The Divide Page 2

  He handed the boy the camera.

  “Make sure you get some good ones.”

  “They’ll only be as good as your skiing. Wait till I holler.”

  He put the camera in his jacket pocket and grinned at his father as he moved off. The snow for the first few hundred feet was still good. But as he came closer to the rim of the sunlight, he felt the surface harden. When he turned there was almost no grip and no swishing sound, only the rasp of ice against the steel edges of his skis. He stopped where the sun met the shadow and looked up the slope where his father stood against the sky.

  “How is it?” his father called.

  “Kind of skiddy. It’s okay.”

  “Wait there. I’m coming.”

  The boy took off his gloves and pulled the camera from his pocket. He managed to get a couple of shots with the zoom as his father skied down toward him. The third picture he took would later show the exact moment that things began to go wrong.

  His father was starting a right turn and as he transferred his weight the edge of his left ski failed to bite and slipped sharply downhill. He tried to correct himself but in the process stepped too hard on his uphill ski and it skidded from under him. His body lurched, his arms and ski poles scything the air as he tried to recapture his balance. He was sliding now and had twisted around so that he was facing up the slope. For a moment he looked almost comical, as if he were pretending to ski uphill. Then he jerked and flipped backward and fell with a thump onto his back and at once began to gather speed.

  It briefly occurred to the boy that he might try to block his father’s slide, or at least check or slow it, by skiing into his path, but even as he thought it, he realized that the impact would surely knock him over and that he too would be carried down the slope. In any case, it was already too late. His father was accelerating so fast there would be no time to reach him. One ski had already come off and was torpedoing away down the mountain and now the other one came off and the boy moved quickly and reached out with a pole, almost losing his balance. He managed to touch the ski but it was traveling too fast and rocketed past him.

  “Stand up!” he yelled. “Try and stand up!”

  It was what his father had once called to him when he was falling. He hadn’t managed to stand and neither could his father now. As he careered past, facedown now and spread-eagled on the ice, his sunglasses scuttling alongside like an inquisitive crab, he shouted something but the boy couldn’t make it out. The father’s ski poles, one of them badly bent, were still looped to his wrists and trailed above him, flailing and bouncing on the ice. And still he was gaining speed.

  The boy began to ski down after him. And though he was shaky with shock and could feel his heart thumping as if it would break loose from its roots, he knew how vital it was not to fall too. He kept telling himself to stay calm and tried to summon all the technique he had ever learned. Trust the downhill ski, even though it slips. Angulate. Chest away from the mountain, not into it. Finish each turn. Angulate, angulate! Look ahead, you idiot, not down at the ice, not down at your skis.

  There was no grip at all now, but after a few first tentative turns he found he could control the slide of his skis and his confidence began to return. Mesmerized, he watched the dark and diminishing figure sliding away and down into the shadow of the valley. Just before he disappeared from view, his father cried out one last time. And the sound was high-pitched and chilling, like an animal frightened for its life.

  The boy slithered to a halt. He was breathing hard and his legs were shaking. He knew it was important to remember the exact point at which his father had vanished, though why he had vanished, he couldn’t yet figure out. Maybe there was some sudden drop you couldn’t see from above. He tried to picture the last time they had skied the slope but couldn’t recall whether the lower part of the drainage grew steeper or leveled out. And he couldn’t help thinking about what might happen when his father hit the bottom. Would the snow heaped in the creek bed cushion his fall or would it be frozen like rock and break every bone in his body? In all his fretting, the boy had already lost the mental note he had made of precisely where his father had disappeared. In the shadow below everything looked the same. Maybe there were some marks on the ice that might lead him to the place. He took a deep breath and eased himself forward.

  On the very first turn his downhill ski skidded badly and he almost fell. His knees were like jelly and the rest of him was locked with tension and it took him some time to trust himself to move again. Then, a few yards down the slope ahead of him, he saw a dark streak maybe six inches long on the ice. In a barely controlled side slip he made his way toward it.

