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Yes. Rough day.
She got up to make herself a cup of tea. Her cell phone vibrated on the counter. Part of her felt like she didn’t even want to look who it was. She already knew who it was anyway. Geoff, making sure she’d made it home. He was a gentleman like that. Part of her just wanted to take a long shower and go to bed and wake up and better things would happen tomorrow. She listened to the buzzing a third time.
She looked at the screen and saw a name she couldn’t place at first. Ronald Kessler.
Who the hell was that? Probably some marketing call. She was about to just let it go to voice mail when curiosity got the better of her and she just answered. “Hello?”
“Dani?”
By the time she put it together who it was he’d already told her. “It’s Ron.”
“Ron?”
“Rooster.”
“Jesus, Rooster … Ron, how’d you get my number?”
“I had it once. Remember, you recommended some customers to us a year or two back.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” It struck her as a little creepy that Rooster had kept her in his phone all this time. “Listen, Ron, it’s a little late and I’m just getting ready—” There was a lot of noise in the background.
“I know it’s late, Dani. I don’t mean to bother you,” he said. “There was just something I had to say. About what happened back there at the bar.”
“Look, we all had a little too much to drink …” In a weird way Dani always had a soft spot for Rooster. In the same way you might feel sorry for a stray cat. The guy was an outcast. But he didn’t mean anybody harm. John Booth was probably right, he’d just taken one too many hits of something back in the day. “But Rudy was right, Ron. Trey had a wife and kid, and you can’t just go around riling people up making accusations that you can’t support.”
“I wasn’t making anything up. And I wasn’t lying. About what I said I saw out there this morning.”
He hesitated just like he had at the bar. She put on the kettle for her tea.
“Ron, if you’ve got something to say, just say it. Or else take it to Chief Dunn.” She knew Rooster knew Wade. Wade was once his sponsor in AA, and that didn’t go so well. Rooster had slipped several times and had a reputation of not being honest in the program. “And just so we’re real here, you can’t even see that part of the river from where the balloons go up. You know that better than anyone.”
“I can’t take it to Chief Dunn. There are some things between us. I know he thinks I’m a few of bricks short of a wall. Everyone does. And maybe I am. Plus, I wasn’t supposed to be where I was out over the river earlier. I was the only one up today and this nice couple, they handed me a hundred-dollar bill to stay up there a while longer and let it drift. That’s why I’m calling you.”
Dani started to grow impatient. “Me?”
“You can take it to Chief Dunn, Dani. He’d want to know this.”
“Ron, please …” Dani put in the tea bag and poured water into the mug. “It’s been a rough day for everyone. And I’m getting ready for bed. So what is it you saw?”
“All I can say is, your friend wasn’t alone out there on that river.”
“I know, that’s what you’ve been saying. Look—”
“He was wearing a red windbreaker, right?”
That took her by surprise. He was.
“And his kayak was blue …?”
Dani didn’t answer, but her hesitation seemed to give Rooster the sense that he’d struck something with that.
“So I’m not so crazy after all, am I? I didn’t know it at the time, but it had to be him, right?”
“So who was out there with him, Ron?” Dani’s attention was suddenly aroused. “Ron, it’s crazy in there. You still at the Nugget?”
“How about you meet me at the balloon field in the morning.” Near the Aspen Industrial Park where the balloons went up from. “I got a ride at seven and we’ll be all tethered back by eight thirty.”
Dani didn’t have a tour in the morning. And, yes, she could take it to Wade. Whatever Ron claimed he saw. He did have the color of Trey’s kayak right, and what he was wearing.
“Will you be there?”
“All right, I’ll be there,” Dani said. She suddenly felt the hairs on her arms stand on edge. She didn’t even like the idea of being alone with him.
“I know he was a friend of yours, Dani. But you were always a fair person to me. Not like some.”
“Yes. I know that, Ron.”
“So I’ll see you at eight thirty, then. After my ride.”
“Okay.”
“And Dani …”
“Yes.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks, I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t drunk tonight and I surely wasn’t this morning, either. You believe me, right?”
“Yes, I believe you.” Before she’d left the bar, she checked with Skip, the bartender. To be sure. Rooster had been drinking ginger ale.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_af279609-28b3-59a7-bc19-092d21859853)
The sun came up slowly over the mountains the next morning, covering the Aspen Valley in streaks of yellow and rose, as the four balloons rose majestically into the sky.
It was a picture-perfect dawn, light dappling the moss, peaks bathed in glinting sunlight. Ron revved the burner with heat, the blue flame shooting into the envelope with a loud hiss, sending the balloon higher.
On board, the four passengers oohed.
“Take a look over there,” Ron directed them. “That’s Aspen Mountain there shrouded in shadow, and as we get up, you can see those two peaks to the west, those are the Maroon Bells, two of over fifty-three mountains in Colorado that are over fourteen thousand feet.”
In his basket was some big-shot financial dude from Connecticut, who was trying to work it out that he and his bundled-up trophy wife could get a private, trying to buy off the launch manager. But it didn’t work out. And a middle-aged couple from Japan, equipped with the requisite camera and one, long fucking lens, Ron admired. At five hundred feet, the four balloons cut a beautiful path across the morning sky, each of them a colorful design of reds, yellows, and greens.
By seven, they were at six hundred feet, the maximum elevation today because of the winds, and Ron cut off the burner, cooling the air.
