Hazard of the Hills Read online

  “Well, I don’t think we’re going to figure out much more standing here, so let’s have the experts take a look.”

  “Yup.” Jones raised her hand high over her head, motioning for the forensic guys to come over. They looked at her for any detailed instructions she might have. “I’ll leave you to it. I don’t have any particular insight into people who fall over cliffs. I guess we should look for anything that she might have been holding and dropped. But I don’t see anything obvious. Record everything you can, and then we’ll have the death investigator take a look at the body and arrange transport.”

  They didn’t tell her that they already knew the protocol, just nodded politely and went to work. Margie and Jones scanned the ground for anything that might have been dropped or fallen out of the pockets of the deceased. There was some litter, more likely left behind by the crazy downhill bikers, but it would all have to be gathered together for analysis anyway.

  “You can’t be over the police line!” A strong male voice was raised over the chatter of police radios, bystanders, and various people involved in the scene. Margie looked around one of the privacy screens to see what the commotion was about. Detective Gagnon, whom she’d not had much opportunity to work with previously, was telling off one of the bystanders, who was, in fact, properly behind the yellow police tape. Margie turned her head to frown at Jones, who was also looking at the scene with some consternation.

  “You want me to confiscate that?” Gagnon demanded.

  The man he was talking to had something in both hands like an electronic game. His head was down and he was working the controller in his hands. He glanced up at Gagnon, scowling, and said something back to him.

  Margie wanted to go see what was going on, but if she and Jones both went over, it would look like they were questioning Gagnon’s judgment or all ganging up on the bystander, neither of which was a desirable scenario.

  “Go ahead,” Jones said. “See if he needs a hand with anything and I’ll supervise here.”

  Margie nodded and moved off to join Gagnon at the perimeter. “Anything I can assist with, Detective Gagnon?”

  He cast an irritated glance at her, which Margie fully understood. She wouldn’t want anyone trying to poke their nose in when she was handling a situation either. Only sometimes, it did help to have someone else on hand.

  “This joker thinks that he doesn’t have to respect the police line,” Gagnon pointed out.

  Margie looked at the man a few feet back of the police tape. But as she stood there, something caught her attention out the corner of her eye. She turned her head and looked up. A bird or squirrel? But the movement hadn’t been an animal in the trees. It was a small box floating in the air. There was a very faint whirring coming from it that she could barely hear over the other ambient noise of the murder site.

  A remote-control drone of some kind. And it was, in fact, significantly inside the police line. In a position where its camera would be able to view over the privacy screens to where the body lay. Margie looked back at the man with the controller in his hands.

  “Do you want me to arrest him for obstructing an investigation?”

  Gagnon’s jaw clenched and he gave a curt nod. “Might as well, he won’t listen to anything else.”

  Margie took a step toward him. “Sir, I’m putting you under—”

  “I’m not doing anything!” the man protested, looking at her for a moment before looking back down at the controller in his hands, twiddling the joystick that controlled the craft’s direction. “I’m not interfering. I’m back here behind the police line, just like he said. I haven’t touched anything or gotten in anybody’s way.”

  “You’ve been told that thing can’t be over the police line. You’ve failed to comply. So I’m putting you under arrest. We’ll impound the drone and the judge can decide whether—”

  “It’s here. It’s here, it’s not over the line anymore.” The little box hovered over the man, then ducked slightly behind him, as if it were a child hiding behind his father.

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Howard Ross.”

  “Have you got some ID?”

  He looked as though he would argue. Then he bit his lip and used his controller to bring the drone down to the ground, so that he could put the controller down to go through his pockets. He pulled a wallet out of his breast pocket and dug out his driver’s license for Margie to look at. He had given his correct name, and she quickly jotted down his name, address, and birth date, as well as the operator’s license number in her notepad.

  “Have you ever been arrested before?” she asked him.

  “You can’t arrest me! I’m doing what you told me to.”

  Margie looked at Gagnon, raising her brows. “I’m pretty sure I can,” she argued. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Of course.”

  Margie nodded. “So, is this the first time you’ve been arrested?”

  “I’ve never been arrested before. Look, all I was doing was using my drone. I didn’t think there was any harm in it.”

  “When a peace officer gives you a command and you don’t comply, you’re in the wrong. Period. It doesn’t really matter what you think.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, then apparently thought better of it. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “This is a police perimeter. You can’t cross a police perimeter with a drone.”

  He nodded his understanding.

  “I think you owe Detective Gagnon here an apology.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ross said immediately. He turned slightly to face Gagnon directly. “I’m sorry, sir. I should have listened to what you said. I really don’t want to be arrested. I wasn’t trying to do anything wrong. Do you think…”

  Gagnon gave him a fierce look, unblinking. Ross lowered his eyes and looked at the ground near his feet.

  “I am. I’m sorry. I’m not just saying that. Please don’t arrest me or confiscate my drone.”

  “Why don’t you pick up your drone and get out of here?”

  “Okay. Yes, sir. I will.” Ross turned around and bent down to pick up the small drone and beat a hasty retreat.