  It was blood. And farther down the slope there was more. There were scuff marks in the ice too, probably where his father had tried to kick a grip with the toes of his boots.

  Had the boy been able to ski this same slope in good snow, it would have taken him no more than four or five minutes. But on sheet ice with legs atremble, all he could manage was a side slip so tense and fearful that it took the best part of half an hour. So slow was his descent that the sun overtook him and he watched the band of shadow retreat below him and the trail of blood turn vivid on the pristine snow.

  Now, in the glare, he could see that the trail disappeared over a sudden rim and that there was something lying there. And drawing closer, he saw his father’s sunglasses, perched on the edge of a last steep section of mountain, as if they had stopped to watch the climax of the show. The boy stopped and picked them up. One of the lenses was cracked and an arm was missing. He put them in his pocket.

  The slope below him fell sharply some two hundred feet into the valley bottom which even as he watched was filling with sunlight. He peered down, expecting to see the crumpled form of his father. But there was no sign of him nor sound. Just a dazzling white silence.

  Even the trail of blood and scuffing had vanished. There was a sudden rushing of air and the pair of ravens swooped low over his head and down toward the creek, squawking as if they would show him the way. And as the boy watched their shadows cross the creek he saw one of his father’s skis and a dark hole in the rumpled blanket of snow.

  Five minutes later he was down there. There was a crater, some ten or twelve feet across, its edges jagged where the frozen snow had cracked and given way. He wasn’t yet close enough to see into it.

  “Dad?”

  There was no answer. All he could hear was a faint trickle of water somewhere below him. Cautiously, he maneuvered his skis sideways, testing the snow with each small step, expecting that at any moment it might collapse and swallow him. It seemed firm. Then he remembered his avalanche transceiver. This was exactly what it was for, to help you locate someone buried in the snow. He took off his gloves and unzipped his jacket and pulled the transceiver out and started fiddling with the knobs. But his hand was shaking and his head so blurred with panic that he couldn’t remember how the damn thing worked.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  “Here! I’m here!”

  The boy’s heart lurched.

  “Dad? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Be careful.”

  “I saw blood.”

  “I cut my face. I’m okay. Don’t come too near the edge.”

  But it was too late. There was a deep cracking sound and the boy felt the snow tilt beneath his skis and in the next instant he was falling. He caught a brief glimpse of his father’s bloodied face staring up at him as the lip of the crater crumbled and then he saw nothing but the white of the snow cascading with him.

  The next thing he knew, his father was hauling him out of the wreckage, asking him if he was hurt. At first the boy didn’t know the answer but he said he didn’t think so. His father grinned.

  “Good job, son. You just made us a way out.”

  He nodded and the boy turned and saw what he meant. The collapse had created a kind of ramp for them to climb. They sat staring at each other, his father still grinning and dabbing his cheek with a bloody handke
rchief. There was a long gash but it didn’t look deep and the bleeding had almost stopped. The boy shook his head.

  “Didn’t think I’d find you alive.”

  “Hope you got that picture.”

  “Wow, Dad. That was some fall.”

  The walls of the hole in which they sat were layered with shelves of bluish-white ice, which their two falls had shattered. It was like being in the cross section of some giant frosted wasp nest. The floor felt firm and when the boy brushed away the snow he saw they were on solid ice. His skis had come off when he fell and lay partly buried in the snow. He stood and gathered them up. His father slowly stood too, wincing a little as he did so. The sun was just creeping in on them.

  “I guess we ought to have a look for my skis,” he said.

  His pack was lying on the ice just next to where the boy had brushed away the snow. A shaft of sun was angling onto it. The boy stooped to pick up the pack and as he did so, something caught his eye, a pale shape in the translucent blue of the ice. His father saw him hesitate.

  “What is it?”

  “Look. Down here.”

  They both kneeled and peered into the ice.

  “Jesus,” his father said quietly.

  It was a human hand. The fingers were splayed, the palm upturned. The boy’s father paused a moment, then brushed away a little more snow until they saw the underside of an arm. They looked at each other. Then, without a word, they got to work, brushing and scraping and pushing away the snow, creating a window of ice through which, with every stroke of their gloves, they could see more of what lay encased.

