Rock Bottom (Em Hansen Mysteries) Page 16

  I stared up at the brilliance of the stars that danced across the heavens, marveling at my husband’s wisdom. I felt privileged, even as an eavesdropper, to hear what he was saying. My heart rose with pride, and I shifted, ready to just jump into the tent and join the conversation, when Brendan brought up one more thing.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “That girl I was telling you about?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “I saw her with that other man? That one she calls uncle? And he … um … well, they didn’t know I was watching, and…”

  When Brendan’s pause stretched into silence, Fritz said, “It’s okay, you can tell me.”

  “He was touching her, Dad, in ways I could tell she didn’t like, and it looked…”

  I heard things shift inside the tent as Fritz rolled toward his son. “He did what?”

  “He said he was preparing her to ‘serve.’”

  Fritz’s voice deepened into a growl. “Are they still near us on the river?”

  “No. I think they motored ahead and were going to pull out soon.”

  “That’s not only abuse of influence, that’s molestation and child abuse. It’s sexual assault. There is no gray area here. What he is doing is wrong and it’s against the law!”

  “But Dad?”

  “Yes, son.”

  Brendan’s voice was rising in pitch. “That uncle guy is running that church now. How’s Holly Ann going to get away?”

  Fritz was quiet for a long time, no doubt thinking through the complexities of his son’s fears, the conundrum of his failed marriage, and the legal land mines these issues presented. Finally he said simply, “Son, that church is not above the law.”

  Notes of Gerald Weber, Chief Ranger

  Investigation into death of George Oberley

  April 19, 10:30 A.M.

  Analysis of items found with body of George Oberley:

  Shirt: Men’s, size L, short-sleeved, plaid, manufactured by Cabela’s. Appears fairly new. Shirt a size small, pulling at buttons across chest and belly.

  Shorts: Men’s size 38 (?) khaki cargo short, extremely worn, no label. Nothing in pockets. No underwear present.

  Footwear: One rubber “flip-flop” sandal, men’s size L showing heavy wear. Matching sandal not present.

  Life vest: Extrasport B-22 Highfloat, dark blue, size L, marked as property of Canyon Rentals, Inc., serial number CR-452.

  NOTE: Telephoned Canyon Rentals re: life vest. Jane Hickock in Supply Department checked records and stated that this item was rented to Fritz Calder of Salt Lake City, Utah, and delivered to him at Lees Ferry on March 31 of this year. Calder also rented their “oar raft package” which includes a 16-foot raft, two sets of oars, a full-sized cooler, drop bag, frame, and other rigging. Cross-check with sat phone communications shows a Fritz Calder first reported Oberley missing. Cross-check with list of rafting trips currently on river shows Calder launched April 1 as alternate trip leader for 21-day private oar trip.

  NB: Calder party due to pull out at Diamond Creek in approximately 48 hours. FOCUS HERE FIRST.

  APRIL 11: FISH AND VISITORS

  In the morning I took a bath in the river, really just a little soap in the most critical places. I was, in fact, turning into a fine example of “river trash,” having long since lost my hairbrush. I just ran my fingers through my hair each morning, and I had never been one to worry about a little dirt on my shirts or pants, much less my face. I was getting a fabulous tan across my nose and forearms, and during camp time when I could wear shorts, I was beginning to lose the shark-bait-whiteness on my legs, too, though my feet were turning strange colors from being packed into neoprene booties for long periods of time.

  I had taken a long walk before I could hope to get to sleep after overhearing the conversation between Fritz and Brendan, pacing up and down along the dark nighttime waters of the Colorado River. The pain of children haunts me that way, wakening ghosts of my own. The girl with the guitar was far downriver now, where I could not help her, and that tied my stomach into knots, and I had my own small world to try to keep right side up, too.

  Things actually seemed to have settled down within our own rafting party. By the end of the second day after the Sockdolager fiasco, I let myself hope that maybe Wink Oberley’s tricks were over. Glenda seemed to be an excellent influence on him, and we had all cheerfully forgotten Julianne’s embarrassing posturing as a thing of the past.

