Tough Cookie

So I didn’t hear a bawled caution. At least, not the first one.

Yelled warnings of “Look out! Move! Get out of the way!” finally got my attention, however. I brushed snow from my goggles but couldn’t see what the problem was. I skied to the far side of the run. More screaming erupted as I looked up the hill and tried to determine the source of the commotion.

In her sparkly suit, Marla was easy to spot on the opposite side of the run. A ski school class had stopped in its tracks. A gaggle of snowboarders in backward baseball caps flew down beside me. Further up the slope, a lone snowboarder was hurtling down the hill. He was headed toward a skiing couple not far from me.…

The startled couple moved one way, then another to get out of the speeding snowboarder’s way. Each time they sped up and turned to avoid him, he changed direction. It was like watching a torpedo homing in on a target.

The couple, I suddenly realized with horror, was Eileen and Jack.

“Eileen!” I screamed. “Jack! Get out of the way! Move!” What could I do? “Hey, snowboarder!” I shrieked. “Stop!”

Eileen and Jack turned back, then started to scoot toward the trees. Down the boarder came, faster and faster. Was he drunk? Was he crazy?

The snowboarder hit Eileen and Jack with all the force of a speeding bowling ball. Two bodies went flying. The big boarder struggled to right himself, then kept going down the hill. As he came nearer, I feared for a moment he was going to hit me, too. Then I realized he was slowing down.

He stopped inches away from the tips of my skis. Then, almost in slow motion, he toppled sideways and then backward into the snow. Cautiously, I made my way to his side.

When I removed his dark goggles, Barton Reed’s eyes were closed. The sound of wailing drifted down the hill. Jack Gilkey was crying, calling desperately for help. He was leaning over a blue-clad body sprawled in the snow.

Eileen.

CHAPTER 18

The ski patrol took Eileen and Barton down the mountain in sleds. The two patrol members would tell us only that Eileen was unconscious. Barton was nearly so, and had a broken leg. How fast was the boarder going, the patrol wanted to know? As fast as any downhill racer I’ve ever seen on television, I told them. It wasn’t the kind of collision where folks get covered with snow. It was the kind of crash that leaves limp bodies. Lifeless bodies.

The patrol wouldn’t let us near Jack, whom two other patrolmen were treating for shock. Marla and I got permission to leave and skied down. As we lugged our equipment to our cars, I filled her in on what I knew about Barton Reed. That he was a convict. That he was in remission from cancer. That he had had a possibly deadly resentment for Doug Portman, and apparently also had it in for Eileen or Jack or both.

We headed eastward in convoy, Marla in her four-wheel-drive Mercedes behind the Rover. Overhead, two Flight-for-Life helicopters thundered eastward. The ski patrol members had told us where Eileen and Barton were being taken: Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge, northwest of Denver. I tried to keep my eyes on the road while punching in our home number on the cellular.

“Eileen’s been hit,” I began without preamble when Tom answered. “On the slopes. I saw it coming. I didn’t—” My voice cracked. “I couldn’t do anything.”

“Slow down, Miss G. Someone hit Eileen? What was it, a skiing accident? Is she all right?”

“She’s unconscious. Oh, Tom. Barton Reed hit her. He was watching for her and then he hit her. With his snowboard. It was deliberate. I saw it.” Emotion closed my throat. I struggled for control and said: “The helo’s taking her to Lutheran now. Reed, too. Oh, Tom, why would he do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. Look, Wheat Ridge is in Jefferson. I’ll call someone from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department to be there at the hospital when they arrive. You … think I should pick up Todd from school and bring him down? What about Arch?”

Of course Todd should go to his mother. I told Tom so. “But I have to warn you, she looked terrible. All limp. Would you …” I couldn’t say it. Tears welled in my eyes. “Would you see if … if the priest from St. Luke’s can come down, too?” Best to prepare for the worst.

Ninety minutes later, Marla and I careened side by side into a hospital parking lot. Belatedly, I realized I’d tossed my ski boots in the Rover’s hatch and driven to Wheat Ridge in my socks. By the time I’d tied up my sneakers, Marla was opening the Range Rover door and peering inside.

“Goldy? Can we walk in there instead of running? I can feel my blood pressure rising.”

“You shouldn’t go in. Just stay out here and relax.”

“Are you kidding? The best place to be when you’re having a heart attack is inside the hospital.”

“Marla—”

“I am kidding.” We walked across the snowpacked road to the hospital. Low, dark clouds obscured the view of the Front Range. Marla asked, “Did you see what happened?” I nodded, and she went on: “I’ve been thinking about it all the way over here. Like TV. Instant replay.” She shuddered. “It wasn’t what it seemed.”

The automatic doors opened. A rush of warm antiseptic air washed over us as we entered the high-ceilinged hush of the hospital’s lobby. As we headed for the information desk, I asked, “Wasn’t what it seemed in what way?”

Marla faced me. “That snowboarder, the one you said you knew? Barton Reed. He was headed for Jack. Not Eileen.”

“How’d he miss?”

“Who knows? I saw it right from the start. Reed was perched at the top of the run. Eileen had boarded to the side. Jack was traversing the run. Reed took off toward Eileen. But he was on a snowboard. To gain momentum, he would have to go fast one way, then turn, still cruising fast, and fly over to hit Jack. Jack was too far away for Reed to go straight down the fall line to whack him.” I suppose I looked puzzled, because she continued: “Goldy, listen. A snowboard is different from skis that way. To build up momentum, if he was aiming for Eileen, he would have gone left, not right, and then doubled back to hit her.”

I struggled to recall what I’d seen. I didn’t know enough about snowboarding to analyze the way Barton Reed had come down the slope. Had Jack seen the danger? I thought he’d reversed direction to protect Eileen, or at least to get her out of harm’s way. Had he been trying to protect himself instead?

The woman at the information desk informed us that Eileen Druckman was in critical but stable condition in Intensive Care. Internal injuries, head injuries, what? I pressed. The woman replied that she did not know. Starting soon, Eileen could have family-member visits, two people at a time, for ten minutes per hour. As Marla and I rolled up the elevator to Intensive Care, I again tried to dredge up the memory of precisely what I’d seen on Killdeer Mountain. If you didn’t know much about snowboarding—and I didn’t—interpretation was not possible. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know how much Marla knew about snowboarding, either.

Plus, what did I really know about any relationship between Barton Reed and Jack Gilkey? When I’d dropped Arch off on Saturday morning, Jack had known about Reed’s sentence. He’d also known that Portman denied Reed parole.

I had never thought to ask how he’d come by his information.

Tom and Arch were standing in the ICU waiting room when we arrived. Todd, though, was nowhere in sight. I was so happy to see Arch I hugged him before he could protest.

“Mom. Please. Stop.”

“I’ve been worried about you.”

“Why? I wasn’t skiing. I was in school.” I must have looked defeated because he made his tone brighter, more comforting. “It’s okay. A nurse just came out and told us Eileen’s awake, but real weak. She’s got a concussion. Todd’s in there with her. Oh, and Tom says that Todd can stay with us. You know, indefinitely. Until his mom’s better.”