One Mile Under

“I can’t take it to Chief Dunn. There are some things between us. I know he thinks I’m a few of bricks short of a wall. Everyone does. And maybe I am. Plus, I wasn’t supposed to be where I was out over the river earlier. I was the only one up today and this nice couple, they handed me a hundred-dollar bill to stay up there a while longer and let it drift. That’s why I’m calling you.”

Dani started to grow impatient. “Me?”

“You can take it to Chief Dunn, Dani. He’d want to know this.”

“Ron, please …” Dani put in the tea bag and poured water into the mug. “It’s been a rough day for everyone. And I’m getting ready for bed. So what is it you saw?”

“All I can say is, your friend wasn’t alone out there on that river.”

“I know, that’s what you’ve been saying. Look—”

“He was wearing a red windbreaker, right?”

That took her by surprise. He was.

“And his kayak was blue …?”

Dani didn’t answer, but her hesitation seemed to give Rooster the sense that he’d struck something with that.

“So I’m not so crazy after all, am I? I didn’t know it at the time, but it had to be him, right?”

“So who was out there with him, Ron?” Dani’s attention was suddenly aroused. “Ron, it’s crazy in there. You still at the Nugget?”

“How about you meet me at the balloon field in the morning.” Near the Aspen Industrial Park where the balloons went up from. “I got a ride at seven and we’ll be all tethered back by eight thirty.”

Dani didn’t have a tour in the morning. And, yes, she could take it to Wade. Whatever Ron claimed he saw. He did have the color of Trey’s kayak right, and what he was wearing.

“Will you be there?”

“All right, I’ll be there,” Dani said. She suddenly felt the hairs on her arms stand on edge. She didn’t even like the idea of being alone with him.

“I know he was a friend of yours, Dani. But you were always a fair person to me. Not like some.”

“Yes. I know that, Ron.”

“So I’ll see you at eight thirty, then. After my ride.”

“Okay.”

“And Dani …”

“Yes.”

“I don’t care what anyone thinks, I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t drunk tonight and I surely wasn’t this morning, either. You believe me, right?”

“Yes, I believe you.” Before she’d left the bar, she checked with Skip, the bartender. To be sure. Rooster had been drinking ginger ale.

CHAPTER SIX

The sun came up slowly over the mountains the next morning, covering the Aspen Valley in streaks of yellow and rose, as the four balloons rose majestically into the sky.

It was a picture-perfect dawn, light dappling the moss, peaks bathed in glinting sunlight. Ron revved the burner with heat, the blue flame shooting into the envelope with a loud hiss, sending the balloon higher.

On board, the four passengers oohed.

“Take a look over there,” Ron directed them. “That’s Aspen Mountain there shrouded in shadow, and as we get up, you can see those two peaks to the west, those are the Maroon Bells, two of over fifty-three mountains in Colorado that are over fourteen thousand feet.”

In his basket was some big-shot financial dude from Connecticut, who was trying to work it out that he and his bundled-up trophy wife could get a private, trying to buy off the launch manager. But it didn’t work out. And a middle-aged couple from Japan, equipped with the requisite camera and one, long fucking lens, Ron admired. At five hundred feet, the four balloons cut a beautiful path across the morning sky, each of them a colorful design of reds, yellows, and greens.

By seven, they were at six hundred feet, the maximum elevation today because of the winds, and Ron cut off the burner, cooling the air.

The view was amazing.

“Wave hi to your mates over there,” Ron said, pointing to the closest companion balloon, maybe a hundred yards away. The Japanese couple waved and the husband aimed his gargantuan lens. The financier and his wife were bickering about where they were going to have lunch later, the burger at Ajax Grille or sushi at Matsuhisa.

Suddenly Ron felt a thud from above. The whole basket rocked back and forth. Everyone looked up. “What the hell was that?” the financial guy asked, his wife clearly a little spooked and not happy in the first place to be sharing the ride with the Japanese couple.

“Don’t know,” Ron said. “Maybe we hit a thermal. It’s kind of like a wind inversion. There’s a breeze today.” He checked out the other balloons to gauge his relative height and noticed he had descended slightly. He opened the valve and shot a blast of flame hissing into the balloon, momentarily lifting it to where it was before. “I think we’re okay. So check out that river to the northwest out there.” He pointed. “That’s—”

The basket wobbled again. He noticed them losing more altitude. Air was definitely leaking from somewhere. He may have to bring this baby down. Then suddenly he heard a tearing sound from above them. The basket lurched again, swaying. Everyone grabbed the sides. Ron shot more heat in, but nothing seemed to be happening. Except that they were losing air.

