“Rich, get on the horn, quick, I need you,” she said, trying again. “It’s urgent. Something’s happened here.”
“You at the fords already?” Her tour partner finally came on the line. “God, you’re early, Dani, it’s only—”
“Negative, Rich. I’m at the bottom of the Cradle and we’ve got some trouble here. There’s been an accident.”
“Oh, shit,” he went, imagining the worst. “Everyone okay …?”
“Not us,” Dani said. “It’s Trey Watkins. His raft flipped over. There’s a gash on his head. He’s not breathing, Rich.”
“Trey? Oh my God …” Everyone knew him. “Any sign of a pulse?”
“Negative, again. I can’t believe this, Rich.” Trey could ride with the best of them out here. The most challenging water was all well behind him. She looked back and saw her raft team all gathered on the shore, looking on. “I’m holding him here, Rich. He’s dead.”
Chief Wade Dunn kneeled down on the rocks overlooking the river, as the Pitkin County Rescue Team pulled the kid out of the water.
Not a kid really. He was twenty-nine. One of those adrenaline junkies around town who did it all. Off-terrain skiing. Paragliding. Mountain biking. The on-site opinion of one of the EMTs who inspected the body was blunt-force trauma to the head and possibly a broken neck. Any one of those rocks could have caused it. No telling how far the raft had continued down. Made you wonder. Wade watched, lifting his Stetson custom cowboy hat. Trey Watkins was also a topflight river rider. This far downriver, he was way past anything that might have been thought of as a challenge. Wade knew his young wife. Allie. Pretty, and must be quite a gal to tame someone like Trey. And things were just starting to take off for the guy. A new kid, and he had this camera-mount business that was just getting off the ground. Allie’s father, Ted Benton, who owned a rib restaurant and a small hotel in town, once joked to Wade that his son-in-law was going to make them all look poor.
Wade watched the rescue boys do their job. Look at him now.
They lowered down a stretcher, then hoisted the body back up the slope, and cut a path in the brush to where the emergency vehicles had parked on the road. Wade stood up and looked at the body as they brought it by. It looked exactly like what it probably was: the kid must’ve flipped and struck his head on the rocks. Enough to cause that wound or to break his neck. Probably trying out some slick new move. Grab some air or a spin-o-rama, or whatever they call them today. And not wearing a helmet. Not as smart as ol’ Ted thought, apparently. These kids, they all think they’re invincible. Come here from all parts, think their life is a fucking X Game. They’d do a drug and alcohol test in the postmortem. Who’d bet on what they’d find?
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.
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