Bitter Recoil

Chapter 11

The pickup truck lay on its side at what we later measured as sixty-three yards below the mesa rim. I pictured the Ford crunching almost lazily off the precipice. The undercarriage had scraped the rocks as the truck tipped over, so it certainly hadn’t vaulted off like something driven by a Hollywood stuntman.

Fifteen feet into the plunge, the truck had hit a small juniper and twisted sideways, beginning the first of several rolls. On the second roll, the windshield had smashed against a large limestone boulder.

The trail of glass followed the truck’s course downward from when first the back and then the side windows had shattered. Forty-one yards from the rim, the truck had flopped on its back on an outcropping that almost stopped the trip.

But inertia won, and the Ford had tipped on over, dropping eighteen feet straight down. It landed on its left side, rolled twice more, and finally wedged to a stop against a collection of house-sized boulders.

It wasn’t so clear what had happened to the occupants. The first was lying where he’d been crushed when the truck smashed into the outcropping.

The kid…he wasn’t much more than that…had been sieved through the space between the collapsing cab roof and the dashboard on the driver’s side. The blood, tissue, and clothing fragments on the rocks told a familiar story. The truck had held onto him for one full roll and then tumbled on, leaving the crushed and torn rag doll behind.

“What I.D. did you find?” Estelle asked Paul Garcia.

“I haven’t touched anything yet. I didn’t look.”

Estelle nodded, and I held the light for her while she pulled out the kid’s wallet. She handled it carefully, just with the very tips of her fingers. “Robert Waquie,” she said and looked up at me. I snapped open her briefcase and handed her a plastic evidence bag, and she dropped license and wallet inside.

“So the old man called it right,” I said.

“Yes, it appears so. Paul, where’s the other one?”

Garcia twisted and pointed downhill, off to the south. “Over there about twenty yards, almost on a line with the truck.”

“You’re kidding,” Estelle said and stood up. “There’s no way he could have been thrown that far, and certainly not in that direction.”

I was the only one who took time to find an easy way around the outcropping…Estelle and Garcia went straight down the rocks like goddamn mountain goats.

The second victim was as dead as his companion. From what we could tell, his injuries were consistent with being bashed around inside a crushed cab.

“He was extruded out through the back window,” I said. I held my light close and pointed at the crescent-shaped piece of Plexiglas that was driven into the small of the victim’s back three inches above the belt. I swept my light back to the truck, pointing it at where the custom sliding camper window had been installed in place of the solid glass window. Most of the window’s aluminum frame had been torn from the cab.

His I.D. said Kelly Grider, and he had lived long enough to pull himself a few yards away from the wreckage, and then he’d bled to death.

Estelle stood near the corpse. Several times she flicked the light from Grider to the truck, as if trying to outline the path crawled by the victim. “What do you think?”

“You sure pick ’em,” I said. “They had to have been drunk to pull a stunt like this.”

“They were drunk all right,” Estelle said. “I can smell it on both of them.”

“And the truck’s loaded,” Paul Garcia offered. “Empty cans, a couple of empty bottles. A couple of six-packs waiting to be opened. They had to be so stoned that they just idled right over the edge.”

“Easy enough to do if you’re not paying attention,” I said. “But why were they up there in the first place?”

“Scout hunting, probably,” Estelle said.

“Then the scouts are goddamned lucky,” I muttered. To Garcia, I said, “Did you take a good swing around the area? No other surprises?”

Garcia shook his head. “No, sir. I spent an hour down here, and I spent it looking. Not a thing. Just the two.”

“How did the scouts come across this in the first place?” Estelle asked.

“They’re on a campout just down the mesa. They said about a mile or so.”

“Then they probably heard this.”

“They said no. Apparently, they were taking a night hike up the canyon bottom.”

“A night hike?”

“Scouts do that,” Estelle said. “So they were down this slope even farther than we are now.”

“That’s what the counselor said. They were following the watercourse, and one of them flashed her light up here on the slope. That’s when they saw the truck.”

“Damn strange place to hike,” I said.

“Not really, sir,” Estelle said. “The watercourse follows the bottom of the ravine and gradually slopes up until it joins the mesa almost at the two-track where we came in. So you can hike it and know right where you are when you surface. Good for orienteering.”

