“He was a friend, Wade.” She kept her eyes fixed on him. “So I’m asking, what did they say? About his blood?”
“About his blood …?” Wade shrugged and rocked back in his seat. “They said nothing, Danielle. Hundred percent clean. I’ll give you that.” There was a pause, one that seemed to carry the weight of the many issues between them, until Wade shook his head. “C’mon, Dani, who the hell would possibly want to kill Trey Watkins? Honestly …”
“I don’t know.”
“And all this because of some news flash from a totally disreputable source that he wasn’t out there alone. Or your belief that he could handle that section of the river in his sleep? Or not finding any helmet?”
Wade stood up and came over, and sat on the edge of his desk. “Listen, Danielle, I get that he was a good friend, but what we have here are two tragic, but separate occurrences. Trey Watkins probably tried some ill-advised maneuver that got his head wrung up against a rock. That balloon, it’ll come out there was something going on. It imploded. That’s what the witnesses saw from the other balloon. Rare as it is, it happens. We get one shred of evidence that says it’s something different, I’ll be the first to jump on it. They got some team from the Parks Service in today and looking around the accident site. And I damn well know they’ll be going over that balloon shell with a fine-tooth comb to find whatever they can, though God knows what that would be as it’s nothing but a burnt-up mess, I’m afraid. How about you let me and Sheriff Warrick do our jobs. For God sakes, you’re as headstrong as your mother. And you saw how that went.”
“Seemed to go fine, Wade …” Dani said, her eyes flashing to the bourbon bottle on the credenza. “God knows how. Till those bottles were full and not empty.”
“Easy to blame me, I admit …” Wade nodded and frowned. “I know we got some unfinished business between us, Danielle, but I was always a friend to you.”
“Just look into it, Wade. That’s all I ask. Please …”
The female duty officer outside came in over an intercom. “Chief, Sheriff Warrick’s on the phone for you.”
Wade nodded and went back to his desk. “With your permission … I gotta take that now.”
Dani got up and headed toward the door. Her eyes went to the credenza behind his chair. “I meant to ask, how’s Kyle doing?”
“He’s fighting. They got him fitted up with a new leg. He’s learning how to get used to it. Thanks.”
“I know I should go and see him more.” She liked Kyle. For a couple of years, when she was twelve, he was like an older brother to her. Before he signed up.
“I’m sure he’d like that, Dani. And listen …” Wade picked up the phone and crooked it in his shoulder and held his finger on the waiting line. “I’m sorry about Trey. But how about you leave the police work to me and Sheriff Warrick. And when the river opens back up in a day or two, I know that’s where you’ll be.”
CHAPTER NINE
It continued to gnaw at her, no matter what Wade said: what Rooster said he saw. So the following morning, the river closed to traffic, Dani went back out along the stretch where she had found Trey’s body. There was a road that followed the river, paved at spots, mostly not, which the whitewater companies used to meet up with their rafts at the end of their runs, and cyclists and campers to head to the many trails and campsites in the park.
As she drove out, she reflected on yesterday’s meeting and her history with Wade. Her mother and her dad were divorced when she was six. He was in his residency at the Aspen Orthopedic Clinic, under a well-known orthopedic surgeon, and her mother, Judy, was the daughter of Tom Barnham, who owned the dry goods store on Galena, then bought the building outright, and then over the years, the one next to it and the one next to that, even becoming the mayor in town for eight years. When Dani was twelve, her mother married Wade, who’d had a few reversals in town, and who became the country sheriff mostly through his father-in-law’s influence. Whatever the glitzy veneer, Aspen was then and has always remained a small town at heart, where insiders matter. Dani recalled them happy at first, and Wade became kind of a sizable personality about town, strutting around alongside the rich and famous in his trademark cowboy hat, python boots, and flashy rings.