Backcountry

  Backcountry

  Chapter 1

  Sam Westin stared at the photo on her cell phone. The jagged granite mountains, ivory-barked alders, and cloudless azure sky were so perfectly mirrored in Pinnacle Lake that she couldn’t tell the difference between the reflection in the water and the reality of peaks and vegetation above the shoreline.

  This picture would make a perfect enlargement to replace the faded print of Table Mountain above her fireplace.

  Except that every time she looked at the image, she might cry.

  She thumbed the screen back to the selfie that had arrived in her e-mail three weeks ago. Kimberly Quintana, her curly brown hair frizzed around her head, her petite blond daughter Kyla Quintana-Johnson posed in front of her, the lake sparkling behind them.

  Kim and Kyla died here.

  “They probably sat right in this spot,” Sam said aloud, touching her fingers to the rock ledge beneath her. Biting her lip, she turned away from the lake. Behind her, Chase was inspecting a small clearing in the shrubbery. “Who comes to such a beautiful place to commit murder?”

  He folded his arms across his chest, his gaze fixed on the ground. “Whoever he or she was, the killer—or killers—didn’t leave behind many clues. I can’t even tell where it happened.”

  The word “it” wafted over Sam like a cold breeze. There was no blood. No outline where the bodies had lain, no yellow crime scene tape. Rain showers had drenched the site since the murders. Dozens of boot and shoe prints were etched into the mud near the lake shore, but they were smudged by weather and trampling; it was impossible to tell when they had been laid down. Sam recognized the tread patterns left by several brands of hiking boots and athletic shoes, but those might have been worn by the law enforcement personnel who had visited the site over the last several weeks.

  The trees and bushes were myriad shades of green, only starting to change colors for the coming autumn. The ground cover was the usual mix of grass, lichens, and ferns. There were even a few blossoms left late in the alpine season; fuchsia monkeyflowers and violet penstemons and one lonely white trillium.

  The lushness of the surroundings felt almost shameful. Violent death should not go unmarked. But wasn’t this what she loved about nature? If left to her own devices, nature could heal all the wounds inflicted by humans. Wasn’t that what Kim and Kyla loved, too? Sam hoped they’d had a chance to enjoy the beauty of this place before...

  She didn’t want to finish the sentence, even in her mind.

  Chase lowered himself onto the rock ledge beside her, extending his long legs out to rest his heels in a patch of moss. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the memorial service.”

  “You didn’t know them. I met them less than a year ago.” She’d instantly bonded with the mother and daughter on a trail maintenance crew last November.

  Chase studied her face. “Are you glad we came?”

  “Glad” was a poor word choice, too. Sometimes human language was simply inadequate. She swallowed around the lump that partially blocked her throat. “I had to see it. Thanks for coming with me.”

  She and Chase had the place to themselves. They were not supposed to be here at all. The Forest Service trail was officially closed. But years of experience with lack of staff in wild places had taught Sam that there would be no ranger or deputy to stop them. If by chance they had been challenged after passing the “Closed—No Entry” sign, Chase could argue that as an FBI agent, he had cause to investigate a crime site on federal land.

  On the way into the trailhead parking lot, they had passed a lone driver, a man in a baseball cap driving a silver Subaru Forester. Others had come as well, at least as far as the parking lot: an informal memorial had grown up by the trail register. Soggy sympathy cards and a heart woven out of grass nestled among two incongruous teddy bears and a pink Valentine-shaped Mylar balloon that had no business defiling a natural area.

  Balloons were notorious for killing wildlife.

  Both Kyla and Kim would have been outraged to find one here.

  A faint scratching sound made her turn to check the rocks that flanked both sides of her. A Townsend’s chipmunk, its tail flicking up and down, edged away from her pack and the remains of their brunch. The striped rodent froze, eyeing her. Its cheeks bulged suspiciously.

  Sam pulled the leftover crackers and cheese into her lap. The chipmunk dashed to the top of a boulder a few feet away, where he twitched and chittered, loudly broadcasting the news of these giant intruders in his territory.

