Chapter Eight

“We can take this into evidence, but without more context, there’s not a lot we can do.” Sheriff Walker faced Tammy and Vince across his neat desk Sunday morning, the letter and postcard side by side on the almost-empty expanse of oak. “Unfortunately, it’s not unusual for twisted people to prey on the families of crime victims this way.”

“We don’t know that Valerie’s disappearance was a crime.” Vince flushed when Travis turned to look at him.

“That’s true,” Travis said. “But it’s a crime to pretend to be someone else for the purpose of extorting money or other compensation.”

“The letter writer hasn’t asked for anything,” Tammy said.

“Not yet.” Travis considered the letters once more. “If you receive any other correspondence like this, handle it as little as possible. We might be able to recover prints or DNA.”

They promised to keep the sheriff informed of any developments and left his office. Outside, on the sidewalk, Vince pulled out his keys. “I have to go,” he said. “I promised my parents I’d have lunch with them.”

“Before you go, there’s something I need to say.” Tammy had been rehearsing this little speech all morning, and she needed to get it out before she lost nerve.

He stopped and turned to face her, expression wary.

“You asked me last night if I’m going to write about this,” she said.

“Have you changed your mind?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not unless you want me to. If you think it will help us find who did this, I will.”

“No. The last thing I want right now is more publicity. It draws out the scammers.”

“I’m your friend, Vince,” she said. “First. Reporter, second. I want to make sure you understand that. I want you to feel free to talk to me without fear of what you say ending up in the paper.” Having him believe anything other than that hurt more than she wanted to admit.

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

“Good. I wanted to make sure you knew that.”

Embarrassed now, she turned and led the way down the sidewalk toward the lot where they had parked their vehicles. They hadn’t gone far before she spotted a familiar figure. “Hey, Mitch.” She waved.

Her brother stopped and waited for her to catch up. She turned back to Vince. “Vince, this is my brother, Mitch. Mitch, this is Vince Shepherd.”

The two men shook hands. “How’s it going?” Vince asked.

“I’m headed over to Riverside Condos.” Mitch glanced at Tammy. “Elisabeth signed a lease on an empty unit there, and I want to make sure there’s no problem with the paperwork.”

“Vince lives at Riverside,” Tammy said.

Mitch grinned. “Then you’ll see me around. At least, I hope you will.”

“Mitch is so gone on his new client,” Tammy said.

“Elisabeth is a special person,” Mitch said. He checked his watch. “Gotta run. Nice to meet you, Vince.”

Mitch loped away. They were at their cars now; Tammy turned to Vince. “Let me know if anything else happens,” she said. “Because I’m your friend. Not because I’m a reporter.”

He took a step back, hands in his pockets. “Thanks. Um, maybe we could have dinner later.”

She fought back a grin. “I’d like that.”

“Just...as friends,” he added.

“Sure.” It wasn’t all she wanted, but it would do. For now.

A S A ROOKIE with just a few months of search and rescue experience under his belt, Vince saw every call as a new challenge. Though veterans might approach another auto accident or fallen hiker as the type of incident they had competently dealt with dozens of times before, Vince’s mind raced with a review of everything he had learned about the protocol for this type of emergency, and the awareness that one misstep could potentially jeopardize someone’s life.

No one was looking at their mission Tuesday evening as routine, however. Rescuers lined the road above Carson Canyon and followed the beam of a handheld spotlight until it came to rest on a pickup truck snagged in an almost-vertical position on the sharply sloping canyon wall. The truck’s front end was smashed, the windshield shattered, the back bumper and half the rear-cargo area extending out into the darkness beyond—a canyon that was easily a hundred yards deep. “It looks like the front axle is snagged over that boulder.” Danny lowered the binoculars he had been using to survey the scene and handed them to Tony. “See what you think.”

“I don’t see anything to secure chains to,” Ryan said. “How are we going to stabilize the wreck enough to make it safe for us to go down there?”

“Shine that light into the cab,” Tony said.

Grace, who was holding the light, shifted the beam to illuminate the cab.

