Fatal Descent (13 page)

Mandy grabbed her arm. “We’ve got to know what’s wrong so we can treat him. Is he diabetic? Does he have hypertension?”

Alice removed Mandy’s hand. “No, nothing like that. Nothing you can treat. But you won’t get it out of me. You’ll have to ask him.” She turned her head as Kendra appeared behind them. “And I suggest you ask in private. The damn man has his pride.” She clamped her lips tight, indicating the conversation was over.

“Girl, you took off like a shot,” Kendra said to Alice, while taking deep breaths. “I couldn’t keep up.”

“Well, I
am
a runner,” Alice replied, then turned to Mandy. “So where’s the tarp?”

Mandy clambered onto her raft and dug the tarp, poles, and
rope out of the supply stash. She parceled out the items among Kendra, Alice, and herself and grabbed a water bottle. “Let’s go.”

They took off at a quick pace, but by the time they had scrabbled up the first gentle rise to the base of the switchback trail up the cliffside, Mandy could see the group slowly making their way down the last few hundred feet. Rob and Gonzo had Hal slung between them in a fireman’s carry. They were picking their way sideways down the single-file trail while Cool preceded them and called out where to put their feet. The others followed silently.

Mandy put the poles she was carrying on the ground. “By the time we get this stretcher built, they’ll be here.”

She took the tarp from Kendra and used the grommet holes along the two sides to lash it around the poles. True to her prediction, by the time she and Kendra had finished tying the knots, the group had arrived. Rob and Gonzo eased Hal onto the makeshift stretcher and Diana fell down on her knees beside him. The others stood back, anxiety lining their faces.

Mandy studied Hal’s face and didn’t like what she saw. The man’s skin was pale and clammy, and his breathing was shallow.
What’s wrong with him?

Before she could question Rob about what had happened, though, he said, “Let’s get him to camp.” He directed Gonzo, Cool, and Paul to each pick up an end of a pole while he took the fourth one.

Mandy helped Diana to her feet and led the way back to camp. She found a flat shady spot under a dying tamarisk a short distance from camp where they could lay the stretcher. She was determined to find out what was wrong with Hal, but was mindful of what Alice had said about asking him in private. So, as soon as the men lowered him to the ground, she addressed the group.

“Rob and I will stay with Hal, along with his wife. The rest of
you
need to break camp. Gonzo, Kendra, and Cool, you’ll be in charge
of lunch, too.”

With a few last concerned looks at Hal, the others wandered off to do what they were told. Diana had lowered herself onto the ground next to her husband and was holding his hand. Hal’s eyes were shut, but he had raised an arm to wipe sweat off his forehead, so Mandy knew he was awake—and being male, probably embarrassed about causing such a ruckus.

She knelt next to Diana by Hal’s head. “Mister Anderson,” she started, to show some respect, “do you need some water?”

He nodded, and she slipped a hand under his head to help ease it up so he could take a few swallows from a water bottle. After he lay back down, she caught his gaze and gave him a stern look.

“I understand your desire to keep your medical condition private, especially from the other clients.” She swept a hand toward the bustling camp. “But Rob and I have to know what’s wrong, so if you get in trouble on the trip, we can give you the right first aid. You were supposed to list any health issues on your confidential medical form, but since you didn’t, you need to tell us now.”

Hal shook his head, but Diana said, “We’ve got to tell them, Hal.”

Rob sat down on the other side of Hal across from Mandy and Diana. “Yes, you need to tell us, but it will go no further than the two of us. We’ll keep it private, whatever it is.”

Hal sighed and nodded at Diana, then closed his eyes again.

She looked at Rob, then turned her head toward Mandy, exposing the bright tears pooled in her eyes. “He’s got lung cancer. Terminal lung cancer. He’s dying and there’s nothing the doctors or you or anyone else can do to stop it.” A tear splashed on Hal’s hand that she held tightly in hers.

“Jesus,” Rob whispered.

The horror of dealing with another death on the trip swirled through Mandy’s head. Then she realized Hal’s doctor probably wouldn’t have allowed him to go on the trip if he was that close to dying—or had he told his doctor his plans?

She waited for Hal to open his eyes. “What did your doctor say about you taking this trip?”

Hal grimaced. “She wasn’t happy about it.”

“But she said he still had at least a few weeks before the cancer would incapacitate him,” Diana added. “Once she realized how important this trip was to the family, she read your trip description and decided Hal should be able to handle it. But she told him not to try anything strenuous, that his remaining lung capacity wouldn’t support it.” She gave Hal a disapproving frown. “Then stubborn you insisted on going on that damn hike.”

“I had to try it,” Hal struggled to rise, and Rob helped him to a sitting position. “I’m sorry I caused all that trouble, but hell, this is my last chance to see views like that.”

