One Mile Under (9 page)

“Everyone liked Trey. And, yes, it
was
rough.” Dani nodded. “Thanks.”

“Seems kind of hard to believe. Happening where it did. That far downstream. Some people are saying it must have happened up around the Falls, and the current took him down. It sure seemed he knew what he was doing.”

“He did know what he was doing, Cammie,” Dani said. “That’s why I’d like to take a look at that film.”

The ranger’s eyes widened a bit, as she got the sense of what Dani was asking. “Everything I heard said it was just a crazy accident. Even the state parks team was here.”

Dani shrugged. “Look, I know this may not be one hundred percent by the book …”

“I’m not so concerned about by the book …” Cammie said. “It’s just that, it’s not here. It’s been handed over.”

“Handed over? Handed over to whom?” Dani said in surprise. “The Parks Service?” If everyone was so sure this whole thing was nothing but an accident, why would it dawn on them to take the film?

“Not the Parks Service. It was Chief Dunn who came and took it. Day after it took place.”

“Chief Dunn?”
Wade?
Wade had it all along. All the while he was saying this was just an accident. Cut and dried …

He was either hiding something from her, or he believed it, too.

“But we take ’em when people leave here, too.” Cammie pointed to another camera, this one facing the exit gate. “And he didn’t ask for that one. It’s all digital these days. Fine with me if you want to come in and take a look.”

He had it
. The realization twisted inside Dani. Wade had it when she went into his office yesterday. When he made that big scene about her overreaching and butting out. It meant either that he suspected she was right—that Trey’s death was suspicious, and then Ron’s, too. Or worse, that he was protecting something.

He’d had it all along.
Before she even found the helmet.

Which, after what Dani and Cammie saw was on it, also meant he knew …

There was a meeting under way at the police station. Another officer Dani didn’t recognize was manning the front, and Dani went right past him, the officer going, “Wait! Hold on. You can’t—” And she pushed open the door and barged straight into the chief’s office.

Wade was at the head of the small conference table with his one and only detective and another officer around it.

“You took it.” Dani glared at him.

“What?”

The two others at the table looked up in surprise.

“The camera roll from the ranger station at the river. On the morning Trey died.”

Wade’s face grew heated. “Dani, I’m gonna ask you to step out now, if you please …”

“Cammie said you came and got it two days ago. So you knew. You knew all along it wasn’t an accident. You knew there was someone out there even before I brought in the helmet yesterday.”

The air hung like lead. Wade put down his pen and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for my stepdaughter’s outburst here. You all mind giving us five minutes and we’ll reconvene.”

The two of them left with a series of eye rolls and awkward glances that Dani knew would be around the station in two minutes. She realized this time she’d gone too far. She couldn’t help it. Wade had led her on. When the door finally shut behind them, he turned back and glared at her. “That’s my staff you just embarrassed me in front of. You do that again, and I don’t care if you’re my stepdaughter or not, so help me I’ll …”

“I’m sorry. I was out of line. But, Wade, you’ve had it all along. You let me go through that whole thing about Trey and Rooster and the helmet and the path I found … You know who it was, too. Who was out there that morning? Whose tire tracks I saw.”

“First of all,” Wade said, coming around the table, “it’s my job to look at anything that might—”

“That’s a load of bull, Wade. You told me Rooster was crazy. There’d be no reason to even request that film if it was all just an accident like you said. Unless you suspected there was something suspicious that went on out there. At least I’m damn well hoping that’s the reason for it.”

Wade leaned his hands against the table. “And what other reason might there be?”

“I don’t know. That you’re hiding something.” Dani didn’t back down. “That there was something on it you didn’t want anyone to see.”

Wade’s eyes took on a hardened expression, a space between hurt and outright anger. “That’s a mighty strong accusation, Dani, coming from someone who I’ve only been a friend to in life.”

“So convince me it isn’t, Wade. Who else has seen it? Who else did you show it to, if this was some kind of big investigation? I’m sorry if I don’t exactly believe you, but there’s a lot of recent history between us that doesn’t exactly rule that out.”

