One Mile Under

Thrill junkie.

He was like that once, too, Wade reflected. Invincible, or he surely thought so. That was back when he was the sheriff in Aspen. Not Carbondale, the little commuting town thirty miles down the road where everyone lived who couldn’t afford to live in Aspen. Shit, he could’ve pretty much run for mayor back then. Or governor. Anything he wanted. He knew all the big celebs—Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith, Goldie Hawn, and all the big CEOs flying in on their Learjets and Citations. Now look at him. Divorced. Twice. Widowed once, though they had been living apart. A couple of stints in detox. Running a police force one-tenth the size of what he used to, and lucky to have the damn job at that. Looking a whole lot older than his fifty-seven years. Basically broke. Now he was what, the mayor of the sober community here in town? Younger, more ambitious men all waiting in line for him to retire.

Then there was Kyle. His boy from Wade’s first marriage. Came back from Afghanistan missing a leg and an arm, and his brain rattling around in his head like loose change. What did they expect him to do in life? And who was going to take care of him? His mom was down in Florida somewhere. Working on a cruise ship, last he heard. Kyle was still rehabbing in a VA hospital in Denver, where he’d been for two years. Learning to eat peas with that new bionic hand they’ve given him. Basically the same age as this kid, Trey.

Kyle had maybe five, six more months and then he was out. Who was going to watch out for him? What with the government cutting back benefits every day, and all the mess with the VA hospitals. Wade went down once a week to see him. Someone was going to have to help him in life. Pay for the kind of van to get him around, or retrofit his house to make it easy to live there. And all those bloody therapists …

“Wade.”

Dave Warrick came up from behind and put a hand on Wade’s shoulder. “Just letting you know, I closed down the river to traffic for the next few days. Until we get this fully figured out. I called into Denver.” The Roaring Fork was in a state park. “Parks Service’ll be sending someone around just to make sure.”

Dave ran the Pitkin County sheriff’s force in Aspen now. Wade’s old position. They had jurisdiction here. He was nice enough. Wasn’t his fault his old boss had been mixing bourbon and OxyContin he’d stolen from his own evidence locker. That had taken every friend Wade had left to get behind him. Not to mention every dollar too.

Wade agreed. “Seems like the right move, Dave.”

“I think you know the family, don’t you?”

“His wife’s.” Wade nodded. “He was from up north somewhere, I think. Maybe from around Greeley.”

“I took a statement from Dani. She said the kid was quite the rider.”

Wade shrugged. “Who knows what he was trying to do. Flips, three-sixties. These kids all watch Shaun White and think they’re him, minus the red hair. Doesn’t matter what they’re riding.”

“I hear you. So you want me to go with you? To see his wife. These things are never easy. Never hurts to have someone along.”

“Thanks.” Dave never used his new position to make Wade feel smaller than he was. “But after twelve years in AA, telling people how their life is about to come tumbling down on them, I think that’s one job I’m equipped to do these days.”

“Well, let me know if I can help.” They stood on the rock, looking. “Just seems like a big fat waste of a life to me.” The Aspen police chief shook his head. “Funny, isn’t it?”

“What?”

Warrick shrugged. “How it was Dani that found him …?”

“Chief, can you come over here …” One of the troopers interrupted them. Dave and Wade both turned, but it was Warrick they were calling. They were getting set to load the body into the van.

“As I said, let me know if I can help, okay …” Dave patted Wade on the shoulder. “I’ll be in touch when we have something back from medical.”

“Thanks.”

Funny … What was funny was that for twenty years, Wade felt like his life was running down his own set of rapids. Lying to everybody. Hiding what he’d done. Losing his wife. Then his town. Knowing one will capsize you in the end, just like Trey here.

Charles Alan Watkins III. Sounds like some judge somewhere. Wade watched them load the body. You can only make it through so long, right? Riding through life that way. Without a helmet. That’s the truth.

Wade scratched his head and headed back to his car.

He knew sure as anything, one time he wouldn’t make it out of those rapids, either.

CHAPTER FOUR

There was a kind of memorial gathering that night at the Black Nugget, the bar in Carbondale where a lot of the river riders and top skiers hung out. A few of them had already gone over to the house and paid their respects to Allie. No one could believe what happened: the bottom of the Cradle getting the best of someone like Trey. Everyone agreed that it had to have happened farther upstream, like at the Falls or Slingshot, and the current carried him down. That was the only way anyone could see it.