Mandy studied him to see if sitting up would make him dizzy, but his color seemed to be returning. “Did you get a chance to see the views before—”

“Before I wilted on the trail?” Hal finished for her. “Yes, it was on the way down that my legs gave out. I hadn’t realized how shallowly I’d been breathing. My leg muscles just weren’t getting enough oxygen to work right.”

Diana nodded. “That’s happened to him before.”

Kendra called out, “Lunch is ready. Pasta salad!”

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hungry.” Hal rolled over onto his hands and knees. “I’m okay now. I think I can stand.”

He pushed himself to his feet, but Rob stood close with a hand
under Hal’s elbow, just in case. Mandy stepped closer, ready to help
support Hal on the other side. They waited for a moment while he took a few breaths.

He walked to Diana and took her arm, then turned and searched
Mandy and Rob’s faces. “Not a word to anyone, right?”

“Right,” Rob said.

“But your family already knows, don’t they?” Mandy asked. “When
I asked Alice if you had a health problem, she seemed to know some
thing. But she wouldn’t tell me what it was, and said you swore the family to secrecy about it.”

“Yes, they know,” Diana said. “A couple of months ago, after we found out the chemo failed, Hal and I sat them down to tell them the news and talk about how the estate will be settled. Each of the three kids will get a fourth right away, with me getting the other fourth. We wanted them to know that they’ll be comfortably well off and won’t have to worry about anything after …” She bit her lip.

“After I’m gone.” Hal patted her arm, and they turned and walked toward camp.

“Comfortably well off,” Mandy said to Rob, after the couple was out of earshot. “There’s a motive for you. A big inheritance. Either one of Alex’s sisters could have killed him to make their share even larger.”

A puzzled expression crept onto Rob’s face. “That makes sense. But what about Elsa? Why go after her? And neither one of them was on the cliff with Elsa.”

thirteen

The important thing to remember is that you’re
dancing with the river—and you’re not leading.

—
boatman john running

Mandy and Rob grabbed
some
pasta salad, then walked to where the rafts bobbed in the water to eat a hurried lunch and to talk. Mandy told Rob about her search. “Unfortunately, I didn’t find either the bear paw
or a hypodermic needle. And I never got to the girlfriends’ tent.”

“They don’t have a connection to either Alex or Elsa,” Rob said, “so maybe we can rule them out.”

“That’s why I left their tent for last,” Mandy replied, “but I don’t
think we can rule anyone out. Not yet.”

Rob nodded solemnly. “True.”

Mandy changed the subject. “I gather you didn’t find anyone up there.”

“No, no hikers, and no evidence of campers, either. That cou
ple we spotted yesterday must have just been passing through. They
could be anywhere in the Maze now. I left Cool with the clients, and Gonzo, Kendra, and I split up and searched the whole Doll House area. We found nothing. I almost feel like I’m in one of those disaster movies, where the whole world’s destroyed except for one small group of people.”

Mandy shuddered. “More like the opposite. We’re the disaster, and no one’s around to help us.”

“The only thing left to do is to keep moving down the river and make sure we rendezvous with our pick-up tomorrow morning.” Rob ate his last bite of pasta salad and glanced at Mandy’s watch. “I wanted to be on the river a half hour ago. Let’s get moving. You ready the rafts and I’ll ready the crew.”

Mandy helped Kendra pack the kitchen gear. After they stowed it in the rafts, she checked the lashings on all of the other gear and on Alex’s body bag in Rob’s raft. Mandy wanted the ropes to be as tight as possible before hitting the rapids in Cataract Canyon.

“The last thing we need now is to lose Alex’s body to the river after carrying it this far,” she said to Kendra while tightening a knot. “His poor parents have been through enough.”

When she got no response, she looked at Kendra and saw her fellow river guide was staring at the body bag. “You okay?”

“Why can’t we smell him?” Kendra asked. “Shouldn’t he be stink
ing by now?”

Mandy sat back on her haunches in Rob’s raft. “Yeah, he is, plenty.
But the bag’s airtight, which keeps the odor from getting out.”
Thank the river gods.

They returned to the camp, where Rob was giving all of the clients a safety briefing and a review of paddling techniques. Cool and Gonzo circulated among the clients, checking their PFD straps and cinching them tight.

Les tugged on his PFD. “I can’t breathe with this lifejacket so tight!”

“Our mantra is that if you can’t breathe you can’t drown,” Cool said while rechecking Les’s straps. He loosened the one over the middle of Les’s chest a fraction of an inch. “We don’t want the water ripping the PFD off you. How’s that?”

“Not much better,” Les grumbled.

After Cool’s statement, though, no one else seemed inclined to complain. Mandy scanned their faces and recognized the familiar stink of nervous tension coming off the clients. As with all of her past whitewater rafting trip clients, eyes were bright, limbs couldn’t keep still, and tongues were licking lips suddenly gone dry as they anticipated the excitement ahead. She hoped the only dangers they would face would be those posed by Mother Nature, not by their mysterious killer.

