But when Dani was sixteen, a miscarriage made her mom depressed, and then she started getting headaches. And Wade, whose self-destructive nature took over, stopped taking the kids fishing and camping and started coming home drunk—from parties he used to call his “public responsibilities,” but then seemed to turn into all the time. Once he totaled his car and another time he got into a public fight with one of his officers right in the middle of town. He went into the program—even went away once for a month—but then he started using stronger stuff, which only came out much later, and which came to a head when he pilfered a couple of hundred OxyContin tablets from his own police evidence locker. By then it had all fallen apart for him and he was forced to resign. Her mother grew worse and worse, and Dani took a semester off to care for her. But in Dani’s sophomore year, Judy just suddenly seemed to give up and died. Complications from the disease, it was called. Her mom was taking her own share of medication back then, and Wade was mostly at his worst, and not much of a caregiver. But Dani still always pictured her in her mind, smiling and pretty, braiding Dani’s long, curly hair and singing “Sweet Baby James” and John Denver songs with her, with those Colorado blue eyes. Dani even tattooed an “Ai,” the Chinese symbol for love, on her shoulder, with her mother’s initials.
So maybe Dani did always blame Wade a bit for her demise. Or at least, for not helping. Dani was in the process of transferring back to Boulder when her mom just fell off a cliff. For years Dani blamed herself for not having been there at the end. The suddenness had taken everyone by surprise. Wade may not have actually killed her; Dani had finally come to terms with that. But his own problems surely sapped the strength out of her and helped her to decline.
Dani drove along the river to the spot at the Cradle where Trey was found, which was now blocked off by tape with a Pitkin County police van parked there. She continued down about a half mile to a spot they called the Funnel, where the various currents fed into a narrow channel, about a quarter mile up from the ford, where the rapids tour ended.
She parked in a small turnout on the side of the road. She knew the narrow pathway that led down to the river, which this far down was wider than upstream, but not much more than a rocky, shallow bed on each side. She knew this river like the back of her hand. She knew the currents, where they fed. As a kid, she had once lost a backpack in the current all the way back above the Falls, and weeks later she found where it had ended up.
At the Funnel. Here.
Dani climbed down through the brush and onto the shoreline. The alluvial currents here had widened out a deep gorge in the aspens and firs. She knew it was kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. Without even knowing if the needle was even hidden here. She saw a beer can glinting among the rocks. A flip-flop sandal was nearby, which must have slipped off someone’s foot. A waterlogged Penn tennis ball. She kicked over an empty can of beans, stepping over the small, loose rocks. Because of the depth, the water color changed here from a clear blue and white to a musty gray.
It wasn’t around.
She kneeled in the shallow bed, disappointed. It was kind of a long shot anyway. If it had washed down, she was pretty certain it would have ended up here.
She scanned the opposite side before going back up to her car.
Something glinted. Nothing more than a fleck of color amid the rocks on the shoals. Across the stream.
White.
The river was shallow here and easy to ford. Except for the narrow channel in the middle that was still about two feet deep where you could still traverse a raft. Dani went in in her shorts and Tevas and made her way across. About thirty yards. Her sandals gripped the silty river floor, water rushing by her knees. The current was mild here. No threat of being swept away. Not like what she had to go through to get to Trey.
She crossed toward the object she’d seen, which was nestled amid the rocks.
Whatever hope she had that she’d found something faded.
All it turned out to be was just a white plastic drink container. She bent down, picked it up and tossed it farther off the riverbed into the brush. Probably someone’s water container that had fallen overboard. It could have been sitting here for months.
Maybe Wade was right. It was possible Trey had been just riding recklessly and hit his head against a rock. It’s possible he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Maybe Rooster did just make it all up—for the attention. To be the big shot. Anyway, it was now all kind of moot. Both Trey and Ron were gone. She’d never know, though something still inside her said—
Something farther along the shoreline caught her eye. Half submerged amid the vegetation along the shore. She went over, the black composite almost completely blending in with the gunmetal water and dark green vines.
She picked it up by the strap. It was a little scuffed, beaten up from its ride downstream, bouncing off rock after rock.
Her heart started to race.
Trey’s helmet.
But it wasn’t dented. Dented in the way it would have been if its wearer had sustained blunt-force trauma to the head.
Which had to mean one thing. That it hadn’t been on Trey at the time he sustained his injury. If he’d cracked it with enough force to kill him you would have surely been able to see it. Holding the black helmet, Dani knew that had to mean something, right?
Her blood surged. So she wasn’t wrong, at least, not about that part. Trey had been wearing it.
So maybe she wasn’t so wrong about all the rest of it, either.
CHAPTER TEN
Back in her car, following the river back upstream, she searched for the spot above the lower Cradle where she had found Trey’s body.
The road narrowed there, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, with dense brush crowding in from both sides. The aspens and pines were so tall here Dani could barely see the sky. She came up to the clearing where the rescue vehicles converged when they pulled Trey out. It hadn’t rained since, and tire tracks and footprints were still visible all over the dirt road.
Dani heard the roar of the river slashing against the rocks below.
It was clear, even in just Class Two or Three rapids, that Trey couldn’t have just nested to a stop here. His raft must have been carried down from farther upstream and come to rest in the eddy. She heard Rooster saying, You didn’t see what I saw. He wasn’t alone. Now she was even more certain he hadn’t been lying.
But just what did that mean?
Had someone been along with him on his run? That wouldn’t be hard to determine. The ranger station would know. But if it was all just a terrible accident, surely that person would have called it in. And if so, they surely wouldn’t have taken such a lethal reprisal against Ron in the balloon.