Allie told a few people that her husband had gone out the previous night. A friend of his from the shop was getting married and a bunch of the guys took him to Justice Snow’s, a bar in Aspen, for shooters and kamikazes. Apparently he made it back home around midnight. Allie said maybe he was a little tipsy when he came to bed, but in the morning he was up at half past six pumped to catch a run or two before work. All that new water out there, two thousand cubic feet per second. “Be back before nine, hon,” he said and gave her a kiss.

Same ol’ Trey.

At the bar, a bunch of them were still sitting around after nine P.M., going through their favorite Trey stories. His good friend Rudy was there, whom he’d ski off-terrain with for years. And John Booth, a paragliding instructor and sometime river guide, and his girlfriend, Simone. Alexi, a ski rep, and couple of others sat around, everyone trading stories and pitching in for beers. Dani was on her third Fat Tire. Rudy was telling one how he and Trey were once skiing out of bounds behind Highlands, trying to map out some new terrain for a Warren Miller film.

“The snow was pretty loose back there. The mountain had issued an avalanche alert, but Trey said the powder seemed pretty firm. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘Roots, you and I can outski whatever comes down that mountain. Look at it,’ he said, talking about all the fresh powder. ‘It’s once-a-season quality, Roots. One hundred percent pure.’”

“That was Trey,” said Alexi, lifting his drink.

“That was Trey, pre-Allie,” John Booth clarified.

“Totally pre-Allie,” Dani said. “Post-Allie, Trey wouldn’t even cut to the front of a lift line.”

“You got that right,” John’s girlfriend, Simone, said.

“So we’re zooming down this fall line,” Rudy went on, “and Trey’s ripping down the slope at full speed, eight feet of air at a time. I’m just doing my best to keep up, maybe twenty yards behind. And suddenly the ground shakes and I hear this rumble … I look behind and it’s this wall of white coming at me from the summit. I didn’t even have a second to react. Only to think to myself, Okay, Roots, this is the day that you die! It just slammed into me and took me away. I figured I’m gonna hit some tree at a hundred miles per hour or be buried under ten feet of snow, and Trey and I are goners. Finally it stops. I’m completely covered up. Not a sound. No one around. I don’t even know which way is up. I’m yelling, trying to make an air pocket around me and I got my GPS, but who knows if Trey’s got his. Or if he’s in the same boat. I’m pretty scared, but I’m also so f-ing mad at him for dragging me down there. I still had one of my poles and I’m jamming it in the direction I think up is, screaming holy hell, trying to show anyone around I was there.

“Suddenly, I hear someone calling my name. ‘Roots. Roots? Are you there?’ Guess who? I’m going, ‘I’m here! I’m right fucking here, you sonovabitch. You’re alive!’ I’m jerking my pole around like this.” Rudy thrust his two arms in all directions.

“So he’s standing right above me. Trey, bless his soul. I’m going, ‘Get me out of here! Get me out!’” The sonovabitch has got to hear me. Then I hear, ‘Listen, dude, I’m sorry to leave you like this, but I gotta meet someone at Starbucks. I’m gonna head back up to the lodge for a bit. Hey, you want a latte, man? I’ll bring one back for you. You like yours with or without froth …?’ I’m screaming, ‘Get me out!’ I start jerking the pole around. I wanted to kill him. Suddenly I break through. Turns out I was only about two feet under. He said he could see my boots the whole time. Who the hell knew …”

“Just be glad that it was Trey you were with and not me,” John Booth said, grinning; “otherwise you’d still be down there.”

“Funny.” Rudy sneered at his friend, taking a swig of beer.

“I actually saw him at Starbucks, just after that,” Alexi, the ski rep, said in his French accent, but with a completely straight face. “He said he left you back there and asked should he go back and dig you out? I said, ‘Aw, what the hell.’ He asked if he should bring you a latte and I told him, ‘Look, don’t go all crazy now …’”

“That was Trey,” Artie, his ski tuner in the shop, said.

They all clinked mugs again.

“It just makes no sense.” John Booth shook his head. “Where this happened. The Falls, maybe. Or even Catapult. Trey could do the Cradle with Petey on his lap.”

“Or why he was out there without a helmet?” Dani said.