  Tucked beneath the upper arm, half-concealed by a naked shoulder and peering shyly up at them with one blank eye, they now could see a face. From the swirl of hair, captured as if in a photograph, it looked like a young woman. She lay at an angle, her legs askew and slanting away into the darker ice below. She was wearing some kind of crimson top or jacket that was rucked and twisted and seemed to have torn away from her arm and shoulder. The fabric trailed from her as if she had been frozen in the act of shedding it. Her flesh was the color of parchment.

  TWO

  Sheriff Charlie Riggs looked at his watch. He figured he had about fifteen minutes to get through the stack of paperwork that lay menacing him from the only clearing in the jungle of his desk. If he didn’t get away by two, he wouldn’t be able to drive into Great Falls and be back in time for his daughter’s tenth birthday party. He had to go to Great Falls to pick up her present, which he should have done yesterday, but as usual a dozen damn fool things had popped out of nowhere and he hadn’t been able to. The present was a custom-made, hand-tooled saddle that he’d ordered in a fit of extravagance a couple of months back. How he had ever believed he could afford it, he had no idea. The thought of how much it was going to cost made him wince.

  He heeled his chair closer into the desk, shoved aside a couple of stale coffee cups and picked up the first file. It was a draft of yet another report on the use of methamphetamine in Montana. The door to his cramped little office was open and out in the dispatch room all the phones seemed to be ringing. Nobody was answering them because it was Liza’s day off and the new girl, Mary-Lou (who hadn’t really gotten the hang of things yet), was at the counter talking with old Mrs. Lawson, whose dog had again disappeared. The old biddy seemed to have left her hearing aid at home because Mary-Lou was having to shout and say everything twice. Through the window he caught sight of Tim Heidecker, one of his not-so-sharp deputies, parking his truck. It was odds on that as soon as the boy stepped inside he’d come barging in with a whole bunch of dumb questions. Charlie slipped from behind his desk and quietly closed his door. It was ten to two already.

  It wasn’t so much his daughter’s disappointment that he worried about. He and Lucy got along just great and he knew she’d understand. What bugged him was that he would be handing yet another weapon on a plate to her mother. He and Sheryl had been divorced nearly five years now and she had remarried, happily, by all accounts, though how anyone could be happy with the slack-jawed jerk she’d shacked up with was a mystery. What continued to amaze Charlie was how, even after all this time—and even though it was she, not he, who had walked out—Sheryl could never resist the slightest opportunity to take a jab at him. And she seized on anything that involved Lucy with thinly disguised glee. It wasn’t enough that Charlie should have been a lousy husband, he had to be a useless father too.

  The use of methamphetamine is on the increase, he read. Well, well. Who would ever have guessed? He often wondered how much the people who wrote these darned reports got paid for restating the blindingly obvious. Hell, you could spend five minutes on the Web or go down to the bookstore and find out how to make the stuff in your own kitchen. Maybe he was just getting too old and cynical.

  “I’m sure he’ll show up, Mrs. Lawson,” Mary-Lou was saying out at the counter.

  “What was that?”

  “I said, ‘I’m sure he’ll show up.’”

  He heard Tim Heidecker answering one of the phones. The chances of his being able to handle whatever it was on his own were about a million to one against. Sure enough, within a minute there was a knock on the door and, before Charlie could hide, it opened to reveal the boy’s irritating face.

  “Hey, Chief—”

  “Tim, I’m real busy right now. And please don’t call me Chief.”

  “Just got a call from the Drummond place, you know, up there on the Front—”

  “I know where the Drummond place is, Tim. Can you tell me later, please?”

  “Sure thing. Just thought you ought to know.”

  Charlie sighed and let the report flop on his desk.

  “Tell me.”

  “Couple of skiers just showed up out there, say they found a body up Goat Creek. Young woman, frozen in the ice.”