  Gagnon turned and looked at Margie.

  “I hope you don’t think I was interfering,” Margie said. “I was just offering to help out.”

  “You have a teenager at home?”

  “Yes,” Margie was surprised that he knew. She hadn’t had much to do with Gagnon at the office, and she didn’t talk a lot about Christina or have pictures on her desk. She tried to keep her personal life and job from intermixing too much.

  “I thought so. There’s no one as intimidating as a mom with a teenager.”

  Margie laughed. “Thanks!”

  “He didn’t back down for me,” Gagnon pointed out. “But he wasn’t going to cross Mama Bear.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The medical examiner’s van had pulled into the scene. Margie nodded to Gagnon and returned to the area behind the screens. She waved at Jones, who had noticed her return. While the techs stood to the side once more, the death investigator from the medical examiner’s office leaned over the body. Margie had met him before.

  “Dr. Kahn.”

  He looked up for a moment. “Parks Pat,” he greeted, tone slightly mocking.

  “That’s Detective Pat to you.”

  He was wearing a mask and face shield, but she saw the fan of wrinkles that sprang from the corners of his eyes when he smiled at her comment.

  “I suppose you’re expecting me to declare cause and manner of death on the spot.”

  “Oh, Detective Jones has already done that,” Margie said, waving a hand airily. “Accidental death caused by a fall.”

  “It wasn’t the fall that killed her,” Kahn said.

  “Oh?”

  Everyone nearby froze and looked at him, startled by this announcement.

  “No. It was the landing that killed her.”

  Margie groaned. Everyone resumed their conversations, t
heir eyeballs nearly rolling out of their heads. “That’s really bad, Dr. Kahn.”

  “I thought you would appreciate it.”

  “I’m not sure appreciate is the right word.”

  He chuckled and resumed his examination of the body. Margie was hesitant to look too closely, but now that the woman had been turned over, she leaned in for a better look at the face. The fall had done a number, but she was still recognizable. Since the impact had killed her, there hadn’t been any swelling. If she had survived, Margie was sure her face would have been too swollen for her own mother to recognize her.

  “Do we have an identity?”

  “Patience.”

  “Patience who?”

  He ignored her. After a few minutes, he patted her pockets. He shook his head. “No wallet on her. You’ve looked around the area to see whether it fell somewhere close by?”

  “We didn’t find anything,” Jones confirmed.

  Kahn looked up at the hill. “Then I guess you should look at the top and follow her path down. See if she lost a wallet or purse along the way. It could be caught on a clump of leaves or a depression in the ground.”

  They all looked at the 70-meter climb. No one volunteered.

  “Do you think it’s best to go down from the top, or up from the bottom?” Jones asked Margie.

  “Top down, for sure. But with a harness and rope. I’m not taking the chance of landing beside our mystery woman.”

  “Try the Fire Department Vertical Rescue Team,” Kahn suggested. “They love stuff like this.”

  Margie didn’t mind the idea of adding a little adventure to someone else’s day. If the Fire Department would enjoy belaying down the hill, who was she to step in the way of their good time? “I’m on it.”

  She called the non-emergency line and explained to the phone operator what she needed. In a few minutes, she was talking to Captain Burrows, head of the Vertical Rescue Team. She smiled at the excitement in his voice when he heard that they had an actual crime scene to help out with. Not just an exercise, but not a life and death rescue either.

  “We’ll be there as soon as possible, detective.”

  “Do you need coordinates or a more accurate description of where it is?”

  “Oh, trust me, I know where it is.”

  Margie laughed and hung up. “They’ll be on their way soon,” she told Jones.

  “Excellent. You don’t know how glad I am that no one is going to be lowering me down that hill on a rope. Do you know how long it would be before I got tripped up on a slope like that?”

  Jones was a little overweight and not in the best physical shape. Unfortunately, detectives spent a little too much time at their desks and didn’t get the kind of exercise that a beat cop did. She wasn’t particularly clumsy that Margie had noticed, but Margie wouldn’t want to be going down that hill without a safety harness either. She couldn’t imagine looking down from the top of the hill, balancing on a bike, trying to work up the courage to rocket down it. It was amazing they didn’t have regular calls out to the location. Maybe that said something about the common sense of most bikers. But not all of them.

  She looked back at Dr. Kahn and the victim. “Was she killed instantly?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that one. But it was something they would need to know.

  “Very little blood or perimortem bruising. I would say that she probably died on impact.” He was working his way around the victim’s head, fingers quick and light. Margie was reminded of checking a melon for soft spots. The thought stirred a little nausea and she turned away to look around the scene.

  “At least this one is clearly an accident,” she offered to Jones.

  “Don’t jinx it.”

  “By saying that it’s an accident?”

  Jones nodded. “Yeah. You don’t want it to turn out to not be an accident, do you?”

  “No. But I don’t think I can say anything now that will change it.”

  “Just don’t bring the wrath of the universe down on you by saying we know something before the medical examiner confirms it. You know how complicated things can get when you think it’s an accident but then it isn’t.”