Rob finished his safety briefing with, “It may sound obvious, folks, but stay in the raft. If you have to, stop paddling to hold on. Okay, let’s get this show on the river!” He turned and signaled for everyone to follow.

All of the clients had opted to try paddling the rapids, even Hal Anderson, so they piled into Kendra’s and Gonzo’s rafts. Cool joined Rob in his raft. Rob’s raft was taking the lead position, and he needed Cool in the front. Since Cool had run the canyon multiple times, he and Rob would pick out the routes to run in each rapid.

Mandy took the sweep position in the rear since she would be running the canyon for the first time, having missed the scouting trip. She planned to watch the routes the other rafts took through the rapids before lining up her own. And, she was responsible for picking up any swimmers. She hoped there wouldn’t be any.

When the flotilla rounded the sharp left turn the Colorado River
made below Spanish Bottom, Mandy could hear the roar of the Brown Betty rapid. Her heart beat faster in anticipation, the adrenaline rush flushing her cheeks. She felt the familiar surge of joy, confidence, and pure power that kept bringing her back to whitewater for another fix.

Used to running the clear, blue-green waters of the Arkansas River, Mandy found the milk chocolate–colored waves of the Colorado disconcerting. But when she focused on the structures and features in the roiling water—the whitecaps glinting in the sunlight, the downstream and upstream Vs, the swirling holes—she began to feel at home. She watched Rob run Brown Betty cleanly and made a mental note of the turns and cross-river ferries he executed. Then she turned her attention to Kendra’s and Gonzo’s rafts.

Kendra’s raft made a clean run, to the whoops and hollers of
the passengers, then it was Gonzo’s turn. Just as his raft reached the lip of the first drop, Paul let go of his paddle with one hand and grabbed the waterproof camera that hung on a lanyard around his neck.

Damn it,
Mandy thought.
We told them more than once not to try to take photos while in the rapids.

Paul compounded his error by raising himself to hold the camera above Tina’s head in front of him.

Gonzo yelled, “Get down! Put your hand on your paddle!” at him to no avail.

The raft dove and smacked into the first standing wave of the rapid. As Mandy expected, the jolt pitched Paul out of the raft.

Gonzo had anticipated it, too. He shouted paddle instructions at the others in his raft and reached a hand out over the water. He tried to grab Paul as the raft bobbed past him.

But Paul was so disoriented he flailed away from the raft instead of toward it. He missed Gonzo’s hand. After the raft passed him, Gonzo shouted at Paul to swim toward Mandy’s raft.

Mandy gave up aiming for the rapid’s ideal entry point. Hauling on her oars, she pointed her raft at Paul. She took a moment to cram the whistle tied to her PFD in her mouth and blow on it. She knew her voice wouldn’t carry to Paul over the roar of the rapid, but she hoped he would hear the whistle.

Thankfully, he spun in the water as if searching for the origin of the whistle blast. When he saw her, he started dog paddling in her direction.

Good, Mandy thought, he’s thinking clearly again.

When she got close enough, she yelled, “Grab the rope!”

Mandy angled her raft toward Paul so the side would graze him as they both bounced along one side of the rapid’s train of standing waves. They had told the clients that if they fell in the river, they should immediately swim for the nearest raft and grab the rope running along the outside. They were to hang on for dear life and ride out the rapid that way until the raft guide or a passenger could haul them in.

When Mandy’s raft hit him, Paul snatched frantically at the rope while waves crashed over his head, temporarily blinding him. He finally grabbed the rope with his left hand toward the back of the raft. Mandy pulled back on her oars, working against the current to slow the raft. She wanted to give Paul a chance to get his right hand on the rope before it was ripped out of the left.

She watched over her shoulder as Paul scrabbled for the rope. Finally, his right hand closed around it. Relieved, Mandy turned her attention to the rapid itself. The jagged edge of a mostly submerged massive boulder approached on Paul’s side of the raft.

Shit!

Mandy hauled like a demon on the oars so they would skirt the rock with enough room for Paul to avoid getting hurt. Once they were past that, she saw that they had reached the short lull between Upper and Lower Brown Betty. She boated the oars and clambered back to where Paul was hanging on.

She knelt and grabbed the shoulders of his PFD. “On the count of three, kick hard and push up on your hands.”

He did as he was told, and Mandy yanked as hard as she could. His upper body flopped over the pontoon. With Mandy pulling on his PFD, he managed to get a leg over and roll the rest of the way into the raft. He lay there panting.

“Stay there and hold on,” Mandy yelled at him.

She leapt back into position between her oars.

