It was a brilliant plan, probably hatched in Holman when Crayline discovered his upcoming trip to the Institute. Prisons had “alumni associations”, and someone with the demonic charisma of a Bobby Lee Crayline would have outside connections, men who’d risk their lives to say they’d helped him escape.
In the meantime, people in Mobile were bludgeoned, stabbed, poisoned, shot and, in one memorable case, vacuumed to death. Harry and I investigated, putting in a lot of eighteen-hour days. Then, good news. Financial stimulus funds reached the understaffed Mobile Police Department and sparked the hiring of new officers. This allowed the promotion to detective of several deserving uniformed men and women. The workload decreased.
I was thinking about taking some time off, when my supervisor, Lieutenant Tom Mason walked to my desk. Tom had been trying to get me to take a lengthy vacation for years. I’d get close, but the caseload would balloon and I’d truncate my plans to a long weekend getaway. At least that’s what I told myself. My partner muttered that I was an investigation addict afraid of missing a fix, but he muttered a fair amount.
But in truth, even I felt increasingly frazzled. Cases were becoming less a rush than a drudge. The slackening of pressure had me thinking it was finally time to take a break and get my edge sharpened.
“You and Harry have had a tough year,” Tom said. “He got his head banged like a gong. You put in eighty-hour weeks on that case with Sandhill. Not to mention this current crop of madness.”
“The point being, Tom?”
“The Department owes you forty-three days of accumulated vacation, Carson. Now, I can’t order you to take time off, but I think it would be good if you gave it some thought and …”
“I’ll do it,” I said, clapping my hands.
“Do what?”
“Like you just said. Go on a vacation. What a great idea!”
Tom paused. “You will? Just like that?”
“It’s brilliant, Tom,” I said, standing to do a little shuffle-foot dance. “I’ll start making plans.”
Tom nodded and turned back to his corner office, stricken mute. I could tell he’d prepared an entire lecture on Why Carson Ryder Should Take a Vacation.
Tom paused at his doorway, fingers tapping the frame. He turned.
“You’d planned to take some time off, right, Carson? Is that it?”
I did cherubic innocence. Tom waved the question away and went inside his office, his long face heavy with puzzlement.
Which explains, in a roundabout way, how I ended up in Eastern Kentucky, hanging off the side of a mountain while being yelled at by a gnome.
“Hey Carson!” called a voice from way below my feet. “You get lost again? Yoo-hoo, Earth to Carson Ryder.”
“I hear you, Gary,” I called over my back. Above me I saw two hundred feet of Corbin sandstone, the leavings of untold millennia of alluvial flooding. I was climbing through the compressed floor of an ancient sea that flowed during the Mississippian era, 400 million years ago. My fingers clutched small handholds. My toes were wedged into clefts. At my back lay nothing more than air.
“Others are waiting their turn, bud. Come on down.”
I pushed away from the rock face, dropping a foot until the rope through the bolt jolted me to a stop and I was lowered thirty feet to the ground. Gary, the twenty-five-year-old rock-climbing instructor, a diminutive guy who was part gnome, part mountain goat, grinned as my feet hit the ground. Pete Tinker, the other instructor from Compass Point Outfitters, grabbed the control rope and launched another aspiring climber up the cliff face. Gary patted my back.
“You seem to get lost up there, Carson. How was it?”
“I’m sweating like a sprinkler,” I said, pulling my soaked tee from my chest to put air over my skin. “My muscles are quivering. My fingers ache. But I’m ready to go back up right now.”
“I’m not surprised. A lot of folks don’t have the physicality for rock climbing, the strength and elasticity. You do. But even more, you have an intuitive feel. You don’t waste motion.”
“I’m surprised to hear that. I feel clumsy as a first-step toddler.”
Gary grimaced toward the young woman just sent up. She’d lost her grip and was spinning in the air as Tinker belayed rope and shouted instructions.
“These folks are toddlers, Carson. Four days of lessons and you’re up and running. But you’ve done this before, I take it?”
I grinned. “I dated a climber a few years ago. She gave me the basics.”
“She done good. But you’re ready to move past the basics. You’re coming back, right?”
“Try and keep me away.”
I packed up my rented climbing gear and began coiling ropes. The eight other climbing students did the same under Gary and Pete’s watchful eyes. We heard the labored grind of an engine and turned to an SUV arriving on the old logging trail connecting the main road to our cliff face. The insignia on the door read US Forest Service. We were on their turf, inside the Red River Gorge Geological Area of the Daniel Boone National Forest.
The high-sprung vehicle crunched to a stop and two occupants exited, a big, square-built county cop about my age, mid-thirties. His face was a broad, flat plain centered by a button nose, as if a normal nose had been sectioned and only the tip pasted to his face. The man’s eyes were a gray wash and his mouth so lipless and tight I couldn’t imagine it smiling. His belly rolled three inches over a wide belt hung with police implements. The cowboy boots were alligator and the hogleg pistol he carried would only be standard issue in a Wild West wet dream. His uniform was too many hours from an iron.
Beside him, in visual opposition, was a trim and tall older guy in a hard-creased green uniform that looked ten minutes from the dry cleaners. It took a second to register that he was a forest ranger. He had a relaxed and dreamy smile on a tanned and ruggedly pleasant face, leaning back to stretch his spine. But I noted his half-closed eyes vacuuming in his surroundings. It was interesting.
The cop went to talk to Pete and Gary. I carried on coiling rope and watching from the corner of my eye. The ranger had nodded to the instructors before leaning against the trunk of a hemlock, whistling to himself and studying the sandy ground.
I looked up and caught a hard and cold appraisal from the sheriff, like he found something offensive in my bearing. I feigned indifference and walked my coil of rope to the van. Turning, I saw the ranger cross my path to pick up a tiny foil wrapper, as if collecting errant litter. He tucked the foil in his pocket, looked down again, headed back toward the SUV.
I knew what he was doing, and it had little to do with litter collection.
“Sheriff Beale,” the ranger said.
The cop turned from Gary, pushed back his hat. “E-yup?”
“We’re done.”
The big cop shot me another hard glance, then nodded and followed the ranger. They climbed in the Forest Service vehicle, pulled away slowly, the ranger at the wheel. As he passed in front of me, I smiled.
“Not the shoe prints you were looking for, right?”
His eyes held mine for a two-count. Then the eyes and the SUV were moving away and I tossed my second coil of rope in the van with the gear of the other students. They’d driven six miles from the outfitters in Pine Ridge. The cliff we’d been using for practice was only three miles from my lodgings, so I’d driven over on my own.
Gary