“Trey didn’t wear a helmet,” John Booth said. “Off-terrain maybe, or if he was doing tricks.”

“You’re wrong,” Dani said. “I saw him lots of mornings out there. Since Petey was born he damn well did wear one.”

“Anyone find one?” John Booth looked at her. “The rescue team was all over the place out there.”

Dani shrugged. She had waited around to see after she gave her deposition to the police. “No.”

“So there you go. Probably trying a one-eighty or a rollover, or something, and all that water got to him. Maybe his reactions were a little dulled from the night before, who knows? Anyway, here’s to my man.” John raised his mug. “To Charles Alan Watkins the Third.”

“To Trey!” Everyone at the table joined in.

Through the crowd, Dani saw Geoff Davies come in.

Geoff was the owner of Whitewater Adventure, where Dani worked. He was thirty-four, from Australia, had a master’s degree in psychology, and had moved out here from L.A. after a divorce and bought the business. He built it up, with a clothing line and videos and state-of-the-art equipment. He and Dani had been seeing a bit each other for the last few months. Not a big thing, and probably not the smartest. either. Taking up with the boss. But it was only now and then, and Geoff was an upbeat, good-hearted guy, and smart. And anyway it wasn’t like this was some Fortune 500 company and there was a whole corporate hierarchy where it could get around. Whitewater Adventures had eight full-time employees.

“I heard this was where you could lift one up to Trey Watkins?” Geoff came over to the table.

“That it is,” John Booth said. “One more round,” he said, motioning to Skip behind the bar. A few of them had already had four or five, and that was becoming clear. “Sit right down.”

“Thanks.” Geoff grabbed the empty chair next to Dani. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She shrugged back. Though everybody probably already knew, they always kept things cool and gave each other just a friendly kiss on the cheek.

“So how’re you doing?” He gave her an affectionate stroke to her hair, which Dani had tied back in a thick ponytail. He had wiry brown hair and soft, gray eyes.

“Hanging in there. Everyone get back okay after Rich picked them up?”

“Not exactly how we normally like to end our deluxe Roaring Fork River Thrill Experience … But yes. I gave them all a full refund, of course. Not that anyone really wanted it. Up until then they all had a terrific time and they all said you were great. And how you handled it. They even left some tips for you. It just seemed the right thing to do. Especially with the kids in there.”

“I think it was the right thing.” Dani squeezed his thigh under the table. “That was nice.” The new round of beers arrived and they all toasted Trey one more time, Geoff as well. Dani downed a long swig, maybe a quarter of the mug.

“I heard his father’s coming down tomorrow,” Geoff said. “He’s a farmer from up north somewhere.”

Rudy nodded. “Trey always said he came from a small farm. He mentioned once that lately it had fallen on hard times.”

“There’s been a pretty long drought up that way,” John Booth added.

“Two or three years.”

“Sometimes your luck just runs out.” Rudy shook his head, enough beer that he was growing melancholy. “He just hit a rock the wrong way and … Just a freakin’ accident. Could happen to any of us the same way.”

“It wasn’t no accident.” They all heard a voice ring out from behind them.

Everyone looked around. A guy named Ron was at the bar—Rooster, everyone called him, because he had long, straggly hair, a pockmarked face, and a pointy chin. He was a balloon operator for one of the sightseeing companies in Aspen that took tourists up for a view of the valley. Rooster was in his fifties, a heavy drinker, who was always running his mouth off somewhere. No one cared for him much.

“What are you talking about?” Rudy shifted around.

“Just that it wasn’t no accident,” Rooster said again. His eyes were bright and kind of intense, either from the beer or with mischief, and he sat there, looking at them, seeming kind of pleased. “All I’m saying.”

“What do you mean, it ‘wasn’t no accident’?” John Booth said, mocking Rooster’s grammar. “What the hell was it then?”

“Not for me to say.” Rooster shrugged. “Just that he wasn’t alone.”

“Wasn’t alone …” John shook his head and rolled his eyes. “And you know this, how, Rooster …?”

“’Cause I was up there. This morning. Just after light. And I seen it. I seen what happened.”

There was silence. “You got something on your mind, Rooster, better let it rip,” said Rudy, shifting around in his chair.

