Maximum Exposure (8 page)

Max could handle only so much silence before she started getting nervous. Chuck was ten feet in front of her because the path was too narrow for them to walk side by side. “If—,” she began when Trixie barked.

The steady barking cut through the subtle sounds of the forest. Max slipped and fell on her ass. “Shit,” she muttered.

Chuck turned, smiled, and offered her a hand again, which she gratefully took. He pulled her up with strength she wouldn’t have expected from his trim frame. “Trixie found something.”

“Could it be an animal?”

“She knows the difference. And if there was a threat, she has a different bark.”

They continued down the path, an even steeper embankment than before, but Max managed to keep her balance by holding on to the tree trunks as she went. Then it leveled out. “The old scout camp is through there.” He pointed straight ahead. “You can see where the bridge collapsed.”

At first Max didn’t see; then it was clear that it had been a rope bridge. Thick ropes were tied to a tree trunk on either side of a steep cavern that looked at least a hundred feet deep and twenty feet across. An echo of rushing water came up from the depths.

Max never considered that she was afraid of heights, but it would take a lot of cajoling for her to take a rope bridge over that cavern.

Trixie’s steady barking came from the right. Away from the scouting camp.

They turned and walked steeply up a trail twenty yards before they found Trixie standing, her head facing into a grove of trees. Chuck called her back with a whistle, and she immediately came to him and stopped barking. He gave her a scratch and a treat, then some water.

Max tried to be patient, but it didn’t come naturally. She inched forward, and Chuck followed.

Just off the trail, a black sleeping bag was bunched up against a tree, partly buried in leaves and dirt. There was some snow that hadn’t melted, but as they approached, the ground was soft and muddy.

At first, Max didn’t see anything other than the dark bag. Then she saw the fingers of a hand, barely exposed through the opening.

“Stay here,” Chuck told her. He walked over, bracing himself against the tree trunk to keep from sliding down the slick mud. He pulled back the top of the sleeping bag and peered inside. A foul stench hit Max, and Trixie whimpered, then lay down with her head on her paws. If a dog could look sad, Trixie was miserable.

Max squatted down and scratched her behind the ears. “You’re a good girl, Trixie,” she said. Her voice cracked.

Scott Sheldon was most certainly dead, his body remarkably preserved in the cold climate.

“Well, shit,” Chuck said. “You always hope they ran off with their girlfriend.”

He knelt to inspect the body. “No obvious signs of injury. No visible blood—if there was blood, I suspect the animals would have found him long ago.”

“Their statements were identical,” Max said, anger rising. “They claimed that they were hanging out at the campsite, drinking beer, and joking around. Scott got mad and stomped off toward where they’d parked, two miles away. At night. But on the map, where they parked was in the opposite direction from this trail. So either they lied about the direction—”

“Or were too drugged up to notice,” Chuck suggested, and Max agreed that it was a possibility.

“Or,” she continued, “they lied about him leaving in the first place.”

“Before you jump to conclusions, Ms. Revere, let’s see what the coroner has to say. She’s a fine doctor. If there was foul play, she’ll figure it out.” He pulled out his radio and contacted Tim and Ann. “Tim? Go back to the truck and retrieve the gurney and body bag. Meet us at the campground. We’ll lead you to the body.”

Chapter Seven

“What happened?” Adele Sheldon asked Max.

Max was in her room at the Broadmoor, sitting at her desk. She didn’t know what to say—a first for her.

“Detective Horn called me,” Adele said, a hitch in her voice. “I knew he was dead, I knew it, but…,” Her voice trailed off on a sob.

“Would you like me to drive down and see you?” It was almost a two-hour drive. She didn’t want to go tonight, but she would, for Scott’s mother.

“No, I want you to find out what happened. You were there. You saw him.”

“We need to wait until the autopsy results.”

“That’s what the detective said.” Adele took a deep breath, worked to control her emotions. Max let her; she didn’t need to rush this. “I wanted him to be alive, but I knew in my heart that he wasn’t. I’m his mother; I think I’ve always known.”

