I’m an architect, not a survival expert, I thought. I could hardly feel my hands. Why the hell hadn’t I put gloves in my knapsack? I was so stupid, I
deserved
to die.
Trying to avoid a pine branch, I lost my footing, fell, and almost banged my head against a boulder on my right. Stupid. Deserve to …
Architect.
The vague thought nudged my dimming consciousness.
Know how to …
Slowly, the thought insisted, making me turn toward the boulder my head had nearly struck.
Build things.
When I struggled to my feet, I discovered that the boulder was as high as my chest. A second boulder, five feet to the left, was slightly less high. The boulders lay against a cliff, which formed a rear wall.
Build things, I repeated.
I stumbled to the pine branch I’d tried to avoid, put all my weight into it, and felt a surge of hope when a
snap
intruded on the smothering stillness. Working as hard as I could, I dragged the branch through the snow to the boulders and hefted it on top, bracing it across them. Staggering, I repeated the process several times, overlaying the needles, trying to form a roof.
The cold made my hands ache so much that tears streamed from my eyes, freezing on my cheeks, but I didn’t have time to stick my hands, raw and bloody, under my rain slicker to try to warm them against my chest. There was too much to do. I used football—size rocks to weigh down the edges of the branches.
Delirious, I kicked the snow from the ground between the boulders, adding it to the drift outside the shelter. I stuck two needled branches at the shelter’s entrance, forming a further windbreak. No matter how pained my hands were, I couldn’t stop. I had to get dead twigs, leaves, and sticks, piling them at the back of the shelter.
I’d left a small hole at the back, where the boulders touched the cliff, hoping that smoke would escape through it. Away from the wind and the falling snow, I felt less assaulted by the cold. But my hands were like paws as I clumsily made a small pile of leaves and twigs, then fumbled to open the container of matches and pull out a book of them. I could hardly peel off one of the matches. My fingers didn’t seem to belong to me. The match kept falling. It was finally so damaged that I had to peel off a second match, and this one, blessedly, caught fire when I struck it. It fell from my hands onto the clump of leaves and twigs, remained burning, and started a small fire. Smoke rose. I held my breath to keep from coughing. Pushed by heat, the smoke drifted toward the hole in the back.
My throat was so dry that it swelled shut, restricting the passage of air to my lungs. Desperate for something to drink, I reached my unfeeling right hand outside and fumbled to raise snow to my mouth. Instantly, I regretted it. The melting snow made my lips and tongue more numb than they already were. Shivering, I felt a deeper cold. I dimly remembered TV news reports that warned hikers caught in a blizzard not to eat snow as a way of getting moisture. They’d use so much body heat melting the snow in their mouths that they had a greater risk of dying from hypothermia.
The small amount of water from the melted snow hadn’t done any good. Almost instantly, my lips became dry again. My swollen tongue seemed to fill my mouth. It was a measure of how dazed I’d become that I stared blearily down at the metal container of matches for a long time before my muddled thoughts cleared and I realized what I had to do. Shaking, I put the matches in the first—aid kit. I picked up their metal container, reached outside into the wind, packed the container with snow, and set it near the fire.
Slowly, the crystals melted. Worried about burning my hand, I put my shirtsleeve over my fingers before I gripped the hot container and pulled it away from the fire. It was only half an inch thick and two inches square, but it might as well have been a sixteen—ounce glass, so irresistible was the tiny amount of water in it. I forced myself to let it cool.
Finally, I couldn’t be patient any longer. I used my sleeve to raise the container. I brought it close to my lips, blew on it, then gulped the warm, bitter water. My parched mouth absorbed it before I could swallow. I reached greedily outside and packed it with more snow. The lingering heat in the metal reduced the snow to water without my needing to set the container near the fire. Again, I gulped it. Again, the water never got near my throat. I refilled the container, placed it near the fire, and put a few more sticks on the flames.
That became my pattern. When my mouth and throat were moist enough, I pulled a plastic bag of peanuts and raisins from my knapsack, chewing each mouthful thoroughly, making them last. Worrying about Jason, hating Petey, I stared at the fire.