For a moment, Rooster puffed out his chest like he was about to. The guy was always a weird duck. He always said he’d been a roadie for the rock group Boston; clearly they’d invited him to the party room one too many times. He didn’t have a whole lot of friends and mostly hung out alone. Dani had seen him drunk once or twice and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He’d been let go from his job by the owner of the tour company, but one of the operators had quit and it was summer, so apparently he was back on a temporary basis. Mostly, she just felt sorry for him.

“We’re waiting, dude …” Rudy tapped his finger. Rudy was large and had had a couple, and was known to have a short fuse. It had been a long day, and they had all lost a friend. It wouldn’t take much for him to let it go. “Now would be the time …”

“All I’m saying is, you didn’t see what I saw.” Ron backed down. He glanced around, looking for a way to get himself out of trouble. “He just wasn’t alone out there, that’s all.” He sat there, bouncing a leg against the barstool, as if thinking, maybe this wasn’t the smartest thing.

“You’re saying someone did this? So who was with him?” John Booth pressed.

Rooster saw that he was sliding headfirst into a mess. He cleared his throat, and stammered a second, evading the question.

“Ron …?” Dani pitched in, seeing he had gotten all nervous. “It’s okay. What did you see …?”

“Nothing,” Rooster finally said. His eyes hung, seeming both shot down and defeated, and they seemed to settle on Dani’s with a kind of contrite, regretful smile. “Nothing more to say.” He raised his glass to Rudy and John. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“C’mon, Rudy, that’s the end of it …” John Booth pulled his friend back around by the arm. “Just Rooster being Rooster. Sit back down and have a wing. We’ve all had a bunch to drink.”

“I ain’t drunk,” Rooster chimed in again. “Been clean for fifteen days now. It’s ginger ale. See …?” He held up his drink. “Anyway—to your friend.” He tilted his glass.

“To Trey …” Rudy nodded grudgingly, turning back around. Under his breath, he muttered, “Asshole.”

“I think you’re right,” Dani said to Geoff, sensing the shift in the mood. “Time for me to move along.” She went into her jeans pocket and came out with a couple of twenties.

“No way,” John Booth and Alexi seemed to say as one. They pushed her money back. “Your money’s not good here. Not after what you had to do today.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“You want to stay with me?” Geoff asked. “It’s a long way back.”

“I’m fine,” she said. She put her hand lightly on his thigh and smiled. “Thanks. But don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Besides, Blu will get me back.” Blu was her three-year-old yellow Lab, who went with Dani everywhere. She stood up and said, “It’s a work night, everyone, or at least it is for somebody out there … Time for me to get back home.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Blu got up from snoozing in the back as Dani climbed into her Subaru wagon. “C’mon, Blu, baby …” He stepped up to front, wagging his tail happily. “You’re shotgun, dude. Time to get me back home.”

Carbondale was thirty miles northwest up Route 82, and there were always a bunch of cops out at night. And Geoff was right, she’d probably had had one more than she should. She turned on a CD, a local cover band named Wet Spring. She made the turn onto Main and then went on through the rotary, heading onto 82. She settled in for the forty-minute ride.

Sure, accidents always happened, she knew. And that was likely what it was. John Booth was probably right, he could have been trying out some old spins or flips. He could have been going down backward. There was so much beautiful water, he could have easily hit his head a million ways, with no helmet. You pitch into a rock, or get sucked under by an eddy or thrown by a hole. Anything could happen on the river. They all knew the risks. Trey more than any of them.

Dani sighed. “What did it really matter anyway, right, Blu?” How Trey died. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. It’s a lesson for them all. He was dead.

That’s all.

Around the turnoff for Snowmass, she winced at the thought of Allie and Petey having to suddenly go it alone. To have their world ripped from them. Just like that. Like soldiers in the war, talking one minute, who drive over an IED. One day you’ve got a beautiful family and the sky is blue and the whitewater is rushing. The next day you’re gone.

Her mind flashed back to Rooster: You didn’t see what I saw, that’s all.

That Ron was a hard one to like. An even harder one to put stock in and believe. But what he had said seemed to stay with Dani. It wasn’t no accident?

Well, if it wasn’t an accident, what the hell was it then? Was there another rider out there? Did someone else ram into him, and cause him to spill? Or did someone come out from the shore? There was that rock bed down there by the Cradle.