“Looks like at least two people in the vehicle,” Tony said. “Still secured by seat belts. They’re not moving, so they’re either dead or unconscious.”

“We need to get a wrecker out here,” Caleb said. “They could hook onto the frame with chains and it wouldn’t go anywhere.”

“One of us will have to climb down and hook it up,” Eldon said. “We’ve done it before.”

“We’ve done it before,” Ryan said, “but not to a vehicle in that kind of precarious position.”

“And not in the dark.”

“Let’s get some lights out here,” Danny said. He took out his phone. “I’m going to call for a wrecker. But I want you to start rigging for the rescue. Approach it as if we don’t have a wrecker available. You need to secure the vehicle, get the rescuers down safely, and lift out the driver and passenger.”

“See if a helicopter is available,” Sheri said. “It might be easier to lift the victims out by air than to try to drag them up this steep slope.”

Danny acknowledged this and spoke into his phone. Ryan turned to Vince. “Come help us with the rigging.”

“Could I help?” Bethany spoke up.

“Have you done any climbing training yet?” Ryan asked.

“Not yet.”

“Then it’s probably better that you help with setting up the portable work lights. Everything will make more sense to you after you’ve got a little more training under your belt.”

“Oh, uh, sure.” She gave a wobbly smile and hurried away.

Ryan smirked. “Don’t say anything,” Vince warned. He wasn’t in the mood for teasing—no matter how good natured—over the new girl’s infatuation with him.

Ryan held up his hands. “I didn’t say a thing.”

Ryan, Vince and several others set to work constructing the intricate series of ropes, chains, anchors, pulleys, knots, brake bars, carabiners and other hardware to construct a spiderweb of lines that would enable volunteers to travel safely up and down the steep slope.

Two trucks from the highway department pulled up with a bank of work lights that did a better job of illuminating the accident scene. Close on their heels, Bud O’Brien arrived with his largest wrecker, which featured a long boom that could extend over the canyon. A portly man in his late fifties with a wad of chewing tobacco puffing out one cheek, Bud peered over the edge at the smashed truck. “I can get it out of there,” he said. “But one of you will have to hook it up.”

Danny delegated Ryan and Eldon to make the initial climb down. Once the vehicle was secure, Tony and Sheri would follow, with Caleb and Vince on standby if they needed more assistance. “We’ll need to package the victims for transport on the helicopter flying in from Delta. The chopper will set them down in the road, and we’ll transfer to an ambulance.”

“Any response from the truck?” Vince asked.

“Nothing,” Danny said. “I tried hailing them and got no reply. I thought I saw movement earlier, but it’s difficult from this distance to be sure.” He looked past Vince. “I think Bud has the wrecker in place now.” He raised his voice. “All right, everybody. Let’s do this!”

Vince positioned himself across from Caleb to monitor the rigging as first Ryan, then Eldon descended. He found himself holding his breath as Ryan neared the vehicle. One false move might send the truck plummeting the rest of the way into the canyon. From here, he couldn’t see the people inside. Maybe it was a good thing they were unconscious, since that made it less likely they would move about and possibly dislodge the vehicle.

With Ryan in place just above and behind the truck, Eldon started his descent. Vince watched carefully, trying to absorb everything. Maybe one day he would be the one setting the rigging or even making the descent. He had a little experience climbing, though nowhere near the training Sherri, Ryan and some of the others had completed in high-angle rescue.

When Eldon had almost reached Ryan, Danny signaled to Bud, who began lowering the heavy cable and hook from the boom, which was extended out over the canyon. Eldon snagged the hook, then prepared to crawl beneath the truck.

Bud radioed down. “Be sure to attach that to the frame, not the axle.”

“Understood,” Eldon said. “That truck better not slip and take me with it.”

“We’ve got you,” Caleb called over the radio. Eldon and Ryan were both attached to safety lines tethered to anchors at the top of the cliff.