“Though we can’t be sure until after the tests, there were no visible injuries.” To preserve evidence, Chuck and Tim had bagged Scott’s body while still in the sleeping bag. They examined him for visible head and chest wounds, but there were none.

“Did he suffer?” she asked, her voice small.

“It doesn’t appear so.” Max didn’t know what to say, so she said what she thought was accurate. What might give Adele a modicum of comfort. “If he died of exposure, he most likely fell asleep and then just didn’t wake up.”

Adele didn’t say anything. She probably knew that dying of exposure wasn’t as peaceful as Max implied. But would it help anyone to know if Scott had been in pain?

“I’m sorry, Adele.”

“It’s okay. Why did it take you to find him? They would never have found him if you didn’t light a fire under them.”

“We don’t know that. I spent the day with Chuck Pence, the head of search and rescue. He looked as long as he could after Scott’s disappearance, but we found your son in a different area than where they initially focused.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“They had time against them in the fall. The storm was getting worse, and they concentrated on the area between the camp and where the boys had parked their truck. Scott was found on the opposite side of the mountain, nearly two miles southeast of the campground; they parked two miles north of the camp. I suspect that Chuck and his team would have found Scott in the next couple of days. I met them; they weren’t going to give up. I just—made it go faster.” She didn’t mention at this point that it had been her suggestion to check the other trail, because that really didn’t matter—not to Adele. It would matter when Max talked to the three boys who left Scott alone on that mountain.

“Are you leaving?” Adele asked.

Max had thought about it. She didn’t know why seeing Scott Sheldon’s thawing body had disturbed her so much. She’d viewed an autopsy before, seen crime scene photos, once researched a child abuse case that left a little girl in a coma. That small, unconscious body had unnerved Max on multiple levels.

But this—she’d never seen a body so exposed. So … vulnerable. So
dead.
An autopsy was clinical and scientific. She could separate the procedure from the person. Crime scene photos were two dimensional, violent and grotesque, but again, she could view them as a reporter and not with undue emotion.

But Scott … he was right there, and had been for nearly six months. In his sleeping bag, suggesting he knew he couldn’t get back to the campground where his friends had pitched a tent. He’d curled up against the tree, in his sleeping bag, and died. Had he known? Had he thought he would wake up in the morning and find his way back? She’d already checked—the average temperature in Colorado Springs that night was fifteen degrees. Chuck told her that would mean in the mountains where the boys had camped it would have been even colder, likely below zero. Scott’s sleeping bag wasn’t designed for subzero temperatures.

Had he wandered around and gotten lost? Why?

“I’m going to wait until the autopsy results come in, talk to the detective, then talk to the boys again.”

“Do you think—something else happened?”

“I don’t know, Adele. I think—” Max didn’t want to share her theories with Adele. Not until she had proof. “I’m not sure that the entire story has been told.”

“Call me. I—I’m going to have a funeral for him. Detective Horn said a few days and I should be able to…” Again, her voice trailed off.

“Let me know about it. If I’m still here, I’ll come.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” Adele hung up and Max was relieved. The grief of parents twisted her stomach in knots. She had a headache—she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She wasn’t hungry, but knew she needed to eat something or she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Especially when she couldn’t get Scott Sheldon’s dead body out of her mind.

She made a reservation at the Tavern, her favorite restaurant at the Broadmoor. She’d been to the resort many times in the past—it was one of her favorite places to relax—only this time, she didn’t feel relaxed.

Chuck called her cell phone as she was leaving for dinner. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. You were very quiet during the drive back.”

“It’s been a long day,” she said. “I’m dining at the Tavern, if you’d like to join me.”

He didn’t commit. “I’ll see.”

“You know where I am,” she said, and hung up. She didn’t want small talk; she didn’t really want to talk at all.

The restaurant was across the courtyard from the main building. She stepped out into pouring rain. The doorman handed her a complimentary umbrella, and she smiled her thanks, but had no energy to talk. Her thoughts were filled with images of Scott Sheldon dying alone—buried in snow, pounded with rain, covered with layers of mulch. Her melancholy turned to anger. There was no reason he should have died on that mountain.