  But then we floated by the foot of Bass Canyon.

  There are trails from the canyon’s rims that come all the way down to the river, and one of them comes down Bass, which sounds like the name of a fish but was in fact named for a fellow who built a tourist destination at this location in about 1890. There was a photograph of him in the river guide posing with his trusty animals, Joe the burro and Shep the dog. We did not see any remnants of Mr. Bass’s tourist empire as we approached the mouth of that side canyon, but we did see someone we all knew: Julianne Wertz. She was standing there waving, calling to the man who owned her heart. “Woo-hoo, Wi-ink!” she called, now prancing from foot to foot to get his attention. “Winkie dear, I’m here!” There was tremendous excitement in her voice, and it rose to a crescendo of “darlings” and “lover boys” as the man, who was for once caught without words, floated by with his mouth gaping open and both oars out of the water. Glenda Fittle turned and gazed stone-faced through her dark glasses, her elegant spine growing stiffer yet.

  Fritz pulled hard on the oars to get our craft out of the current and rammed our boat up onto the beach right by Julianne’s feet. “How nice to see you, Julianne,” he told her, “and … how unexpected!”

  Julianne had stopped prancing. She did not look at us. Her body had gone strangely still, except for her neck, which swiveled as she tracked the progress of the dory, which now moved swiftly and with the obvious purpose of evasion down the river and toward the far side of the river.

  The kayakers came to the beach beside us, and the other three rafts followed. “Hey, what’s up? Are we stopping to look at the Ross Wheeler?” Mungo called, referring to a steel boat that had been abandoned on this shore by an unlucky crew in 1915. Then he recognized our former crew mate. “Holy shit, is that you, Julianne?”

  The woman’s face had grown an ugly shade of red underneath her tan. She began to tremble and was soon shaking with rage.

  The dory continued down the river, disappearing from sight.

  Julianne stamped a foot. She screamed. She snorted with rage. And words were not enough to express her feelings. Overwhelmed with feeling, she broke from her position and began to run into the river.

  “Whoa!” said Mungo, lumbering out of his raft and blocking her progress with his body. “Settle down, woman! You got someone you need to visit with?”

  “Yes!” she sputtered. “Yes! I need to talk to Wink! Now!”

  Mungo gathered her into a bear hug and spoke soothingly. “No problem. I can row you right across this here river to where he’ll be waiting for ya. We all had plans to camp tonight right there at Bass Crossing, just at the other side, and clearly you aren’t gonna make it back up to the rim tonight, are ya?”

  Hoping to avoid an ugly scene, Fritz directed everyone into taking a stroll over to see the abandoned steel boat. It was a flattened version of the modern Grand Canyon dory that Wink had built, but like it, it had a central cockpit and was decked over fore and aft, with a hatch opening into each compartment. I stared into it, contemplating the metaphor of all the lies Wink had stowed in the wrecked vessel of his life. I felt no pity or sympathy for Julianne, and neither did I feel scorn, I felt only a burgeoning embarrassment.

  I was not happy about the prospect of taking her across the river. Even Mungo seemed to have thought twice by the time we had returned to the rafts. “Are you sure you want to go there?” he asked.

  Julianne answered by climbing into Mungo’s raft. Molly shifted to make room for her, and Hakatai took her backpack and lashed it on
top of the load.

  “Wait,” said Fritz. “You can’t go if you don’t have a life jacket.”

  Julianne leveled a withering gaze his way. “Then I’ll use the spare,” she growled, yanking it out from under the tarp that Mungo had stretched over the top of his load. He had tethered it to the loose end of a cam strap, so she undid the knot and wrestled her way into it.

  It was a short ride across the river, but it might as well have been miles. A pall had settled over our little group. Our surprise at first seeing Julianne on the riverbank had dissolved into a collective sense of loss as we watched this woman face her humiliation with such force. The otherworldliness of life on the river and what she thought was love had drawn her back down into the great, wide-open world of the canyon in search of more. She was an addict, and the attentions Wink had shown her were a drug. She would have it now regardless of its cost.