I vaguely remember going out to clear a drift from the smoke hole and to find more fuel. Otherwise, everything blurred. A couple of times when I woke, the flames had died out. On those occasions, all that kept me from freezing to death was the heat that the boulders had absorbed.
When I noticed that the pressure bandage around my left forearm was completely pink from the bleeding under it, I didn’t react with dismay—the arm seemed to belong to someone else. Even when I saw sunlight beyond the branches and drifts at the entrance to my shelter, I felt oddly apart from it. Eventually, I discovered that an entire day had passed, but while I was trapped in the shelter, time hardly moved.
Probably I’d have lain in a stupor until energy totally failed me, if it hadn’t been for water dripping through the roof. The cold drops struck my eyelids, shocking me. The sunlight was painfully bright. I moved my head. The drops fell into my mouth, tasting vaguely of turpentine from the resin on the pine branches. I gagged and spat the water out, sitting up to reach a dry spot.
More drops splashed around me, raising smoke from the almost—dead fire. Coughing, I grabbed my knapsack and stumbled outside, kneeing through the branches and drifts at the entrance. The heat of the sun was luxurious. Snow fell from trees. Rivulets started to form. Standing in the melting snow, my feet and shins became wet again, but it was a different kind of wet, the sun warming me, so that I didn’t shiver. From the sun’s angle in the east, I judged that the time was midmorning. As much as my body didn’t want to move, I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of the improved weather, I might never have another chance.
I took a long look back at the shelter. It was loose and flimsy, as if a child had put it together, and yet I’d never been prouder of anything I’d designed.
I started down. Light reflecting off the snow lanced my eyes. By the time the sun was directly overhead, much of the snow had melted, the ground turning to mud as I crossed the first meadow. Still, the road remained hidden, and with little to guide me, all I could do was keep heading downward, aiming toward breaks in the trees where the road possibly went through them.
I don’t remember reaching Highway 9, or collapsing there, or being found by a passing motorist. Apparently, that was at sunset. I woke up in a small medical clinic in a town called Frisco.
By then, a state trooper had been summoned. He leaned over the bed and wanted to know what had happened to me. I later found out that it took him twenty minutes to get a coherent account from me. I kept screaming for Jason, as if my son was within arm’s reach and I could help him.
The doctor stitched my left forearm. He disinfected and bandaged my hands, which he was worried might have frostbite.
The state trooper returned from talking on the phone. “Mr. Denning, the Denver police sent a patrol car to your house. The lights were off. No one answered the doorbell. When they aimed a flashlight through a garage window, they saw your Ford Expedition.”
“In the garage? That doesn’t make sense. Why would Petey have gone back to the house?” The awful implication hit me. “
Jesus.
”
I tried to scramble out of bed. It took both the doctor and the state trooper to stop me.
“The officers broke a window and entered your house. They searched it thoroughly. It’s deserted. Mr. Denning, do you have any other vehicles?”
“What difference does …” My head pounded. “My wife has a Volvo.”
“It isn’t in the garage.”
That didn’t make sense, either. “The bastard must have taken it. Why?
And where are my wife and son?
” The increasingly troubled look on the trooper’s face made me realize that he hadn’t told me everything.
“The master bedroom and your son’s room had been ransacked,” the trooper said.
“
What?
”
“Drawers had been pulled out, clothes scattered. It looked to the Denver officers as if somebody tore through those bedrooms in an awful hurry.”
I screamed.
No matter how desperately I wanted to get home, the doctor refused to release me until the next morning. The state trooper drove me back to Denver. My right wrist ached from the IV the doctor had given me. After two days without food, I should have been ravenous, but the shock of my emotions killed my appetite. I had to force myself to chew slowly on a banana and take small sips from a bottle of orange juice.
When we turned onto my street, I saw the maple trees in front of our Victorian, a van and a station wagon in our driveway, and a Denver police car at the curb. Farther along were other cars and two trucks from local TV stations.
