Best Laid Plans(151)

She was seated immediately and ordered a crab cake appetizer and wine before she looked at the menu. The wine, thankfully, arrived first.

She stared at the fire across the room, sipped her wine, and tried to force her mind to go blank. It was something she had a hard time doing, turning off her thoughts. Either her mind had to be working or her body—preferably both. But today all she felt was cold, even in the warm restaurant and wearing her favorite cashmere sweater and snug wool slacks. She shouldn’t be cold, but even the hot shower after she returned from the mountain hadn’t warmed her.

The loss hit her. What had Scott been thinking those hours he lay in the cheap nylon sleeping bag? Had he known he was dying? How long did he stay there, too cold to move, too cold to call out? Was he disoriented? Severe hypothermia lowered the body temperature so much that victims got confused, often hallucinating and wandering, their heart rate dropping, their major organs slowly shutting down. Did it take a couple hours? All night? He would have lost consciousness before he died, but the hours leading up to that would have been full of fear and pain.

A miserable way to die.

But was there any good way to die?

By all accounts, Karen had been stabbed to death—how else could she have lost so much blood? Did she die faster than Scott, and did that make it some sort of blessing? Or was it more painful, more fearful? Did it matter? They were both young people, in college, with their lives ahead of them, and they were dead. One violently, and one by the stupidity of others.

Whether it was malicious or not remained to be seen.

Her crab cakes came and the waitress asked if she wanted to order dinner. “Not now,” Max said. “Another glass of wine, please.”

She nibbled on the crab cakes and watched as Chuck Pence crossed in front of the fire and sat across from her.

“Where’s Trixie?” Max asked.

“Home. Finding a body, even though she’s trained for it, is disturbing for her as well as us. My wife knows how to soothe her.”

“Have a drink with me,” Max said as the waitress came with her second glass.

He said to the waitress, “Scotch, neat.”

“Do you have a preference?”

“No,” he said.

“Top shelf, single malt,” Max told the waitress. “Thank you.”

“Reporting must pay well,” Chuck said.

“Not particularly.”

“Detective Horn told me you’re also a writer. Books.”

“True crime.” She didn’t feel the need to share more of her history with Chuck. “I’m sorry I was abrupt on the phone.” Apologies didn’t come easy to her, but she had been snippy, and Chuck had been helpful. “I appreciate that you took me out with you and the Callows today.”

“I wish there could have been a better outcome.”

“We both knew the outcome.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier.”

They sat in silence while the waitress brought Chuck’s Scotch. He sniffed, sipped, nodded. “Thank you.”

“Did you get the preliminary autopsy report?” Max was familiar enough with the process to know they wouldn’t get a final report until the exam and all tests came back.

“The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Amelia said she’d call me when she knew anything.” He paused, sipped some more. “She doesn’t usually do that, but she knows this has been bothering me. And she suspects I’ll inform you.”

“Why doesn’t she call me?”

“She’s uncomfortable talking to the press.”

“She talked to me on the phone the other day.”

“Curiosity.”

“And you? You deal with the press all the time?”

“Never. But you don’t strike me as a typical reporter.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I did learn something at the coroner’s office. The visual exam of the body shows no external cause of death. There were some scrapes on his arms consistent with tree branches or falling and skinning his arm, but other than that, no visible wounds. X-rays showed a fracture in his left fibula. He probably could have walked on it, but it would have been painful. Because the body was frozen for so long, and based on average temperature for the area over the last six months, the coroner hopes to get a good tox screen, see if he was on drugs. Alcohol will be next to impossible to find—it breaks down in the system in a matter of hours, but it also speeds up hypothermia.”

“If he was found Saturday, would he have survived?”

“I can’t answer that. He was in apparent good health, he should have been able to survive, though he’d have had extreme hypothermia. By the second night, I would put his chance of survival—given what he was wearing and the sleeping bag—at less than twenty percent. If he’d fallen in the creek we crossed to find him, that would have lowered his body temperature dramatically and he wouldn’t have survived even more moderate temperatures than what he had. Without those answers, I can’t speculate.”

He paused, sipped his Scotch. “You’re suggesting that had the boys informed the rangers on Saturday that he was missing, we could have found him.”

“Yes.”

He let out a long, slow sigh. “I don’t know.”