Ponch dug his phone from his pocket, punched its face, and turned it to Chuck. “See? Nothing.” Again, he scanned the empty campsite. “But he’s not here.” He pointed skyward, toward the head of the valley. “I was with him at sunrise on Glacier Point.”
“He jumped?”
“He flew.” Ponch’s jaw muscles twitched, his face still white. “He dropped off the point into the shadows and then out across the valley. I lost sight of him pretty quick.” He stared up through the trees, where the valley’s south wall showed between outstretched branches. “He planned to shoot Sentinel Gap.”
Chuck sucked a breath. “The notch in the ridge?”
Ponch lifted and dropped his chin, a grim up-and-down movement. “If conditions were right, he was going to fly through it, then swing around and pop his chute to land here, in the parking lot. It was supposed to be a big surprise. He figured the helmet-cam footage of his fly-in to the reunion would make for a great online post. But it all depended on the wind—shooting the gap, landing here, the whole thing. If the winds were too strong after he jumped, he could have landed anywhere, even outside the valley altogether.” Ponch looked around him. “But if he’s not here by this—”
A male voice broke in from behind Ponch. “Chuck Bender?”
A park ranger approached on the path through the campground. The ranger carried a metal clipboard thick with papers. He looked eerily familiar to Chuck. The uniformed man was in his early thirties, his regulation gray shirt and evergreen slacks crisply pressed. A flashlight, walkie-talkie, and holstered pistol hung from his black leather belt. Buzz-cut hair showed beneath the circular brim of his straw, Smokey Bear ranger hat. He was clean shaven, his piercing gray eyes set close on either side of a long, hooked nose.
The broad-shouldered climbing tower attendant walked with the ranger, their feet crunching on the graveled path.
Chuck lifted a hand. “That’s me.”
The two men stopped next to Ponch. The tag pinned to the ranger’s chest above his brass badge was inscribed with the name Owen Hutchins. Chuck stared at the engraved name. He should have known—the hooked nose; the eyes the same slate gray color as the ranger’s shirt.
“Would you come with us, please?” the ranger, Owen, asked Chuck without introducing himself.
“I’m pretty busy right now. What is it you need?”
Owen indicated the tower attendant beside him with a tilt of his head. “Alden here tells me you belayed a youngster on the climbing wall immediately preceding the accident. I tracked down your name on the campground register.”
“I’m not sure I—”
“Did you or did you not,” the ranger broke in, his face set, “adjust the auto-belay mechanism when you tied yourself into the climbing rope?” He tucked the bulky clipboard beneath his arm, his eyes on Chuck.
“I didn’t touch the auto-belay,” Chuck said, meeting the ranger’s gaze. “As light as my daughter is, I was afraid it wouldn’t kick in if she fell. All I did was release the rope and belay her off the top pulley myself.”
The attendant, Alden, said, “You’re supposed to let me detach the rope from the auto-belay for you.”
While Chuck had released the rope from the device and set up his own belay for Carmelita, Alden had chatted with the female climber on the far side of the line of boulders, his gaze fixed on her bikini top.
Chuck looked the attendant up and down. “You were otherwise occupied, if you recall.”
Alden’s eyes darted away.
Owen stepped forward. “I’m performing a preliminary Q&A to determine if a special agent from the Investigative Services Bureau should be assigned to investigate the incident.”
“A special agent?”
“The National Park Service takes all accidents that occur in its parks seriously. The agent, if assigned, will determine whether an SAIT should be formed.”
“An SAIT?” Chuck asked, repeating the letters.
“A Serious Accident Investigation Team.”
“A whole team of investigators? Sounds pretty over the top.”
“The park service will decide what’s over the top and what’s not.” Owen pulled the clipboard from under his arm. “You claim you did not turn off the auto-belay device, is that correct?”
“I just told you, I didn’t touch it. I had no reason to.”
“But you took it upon yourself to—”
“Look,” Chuck cut in. “I belayed my daughter myself, that’s all. People do that all the time on sport walls.” He turned to Alden and waited until the tower attendant met his gaze. “You know I’m right . . . Alden, is it? Everybody knows. That’s why you didn’t have any problem with what I did.” Chuck pivoted back to Owen. “The only thing I touched was the climbing rope.”
“Which was attached to the auto-belay mechanism.”
Chuck’s voice quivered. “I simply released the rope from the device to belay my daughter myself.”
“I want you to show me exactly what you did.”
“I already told you what I did.”
“There’s no need to get defensive, Mr. Bender.”
Chuck felt his face growing hot. “All I did was—”
Owen held up a palm. “Please.” He turned sideways, his black boots grinding in the path’s chunky stones, and indicated the direction back through the campground to the parking lot with an outstretched hand. “If you’ll come this way.”
Chuck said to Ponch, “I’ll be right back. We’ll figure out what to do next.”
Falling into step with the ranger and tower attendant, Chuck bit down on the inside of his cheek to control his anger. There was more going on here than just Owen Hutchins’ undue suspicion regarding the auto-belay device, and Chuck suspected what it was.
“Here we are,” Owen announced, halting at the base of the climbing tower with Chuck and Alden.
Chuck looked past the tower. Sedans and SUVs glittered beneath the sun in the parking lot, the oversized Bender Archaeological pickup truck among them. Presumably, Thorpe had planned to end his dawn flight by landing in one of the open stretches between the rows of parked cars. Instead, Chuck assured himself, Thorpe had touched down safely somewhere else. As for Ponch’s overwrought concerns? Nothing more than tarot-card-inspired paranoia.
“Let’s take a look at the auto-belay mechanism together,” Owen suggested.
Alden squatted next to the device, a metal cylinder six inches around and eighteen inches long bolted to the climbing tower two feet above the ground. A wire cable ran from the top of the cylinder to a pulley affixed to a steel stanchion extending three feet from the top of the tower. “The disable switch is under here,” Alden said, pointing to the base of the cylinder.
