Best Laid Plans(150)

“That’s what the detective said.” Adele took a deep breath, worked to control her emotions. Max let her; she didn’t need to rush this. “I wanted him to be alive, but I knew in my heart that he wasn’t. I’m his mother; I think I’ve always known.”

“Though we can’t be sure until after the tests, there were no visible injuries.” To preserve evidence, Chuck and Tim had bagged Scott’s body while still in the sleeping bag. They examined him for visible head and chest wounds, but there were none.

“Did he suffer?” she asked, her voice small.

“It doesn’t appear so.” Max didn’t know what to say, so she said what she thought was accurate. What might give Adele a modicum of comfort. “If he died of exposure, he most likely fell asleep and then just didn’t wake up.”

Adele didn’t say anything. She probably knew that dying of exposure wasn’t as peaceful as Max implied. But would it help anyone to know if Scott had been in pain?

“I’m sorry, Adele.”

“It’s okay. Why did it take you to find him? They would never have found him if you didn’t light a fire under them.”

“We don’t know that. I spent the day with Chuck Pence, the head of search and rescue. He looked as long as he could after Scott’s disappearance, but we found your son in a different area than where they initially focused.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“They had time against them last fall. The storm was getting worse, and they concentrated on the area between the camp and where the boys had parked their truck. Scott was found on the opposite side of the mountain, nearly two miles southeast of the campground; they parked two miles north of the camp. I suspect that Chuck and his team would have found Scott in the next couple of days. I met them; they weren’t going to give up. I just—made it go faster.” She didn’t mention at this point that it had been her suggestion to check the other trail, because that really didn’t matter—not to Adele. It would matter when Max talked to the three boys who left Scott alone on that mountain.

“Are you leaving?” Adele asked.

Max had thought about it. She didn’t know why seeing Scott Sheldon’s thawing body had disturbed her so much. She’d viewed an autopsy before, seen crime scene photos, once researched a child abuse case that left a little girl in a coma. That small, unconscious body had unnerved Max on multiple levels.

But this—she’d never seen a body so exposed. So … vulnerable. So dead. An autopsy was clinical and scientific. She could separate the procedure from the person. Crime scene photos were two dimensional, violent and grotesque, but again, she could view them as a reporter and not with undue emotion.

But Scott … he was right there, and had been for nearly six months. In his sleeping bag, suggesting he knew he couldn’t get back to the campground where his friends had pitched a tent. He’d curled up against the tree, in his sleeping bag, and died. Had he known? Had he thought he would wake up in the morning and find his way back? She’d already checked—the average temperature in Colorado Springs that night was fifteen degrees. Chuck told her that would mean in the mountains where the boys had camped it would have been even colder, likely below zero. Scott’s sleeping bag wasn’t designed for subzero temperatures.

Had he wandered around and gotten lost? Why?

“I’m going to wait until the autopsy results come in, talk to the detective, then talk to the boys again.”

“Do you think—something else happened?”

“I don’t know, Adele. I think—” Max didn’t want to share her theories with Adele. Not until she had proof. “I’m not sure that the entire story has been told.”

“Call me. I—I’m going to have a funeral for him. Detective Horn said a few days and I should be able to…” Again, her voice trailed off.

“Let me know about it. If I’m still here, I’ll come.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” Adele hung up and Max was relieved. The grief of parents twisted her stomach in knots. She had a headache—she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She wasn’t hungry, but knew she needed to eat something or she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Especially when she couldn’t get Scott Sheldon’s dead body out of her mind.

She made a reservation at the Tavern, her favorite restaurant at the Broadmoor. She’d been to the resort many times in the past—it was one of her favorite places to relax—only this time, she didn’t feel relaxed.

Chuck called her cell phone as she was leaving for dinner. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. You were very quiet during the drive back.”

“It’s been a long day,” she said. “I’m dining at the Tavern, if you’d like to join me.”

He didn’t commit. “I’ll see.”

“You know where I am,” she said, and hung up. She didn’t want small talk; she didn’t really want to talk at all.

The restaurant was across the courtyard from the main building. She stepped out into pouring rain. The doorman handed her a complimentary umbrella, and she smiled her thanks, but had no energy to talk. Her thoughts were filled with images of Scott Sheldon dying alone—buried in snow, pounded with rain, covered with layers of mulch. Her melancholy turned to anger. There was no reason he should have died on that mountain.