Dead Man Falls (5 page)

I was just nodding off when someone rather rudely rammed an elbow into my side. I jumped then gave that someone a dirty look.

She pointedly ignored me and glared straight ahead beneath the purple shade.

Fine. I turned and glared too, and since I didn’t hear any more speechifying, I presumed it was finally time for the main event. Yippee. I covered my mouth with my hand to hide a yawn and then rubbed my face to try to wake up. Given the right circumstances you really can sleep standing up, but not with your mother jabbing her elbow into your ribs. Another jab. "Ouch! Stop that!"

"Look up there," Lucille said gleefully, pointing to the top of the rock wall. "They’ve got the lights flashing on the tops of the fire trucks. You can just barely see them above the bushes. My word, they must have fifty trucks up there."

Five was more my guess, but the thrill of a light show to go with the shooting of the fire hoses stilled my tongue.

The trucks howled their sirens and the mass of humanity behind and beside me went wild, adding their whoops and cheers to the noise. I stuck my fingers in my ears.

On cue, a squadron of fire hoses sprayed forth and the crowd sucked in its collective breath. I took my fingers out of my ears in time to hear the roar of rushing water rumble down from the top of the hill. The band started playing something that sounded suspiciously like a pep rally song and the fans were immediately whipped back into a frenzy.

A thick mist filled the air and high-velocity gushes ricocheted toward us. The fire engine pumps spewed with such pressure I couldn’t help but worry that they’d loosen some of the fake rocks and send the whole mess tumbling down into the river any second. Leaves, twigs, a couple paper cups and a plastic grocery bag flew off in the gush, but eventually the top pools filled and water began trickling, then cascading, out and down to the next level of rocks.

The crowd whooped louder. The band played faster.

The second layer of pools began to fill and flow, all except the center one. I squinted against the sun, trying to see the problem. From my distant vantage point on the opposite side of the river, it looked like a big log or blob of trash had lodged against the rock edge of the upper pool.

This was not an immediate concern--despite the "Don’t Mess with Texas" campaign--since Styrofoam ice chests, plastic milk jugs, aluminum cans, and glass bottles are still considered important parts of the ecosystem here, homes for fish and such. There are also economic issues and civic duties to consider. If Bubba don’t throw his beer cans out the truck window, them boys in the orange suits won’t have nothing to do and widespread unemployment will wreck the whole economy. Oh, yes.

After a few minutes, enough water had built up behind the impromptu dam to push the blockage up and over the edge. The lumpy brown mass--which was looking bigger by the second--plummeted out and down the falls in one long clump, end over end, bouncing off the rocks and landing with a big splash in the river below us.

I didn’t gasp, but I did mutter an "Oh, shit." Even through the gush and foam of the water, I knew a dead body when I saw one.

Chapter 3

I heard a few mumblings about trash from people around me, but no one else even gasped or screamed. For the most part, everyone seemed content to keep their eyes on the fire hoses and see what happened next. Was I the only one who saw what looked like a wrapped-up corpse come shooting down the falls? Since wild screeching and mass panic hadn’t erupted, I had to assume so. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe it really was only a log. Or trash.

And maybe not.

Mother stared at the falls, still mesmerized by the water show. Thankful she hadn’t noticed anything amiss, I whispered to her that I’d be right back then took off before she had time to object.

I slipped through the crowd as quickly and unsuspiciously as I could, working my way away from the center of the festivities, following the downward flow of the river.

The fire trucks were still power-driving water over the falls, keeping the crowd’s attention and turning the river below into boiling murky rapids. Somebody needed to get the body out before it either sank or wound up in Lake Kickapoo. That somebody wasn’t going to be me, but I’d sure do what I could to help.

On the bright side, the bundle, which looked enough like a floating log to not attract too much notice, was zigging and zagging toward another walking bridge far downstream. Within seconds it would be out of sight of the cheering crowd.

I cut left through some bushes and saw a uniformed cop standing at the edge of the crowd. Oh, this was going to be good. He obviously hadn’t seen the body and I was going to have to tell him about it.