And altitude.

“Is everything all right?” the financier’s wife asked, looking a little edgy.

Ron looked above and kept pumping as much heat as he could into the envelope. “Don’t really know.”

A call came in on the radio. Steve, in the next balloon. “Ron, you got something wrong on your right side. You’re definitely losing your pitch. Can you see it? You better get yourself down. Pronto.”

“I hear ya,” Ron replied. “Exactly what I’m doing, Sorry, folks, seems to be some kind of malfunction up there. I’m going to have to take her down. Shouldn’t be a problem.” He kept pumping in as much heat as the balloon would take. But still they kept coming down.

“Cole! Cole!” he radioed in to the company attendant at the landing field. “Something’s wrong with the balloon. We’re leaking air. I’m coming back. Now.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said supportively to his passengers, who were now clearly anxious. “We’ve got a malfunction in the canvas. But I’ll get you down. These babies are fit to—”

Suddenly he heard another tear. They all heard it this time. Phhfft. “What the Sam Hill …”

The basket lurched again, this time terrifyingly. Then there was a deep groan emanating from above, hot air leaking out, colder air coming in.

The balloon swaying and collapsing.

Over the radio he heard, “Ron, you’ve got a full-scale implosion going on! I can see it. Get your ass down as fast as you can.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Ron replied. He continued to rev the valves, thrusting as much heat as he could into the envelope, compensating for the cold air rushing in through the tear, to bring them down at a manageable speed.

It wasn’t working.

“What’s going on? What’s going on?” the financial guy was yelling. Their descent started to pick up speed. “Do something!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Ron said. “Everyone be calm.”

They were still five hundred feet up. He looked up and saw the huge tear on one side, a flap in the material buckling and falling over, a huge swath of it suddenly falling down on top of the basket, and to Ron’s horror, catching the flame and suddenly igniting.

The balloon became engulfed in flame.

“Do something!” the financial guy’s wife shrieked, her eyes bulging in terror.

“There’s nothing I can do!” Ron replied, continuing to rev heat into the useless, crumpled canopy. He grabbed the radio. “Mayday, mayday, we’re going down!” They started to fall out of the sky, picking up speed. The ropes holding the basket could catch at any second and then …

The financier’s wife was sobbing on the floor mat. Her husband gripped the basket’s rim and looked down in disbelief. The Japanese couple huddled together.

Ron shouted, “You know a prayer, this would be the time to say it.”

He always wondered what this would feel like. How he would react. In his dreams he had dreamed it many times. It was like a bad trip. And he’d had many of those. “Mayday, mayday!” he screamed uselessly into the radio as the basket began to plummet. “Oh Jesus Lord, we’re going down!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dani saw it as she headed into town before her rendezvous with Ron.

Around the cutoff to the Aspen Industrial Park just after the airport, traffic was being slowed into one lane. She saw EMT vehicles, their lights flashing, and it seemed as if every cop in the valley was there. A throng of people, many out of their cars, were lining the highway looking on. In the large field which the Aspen by Air Balloon Adventure used as their takeoff site, a plume of black smoke funneled high into the air.

What the hell had happened?

Dani pulled up to one of the cops who was waving on traffic. She recognized him as a guy she had gone to high school with, Wesley Fletcher. She rolled down her window and leaned out of her wagon. “What’s the hell’s going on, Wes?”

“Balloon dropped out of the sky. Five people on board, Dani. Traffic’s being routed onto Rectory Street into town.”

“Five people.” Dani felt her stomach tighten “Whose?” she asked, though she was sure she knew the answer even before the question even was out of her mouth. “Whose balloon was it, Wes?”

“Aspen by Air. Rick Ketchum’s company. They’re up every day.”

“I don’t mean who owned it. Who was operating it?” Dani pressed, a feeling of dread grinding in the pit of her stomach. “The one that went down.”

“All I was told was that there were four tourists on board. And everyone’s dead. And some guy named Ron.”

“Ron?” Dani’s heart went still. Rooster.

“I guess the balloon fell apart at five hundred feet into a ball of flames. But, look, I have to wave you on now, Dani. Gotta get these vehicles routed over onto Rectory, and as you can see—”

“Is that Chief Dunn’s car over there?” She saw a white and green SUV with the Carbondale police lettering on it, among the many vehicles pulled up in the field.

