experience.”
She slapped the windscreen. “Get over it.”
“What?”
She backed away from the ship and strolled slowly around it, giving it a last once-over with her eyes, half her attention on looking for anything out of place, the other half on getting Russ to fall in with her plan. It wasn’t the first time she had had to deal with a panicky crew member. “What happened? You took incoming fire? Lightning fried your electrical system?” She looked up at him. “It’s not going to happen here and now. Here and now, a man may very well die if we don’t get him up out of that gorge. So get over it.”
He stopped dead. “I can’t believe you. This isn’t some sort of whim I just made up. This is real. You think I go around confessing to anyone how I feel? What kind of priest are you anyway?”
She swung around to face him. “I don’t know, Russ. I guess I’m the kind who flies helicopters and speaks without thinking and screws up on a regular basis.” She wiped her oily hands on her shorts, instantly converting them from good to trash. “But I’ll tell you one thing,” she said, stepping into his space, crowding him, hissing her words. “I’m not the sort who would let a man die because she’s too chickenshit to climb into a machine!” She pointed to the shed, never breaking eye contact with him. “Now break into that shed and get me those headsets!”