A cheer rose up when Eldon emerged from beneath the truck, thumbs up. Then he and Ryan approached the truck’s cab, one on either side. They had to hold on to the vehicle in order to balance on the narrow ledge. Ryan cleared away broken glass and leaned into the driver’s side of the vehicle. A moment later he leaned out again. “A driver and one passenger. The driver is unconscious, lacerations on his head and face. The passenger is female. No pulse. We’re going to need the Jaws down here to get them out.”

The mood among the volunteers sobered at the news that the passenger was dead, but they set to work securing the hydraulic extractor, more commonly known as the Jaws of Life, for cutting into the truck to make it easier to free the driver and passenger. They attached the tool to a line, and Tony and Sheri took it down when they descended.

“This is the scariest thing I’ve seen,” Bethany said as she and Vince watched their fellow volunteers work on cutting the truck cab apart. “One slip and the whole truck might go over, and everyone down there with it.”

“Part of me is glad I’m not down there,” Vince said. “But it’s hard to be up here too, wishing I could do more to help.”

“Somebody has to be up here, making sure nothing goes wrong with the rigging,” she said.

“You’re right.” He glanced below again as Tony and Eldon eased the driver from the truck cab onto a backboard. “I’ll be glad when everyone is up top safely.”

“I hear you.”

Someone called to Bethany, and she moved away. Vince relaxed a little. Bethany was nice, but her obvious interest in him made him uncomfortable. She hadn’t said or done anything out of line, but every time he turned around, she was either standing next to him or watching from across the room. Others besides Ryan had noticed. He didn’t want to be rude to her, but he wished she would back off a little.

He focused again on the scene below. The volunteers fitted the driver with a helmet, neck brace and an oxygen mask and strapped him into a litter. They had a radio conversation with Danny, who, in addition to being the search and rescue captain, was also a registered nurse.

A heavy throb signaled the arrival of the rescue helicopter. The beam from its searchlight had them shielding their eyes from the glare. The chopper swept in, then hovered over the crash site and lowered a cable. The team below had affixed lines to the litter and attached these to the cable from the helicopter. At a signal from Tony, the helicopter rose and ferried the injured man to the middle of the closed road, where another team of volunteers helped lower the litter to the ground, unfastened it from the cable and carried it to a waiting ambulance.

The helicopter headed for the canyon again, this time to retrieve the black bag containing the body of the passenger. This second transfer accomplished, the volunteers collected their gear and ascended, one at a time, up the canyon walls. Vince, Caleb and Chris monitored the climbers. As soon as everyone was up top and out of their climbing harnesses, they began the tedious chore of disassembling all the rigging and putting everything neatly away, ready to be used in the next emergency.

“How did the passenger die?” Caleb asked Tony as they disconnected various pieces of hardware from the climbing ropes they had used to assemble the rigging.

“Can’t say for sure,” Tony said. “But maybe a broken neck. The driver had a head injury. I think he may have banged his head into the window. Everything in the vehicle was thrown around. I think it was a pretty violent descent.”

Vince shuddered, imagining. This was the first call where the real threat of danger had superseded the adrenaline rush of helping someone out under challenging conditions. Today, there had been a real threat of harm to everyone involved. His worries over a couple of annoying notes seem petty in contrast.

T HE PASS WAS closed by the time Tammy arrived. She had to park half a mile from the accident scene and hike up the road in the dark, past the line of cars waiting to get over the pass when it reopened, then past parked vehicles belonging to search and rescue volunteers, highway department employees and local law enforcement.

The accident site was lit up like a movie set, halogen lights on tall stands ringing a section of roadside and shining down into the canyon. Tammy stopped to take a picture, struck by the contrast of the bright lights and the shadowy cliffs. She was tucking her camera away when someone brushed past her. A slim, dark figure was running down the mountain, away from the accident. Tammy stared after the woman—she was sure it was a woman, though she had seen the figure for only a few seconds. Nothing about her was familiar, though.

She moved closer. Deputy Shane Ellis, who was standing beside his patrol vehicle, watching the search and rescue team work, waved in greeting. Tammy took out her camera once more and moved closer, in time to get a shot of volunteer Ryan Welch begin his descent into the canyon. She took a few more photographs of other volunteers. She didn’t see Vince, but he would be easy to miss in the crowd with so many people milling around in the darkness.