“I think that’s him. I saw him drive up earlier.”

“Thanks, Wes.” Dani pushed on the gas and caught up to the car in front of her. She got as far as the rotary until she realized she no longer had any reason to be here now. She pulled over to the side and let her head drop against the wheel. Poor Rooster. Her heart felt heavy as she tried to imagine such a grisly descent. Things like this just didn’t happen here. But that was only part of it. Part of what was making her insides feel so worrisome. The rest was what Rooster had claimed he’d seen yesterday, and now he was dead. The fool was going around shooting his mouth off.

He wasn’t alone out there. That wasn’t no accident.

Dani looked one last time at the plume of black smoke. Hot-air balloons just didn’t fall out of the sky.

CHAPTER EIGHT

She waited until the end of the day, until she saw his vehicle parked outside the station back in Carbondale. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to see him at work. Years. Certainly not since her mom had died.

“He’s on the phone,” a female duty officer said. Dani didn’t recognize her.

It wasn’t a big station, tucked into a corner of the Carbondale Town Center. Three or four desks, and some workstations. A room with a vending machine that doubled as an interrogation room. There were one or two detectives; whatever they did, Dani never knew. Any real investigation or forensic work was handled out of Aspen. When Wade took the job—the only job he could get—he joked that it was mostly setting up DUI roadblocks and the occasional marijuana bust.

And now, new state laws had even taken that away from him.

“If you wait over there I’ll tell him you’re here.”

“I’m his stepdaughter,” Dani said. “He’ll see me.”

She went right past her, the duty officer standing up, surprised, going, “Hey!” Wade was at his desk on the phone, his feet propped up against a drawer. The ever-present python-skin boots and that large, turquoise, Indian ring. He’d probably die with them on. On the shelf behind him were a couple of photos. Wade in his glory days. With his arm around Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith. Another with a younger-looking ex-president Gerald Ford. There were a couple of Kyle. One in his army uniform while in Afghanistan; the other, he and Wade fishing up in Idaho. Apparently, Dani hadn’t make the cut. There were a couple of AA books stacked on the credenza, and an empty bourbon bottle, which he always said he kept close as a constant reminder of worse days.

“Let me know when they finish up …” Wade was saying. He eyed Dani unhappily, as the young officer who had asked her to wait rushed in after. Wade waved her off with a Don’t worry about it gesture, motioning Dani into a chair.

She didn’t take it.

“I’ll check in with the guy from the Parks Service as soon as he finishes up,” he said. “Be talking with you then. Thanks.” He hung up and took his feet off the open drawer.

“The duty officer out there didn’t make it clear I was on with business,” he said, scowling at Dani like she’d burst in to sell him a new cell phone contract.

“You’ve got a problem, Wade.”

“Thanks for pointing that out to me, Danielle. Let’s see, five people are dead. The whole world’s gonna be breathing down our backs looking for answers. I always knew we did a good job by sending you back east to that fancy college.”

“Six, Wade. There are six people dead. And just to keep the record clear, you didn’t send me. Mom did.”

He wheeled his chair around to face her. “Well, I sure took you, didn’t I? So anyway, six. If you count what happened out on the river. You’ll have to forgive me, it’s been a pretty crazy twenty-four hours here. Not that the two are in any way related.”

“But that’s just the problem.” Dani stepped up to the desk. “I’m pretty sure they are. Related.”

Wade snorted a short blast of air out of his nostrils, his round, sagging eyes regarding her both skeptically and condescendingly. “I asked you to sit, Danielle.”

This time she sank into a hardwood chair across from him.

“And what makes you think some hotshot kid taking a spill on the river would be related to a tragedy like this …?”

“I was headed into to town to meet with Rooster,” Dani said. “Just after it must’ve happened.”

“Rooster?” Wade shrugged.

“Ron. Kessler, I think was his last name. He was manning that balloon.”

“I knew who was manning the balloon, Danielle. And I knew his name. I called him a lot of things, but Rooster wasn’t one of them. All right, you barged in here, you’ve got my attention. I don’t know why your paths would cross with the likes of him, but you were going in to meet with him why …?”

“He was at the Black Nugget last night.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me one bit.” Wade snorted derisively.

“A few of us were having a little tribute to Trey. Rooster … Ron was at the bar and cut in about how he saw something yesterday morning from his balloon.”

“He saw something …?” Wade rolled his eyes.