“And they didn’t think the wreck was just a leftover from the logging days?”

“It was steaming,” Paul Garcia said.

“Steaming?”

“Yes, sir. That’s what they said.”

“What did they do then?”

“A couple of them climbed up to the wreck, saw what it was, and then the whole squad beat a trail back to the main camp… straight east as the crow flies. There’s a good trail the scouts have made. They use this mesa all summer. So it’s not bad hiking, even at night.”

“Especially when you’re in a panic,” Estelle observed. “And they called you from the camp.”

“That’s right. They gave me directions to find the two-track turnoff from the main road, and they met me right where I’m parked now.”

“I’d think half the camp would be out here,” I said.

“The head counselor of this group said the camp director and assistant director are in town for something. She thought it best to keep it kind of quiet until we had a chance to see what’s what. She didn’t want to upset the kids any more than she had to. So she kept her group together and kept a lid on things.”

“Make sure she gets a medal,” I told Estelle. “Her kind’s rare.”

“That’s for sure.” Estelle pinned the truck with her flashlight beam again, then swept the light up the steep slope. “Let’s get some pictures and measurements before the coroner gets here.”

I left the legwork to the youngsters…Garcia didn’t even breathe hard as he worked the idiot end of the tape measure up and down the rock- and stump-strewn path down which the truck had plunged.

I concentrated on the truck. And I thought about Cecilia Burgess. If she had ridden in this vehicle earlier, who had pitched her over the side…Grider? Waquie? Old Man Waquie had said there’d been five kids in the truck when it disturbed his peace… where the hell were the others? Had they ridden up here on this remote mesa, too? Or had they ditched from the joyride sometime earlier?

For many minutes I just sat on a rock, my light beam playing around the inside of the bent, twisted truck bed. Plenty of blood smeared the remains of the rear window and the top rails of the bed…but that could be-and probably was-Kelly Grider’s. With better light we could establish blood tracks. We’d see exactly where he crawled and be able to estimate just about how long it took before he collapsed and died.

Far in the distance a coyote yipped. It was a lonely place to die, and I felt a touch of sorrow for Waquie and Grider. But as drunk as they had been, maybe there’d been no chance for reflection.

I grunted to my feet. Estelle was starting her photography, and I let Garcia work the lights for her.

“I’m going to work my way back up to the car,” I said. “Our traffic is due and they might want to talk with us on the radio. The hand-helds don’t reach out so good.”

“The scouts could use a little company, too,” Estelle said, then added, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Just tired. I need to sit on something soft and think for a while.”

Sixty yards is not all that far, but I had to stop half a dozen times for breath. By the time I reached the mesa rim, my heart was pounding in my ears. I was so tired I almost turned the wrong way, but caught myself with a start.

I didn’t try the short cross-country route through the trees but stuck instead to the two-track. I skirted Garcia’s Suburban, saw that there was enough starlight, and flicked off the flash. I sauntered along the Forest Service road until I reached Estelle’s patrol car.

The scouts were seated in a group under a huge ponderosa, and they stopped their quiet discussion when they saw my dark figure loom out of the darkness.

“Who’s the head counselor?” I said, keeping my light off.

“I am,” she said quietly and held her flashlight up so that the beam just nicked her face.

“You did good,” I said. “We appreciate all your help.”

“It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. But you did all you could.”

“When will we be free to go back to our camp?”

“You’re still going to spend the night out here?”

The girl-I couldn’t tell much about her in the faint light-almost chuckled. “Nobody’s going to get much sleep tonight, so we might as well not get any out here as back at base.”

“Well, the young woman detective is going to want to talk with all of you, but as long as we know where you are, I don’t see any problem.”

“You just follow this road another mile beyond the turnaround,” she said. “That’s where we’ll be, then.”

I opened the door of the patrol car, rolled the window down, and sat down. As the scouts filed out, I said to the counselor who brought up the rear, “You kids stay together tonight. Don’t anyone go wandering off.”

“No fear of that,” she said quickly.

The scouts stuck so close together they looked like a single shadow, moving on twenty legs down the two-track. Exhausted, I leaned back against the seat. I must have dozed off, because I startled when the red lights of the ambulance bounced off the rearview mirror and winked across my face.