He swept his arm in anger, the papers on his table flying onto the floor. “I don’t have to convince you, Danielle. I’m the goddamn chief of police here! And whether there’s something there or not, that’s my role to determine, not yours. Just let me do my job!”

“Well, then do it!” Dani’s eyes lit up with accusation. “But next time you might want to requisition the exit tape as well. They keep it, Wade—just so there’s a record in case people get lost or stranded in the park. So they know exactly who’s still in there.”

Wade’s mouth opened a bit, and he stood there, as if he’d had a gun drawn on him.

Dani opened the manila envelope she had with her and removed the black-and-white photo. The one she made after she and Cammie looked at the film. She put it on his desk.

It was of a white Jeep Cherokee. Colorado plates. D69-416. “He came in at seven-oh-nine that morning. Just after Trey. And he left forty minutes later.
Forty minutes, Wade!
Just enough time for him to set up and do whatever he came to do and for Trey to take his first run.”

Wade’s fists dug into the table so hard Dani thought it was going to collapse. “You don’t know what you’re stepping into, girl …”

“This is him, Wade!” Dani jabbed her index finger onto the photo of the car. “That’s who killed Trey. And if you don’t act on this, so help me, I’ll take it to the
Aspen Times
or to Dave Warrick or anyone else who will listen to me and makes sure it’s in the hands of someone who will. You don’t have six deaths here to worry about here, Wade—you have six murders.” She pressed her finger on the photo again, right on the plate. “And here’s your murderer!”

“I want you out of town,” Wade said, his jaw twitching, his chest heating up with frustration and anger, everything about him suddenly different.

This whole thing had hit a whole new level of seriousness for him now. A combination of being threatened by this crazy girl and the fear of what might happen to her (or
him!
) if she continued on. His conversation on the phone last night had made it clear.
I’ll handle it,
he’d promised them.
I’ll make it go away
.

He knew he’d better damn well deliver.

“You’re not taking this anywhere.” He pulled the photo back to his side of the table and crumpled it into a ball.

“You think I’d be dumb enough to put my only one down in front of you.” Dani leered at him. “I have more.”

“Then I’m telling you, as the head of this investigation and as someone who cares about you, Dani, I want them all handed over now.” He reached across and grabbed the envelope out of her hands. “You’re going to get out of this town for a while and let me do what I’m paid to do. In the meantime”—he took her roughly by the arm—“you’re coming with me.”

“What do you mean, I’m coming with you?” She tried to pull herself away. He clamped on tighter. “Wade, you’re hurting me!”

He dragged her into the station house and then through a door in the back where they had four holding cells.

“Are you crazy …?” Dani glared at him, trying to writhe out of his grip. “Get your hands off me, Wade! You’re doing what—
throwing me in jail
? This is insane. You can’t stop me from talking to people. You’re sitting on something. Just like you did with Mom.”

“I’m putting you somewhere where I can make sure you’re not interfering with my investigation until your father comes, or whomever the hell else I can get to talk some sense in you and take you out of here. Trust me, it’s for your own good.”

“My father? On what charge?” she demanded.

“I don’t know what charge! Obstructing an official investigation. Illegally obtaining government property. On the charge that it’s for your own damn good, Dani. Whatever I can think of that holds you here for a couple of days.”

“Are you nuts? Wade, please, how long do you think that’ll last?”

“As long as it takes to call your dad and get him to come out here.” He pulled her into the area where there were four holding cells. None of them were occupied.

“I’m not gonna stay here, Wade.”

“You damn well are going to stay here! You’re over your head here, Dani, and I’m doing this to protect you, not hurt you. Whether you know it or not.”

“
Protect me?
” He pushed her in an open cell and closed it with a clang behind her.

“Yes, protect you, Danielle,” Wade said, breathing heavily now.

“You’re making a mistake here, Wade. Not about me, but about Trey. And Rooster. And whoever that car belongs to.”

“Maybe so.” Wade walked away and hung the key on the wall. “But I’ve made ’em before. Sooner or later, one’s bound to catch up to me.”

