Page 15 of Mile High Mystery

“Did the FBI follow up on this?” Travis asked.

Shelby gave him a look that let him know what she thought of the question. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how to do her job. “We looked into it. We found the guy, but he swore he didn’t know the Chalk brothers. He said he was a freelance writer, following a theory he had. It turned out to be nothing.”

“Maybe he was lying,” Travis said.

“Maybe he was.” Fear that he was right made her throat tight, so she had to force the words out. “I told Camille what we had learned, and I thought she was calmer, but then she disappeared. She left a note saying she needed to see her parents, but that she would be back soon, and to please not come after her.”

“But you did go after her.”

“Of course we did. But we went to her parents’. There was no sign she had ever been there.”

“What do you know about Zach Gregory?” Travis asked.

“Not a lot. He’s two years younger than Camille, but the two of them were close. Her death—or what he thought was her death—hit him hard. He drifted around a lot after her funeral, dropped out of college, took a series of dead-end jobs. Lately, he seems to have turned things around. He started working at Zenith Mine and joined Search and Rescue.”

“You kept tabs on him?”

She flushed. “We kept track of all her family, in case any threats to them surfaced. And it made Camille feel better to know they were all right. Despite what some people might think, witness security isn’t about depriving people of their liberty or making them miserable. We do what we can to help people adjust.”

“If you had a good idea where Camille was headed when she left WITSEC, why didn’t you come after her?” Travis asked.

Shelby wanted to snap that she wasn’t an idiot, but reminded herself that in his boots, she would have asked the same question. “She misled us. She left things that made it appear she had gone to see her parents. By the time we realized we had been duped and headed here, it was too late.” She would never forgive herself for that. No matter what her bosses said about not getting personally involved with witnesses or victims, Shelby and Camille were friends. And Shelby would never stop feeling she had let her friend down.

“Do we need to be worried about these men, the Chalk brothers, causing trouble in Eagle Mountain?” Travis asked.

“I don’t know. It depends if Camille was right and her brother had become a target. If they were only after her, you don’t have anything to worry about.” She hesitated, then added, “I went with Zach to see his parents in Junction last night. I thought a car followed us from Eagle Mountain—a white Toyota. I thought I saw the same car again on the way home, but they turned off and there was never any trouble, so maybe I was wrong. It wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on Zach for a few days, at least.”

If he was displeased to hear this, his expression didn’t show it. “What are your plans?” he asked.

“The FBI is conducting its own investigation into the murder. I appreciate you sharing the information you’ve already uncovered. I’ll need to talk to more people who might have come into contact with Camille or her murderer. And I’ll stay in town long enough to determine if Zach Gregory is in real danger. If he is a target, we’ll do our best to protect him.” She owed Camille at least that much.

“HEY, ZACH. I’m really sorry about your sister.”

Zach looked up from the ropes he was coiling and saw Sheri Stevens, one of the Search and Rescue veterans who was helping train rookies like him. He hadn’t known how to handle these expressions of sympathy the first time Camille died. Four years hadn’t made him any better at it. “Thanks,” he said and went back to helping to pack the climbing ropes. He braced himself for the onslaught of questions he was sure would come—about his sister, about her murder, about the judge’s murder. They had caught him off guard the first time, before and after the trial. Everyone he met back then, from neighbors to news reporters, wanted some scrap of detail from him that would bring the tragedy closer. Why couldn’t they understand this wasn’t something he wanted to share with anyone?

But Sheri didn’t ask any questions, and neither did any of the other members of the team, though several of them asked how he was doing and said they were sorry for his loss. After a while, he began to relax and accept their condolences as sincere.

“Are you up for this?” Danny asked as they prepared to leave for a callout to an ATV accident on one of the Jeep trails.

“I’m good,” Zach said.

Danny nodded. “Then let’s get after it.”

The network of dirt roads that wound through the mountains above town attracted adventurers on dirt bikes and in Jeeps and all manner of four-wheel drive vehicles, but invariably some of them weren’t prepared for the steep terrain, tight turns and rough conditions. Zach had already learned that, next to traffic accidents on the highway that led out of town, calls from the Jeep trails were the second most common crises Search and Rescue responded to each summer.

This accident involved a single rental ATV that had rolled on its side. Zach and the others arrived to find half a dozen other drivers and riders gathered around a lanky man with blond hair to his shoulders and a scruffy goatee, who sat on a boulder a few yards from his overturned vehicle. Blood, already drying, trickled from a cut on his forehead, and the right sleeve of his shirt was in tatters where he had evidently scraped it on the rocks. Danny, a nurse, knelt beside the man. “I’m Danny, with Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue,” he introduced himself. “What’s your name?”

The blond lifted his head to take in the circle of volunteers around him. “Todd,” he said. “Todd Arniston. That’sToddwith two Ds.”

“Let’s take a look at that head wound, Todd.” Danny, who had already donned nitrile gloves, gently probed the cut on the young man’s forehead. “This doesn’t look too bad,” he said and began to clean the wound. “How are you feeling? Any headache? Dizziness?”

While Danny and volunteer Christine Mercer tended to Todd, Zach and some of the others examined the overturned ATV. An older man wearing an All Who Wander Are Not Lost T-shirt joined them. “I saw the whole thing,” he said. “I was waiting my turn to navigate this narrow, rocky section of the trail when he came tearing around the corner. He took that curve on two wheels, and he was going too fast to stay in control when he saw the backup of vehicles here. He lost control in the gravel and went over on his side and skid a long way.” The man shook his head. “The whole point of being up here in this beautiful country is to take your time and enjoy the scenery—not race around recklessly.”

Eldon Ramsey, one of the group’s best climbers, circled the ATV. He looked over at Zach. “This doesn’t look too banged up, really,” he said. “I bet the two of us could get it upright.” Eldon, originally from Hawaii, was as tall as Zach and even more muscular.

“Sure,” Zach said. “Let’s give it a try.”

The others stepped back as Zach joined Eldon on the other side of the ATV. “On three,” Eldon said. “One...two...three!” They heaved, and with a groan of springs and metal, the ATV bounced onto its tires. Eldon leaned in and set the brake, then slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine coughed, then growled to life. He shut it off and climbed out.

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