She was seated immediately and ordered a crab cake appetizer and wine before she looked at the menu. The wine, thankfully, arrived first.

She stared at the fire across the room, sipped her wine, and tried to force her mind to go blank. It was something she had a hard time doing, turning off her thoughts. Either her mind had to be working or her body—preferably both. But today all she felt was cold, even in the warm restaurant and wearing her favorite cashmere sweater and snug wool slacks. She shouldn’t be cold, but even the hot shower after she returned from the mountain hadn’t warmed her.

The loss hit her. What had Scott been thinking those hours he lay in the cheap nylon sleeping bag? Had he known he was dying? How long did he stay there, too cold to move, too cold to call out? Was he disoriented? Severe hypothermia lowered the body temperature so much that victims got confused, often hallucinating and wandering, their heart rate dropping, their major organs slowly shutting down. Did it take a couple hours? All night? He would have lost consciousness before he died, but the hours leading up to that would have been full of fear and pain.

A miserable way to die.

But was there any good way to die?

By all accounts, Karen had been stabbed to death—how else could she have lost so much blood? Did she die faster than Scott, and did that make it some sort of blessing? Or was it more painful, more fearful? Did it matter? They were both young people, in college, with their lives ahead of them, and they were dead. One violently, and one by the stupidity of others.

Whether it was malicious or not remained to be seen.

Her crab cakes came and the waitress asked if she wanted to order dinner. “Not now,” Max said. “Another glass of wine, please.”

She nibbled on the crab cakes and watched as Chuck Pence crossed in front of the fire and sat across from her.

“Where’s Trixie?” Max asked.

“Home. Finding a body, even though she’s trained for it, is disturbing for her as well as us. My wife knows how to soothe her.”

“Have a drink with me,” Max said as the waitress came with her second glass.

He said to the waitress, “Scotch, neat.”

“Do you have a preference?”

“No,” he said.

“Top shelf, single malt,” Max told the waitress. “Thank you.”

“Reporting must pay well,” Chuck said.

“Not particularly.”

“Detective Horn told me you’re also a writer. Books.”

“True crime.” She didn’t feel the need to share more of her history with Chuck. “I’m sorry I was abrupt on the phone.” Apologies didn’t come easy to her, but she had been snippy, and Chuck had been helpful. “I appreciate that you took me out with you and the Callows today.”

“I wish there could have been a better outcome.”

“We both knew the outcome.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier.”

They sat in silence while the waitress brought Chuck’s Scotch. He sniffed, sipped, nodded. “Thank you.”

“Did you get the preliminary autopsy report?” Max was familiar enough with the process to know they wouldn’t get a final report until the exam and all tests came back.

“The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Amelia said she’d call me when she knew anything.” He paused, sipped some more. “She doesn’t usually do that, but she knows this has been bothering me. And she suspects I’ll inform you.”

“Why doesn’t she call me?”

“She’s uncomfortable talking to the press.”

“She talked to me on the phone the other day.”

“Curiosity.”

“And you? You deal with the press all the time?”

“Never. But you don’t strike me as a typical reporter.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I did learn something at the coroner’s office. The visual exam of the body shows no external cause of death. There were some scrapes on his arms consistent with tree branches or falling and skinning his arm, but other than that, no visible wounds. X-rays showed a fracture in his left fibula. He probably could have walked on it, but it would have been painful. Because the body was frozen for so long, and based on average temperature for the area over the last six months, the coroner hopes to get a good tox screen, see if he was on drugs. Alcohol will be next to impossible to find—it breaks down in the system in a matter of hours, but it also speeds up hypothermia.”

“If he was found Saturday, would he have survived?”

“I can’t answer that. He was in apparent good health, he should have been able to survive, though he’d have had extreme hypothermia. By the second night, I would put his chance of survival—given what he was wearing and the sleeping bag—at less than twenty percent. If he’d fallen in the creek we crossed to find him, that would have lowered his body temperature dramatically and he wouldn’t have survived even more moderate temperatures than what he had. Without those answers, I can’t speculate.”