  Ned and Val Drummond’s ranch was a small spread that lay close by the north fork of the creek. Beyond them, apart from one or two cabins that only got used in summer, there was only wilderness. It took the best part of an hour for Charlie and Tim Heidecker to drive out there and the best part of another to interview the two skiers. They seemed good people and were well aware how lucky they’d been. If they hadn’t managed to find that other ski, the father would have had a hard time getting out. His son would have had to come down alone to raise help. But they were smart and well prepared, which was more than could be said for a lot of the idiots who got into trouble up there and had to be rescued.

  The father was able to pinpoint on the map where they’d found the body. Charlie had brought out a couple of snowmobiles on the trailer and for a while he toyed with the idea of going up at once to take a look. But the sun was already getting ready to disappear behind the mountains and when it did, the light would go fast and the temperature would plummet. If it was frozen into the ice like they said it was, the body wasn’t going anyplace. Better leave it till morning, he figured, work out a plan and go up with all the right gear. In any case, he wanted the father to come along too and though Val Drummond had done what she could to patch it up, that cut on his face needed stitches.

  They all sat drinking mocha coffee in the Drummond’s dark, log-walled kitchen. Charlie had known Val since they were kids and had always had a soft spot for her. In fact they’d once had a little romantic moment after a high-school dance. Even now he could picture it clearly. In her early forties, she was still a fine-looking woman, tall and athletic in that kind of horsey way. Ned was shorter and ten years older and talked too much, like people with a lot of time on their hands tended to, but he was okay. Val had volunteered to drive the boy’s father to the medical center to get some stitches and had said he and his son were more than welcome to stay the night. Both offers had been gratefully accepted. Everyone agreed to meet at eight the next morning when they would go up and check out the body.

  Just as they were saying their good-byes, with a sinking feeling in his gut, Charlie remembered Lucy’s party. There was no signal on his cell p
hone up here so he asked Val quietly if he could use the landline. She showed him into the living room and left him there. Charlie figured the party would still be going on but there was no way he was going to get there before it finished. He dialed Sheryl’s number and steeled himself.

  “Hello?”

  She always sounded quite pleasant until she knew who was calling.

  “Hey, Sheryl. Listen, I’m really sorry. I—”

  “Nice of you to call, at least.”

  “Something cropped up and I couldn’t—”

  “Something more important than your daughter’s tenth birthday party? I see. Well, there you go.”

  “Can I speak to Lucy?”

  “They’re all busy right now. I’ll tell her you called.”

  “Can’t you just—”

  “Are you bringing the saddle over?”

  “I . . . I didn’t have time to—”

  “Okay. Fine. I’ll tell her that too.”

  “Sheryl, please—”

  “Nothing changes, does it, Charlie? I’ve gotta go. Bye now.”

  They heard the snowmobiles long before they saw them. At last the headlights eased into view, strobing through the trees far below them, then climbing the steep slope out of the forest and bouncing up alongside the creek toward them, the yellow beams shafting the dying blue light of the valley.

  The closest they had been able to park the search-and-rescue vehicle was at a trailhead nearly three miles down the valley. It was a converted school bus decked out with a lot of fancy equipment. Ordinary radios weren’t reliable in these steep canyons so the bus had one with a 110-watt booster, powerful enough to relay messages between those in the mountains and the sheriff’s office thirty miles away. Everything they needed had to be ferried up from the trailhead by snowmobile. The two that were heading up toward them now were bringing chain saws, blowtorches, and some powerful lamps so Charlie and his men could go on working into the night.

  He had a team of ten, three of them his deputies and the rest search-and-rescue volunteers, apart from the Forest Service law-enforcement guy who meant well but was young and new to his job and mostly got in the way. Protocol, however, dictated he be there because the girl’s body had been found on Forest Service land. They had worked in shifts, going down to the bus every few hours for rest and food and drink—all except Charlie, who stayed with the body the whole time. They brought him food and hot drinks every now and then, but he was tired and cold and by now more than a little grouchy at having to wait almost an hour for the equipment.