  Margie rolled her eyes. Yes, she had seen that on a few cases. “Okay. I’m not saying anything. Unhear it and forget all about it. We don’t know anything yet. I sure hope that the medical examiner decides that it was an accident.”

  Jones groaned.

  Margie looked at her. “Not that either?”

  “No.”

  Margie lapsed into silence. Apparently, she was not supposed to say anything.

  They could hear sirens off in the distance, apparently getting closer and, after a few minutes, the sirens cut off somewhere close by. Margie looked up at the top of the hill. It wasn’t long before she could see tall dark figures silhouetted at the top of the hill. It made her dizzy just looking up at them.

  Didn’t they get dizzy looking down?

  Jones waved up at them and a few of the men waved back. They stood at the top discussing things for some time, then retreated.

  By the time Dr. Kahn and his assistant had removed the woman’s body from the scene and were transporting her back to the van, firefighters were starting down the hill, strolling along as if they were just out for a Sunday walk. But Margie could see that they had safety harnesses attached to ropes being belayed by men up above. They worked their way down the hill slowly.

  Margie gasped when she saw one of them slip and ski down the hill for a few feet on loose dirt or gravel. She could hear the sound of the skid and found herself reaching toward him as if she could hold him back. She laughed at herself, covering her mouth with her hand to prevent herself from gasping or shouting out again. But she’d heard several other gasps around her too. She wasn’t the only one captivated by the sight of the strapping young men working their way down the dangerous slope.

  One of the men called out and held a hand up to stop the others. Margie couldn’t hear what he was saying and took a couple of steps closer, hoping that if she concentrated, she would be able to hear what he was saying.

  Her phone started buzzing in her pocket. Margie answered it and heard Captain Burrows’s voice.

  “What do you want us to do about any evidence that we find?”

  “Well… it will need to be documented.” Margie stared up at the hill, where they were gathered around something. “Can they take pictures? Something close up, with an object to show scale, and some shots showing context—the area it is in. We’ll have to mark it all on a map of the hill afterward. Do they have gloves and evidence bags?”

  “Yes, I did think that much out ahead of time. We can manage that.”

  “Okay. Have one person do all the collecting, he’ll need to initial the evidence bags and sign an affidavit so that we maintain the chain of evidence. What did they find?”

  “Couple of credit cards. No purse or wallet yet. Maybe she just had them loose in her pocket.”

  “Oh, well I guess you don’t need to show scale for credit cards. They’re all the same size.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  Margie’s phone vibrated again as the forensic techs were gathering up the last of their evidence and equipment. She instinctively looked up the hill to see whether it was Burrows again but, of course, he wasn’t standing on the edge looking down at her.

  She slid out her phone and looked at the face, but it wasn’t Burrows this time. It was Christina.

  “Hi, sweetie.” Margie glanced around her. She’d hardly even been aware of the passing of time and didn’t know at first whether Christina would even be at the Stampede yet. But judging by the short shadows on the ground it was noon or close to it. “How has the morning gone?”

  “Really good,” Christina enthused. “There were some really good bands, and we even got to talk to some of the musicians. There aren’t a lot of people down here like you would expect there to be. Except with COVID, you don’t know how many people to expect. But it isn’t crazy
crowds like I had imagined.”

  “That’s great. What else have you done?”

  “A bit of this and that. Some games and rides, a couple of exhibits. I’m going to go have lunch in the Elbow River Camp. See what’s going on over there.”

  “That sounds great. Say Taanishi for me.”

  Christina sounded like she was smiling as she answered. “Okay. I just wanted to let you know that I was still alive and haven’t been kidnapped by head hunters. We’re having a good time, and everyone is fine.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. Call me again later.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Margie followed Jones’s car up to the top of the hill where the vertical rescue team was staged. They were met by Captain Burrows, a tall, broad-chested man in his thirties who would certainly not be out of place on one of the fundraising calendars that the fire department put out. Margie gave him a warm smile behind her mask and strove to remain professional.

  “I’m so glad that we had your team available. I would not have wanted to search that slope by myself.”

  He nodded his agreement. “It really isn’t safe. Can’t believe that people would actually use it for downhill biking. Some people are crazy.”

  “Or suicidal,” Margie agreed. “I can’t imagine doing that unless you were.”

  “The people who do things like that don’t usually think about consequences. Teenagers and young people whose brains haven’t fully developed. Thrill seekers. No real concept about the kind of suffering it could bring to them or their families. Plenty of my guys are thrill seekers. It’s the nature of the job. But going on a bike down that slope… that’s beyond the pale.”

  Jones and Margie both vigorously nodded their agreement.

  One of the other team members joined them, smiling in greeting. “And you must be the detectives.”

  “We are,” Jones agreed. She nodded to the bags in his hand. “My evidence?”

  “Yes. Can you walk me through what I’m supposed to do to preserve the chain?”

  Jones had him seal and initial the bags and took down his name and contact information in her notepad. “I’ll send you an affidavit to fill out. At some point, you could be called upon to testify, but considering that this is ninety-nine percent likely to be classified as an accident, probably not.”