  When we reached the other side and tied up by the dory, she hesitated only a moment before charging up the bank to the rock where Wink now sat waiting for her. Glenda Fittle had found herself somewhere else to be, strolling along a trail, admiring the flowers that bloomed there with the composure and self-assurance we had quickly come to expect of her.

  Wink did not get up. He greeted his spurned lover with a slight raising of his eyebrows, not even favoring her by removing his fancy dark glasses to look at her with naked eyes.

  She stopped five feet from him and again began to tremble. “Why?” she asked, her voice filled with angry, humiliated tears.

  Wink tipped his head to one side and crumpled his eyebrows, as if confused by her question. “Oh, come on now,” he said. “Everybody has a good time on the river, and what happens on the river stays on the river, right?”

  About now I was wondering what Wink’s wife might think of this scene, or if she might have viewed it often enough to find it simply tedious. And I wondered if either of his stories was true: that he lived happily with his wife and children in New Jersey when he wasn’t out chasing women on the river or that they were separated but for lack of cash still living under the same roof. I now suspected that she had thrown his sorry ass out into the April rains, leaving him with no place to be but right here. Perhaps he had cozied up to the Christian fundamentalist trip because no one else would employ him. His life was a mess, at its tattered ends, and yet he was still scavenging what he could, from Don’s granola bars all the way to this woman’s fragile honor. How, I wondered, had we gotten so damned lucky as to have him hit rock bottom on our trip?

  A standoff ensued, during which Wink kept his ass on that rock and Julianne continued to stand there staring at him, all decision-making power having finally leached out of her. Several minutes passed. The rest of us got busy emptying our nighttime gear out of the boats. We began to pitch our tents, and that evening’s cook crew began to set up the kitchen. At last Julianne broke away from the confrontation and walked stiffly down past where Fritz and Brendan were setting up our tent, on down to the beach where the boats were tied up. Nobody was there when she arrived, and we all gave her the privacy of not staring. I could hear her scuffling around with the gear, and figured that she was kicking Wink’s dory to work out her frustration. After a while, Mungo sidled down to where she waited, loaded her back into his raft, and rowed her across the current to a place where she could gain access to a spur of the Bass Trail.

  The story came out after Wink and Glenda turned in that night, climbing into Glenda’s tent like an old married couple.

  “She told me her tale as we rowed back across the river,” Mungo said, as he nursed three fingers of single-malt Scotch. “I guess he really swept her off her feet, or maybe her footing was a little dicey to begin with, but anyway he told her the whole yarn about being head-over-heels in love with her and so on and so forth, and she bought the whole goddamned lie hook, line, and sinker. He told her he was kind of shy and so he wanted to keep their liaison a secret as best they could, not show it around to everyone else. Then he started sneaking off of an evening to chat with the fundamentalists in the next camp and she got to wondering, but he’d told her it was a paying job, so she convinced herself that he was on the level. She said it was a long hike up the Bright Angel Trail. By the time she got to the top she’d rationalized the whole situation around to thinking this was never-ending true love. Danielle tried to talk sense into her, but no go. So Julianne took a shower at the South Rim and refilled her water bottles and packed her pockets full of snacks and had Danielle drive her to the head of Bass Trail on the hope that she could get down here in time to flag us down. She figured we were still one man short of our full sixteen allowed by the permit, and surely there was plenty of food to go around, and she would just eat less if there wasn’t. You’ll recall that she still had her sleeping bag here on my raft, because I was going to take it home for her at the end of the trip rather than paying for an uphill load with the mules. I told her it was nuts to start up the Bass Trail again by herself, but she said the hike would do her good, that there was still plenty of daylight and she had extra batteries for her headlamp and plenty of food, and I gave her some more. She seemed to have calmed down. I let her go.”

  We all listened quietly, as if he were telling us a story that had happened somewhere else or a long time ago.