  “Were you here when they were murdered?” she asked the animal. “Did you see what happened?”

  The chipmunk leapt from the rock and vanished into the underbrush.

  “That’s what I figured.” Sam stuffed a wheat cracker into her mouth and chewed. “Nobody saw anything.”

  Nobody except for Kyla and Kim, of course. And whoever killed them.

  If she hadn’t been in Idaho with Chase at his family reunion, she would have been hiking here on August second with her friends. After conquering all the familiar trails off the road to Mount Baker, they’d been on a mission to explore the trails further south along the Mountain Loop Highway. If she had been here at Pinnacle Lake instead of partying with Chase’s Latino-Lakota clan, would Kim and Kyla still be alive?

  Chase matched a cracker with a piece of cheese, inspecting both carefully before raising the snack to his lips. “I’m so sorry about Kyla and Kim. But if you’d been here, you might have been killed, too.”

  Sam didn’t respond. As a child, she’d been sleeping, absent from her mother’s deathbed. Absent, out kayaking alone when her colleague died in the Galapagos Islands. Absent, away in Idaho when her friends died right here.

  In age, Sam was nearly equidistant between Kyla and Kim. But she shared a special bond with Kyla, perhaps because they resembled each other, at least superficially. Like Sam, Kyla was petite with long white-blond hair, although Kyla had warm brown eyes and a splash of playful freckles across her nose, while Sam’s skin was uniformly pale and her eyes were a cool gray-green. Also like Sam, Kyla spent weeks at a time backpacking in the wild, while Kim worked behind a desk, escaping only for occasional day hikes with her daughter and Sam.

  Kindred spirits were hard to find. The loss of her friends felt like a bruise that might never heal. Sam touched her fingers to Chase’s thigh. “You checked the case file for me, right? What do they have?”

  Chase covered her cold fingers with his own warm ones. “You really want to know?”

  She nodded. “It can’t hurt any more than it does already.”

  Letting go of her hand, he pulled a wad of pages from the pocket of his windbreaker, smoothed them across his thigh, and read. “Kyla Quintana-Johnson was shot in the back with a 30-06 rifle bullet. A second bullet, most likely from a .357 revolver, was lodged in her brain. That bullet entered her forehead.”

  Sam sucked in a breath that made her heart hurt.

  “Kimberly Quintana was killed by a single .357 bullet to the brain that entered through her forehead.”

  At least, Sam tried to console herself, their deaths sounded like they’d happened quickly. The women hadn’t been raped or tortured.

  “No bullet casings or other bullets were found in the vicinity of the bodies, and unfortunately, those are very common weapons. The surrounding ground was hard and dry; the only footprints found were near the lakeshore. Imprints were taken of those; bits and pieces of trash collected from around the scene, but there are no links to anything substantive yet. The trail register was checked, but the pages were wet and the pencil was missing and no hikers had signed in on that day.”

  That figures, Sam thought. The registers, which were supposed to be used by the Forest Service to re
cord trail usage by hikers, were rarely collected. Often the pages inside the crude wooden boxes had no place left to write and there was no implement provided to write with.

  “No witnesses found so far.”

  The lake in front of her morphed into an impressionist painting. Sam wiped at her tear-filled eyes but only succeeded in blurring her vision even more. “Can I see the crime scene photos?”

  “No.” Chase folded the pages and stuffed them back in his pocket. “Trust me; you don’t want to remember your friends that way.” He checked his watch, then stood up. “We both need to get moving.”

  Taking his hand, she pulled herself up from the rock. “Was there anything in there about suspects?”

  “Christopher Rawlins and Troy Johnson are regarded as persons of interest.”

  “No way.” Sam shook her head. She’d spent time with both Kyla’s boyfriend and Kim’s husband. Neither seemed remotely capable of premeditated murder. “Troy’s the one who convinced me to take this damn job.”

  “At least it’s a normal job,” Chase said.

  “Is it?” She’d had so many crazy assignments in the past, she couldn’t be sure.