With all the people around, I couldn’t very well jump up and down and shout, "There’s a corpse in the river, follow me," so I hurried up to him and said something like "Emergency. Need your help," then darted back through the bushes.

After a few seconds, I heard him crashing along behind me.

Fairly well out of sight of the crowd, I hopped the decorative railing and scurried down the hill to the edge of the river. The cop came running up behind me, another uniformed officer behind him, and a tall dark-haired guy in boots, jeans, and a short-sleeved cream-colored shirt behind us all.

It took me about a second and a half to figure out the tall guy was Jerry Don Parker.

"There’s a body in the water," I said to the officer who’d finally decided to follow me.

That shook him up, but cop number two--who apparently had seen it for himself--came up and they began discussing what to do. One worried about sirens and confusion, the other about getting the body out before they lost it and had to drag the river.

I didn’t wait to find out what they decided because Jerry had stopped at the second bridge and was motioning me downriver. Best I could tell he was going over to the other side and wanted me to follow the corpse on this side. Fine, but who was going to get the thing out, and how?

Cop number one ran up beside me. "I’ll take it from here. We’ve got a rope coming."

I heard the unspoken "eventually" on the end of his sentence. Where was the patrol car, Montana? Then I remembered seeing several police cars out by the park entrance to channel traffic. That was going to take a while. I jogged along with the officer, wondering what I should do. Clearly, he thought I should get out of the way and wait. Maybe I should. I stopped and let him go on. Standing at the edge of the river, I watched Jerry on the far side and kept an eye on the corpse in the water.

The body had slowed down and was fairly concealed under the surface, at least until it hit a rock or a limb or an unseen undercurrent. Then it either disappeared completely or eerily popped up, head or feet first, like a doll in the hands of a two-year-old at bath time. What I had at first pegged as a tarp was nothing more than brown butcher paper, to use an unfortunate phrase, and it was pretty much all torn away now except where it was caught beneath the wraps of yellow nylon rope.

The river was about fifty feet wide, and odds were good that it was at its deepest here, the stretch that would handle any snafus or flooding from the new falls. Or that was my guess. But how deep was deep? Six feet? Ten? Twenty?

The body bobbed up and down in the muddy swirls, darting this way and that. But not close enough to the bank for anyone to grab it, not that anyone was looking foolish enough to try, except maybe the good-looking dark-haired guy on the far side.

Sheriff Jerry Don Parker was still running downstream, his eyes sweeping the water up ahead and the path of the corpse.

I feared greatly that he was looking for a spot to dive in. I surely hoped not. The body was as stiff as a cottonwood tree, so heroics were not exactly called for at this point, and nobody needed to be gearing up for CPR, unless maybe for Jerry if he decided to dive in and drown himself. I waved my arms and tried to get his attention. "Wait, don’t go in yet. Please! They’ve gone to get a rope."

He hesitated and frowned at me as if he either didn’t hear what I said or didn’t understand its importance. He moved closer to the water.

I had no idea how long it would take the cop to get back, but standing here doing nothing wasn’t going to help anything. Maybe I could find a rope closer than the police cars at the entrance. I turned and raced back up the bank toward the parking lot.

I did not run up the hill nearly as fast as I had run down it, but I did make it up to the asphalt without falling down or having a heart attack.

Panting like the out-of-shape, aerobically challenged slacker I am, I sucked in as much thick air as my burning lungs could take and kept jogging into the lot, looking for a pickup truck. Yes, there were plenty to choose from. I just had to be selective in my hunting. I needed a cowboy truck, one owned by a real live cowboy, not the urban drugstore dude variety. And I had to get lucky.

Then, as if fate had me by the hand, I saw the soles of a pair of boots sticking up out of the bed of a beat-up old white Ford. Either the truck held another dead body or an inebriated cowboy. The way things were going, I figured it could go either way. Nevertheless, I huffed and puffed my way over to take a closer look.

A peek into the bed of the truck confirmed that sometimes my instincts are pretty darn good. The well-worn boots were attached to a guy who had a battered gray hat over his face and was snoring--loudly. And in the bed beside him lay a well-worn saddle, blanket, bridle, and one real live roping rope.