Getting out of the cruiser, I recognized the female television reporter who stalked toward me, armed with a microphone, a cameraman behind her. Her male equivalent from a rival station wasn’t far behind. Reporters scrambled from the other cars.
“How the hell did they find out?” I asked.
“Get in the house.”
Holding out his arms, the state trooper formed a barrier while I limped across the lawn. The pants and shirt the doctor had lent me (my own had been rags) hung loosely on me, increasing my sense of frailty. I managed to get inside and shut the door, blocking the noise of the reporters shouting my name. But other voices replaced them. A police officer, several men in sport coats, and others holding lab equipment stood in the living room, talking to one another.
One of the men, heavyset, with a mustache, noticed me in the foyer and came over. “Mr. Denning?”
The motion of nodding made me dizzy.
“I’m Lieutenant Webber. This is Sergeant Pendleton.” He indicated a younger, thinner man, clean—shaven.
“We checked the attic, the basement, and the trees in back. There’s no sign of your wife and son,” Pendleton said.
For a moment, I didn’t understand what the detective was talking about. The officers who’d entered the house the previous night had said that Kate and Jason weren’t home. If Petey had taken them in Kate’s Volvo, why would the police now have checked the attic and the … I felt sick when I realized that they’d been searching for well—hidden corpses.
“You don’t look so good, Mr. Denning. You’d better sit down.” Webber guided me into the living room, where the other men shifted to the side. “I’ll get you some water.”
Despite the fluids the doctor had given me, I still felt parched. When the detective came back with a full glass, I had a moment’s disorientation, as if this were
his
home and I were a guest. I held the glass awkwardly between my bandaged hands and took a swallow. My stomach protested. I managed to ask, “You’ve no idea where my wife and son are?”
“Not yet,” Webber said. “The state police relayed what you told them, but we need to ask you some questions.” He looked at the scrapes on my face. “Do you feel strong enough to answer them?”
“The sooner I do, the sooner I’ll get my family back.”
A look passed between them, which I understood only later—they weren’t as confident as I was that I’d get my family back.
“It would help if …” Pendleton glanced at where my fingertips projected from the bandages on my hands. “We need to take your prints.”
“Take my … But why would …”
“So we can separate yours from the man who kidnapped your family. Which bedroom was his?”
“Go to the left at the top of the stairs.” I felt out of breath. “The room’s at the end of the hall. On the right.”
“That’s the one with the baseball glove on the bed,” Webber told a technician.
“
Baseball glove?
” I tensed. “
On his bed?
”
Pendleton frowned. “Yes. Is that important?”
“The glove was Petey’s a long time ago.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s saying he doesn’t want the damned thing anymore. Because he’s got something better.”
“Slow down, Mr. Denning. We’re not following you.”
As a technician pressed my fingertips on an inky pad and then onto a sheet of paper that had a place for each digit, I tried as hard as I could to make them understand.
“Long—lost brother?”
“God help me, yes.”
“But how did you know he really
was
your brother?”
“He told me things only my brother could have known.”
The detectives gave each other that look again.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just a thought,” Webber said. “Maybe you heard what you wanted to hear. Some con men are good at making general statements sound specific. The people they’re trying to fool fill in the gaps.”
“
No.
I tested him. He got every detail right.”
“They can be awfully clever.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. A con man’s motive would have been robbery. All he’d have needed to do was wait until Kate and I went to work and Jason was at school. He’d have had all day to loot the house. He wouldn’t have needed to try to kill me. That was
personal.
That was Petey getting even!”
Pendleton made a calming gesture. “We’re just trying to get a sense of the man we’re after.”
“For God’s sake, a con man wouldn’t be stupid enough to add murder and kidnapping to a burglary charge.”
“Unless he enjoyed violence.”
The direct look Webber gave me was dizzying in its effect. All along, I’d worked to assure myself that Jason and Kate were alive. Now, for the first time, I admitted to myself that Jason might be dead in the mountains, that Kate’s body might be lying in a ditch somewhere.