  “Did she have a backcountry pass?” asked Molly. “Do the rangers even know she’s out there?”

  Mungo hung his head. “I didn’t think of any of that until I was all the way back here and it was almost dark. I feel bad letting her go.”

  Molly patted his shoulder. “She’s pretty headstrong once she gets going, Mungo. She’ll be all right,” but the lines of worry on her face belied what she had said.

  Interview of river ranger Maryann Eliasson by Gerald Weber via satellite telephone.

  April 19, 11:54 A.M.

  Eliasson: You wanted me to call you, sir?

  Weber: Yes, Maryann. Report your location, please.

  Eliasson: I’m at Stairway Canyon, mile 171. I climbed up to the Tonto when I received your message to call you, so we should have a connection for a while.

  Weber: Good, because I have some questions regarding the Calder party that launched April first. You were the ranger on duty at Lees Ferry on that date, am I right?

  Eliasson: That is correct.

  Weber: Okay then, I have a few items of evidence I wish to discuss with you. First—

  Eliasson: Evidence? Is this regarding the death of George Oberley, sir?

  Weber: Yes, it is.

  Eliasson: Right, go ahead.

  Weber: First, the deceased was found wearing a PFD rented from Canyon Outfitters by Fritz Calder, the trip leader.

  Eliasson: He was?

  Weber: Yes. Why, does that sound odd to you?

  Eliasson: Well, yeah, because he had his own gear.

  Weber: You mean Calder had his own gear?

  Eliasson: Who? No, Wink did. The deceased. I was there when he arrived. He had that old homemade dory of his on a trailer, and he had all his own gear, just like always.

  Weber: “Like always.” That suggests that the deceased had launched with you before.

  Eliasson: Many times. He rowed for several of the commercial companies, and he’d been down the river a number of times with that dory, back when he was doing field work for [pause] oh, I forget what his excuse was. He was one of those guys who just couldn’t stay off the river. He’d rig any kind of an excuse to run the river, see.

  Weber: Then he was very experienced on the river.

  Eliasson: Entirely so.

  Weber: Okay, then he did have his own PFD and spare on his—this dory you describe.

  Eliasson: Yes, he did. But you’re saying he was found wearing somebody else’s?

  Weber: Yes, a rental checked out to Fritz Calder. Do you recall meeting Calder clearly?

  Eliasson: Yes, I do.

  Weber: You launch several parties each day, and it’s been almost three weeks. What in particular was there about this ma
n, that you remember them?

  Eliasson: Well first, there are a whole lot more commercial trips than private, as you know, but he had Oberley with him, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, because Oberley is a pro, and Calder didn’t look stupid enough to take Oberley as a friend.

  Weber: So you were acquainted with Oberley.

  Eliasson: Yes. Well, yeah, everyone knew him.

  Weber: How would you characterize him?

  Eliasson: What do you mean, sir? His abilities on the river, you mean?

  Weber: That, and the man.

  Eliasson: Oh. [pause] Well, he was very good at the oars according to anyone who ever saw him row, but he never rose in the ranks in any of the companies because he was sort of a loose cannon. He’d get crosswise with whoever was in charge and switch to another company, or he’d be let go for one reason or another. That was all a while ago. He quit showing up a few years ago.

  Weber: But Cleome James was in touch with him?

  Eliasson: Sir?

  Weber: Cleome James, our dispatcher. There was a connection there.

  Eliasson: I don’t like to talk about people’s personal stuff, sir.

  Weber: I prefer to stay out of that myself, but here it is right in our laps.

  Eliasson: Yeah, I see what you’re saying.

  Weber: So is there anything I should know?

  Eliasson: About Cleome and Wink?

  Weber: Yes.

  Eliasson: [pause] Okay, they were involved personally for a short time a year or two back.

  Weber: Please continue.

  Eliasson: Well, there’s not that much to say. It did not go well and it ended poorly. I’d say that Cleome bears some annoyance with the man, but apart from that, it’s only what at least half a dozen other women in the area might have to report about him. Really.