I reached in and snatched up the lariat, then dashed back toward the river. I forgot about breathing and ran through the trees as fast as I could, then slid down the grassy bank across from where Jerry stood.

In the few minutes I’d been gone, several other observant attendees had joined in the follow-the-corpse game, which had apparently hit a snag--literally. The body was stuck in a swirling eddy, spiraling up and down like a jack-in-the-box.

A kid, probably in his mid-twenties, wearing a light green uniform-looking shirt and forest green pants, stood near the bridge, tossing a small roll of yellow cord from one hand to the other. He watched the officers, looking like he wanted desperately to help. Behind him, a dark-haired woman who looked a lot like Mrs. Pollock stood wringing her hands. Beside her, a couple of teenage girls in painted-on shorts, crop tops, and Tammy Faye eyes chewed on their fingernails.

None of these people needed to see what was about to dragged out of the river. I didn’t either, but that was beside the point.

The closest police officer was busy holding back the growing swarm of voyeurs and didn’t turn around to take the rope from the boy, which was fine since I had the real thing in hand anyway. Whether I would collapse before I got it to somebody who could use it was another issue. The half-mile sprint up and down the hill had set my legs to quivering and my lungs to gasping, reminding me exactly why it’s against my religion to exercise. It’s no fun--and it hurts.

I stumbled to a stop beside cop number one, who was still near where I’d left him, and tried to catch my breath as I waved the lariat at Jerry.

He looked up from studying the bobbing body situation and nodded, then stepped forward into the water as if he’d been waiting for me to return.

That hadn’t been the idea at all. I sure hoped he wasn’t thinking the rope I held would provide any security for him, particularly in my hands. I could maybe throw the stiff coils to him like a Frisbee, but if he wanted me to hang on to one end and throw the other to him like a calf roper we were in big trouble.

I took a step closer to the river and lifted the rope, intending to hand it to my new officer friend, cop number one. A firm hand caught my wrist and I jerked around.

An older man, probably in his sixties, wearing a sweat-stained gray cowboy hat on his head and weathered wrinkles on his face, had me in his grip. He didn’t smile or frown, just nodded and released my arm. He pulled on a pair of work gloves and plucked the lariat from my hand. "If you don’t mind, ma’am."

Before I could protest his theft of my stolen rope, he was swinging the thing in widening loops above his head.

Jerry was taking it slow wading into the river and had only made it in about thigh-deep.

Gathering a few of my wits, I said, "That guy in the water is a sheriff. You could throw him the rope."

The old cowboy didn’t say a word, just tossed a perfect circle at the bobbing body in the water. He caught the corpse around the neck on the first try, snugged the rope and started reeling it in. "This way’s easier."

Well, yeah.

He took the slack out, looping it up as he got the body to the bank. "And I get to keep my rope."

I fleetingly wondered if I’d committed some heinous cowboy crime that I didn’t know about. Surely rope stealing wasn’t a hanging offense. Then again, we’d just had a dead man over the falls so my little unsanctioned loan seemed rather insignificant. Besides, Cowboy had his special rope back and was now a hero of sorts.

Cop number two ran up with a canvas bag of something just as Cowboy got the corpse to shore.

I glanced across and saw that Jerry was out of the water and heading back upstream for the last bridge. Knowing he’d appear in a few minutes, my eyes involuntarily went back to the body and the nice big bullet hole in his forehead.

My stomach lurched upward and kind of hung in my throat. Distance. I needed distance between me and reality. I could turn away and run or I could do the mental thing and focus on pedantic details instead of murder. Since I felt frozen to the spot, I blinked away my dumbfounded stare and tried to see past the bullet hole.

Male, probably in his forties, eyes half closed, wearing black dress slacks and a mud-red dress shirt that had probably been white before he went into the river, and no tie. Scrapes and gouges marred his face, but something about him looked faintly familiar. I was certain I knew this man--or had at some point. I don’t know how long I stared, but the warm grip of a hand on my shoulder brought me out of my daze.