On Wednesday morning, Max arrived at the ranger headquarters at quarter to eight. The morning was cold but completely clear, and the weather report had said it would warm to the fifties.
Chuck introduced her to Tim and Ann Callow, volunteers with search and rescue. They were both lifelong residents of the area and had been part of the initial search team. Older than Chuck, but both appeared fit.
“Chuck told us you’re a reporter from New York,” Ann said, overtly curious. “Sounds fascinating.”
“You won’t catch me dead in a city like that,” Tim said with a grin.
“I’m a city girl at heart,” Max said. “Though I enjoy the mountains. My cousin owns a ski resort in Vail, and I try to visit every year.”
They chatted as they loaded up the four-wheel-drive truck and Chuck checked provisions. Chuck drove and asked Max, who sat in the passenger seat, “Is that a map of the search area?”
“Partly—I printed it from the park service Web site and marked it up based on the information I learned from the police reports. They parked here—” She put her finger on the map, then traced it south. “—and camped here.”
“We’ve been focusing on the area between the campground and where they parked. The witnesses said he walked toward the car. But at night, he may have inadvertently left the trail. We’ve covered every area between, but now that we have had warmer weather, Trixie can be of more use. She’s still young, not fully trained, but our last cadaver dog died.”
From the backseat, Ann said, “We owned Mickie, Trixie’s mother. She died six months ago, cancer. We still have the two male dogs from her last litter. Chuck took Trixie, and the other two bitches went to friends of ours in Denver who are training them for their own unit.”
“Trixie is a great dog,” Chuck said, “but training takes time. She’s smart, though. Smartest dog I’ve had, and I’ve had plenty.”
Max absently reached back and scratched Trixie behind the ears. She loved dogs, and the only thing she regretted about her career—and all the travel it entailed—was that she couldn’t have her own pup. But it wouldn’t be fair to the animal to be alone so much, or left with neighbors when Max was out of town.
While she petted Trixie with one hand, she marked off on her map where Chuck said they’d searched. “Why didn’t you search south of the camp?”
“Like I said, we focused north and east because of the terrain and where the truck was parked. We also covered a mile perimeter from the campsite during the initial search. We had more than a dozen people the three days after we were notified—though we only had a couple hours each day where we could be out.”
“So the perimeter was defined based on information those three boys from Cheyenne gave you.”
He hesitated. “You sound suspicious.”
“I am.”
“Do you think Scott was murdered?”
“No,” she said immediately, but then she wondered. “It would explain a lot, but at the same time, eventually the body will be discovered, and if it’s clear he was murdered, a more thorough investigation would put those three under more scrutiny. But intent to kill is not the same thing as being responsible for a death. What if there was an accident and some reason the boys didn’t want to admit to it?”
“Like if they had been drinking? Doing drugs?”
She nodded. “Maybe. Scott dies and they fear getting in trouble, so they leave him and make up a story about how he left without them.”
“One of my first encounters with a corpse was finding a pair of young lovers who’d dropped acid about a hundred miles north of here. They hadn’t brought any provisions, no sleeping bags. They were so wasted, they wandered off and we found them buried in leaves. Died of exposure in below-freezing temperatures. Even in the summer, it gets really cold at the higher elevations when the sun goes down.”
Tim said, “Ann and I were up here during the initial search. Chuck and his team covered more ground than anyone thought possible, considering the storm. If there was an accident, it wasn’t at the campground.”
That validated Max’s theory. “Maybe,” she said cautiously, not wanting to offend the three, “you were searching in the wrong place.”
Chuck turned off the winding paved road onto a well-packed dirt and gravel road. Any remaining snow was deep in crevices and under trees, where little sunlight reached, but it looked like spring was fully blooming in the Rocky Mountains. They bounced around in the cab more than Max’s stomach liked, so she put her map away and focused on the terrain.
About a mile later, Chuck pulled over in a clearing. There were deep rivets from other vehicles that had come and gone, and several marked paths. “This is where the boys parked,” he said. “It’s a two-mile hike to the campground. We’ve covered everything around this area both six months ago and this past week.”