  In less than three hours, she needed to be back in Bellingham at the offices of Washington Wilderness Quest. There she would take charge of a troop of troubled teens whose surly attitudes would supposedly be changed forever by a twenty-one-day trek into the backcountry.

  * * * * *

  “Please, Sam, I’m desperate,” Troy Johnson had begged her only a week ago.

  Troy was Kim’s grieving husband, Kyla’s grieving father. Although their talk was supposed to be about business, and they were in a busy brewpub, it was proving to be a painful experience for both of them.

  “I can more or less cope with Kim’s admin jobs,” he confided, sliding his eyeglasses up his nose. The glasses were thickly framed in black, an old style that was all the latest rage. “I can’t take Kyla’s place out in the field. Our other field guide already left for his teaching job in Montana.” He drew a line down the side of his sweating beer glass with his fingertip. “We have several grant applications out right now, and there’s no way we’ll land a single one if we don’t have a full contingent of qualified staff. You’d be a perfect field guide, Sam.”

  She’d scoffed at that idea. “I am a wildlife biologist, Troy. I have zero experience with counseling troubled kids. Zero experience with kids, period.”

  If Kim were still alive, she could have told her husband that humans were Sam’s least favorite species.

  They were seated in a corner of the tap room at Boundary Bay, and the ambient roar was growing as the pub filled with drinkers.

  “You have all the skills we need in the field.” Troy leaned in to be heard, his elbows on the table as he ticked off the requirements on his long fingers. “You have a college degree. You’re a mature, stable adult.”

  Sam speculated that the “stable” part might be stretching the truth a bit.

  “You have extensive wilderness experience in all sorts of weather; and you are a certified Wilderness First Responder for medical emergencies. And since you taught tracking skills for us earlier this year, you already know the system.”

  “I was only there for a few days,” she argued, leaning forward, too.

  “We’ll teach you some techniques for dealing with the kids. Maya will be with you. She knows the ropes now. Aidan Callahan will be your other peer counselor. He knows what he’s doing. The peer counselors carry gear, help set up and break down camp, keep watch on the client kids, and generally do whatever you tell them to. In the field, you’re their boss.”

  Wow. She’d never had assistants before; she was usually a team of one.

  “You’ll have the backup of the mental health counselors in the office, and they’ll take your place for two days halfway through the session to give you a break and check up on the kids.”

  Lifting his beer, Troy took a sip. Deep lines carved his forehead above weary gray eyes, and his cheeks were hollowed above his carefully trimmed white beard. Like Kyla’s, Troy’s hair was straight and pale, although his was more white than blond now. “You can’t say you’re not experienced in working with challenging teens; I see what you’ve done for Maya.”

  Sam still wasn’t sure how she’d developed such a soft spot for the tough juvenile delinquent she’d met on a trail crew two years ago. “Maya has done everything for herself. It’s not like I adopted her. She glommed onto me like a remora.”

  Just as Sam had feared, Maya Velasquez had been booted out of her foster home in Tacoma only days after she turned eighteen. She’d insisted on living in a tent in Sam’s back yard for a few weeks, until Kim Quintana took pity on both of them and gave the girl the summer job as peer counselor with Wilderness Quest.

  The edge of Troy’s pale eyebrow lifted. “I have no clue what a remora is.”

  “It’s a fish,” she told him. “Remoras suction-cup themselves to bigger fish for a free ride.”

  Setting down his glass, Troy reached across the table to place his hand on top of hers. His fingers were cool and damp. “My point, Sam, is that Maya accomplished a lot with your guidance, and that’s exactly what these six kids need.”

  Pulling her hand from beneath his, she fingered the beer-stained coaster on the table in front of her.

  “It’s only for twenty-one days,” he continued. “The parents signed their kids up long ago; they’re counting on us. It’s the last expedition of this year, and there’s no way I can find someone to fill the job now. I’ll pay you three times the usual salary.”