She joined Shane by the sheriff’s department SUV. Shane—a former professional baseball player who had surprised everyone by becoming a sheriff’s deputy—nodded at her. “Good to see the local press reporting the latest news,” he said.

She took out a notebook and pen. “What happened here?” she asked.

“It looks like a pickup truck came around that curve with too much speed.” He pointed ahead of them, to a sharp curve on the highway. “He slid on loose gravel and went over the edge. The canyon walls are really steep in this section, and he must have had quite a ride. But he got lucky. The undercarriage of the vehicle hung up on a boulder.”

“The driver was a male.”

“We don’t know for sure. And there appears to be at least one passenger. But until search and rescue takes a look, I don’t have any more information.”

She scribbled notes she hoped she would be able to read when she sat down tomorrow to write the story. “I saw Ryan Welch descending into the canyon,” she said.

“He and Eldon Ramsey are going down to stabilize the vehicle so rescuers can free the people inside the truck and assess their injuries,” Shane said. “Bud O’Brien has his biggest wrecker out for the job.”

The boom wrecker, lit up by the spotlights, would make an excellent shot for the paper. And Bud might like to have one to hang in his office. She started to move closer to take more photographs when Shane’s next words stopped her. “I heard you got a note that was supposedly from Vince Shepherd’s long-lost sister.”

“I turned it into the sheriff,” she said. “Do you know if he’s learned anything more about whoever wrote it?”

“I don’t think so,” Shane said.

“Then I don’t know any more than you do.” She pushed away from the side of the SUV. “I’m going to get more photographs and talk to some of the rescuers.”

She fired off a dozen more pictures, then climbed onto a boulder, which gave her a birds-eye view into the canyon. A couple of scraggly trees partially blocked her view of the wrecked truck, but she could see enough to feel a little queasy at the prospect of anyone trying to work around the smashed-up vehicle.

The loud chop of helicopter rotors drowned out the rumble of the wrecker’s engine and the conversation of the volunteers. The rescue helicopter swept in and hovered on the edge of the canyon, the backwash from the rotors flinging loose gravel at onlookers and whipping back their hair. People tried to shield their eyes, but none of them looked away as a cable slowly lowered from the belly of the chopper. A few tense minutes later, the cable rose again, a litter bearing the figure of a person, wrapped like a mummy. A cheer rose from the crowd when the litter was safely inside.

Moments later, the cable lowered again. This time the trip was faster, as was the return journey. Another litter rose, but this one carried no securely wrapped figure—only a black plastic bag. The body bag meant one of the occupants of the truck hadn’t made it.

Tammy moved in to speak with SAR Captain Danny Irwin. “Was there just the one fatality?” she asked.

“Yes. The passenger,” Danny said “But the driver—a man—has a good chance of making it.”

“Do we know who they are?” she asked.

Danny met her gaze. “We checked for ID, but I can’t reveal that until their families are notified.”

“Just tell me if they’re locals,” she said.

“They are not,” he said.

Some of the tension that had been building since she had gotten the call about the accident lessened. The fatality was a tragedy, but not as wrenching as if it had been someone she knew. “What can you tell me about the rescue efforts?” she asked.

Danny straightened. “This was a highly technical rescue that put our training to the test,” he said. “The truck was in a dangerous position, and our volunteers risked their lives to stabilize the vehicle and free the driver and passenger from the wreckage. This rescue involved everyone on-site, from those doing the climbing and rendering medical aid, to the volunteers who monitored the rigging, to those who provided backup support. This was an example of the teamwork Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue is known for.”

“I got some great photos,” Tammy said. “Everyone who lives here already knows how lucky we are to have such a great search and rescue group, but this kind of thing reminds them how awesome you all are.”

“We’re not doing it for the glory,” Danny said. “But all that training and equipment isn’t free. Anything that might net a few more donations is welcome.”