Dani said, “Exactly how I thought you’d react, Wade. And why Ron said he didn’t want to come to you with it in the first place. He heard us talking and he said what happened out there to Trey wasn’t an accident. That he wasn’t alone out there. He said he had seen something, but he backed down because Trey’s friend Rudy Thommasson and John Booth were a little drunk and got him all nervous. You know how Rooster gets. Anyway, he called me after I got home and asked me to meet him this morning in town.”

“Asked you to meet him …?” Wade scrunched his brow. “To tell you that Trey Watkins wasn’t alone on the river. Meaning, what, that someone was along with him? Or was there when it happened? You’re saying someone was responsible for his death?”

“I don’t know what he meant. Only that he said it wasn’t an accident. He was about to tell me after his run.”

“Look, Danielle.” Wade squared around. “I don’t mean to speak poorly of the dead, but Ron Kessler was a person who wouldn’t know what was real from a half-gallon jug of rotgut vodka. And when he wasn’t boozing he was just a fool who would say anything that came into his mind if he thought it would get a rise. I bailed his ass out in AA enough times and he was never once honest with me. I even volunteered to be his sponsor once, when no one else in the program would have him. I don’t know how they even let him operate that balloon, but from all I heard he did his job and it wasn’t his fault.”

“He wasn’t drunk,” Dani said.

“He wasn’t drunk?” Wade eyed her skeptically and snickered.

“Last night. He wasn’t. I know everything you said. We all thought so. But he made a big point of saying he’d been sober for three weeks. And I believe him. He even showed what he was drinking at the bar. Ginger ale.”

“Dani, I don’t care if the guy was sober as a preacher, Kessler would tell you whatever you wanted to hear if it stepped him up one tiny notch in his own importance. Your friend flipped his raft five miles out of town on the Roaring Fork River. Even if something did happen out there, whatever the hell he meant—which I’m not saying, only making a point—no way he could have seen that from the air.”

“He said he was the only balloon up that morning and he took some extra cash from the customers to stay up and let it drift a bit over the valley. That’s why he didn’t want to bring it up. He didn’t want what he did to come back to his boss and bite him. That, and because he knew you’d say exactly what you did. Which was why he came to me.”

“Well, I guess I never made it much of a secret.” Wade nodded. “You learn to live with people’s weaknesses in the program. God knows, I’ve had to own up to enough of mine. But let’s just keep it that ol’ Ron, or Rooster, or whatever the hell he went by, zigged when the world zagged one too many times over the years and the world hasn’t been a straight line to him since.”

“Then I’d guess you ought to understand that yourself,” Dani stared at him, “and be a little more sympathetic.”

Wade’s eyes grew fiery, but then they calmed, and he let out a long exhale. “Yes. On that point you’re right. I do. Understand. But I don’t have the time to argue that with you now …”

“Wade, look,” Dani pulled up her chair, “anyone who knows anything knows Trey could handle the lower Cradle rapids in his sleep. And even if what took place happened somewhere farther upstream, say around the falls, the raft likely would have washed up somewhere north.”

“So you’re saying, what? Someone killed him? Someone was out there with him, like this Rooster said. And then what? That what happened to him up there this morning, and all those other poor people, was what … to keep that gerbil from running off his mouth off or something? To stop him from telling the world what he claims he saw. You did start this whole thing off implying they were connected.”

“I don’t know what I’m saying, Wade. But balloons just don’t fall out of the sky. A day after someone goes around saying that they’ve seen something. Whatever else you might want to say about him, Ron did know how to handle himself up there. He’d been doing it for a lot of years.”

“I don’t know, maybe there was a rip or a flaw in the fabric or something. Or maybe something flammable got caught in the gas jet. The right people will figure that out. Or maybe your poster boy there just did something stupid, which he was eminently capable of doing, Dani.” He shook his head.

“So tell me, where was Trey’s helmet, Wade?” Her tone was starting to grow a bit defensive now.

“I don’t know about Trey’s helmet. Maybe he wasn’t wearing a helmet. I mean the same guy would hurl himself off the summit of Aspen Mountain with only a sheet of nylon attached to him, so to me, it’s not much of a stretch that he would go out on the river without a helmet.”

“Well, you’d be wrong on that. Not since he had his boy. I saw him out there a dozen times. And yesterday you were sure he was either high or hungover. So what did toxicology come back with? I know the first thing they would have done was check his blood over in County.”

“Jesus, you’re sounding like a cop now. The river’s closed for a day or so, so maybe you can find yourself a whole new career.”

“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.