Burton’s entire crew, exhilarated after a day battling whitewater, pulled into North River at three that afternoon. Carlyle thanked Simmons and Burton for their help, and hurriedly changed into street clothes. Looking for a place where he could think quietly for an hour, he drove to a barbeque joint overlooking the Hudson just outside of North River.
Grateful that nobody in the restaurant recognized him, Carlyle found a table in a deserted corner of the raucous dining room, pulled a laptop from his briefcase, and entered the details of his trip with Simmons. Still, other than the missing log, nothing stood out. Nothing unexpected had happened in the rafting itself, not even a minor mishap or close shave.
He reread his notes for Sanders’s and Blake’s last trips. Reliving the morning of the first accident, he imagined Sanders to his right, sitting on the back tube, and tried to recall the interval between the time he’d last felt the young guide next to him and when he’d heard him hit the water. Sanders hadn’t simply fallen out of the boat, he’d exploded out. If the frayed strap had unraveled, Sanders’s foot would have merely slipped out of it and he’d have probably ended up on his ass in the cockpit, not in the river.
His mind churning, Carlyle next wrote the names “Sanders” and “Blake” in separate columns on his evidence list. He then tried to visualize every detail of the events the morning each man died. Thinking of what might have caused their deaths, he wrote equipment failure, unpredictable weather, inadequate training, unexpectedly high river levels, alcohol or drugs, crew error, and poor judgment.
Then, tuning out the noise from a group of fishermen who’d just come into the restaurant, he closed his eyes for several seconds and visualized both convoys of rafts as if next to each other. His eyes popped open and a chill swept through his body. He added boat order to his list, threw a sawbuck on the table, grabbed his stuff, and bolted out of the restaurant.
Carlyle raced over to the South Mountain Lodge and, without knocking, marched into Marshall’s office. “We have to talk.”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” Maps, DEC files, account books, and aerial photographs of the gorge covered Marshall’s desk. A picture of his mother, standing outside a ski lodge in Switzerland, was on the wall behind his head.
Ignoring his comment, Carlyle pulled out a chair and sat down. “Think back. Did you switch boats with Sanders at the last minute?”
Marshall sat up straight. “How’d you know that?”
“What raft was he supposed to be in?”
“The green monster.”
“Why wasn’t he driving it then?”
“There was a ton of ice on the river on Saturday. His boat’s a real pig, so I gave him mine. It’s much more maneuverable.”
“The one with the defective foot strap.”
Marshall hesitated for a moment. “So what?”
“Did anyone see him fall out that morning?”
“Betts was right behind the two of you. He said Sanders did a high brace when he came up to Mixmaster, back arched, extended out over the end of the boat, inches from the river, steering like crazy. Then, bam, he just disappeared.”
“Where’s the boat now?” Carlyle said.
“Somewhere out back.”
“Show it to me.”
“I haven’t got time for this shit. Why don’t you go pester Bognor or that fascist deputy of his.”
“If you don’t cooperate, I’ll let Raines take over this investigation.”
Marshall pointed a finger at Carlyle. “Are you threatening me?”
“Of course not. Just show me that damned raft.”
Marshall stood up. “Five minutes. Then I want you out of here.”
The two men walked across the yard in the fading light and stood looking down at the remains of Sanders’s raft, buried under a foot of snow.
Without bothering to put gloves on, Carlyle went down on his hands and knees and dug at the hard, crusty snow until he’d uncovered the raft. “You mind giving me a hand?” Both men bent over, dragged the boat away from the shed, and unfolded it.
“What the hell are you looking for?” Marshall said.
Carlyle turned over the raft, reached into the two-by-three-foot cockpit and, like a blind person searching for his house keys, moved his fingers slowly over the restraining strap’s coarse rubber fabric.
Carlyle exhaled and sat back on his knees. “Look at it. Carefully.”
Marshall stared at the strap. “It’s broken. What about it?”
“It didn’t break. It’s been cut.” Carlyle brought the two ends of the strap together. “If it had worn out or Sanders had simply overstressed it, it would have ragged edges. The first four inches are perfectly smooth. Only a knife could have done that. It looks like a single stroke. Whoever did this left just enough for the strap to hold until Sanders really needed it.”
Marshall didn’t take his eyes off the raft.
“Since he was such a big kid,” Carlyle said, “I assumed it had pulled away or split.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Two deaths in five days? I couldn’t accept they were both accidents.”
“But how can you connect Blake’s death to the first one?”
“At the hearing yesterday, you said how close you came to being hit. That log wasn’t meant for Blake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were supposed to be driving this raft, and then on Wednesday, in the first raft, you narrowly missed the log that got Blake.”
“How can you be so sure that Blake’s death was no accident?”
“I had Simmons stop at Cedar this afternoon. The log is gone.”
“It must have gotten washed out of the chute.”
“A year’s worth of dead leaves are still there.”
“An outfitter probably dumped it in the river to make sure nobody else ran into it.”
“After we left Cedar Ledges yesterday, DEC blocked the entrance to the chute with yellow tape. And besides, if the tree had simply fallen, why would the stump end of it have been out over the river instead of the treetop?”
Marshall leaned heavily against the boat shed. “You’re saying my guides were murdered?”
“But they weren’t the
