“I’ll let Sparks know.” He hung up and swore roundly. Dumb-ass kids. What were they doing out in the middle of the night disturbing the scene of a murder investigation? He shifted down and took a turn into the foothills. There was always talk that the criminal returned to the scene of the crime. Maybe that was the case sometimes, but not in Carter’s experience. Who would be so stupid? Teenagers. Of course.
One of them could be involved, or know someone who was. Maybe they’d overheard something.
Possibly, but he doubted it. He suspected these were kids just out screwing around. Drinking, smoking a little dope. Getting high at the scene of the biggest crime to hit Falls Crossing in decades. Idiots. Carter decided to scare the liver out of them.
He called in his position, left a message for Sparks, and drove steadily upward, his tires slipping a bit, the four-wheel drive grinding through the steeper turns. For once it was clear, moonlight silvering the snowbanks and heavily laden branches, but the temperature was still below freezing, as it had been for over a week.
As his Blazer crossed the bridge spanning Cougar Creek, he noticed that the waterfall was frozen solid, spectacular sprays of water crystalized to ice while tumbling downhill.
Just as the surrounding falls had been frozen the winter David died. Carter’s eyes narrowed but he didn’t see the road winding through the snow-laden trees. Instead, he saw another time and place, a frozen hell where his best friend was a smart aleck with shit for brains.
“I’m tellin’ya, man, this is a chance of a lifetime. We can be the first to climb this mother!” David had laughed as he’d tightened the strap of one of his gloves with his teeth. He and Shane had been standing at the base of the falls, staring up at the incredible frozen plumes of water.
Shane had eyed the cliffs over three hundred feet above. “I don’t know.”
But David hadn’t been able to wait. A few seconds later, he was inching up the ice, higher and higher.
“Goddamn it,” Shane had sworn, squinting upward while fumbling with his own equipment. “David, wait!”
“Can’t do it, man!”
“Shit.”
Shane’s heart had been beating like a drum, and even in the frigid temperature, he’d been sweating beneath his layers of fleece and down.
David had always been fearless, the daredevil, the guy who grabbed life by the tail and swung it over his head. But this—climbing Pious Falls—was a damned fool’s mission. Carter had known it, even though he’d barely passed his sixteenth birthday.
“Jesus, Carter, don’t be a wuss!” David had been inching up the gargantuan icicle, yelling over his shoulder to Shane standing at the base of the frozen waterfall.
Shane’s head had been angled upward as he’d watched his friend’s slow, steady progress up the sheer sheet of frozen spray. He hadn’t wanted to climb. His boots were sliding as he tried to stand on the solid sheet of ice that had been a wide pool at the waterfall’s base. As he glanced down, he noticed two dead trout frozen in the iced pool beneath his feet, staring up at him.
“What are you waiting for, ya dumb ass! Come on!” David had yelled over his shoulder, his voice echoing through the silent, snow-crusted canyon. “This is the kind of thing you can tell
your grandkids about!”
Those words had haunted Shane Carter ever since that gut-wrenching day.
Now, his radio crackled, bringing him crashing back to the present. A transformer had blown east of Falls Crossing and more residents were suddenly without power. From the chatter back and forth on the radio, he knew that emergency crews were on their way. “Son of a bitch,” Carter swore, and feared the end of this god-awful weather was nowhere in sight. If the cold front didn’t let up, there would be more homes without electricity, more people who would have to be evacuated, more stranded drivers, more ERs overcrowded.
His mood dark, he eased his rig up a final rise to Catwalk Point.
Blue and red lights strobed the surrounding forest in eerie colors.
Montinello’s rig was parked in the middle of what had been the logging road, headlights shining on three other vehicles—two pickups and a Bronco—parked at odd angles near the crime scene. As Shane cut his engine, Montinello waved at the vehicles and a dispirited group of teenagers climbed out of their rides. The usual lot of underachievers, Carter thought, eyeing Josh Sykes, Ian Swaggert, and a few others who tried to keep their faces averted.
“Okay, they all say they were up here just hanging out. No big deal. Some claim they didn’t know it was a crime scene.”
“Yeah, right.” Shane’s breath fogged in the air as he looked pointedly at the yellow tape still strung from one copse of trees to another. “I guess they can’t read.”
That got him a snarly glare from Sykes.
Carter bummed a cigarette and lit up, feeling warm smoke curl through his lungs. “You get statements?”
“Such as they are. On tape.”
“Rights read?”
“Yep.”