It had been too long.

The muscles were getting weak, the stomach a little flabby. A month back, long about Frenchman’s Cay, he’d stopped doing his morning crunches. The urge to find himself again, to get back into something, the next chapter, grew more and more restless inside him. He kept asking himself, what was next? To go back to his old job? To Talon, the global security company he was a partner in? He’d taken a month leave to nurse his wounds and bring himself back to life and just extended it kind of indefinitely. Now the wounds had healed; the dime-sized holes where the bullets had found him were now just scar tissue, mostly hidden by the tan. But what do you do when you’ve brought down a worldwide financial conspiracy whose reach led to the doorstep of the president’s own cabinet? Become a talking head on the TV news shows? Go on the speakers’ circuit? Just sail? These past two months, he couldn’t answer that question.

The first month, he didn’t even bring it to mind.

The month Naomi had joined him.

Hauck gazed out in his trunks and shades at the exquisite turquoise sea, white waves lapping gently onto the shore, from the tiny cove he was moored in with no other boat in sight, and didn’t care that there was no breeze.

That first month they just drifted. He didn’t want money or fame. He’d just wanted to help people. That’s why he became a cop in the first place, right? After the death of his youngest daughter. That’s how he put the pieces together back then. How he made his amends. But there were never enough amends. So he just sailed. Until it found him. He knew one day it would.

The day this came down:

“Ty, I’m not sure where this email finds you. But I need your help …”

He had spent the past two months on a thirty-eight-foot skiff he’d rented in Tortola, bonefishing and just sailing around, letting his beard grow out. After he and Naomi Blum exposed the Gstaad Group and helped bring down the secretary of the Treasury, Thomas Keaton, who’d conspired to mastermind the series of events that brought on the worldwide financial meltdown. He just couldn’t take a slap on the back for a job well done and a bonus check, and go back to his desk in Greenwich, Connecticut. Even the high-profile job that it was, handling corporate and governmental security issues with global connections. He couldn’t just sit in a larger office, gladhanding prospective clients, using his newfound notoriety to land new business like some ex-home-run hitter at a baseball card show. The money didn’t mean much to him, either, a guy who always figured he’d retire on a detective’s pension.

The first three weeks, Naomi was with him. From her small office at the Office of Financial Terrorism at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., they followed the trail of Hauck’s friend April Glassman’s murder all the way to the top of Naomi’s very department, to the president’s right-hand man. And once the dust settled and the headlines stopped, the wounds healed, they sailed for a month from isle to isle. They let the boat just drift in the open sea and made love on the deck, on the forestairs, under the stars, whenever the urge hit, and wherever it took them. They pulled into small, festive ports and ate spiny lobsters or tilefish on the beach and danced to reggae bands in thatched-roofed bars, full of Red Stripe beer and Pyrat Rum.

Sometimes they would just sit on deck and watch the sunset, or the sunrise. And wonder why real life had to be any different.

Then she went back to D.C. Now, head of the Financial Terrorism office.

And he just continued to drift. What was next? What had meaning to him? She would send him texts; some cute, recalling their time together. Some sexy. She would refer to his scars and the many times he’d been shot. He’d write back that he loved to play the five chords from the opening of Philip Glass’s
Music in the Shape of a Square
that were tattooed on her butt. The result of a Princeton degree in musicology, before she went into the Marines.

Now he thought of her diving naked into the turquoise sea or dancing in cutoff jeans and a bikini top. He had the time of his life with her. Free. Neither wanted any attachments. She was a rising star with the world in front of her. He … he’d been around a bit longer and had cheated death more than one time.

Then the texts grew shorter and less frequent. She got involved in new cases. Told him to come back. And still he drifted. He’d received a ton of emails from people who wanted to meet with him. From Tom Foley, the CEO of Talon:
When are you coming back?
From his daughter, Jessie. Now sixteen:
How long will u b down there, Dad? Have you gone mental???
Now he only checked his email once a week. He stopped doing his push-ups and crunches. His beard got thicker. If it was another month, then it would be another month. He just fished and sailed.