Just in time, she plunged the blades back in the water while the
raft dove over the lip of the next rapid. Water poured over the front and flooded the raft’s floor. They rode that wave out, then Mandy spied the other rafts waiting for her in a quiet eddy on river right. She spun her raft in their direction and joined them. Rob grabbed the front rope of her raft. Safe at last, she rested her oars and took several deep breaths.

Looking sheepish, Paul climbed forward from the back of the raft. “Sorry about that.”

“There’s a good reason we told you not to take photos in the rapids,” Rob said to him, his chin jutting out in anger. “As you found out, you not only put yourself in danger, you endangered others—the rest of the people in your raft as they tried to rescue you, and Mandy in the sweep raft.”

With his face drooping as much as his wet clothing, Paul said with contrition, “I won’t do it again.”

“No, you won’t,” Rob said. “And if you do, I’ll personally throw your camera in the river.”

Mandy noticed Les tucking his waterproof camera under his PFD. He was smart enough to learn from Paul’s example, at least. In fact, everyone looked a little shaken and apprehensive. There were no gleeful smiles like she normally saw after folks ran their first big rapid.

Rob had come down awfully hard on Paul. Why was that? Then it dawned on her. Rob had mentioned her name specifically. His macho protective instinct had reared its head, chewed up Paul, and spit him out. It was time to lighten the mood.

“Hey, no harm done,” Mandy said. “Paul’s wet but safe, and we all made it through our first big rapid. Let’s hear a war whoop!”

She pumped her fist in the air and whooped. Gonzo and Kendra immediately joined her, with the others soon following. During the hollering, she caught Rob’s eye and mouthed “lighten up” to him and drew a big smile on her face.

He got the message and grinned, but there was a hint of menace behind those pearly whites. No one messed with his gal.

Paul scrambled across the rafts back into his position in Gonzo’s raft, then looked around him. His shoulders fell and he said, “Crap, I lost my paddle.”

“No worries.” Gonzo pulled a paddle out of bundle lashed inside his raft. “That’s why we carry extras.”

Paul accepted the paddle. “Again, I’m sorry.”

Gonzo gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. “Hey, someone has to make the first mistake. It just happened to be your unlucky day and you wound up with the short straw.” He laughed good-naturedly and Paul visibly relaxed.

With everyone’s mood now a little lighter, Mandy put her hands on her oars and said, “Well, I’m ready for some more roller coaster rides. How about the rest of you?”

Kendra and Gonzo grabbed their paddles and their passengers followed their leads. With a last exasperated eye roll at Mandy, Rob leaned on his oars and peeled out of the eddy to lead the way through Rapid Three.

The next four river miles flashed by with a steady stream of rapids—long jostling drops and rocking horse rides on haystacks made of water that periodically doused the rafters were interspersed with short recovery pools. All of the rafts managed to surf the rapids cleanly without swimmers or capsizes. While running them, Mandy had time to wonder whether she had just saved the life of the killer.

_____

Later that afternoon, they came out of Rapid Ten into what Cool and his fellow local guides called Lake Cataract, a three-mile section of swift-moving but relatively flat water. It was punctuated by just two rapids, Eleven and Twelve, in the middle. It was the only long calm section of water in Cataract Canyon before they reached Lake Powell.

Everyone relaxed a little, and Mandy and her fellow guides were able to let down their guard some. Clients wrung out their wet hair and clothes and angled their faces to the sun. Paul and Les fished out their cameras and took photos of the striated canyon walls looming over them and of the people in the rafts.

After running Rapid Twelve, Rob beached his raft on a wide strip of sand on river left. Kendra, Gonzo, and Mandy beached their
rafts a short distance downriver, and Rob and Cool walked over to meet them.

“We’ll take a brief rest stop here,” Rob announced. “Then everyone should prepare themselves for what’s called Mile Long Rapid. It’s really almost two miles of eight rapids, numbered Thirteen through Twenty. In high water, they run together to form one long monster rapid. We don’t want any mistakes here because it could mean a really long, hard swim for anyone who ends up in the water.”

Diana looked worriedly at the lowering sun. “How much longer before we stop for the night?”

“We plan to get all the way through Cataract Canyon today and camp at Waterhole Canyon,” Mandy said. “That’s about seven miles downriver, but as you can see, the river’s moving fast here. We’ve already gone seven miles since Spanish Bottom.”

Les whistled. “We’re really chugging down the Colorado. So we’re going to run the Big Drops today?”

Cool grinned. “You’ve heard about them, huh? The river’s got some real attitude in those honkers.”

Rob nodded. “We’ve got a lot of excitement ahead. But as long as we don’t have any major spills, we should reach the campsite with enough light left to pitch tents and cook supper.”

After a few more minutes, Rob whistled and waved for every
one to return to the rafts, and they were on their way. The river bent
to the right and to the left, then the roar of churning whitewater greeted them again, echoing off the canyon walls. Mandy braced herself for the long run.