She tried to imagine Rooster in the air gliding by. Then she let out a sigh of disappointment, suddenly realizing he was totally full of shit. There was no way to see the Slaughterhouse Falls run from anywhere near where the balloons went up in Aspen. Even on a perfect day like yesterday. It was at least a couple of miles away. Whoever had said it was right: the guy was basically a quarter short of a dollar between the ears. And always starting trouble.

Rooster being Rooster again.

That was all.

Wet Spring was singing their hit, “Misunderstood,” which she’d seen them do a couple of times, and Dani couldn’t stop herself from singing along. Blu had his front paws on the divider and his hind legs in the backseat.

From there it was another fifteen minutes to Carbondale. She pulled off Route 82 and into town, which mostly dark now—nothing much happening here after ten P.M.—and turned onto Colorado Street and into her apartment complex: eight attached units facing Mount Sopris. She shared it with Patti, who worked at the yoga clinic, but Patti was away in L.A. doing some certification seminar. Her neighbor’s calico cat, Cici, was slinking out on the lawn. She never strayed very far and sometimes walked along the fence that separated their decks when Dani was drinking her morning coffee or doing her sun salutations. And who, defying conventional wisdom, Blu seemed to get along with rather well.

“Hey, baby.” Dani bent down and picked her up. Cici was purring. “How was your day? Mine was pretty terrible.”

The door opened and Dawn stuck her head out. “Oh, Dani, sorry, she must’ve snuck out. We’ve been calling her.”

“No worries,” Dani said, handing the cat over. “I never mind a visit from my friend.”

“We’ve got a zin open.” Dawn was a massage therapist who worked at the St. Regis, and her boyfriend, Jerry, was a chef at the hotel, too. “You and Blu want to come over? Watch Jon Stewart?”

“Thanks,” Dani said, “but I’ve had enough. Rough day.”

“I know. We heard. So horrible. Did you know him?”

Dani shrugged, opening the door for Blu to go inside. “A little. More a while back than now.”

“You’re sure you don’t want that glass of wine? It’s a good one.”

“Thanks, Dawn. I think I’ll just crash. We’ll do it another time.”

“I understand.” Dawn smiled. “Let me know if we can do anything for you, okay?”

“Thanks, doll. I will,” Dani said back.

Inside, she peeled off the shell she’d had on since this morning and stepped out of her jeans. She threw herself down on the couch and took out the scrunchie from her ponytail and shook out her hair. She massaged her neck a little and blew out a weary blast of air.

Yes. Rough day.

She got up to make herself a cup of tea. Her cell phone vibrated on the counter. Part of her felt like she didn’t even want to look who it was. She already knew who it was anyway. Geoff, making sure she’d made it home. He was a gentleman like that. Part of her just wanted to take a long shower and go to bed and wake up and better things would happen tomorrow. She listened to the buzzing a third time.

She looked at the screen and saw a name she couldn’t place at first. Ronald Kessler.

Who the hell was that? Probably some marketing call. She was about to just let it go to voice mail when curiosity got the better of her and she just answered. “Hello?”

“Dani?”

By the time she put it together who it was he’d already told her. “It’s Ron.”

“Ron?”

“Rooster.”

“Jesus, Rooster … Ron, how’d you get my number?”

“I had it once. Remember, you recommended some customers to us a year or two back.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” It struck her as a little creepy that Rooster had kept her in his phone all this time. “Listen, Ron, it’s a little late and I’m just getting ready—” There was a lot of noise in the background.

“I know it’s late, Dani. I don’t mean to bother you,” he said. “There was just something I had to say. About what happened back there at the bar.”

“Look, we all had a little too much to drink …” In a weird way Dani always had a soft spot for Rooster. In the same way you might feel sorry for a stray cat. The guy was an outcast. But he didn’t mean anybody harm. John Booth was probably right, he’d just taken one too many hits of something back in the day. “But Rudy was right, Ron. Trey had a wife and kid, and you can’t just go around riling people up making accusations that you can’t support.”

“I wasn’t making anything up. And I wasn’t lying. About what I said I saw out there this morning.”

He hesitated just like he had at the bar. She put on the kettle for her tea.

“Ron, if you’ve got something to say, just say it. Or else take it to Chief Dunn.” She knew Rooster knew Wade. Wade was once his sponsor in AA, and that didn’t go so well. Rooster had slipped several times and had a reputation of not being honest in the program. “And just so we’re real here, you can’t even see that part of the river from where the balloons go up. You know that better than anyone.”