Laughter from a group just beyond them distracted her. She looked past him. Was that Vince?

“Looking for someone?” Danny asked.

“Vince Shepherd. Is he here tonight?”

Danny looked around. “Vince is here somewhere.”

“I’m sure I’ll find him.” She hurried away before Danny could ask why she wanted to speak with Vince. Even she wasn’t completely sure of the answer to that question, except that she liked Vince a lot. She wanted to know him better. And she wanted him to like her.

She hadn’t seen him since they had parted company after their interview with the sheriff Sunday morning. He hadn’t followed up on his dinner invitation. She had picked up the phone to text him half a dozen times but had stopped herself from following through on the impulse. She wasn’t going to chase a man who wasn’t interested in her. Whatever happened between them would have to happen in its own time. If it didn’t, well, maybe it wasn’t meant to happen at all. Was that the coward in her, making excuses? Maybe so, but she was reluctant to let go of the notion that a real love should be strong enough to overcome the obstacles life put in its way. If it wasn’t, what was the point? Life was so fragile and fleeting, why risk grabbing hold of something that was even more unreliable?

V INCE SHOVED THE last duffel of supplies into the back of the search and rescue vehicle known as the Beast. Six volunteers had snagged a ride to the scene in the specially outfitted Jeep, but he wasn’t one of them. Instead, he and the rest of the crew had driven their personal vehicles. He had left his truck parked down the road from the accident site.

“I’m parked right behind you.” Grace Wilcox fell into step beside him. Grace had been with the team a few months longer than he had, but he didn’t know much about her, except that she was an environmental scientist and she was dating a new deputy with the sheriff’s department.

“That was an amazing rescue tonight,” he said.

“I’m in awe of people like Sheri and Ryan, who make those dangerous climbs,” Grace said. “And in the dark. I’m literally just learning the ropes, and I don’t ever think I’ll be that skilled and confident.”

“How did you get involved with search and rescue?” he asked.

“I like helping others and making a difference.” She flashed a smile. “And it gets me out of my own head. I could easily turn into a hermit if I didn’t force myself to get out and be part of the community. This is a good way to do that. And I’m learning new skills, getting into shape—I love it. Even when the rescues are hard or dangerous. It’s all important, and how often do any of us get to do something that’s really important?”

“I guess you’re right.” He had joined search and rescue because he remembered how hard they had worked to help find Valerie. Even though they hadn’t succeeded, the memory of those dedicated volunteers had stuck with him. And though he had never mentioned this when he applied to be a volunteer, he had hoped that time spent in remote locations in the mountains might lead to him uncovering a clue about what had happened to Valerie. He had imagined that would mean finding her body, or at least something that had belonged to her. That hadn’t happened, but until the mystery of her disappearance was solved, he would never let go of the hope of finding a solution.

“The new girl seems really nice,” Grace said.

“Bethany? Yeah, she’s nice.”

“She’s shy, like me, but I can tell she’s trying to come out of her shell.”

“I guess so.” Maybe he was reading too much into her attention to him. Some people were just friendly.

“Hey, what is that all over your truck?”

Grace’s steps faltered, then stopped. Vince stopped also, and stared at his truck. The moon had risen, and even in that silvery light, he could tell something was wrong with the paint job on the truck. It was too splotchy. He broke into a run and stopped when his boots crunched on broken glass. Every window in the truck was shattered. The windshield was still holding together, though a spiderweb of cracks spread out from a spot centered over the driver’s side.

“Is that red paint?” Grace spoke from beside him.

Vince crunched toward the truck until he could touch the dark stain across the hood. His finger came away red and sticky. He stared, realizing something was scrawled amid the broken lines of the windshield glass—messy words in the same red paint.

YOU THOUGHT I WAS DEAD, DIDN’T YOU?

“What’s that at the bottom?” Caleb had joined Vince and Grace. “It looks like a check mark.”

“It’s not a check mark,” Vince said. He stared at the two slashes of paint meeting at the bottom. “It’s a V .” V for Valerie .