  The last was a hard offer to turn down. Had Kim told her husband that Sam’s last writing contract had fallen through, leaving her unemployed? Awkward emotions of guilt and shame wrestled with each other in Sam’s head.

  “You know that Wilderness Quest was Kim’s dream,” Troy pressed. “She wanted this to be her legacy, helping troubled kids find the right path.”

  Oh, yeesh. Of course Sam knew; mother and daughter had often sung the praises of the wilderness therapy program Kim had created.

  Cupping both hands around his beer glass, he stared into the amber liquid. “I didn’t even kiss Kim goodbye that morning. And I hadn’t seen Kyla for weeks; when she wasn’t out in the mountains with the Quest kids, she was with Chris.” His voice wavered, and he paused to swallow before adding, “Kim left a chicken in the fridge to thaw for dinner.”

  Sam struggled to bring into focus her final moments with her friends.

  Kim, her face damp with perspiration after their climb from Iceberg Lake to Herman Saddle. She’d swept her arm across the panorama of Mount Shuksan to the east and Bagley Lake far below them, saying, “This is what cures the kids: nature.”

  Kyla, laughing with Sam after they simultaneously turned the wrong way during a dance lesson at the Kickin’ A Saloon.

  At least her last memories of her friends were happy ones.

  Troy’s tired eyes glistened. “I can’t let Wilderness Quest fail. Kim and Kyla...” His Adam’s apple bobbed down and back up. “They’d be so happy to know you’re taking Kyla’s place. That you’re helping us go on.”

  No fair playing the murdered friends card.

  How could she say no?

  * * * * *

  “Summer?” Chase’s voice shattered the memory, abruptly dropping her back into the present. He always called her by her given name, insisting that Summer perfectly matched her fair coloring and outdoorsy inclinations. “We really need to go, or I’m going to miss my flight.”

  Sam gazed at Pinnacle Lake one last time. Shouldering her pack, she murmured softly to the atmosphere, “Kim. Kyla. I miss you guys so much.”

  Putting a hand on her shoulder, Chase squeezed gently.

  “We always said that if we died out in the wild, we’d die doing what we loved,” she told him. “But we were talking about being mauled by bears or falling off cliffs or getting swept over a waterfall. We never imagined being slaughtered by a madman.�
��

  “No one does, querida.” He tilted his head toward the trail.

  They started down the steep path, the soles of their boots obliterating dozens of other prints from hikers who had trudged up and down this trail over the summer.

  The authorities had recovered bullets from the bodies, but no casings from the scene. She’d learned enough about guns from Chase to understand that without bullet casings or the rifle or revolver that fired them, the slugs recovered from her friends’ bodies were useless except to explain the cause of death and narrow down the types of weapons used. One 30-06 rifle, one revolver. Or perhaps even two revolvers.

  Was the killer a man? A woman? One killer or two? So many unanswered questions. Detritus collected at the scene might contain traces of DNA and maybe even fingerprints, but those were useless without a specific individual to match.

  She followed Chase’s lean figure down the mountainside. Had the killer hiked this same winding trail? Were they trampling vital evidence? The hundreds of bits of rubbish ground into each mile of trail would drive any crime scene investigator crazy. She routinely picked up stray items every time she hiked, a small good deed to keep wild areas pristine. On her way up the trail, she’d bagged a button, two candy bar wrappers, a torn nylon strap with a rusty buckle, and a small packet of tissues that had slipped unnoticed out of a hiker’s pocket. She knew other hikers who collected garbage along the routes they traveled. Evidence could easily have been carried away by environmental do-gooders.

  Hell, for that matter, half the debris in her trash bag might have been transported here by investigators. Dozens of officials had tramped up and down this trail since that day, photographing the scene, carrying the bodies, or just coming to gawk like humans did anytime something exciting happened.

  Why didn’t perpetrators ever conveniently isolate their clues from the background mess?

  “Too bad the real world is nothing like CSI on television,” Chase said over his shoulder, reading her mind again.

  She needed to change the subject. “I so wish you lived here, Chase.”