The view was amazing.
“Wave hi to your mates over there,” Ron said, pointing to the closest companion balloon, maybe a hundred yards away. The Japanese couple waved and the husband aimed his gargantuan lens. The financier and his wife were bickering about where they were going to have lunch later, the burger at Ajax Grille or sushi at Matsuhisa.
Suddenly Ron felt a thud from above. The whole basket rocked back and forth. Everyone looked up. “What the hell was that?” the financial guy asked, his wife clearly a little spooked and not happy in the first place to be sharing the ride with the Japanese couple.
“Don’t know,” Ron said. “Maybe we hit a thermal. It’s kind of like a wind inversion. There’s a breeze today.” He checked out the other balloons to gauge his relative height and noticed he had descended slightly. He opened the valve and shot a blast of flame hissing into the balloon, momentarily lifting it to where it was before. “I think we’re okay. So check out that river to the northwest out there.” He pointed. “That’s—”
The basket wobbled again. He noticed them losing more altitude. Air was definitely leaking from somewhere. He may have to bring this baby down. Then suddenly he heard a tearing sound from above them. The basket lurched again, swaying. Everyone grabbed the sides. Ron shot more heat in, but nothing seemed to be happening. Except that they were losing air.
And altitude.
“Is everything all right?” the financier’s wife asked, looking a little edgy.
Ron looked above and kept pumping as much heat as he could into the envelope. “Don’t really know.”
A call came in on the radio. Steve, in the next balloon. “Ron, you got something wrong on your right side. You’re definitely losing your pitch. Can you see it? You better get yourself down. Pronto.”
“I hear ya,” Ron replied. “Exactly what I’m doing, Sorry, folks, seems to be some kind of malfunction up there. I’m going to have to take her down. Shouldn’t be a problem.” He kept pumping in as much heat as the balloon would take. But still they kept coming down.
“Cole! Cole!” he radioed in to the company attendant at the landing field. “Something’s wrong with the balloon. We’re leaking air. I’m coming back. Now.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said supportively to his passengers, who were now clearly anxious. “We’ve got a malfunction in the canvas. But I’ll get you down. These babies are fit to—”
Suddenly he heard another tear. They all heard it this time. Phhfft. “What the Sam Hill …”
The basket lurched again, this time terrifyingly. Then there was a deep groan emanating from above, hot air leaking out, colder air coming in.
The balloon swaying and collapsing.
Over the radio he heard, “Ron, you’ve got a full-scale implosion going on! I can see it. Get your ass down as fast as you can.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Ron replied. He continued to rev the valves, thrusting as much heat as he could into the envelope, compensating for the cold air rushing in through the tear, to bring them down at a manageable speed.
It wasn’t working.
“What’s going on? What’s going on?” the financial guy was yelling. Their descent started to pick up speed. “Do something!”
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Ron said. “Everyone be calm.”
They were still five hundred feet up. He looked up and saw the huge tear on one side, a flap in the material buckling and falling over, a huge swath of it suddenly falling down on top of the basket, and to Ron’s horror, catching the flame and suddenly igniting.
The balloon became engulfed in flame.
“Do something!” the financial guy’s wife shrieked, her eyes bulging in terror.
“There’s nothing I can do!” Ron replied, continuing to rev heat into the useless, crumpled canopy. He grabbed the radio. “Mayday, mayday, we’re going down!” They started to fall out of the sky, picking up speed. The ropes holding the basket could catch at any second and then …
The financier’s wife was sobbing on the floor mat. Her husband gripped the basket’s rim and looked down in disbelief. The Japanese couple huddled together.
Ron shouted, “You know a prayer, this would be the time to say it.”
He always wondered what this would feel like. How he would react. In his dreams he had dreamed it many times. It was like a bad trip. And he’d had many of those. “Mayday, mayday!” he screamed uselessly into the radio as the basket began to plummet. “Oh Jesus Lord, we’re going down!”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_d090c9a0-cc32-54f3-a84d-f3af5bfac97a)
Dani saw it as she headed into town before her rendezvous with Ron.
Around the cutoff to the Aspen Industrial Park just after the airport, traffic was being slowed into one lane. She saw EMT vehicles, their lights flashing, and it seemed as if every cop in the valley was there. A throng of people, many out of their cars, were lining the highway looking on. In the large field which the Aspen by Air Balloon Adventure used as their takeoff site, a plume of black smoke funneled high into the air.
What the hell had happened?
Dani pulled up to one of the cops who was waving on traffic. She recognized him as a guy she had gone to high school with, Wesley Fletcher. She rolled down her window and leaned out of her wagon. “What’s the hell’s going on, Wes?”
“Balloon dropped out of the sky. Five people on board, Dani. Traffic’s being routed onto Rectory Street into town.”
“Five people.” Dani felt her stomach tighten “Whose?” she asked, though she was sure she knew the answer even before the question even was out of her mouth. “Whose balloon was it, Wes?”
“Aspen by Air. Rick Ketchum’s company. They’re up every day.”
“I don’t mean who owned it. Who was operating it?” Dani pressed, a feeling of dread grinding in the pit of her stomach. “The one that went down.”
“All I was told was that there were four tourists on board. And everyone’s dead. And some guy named Ron.”
“Ron?” Dani’s heart went still. Rooster.
“I guess the balloon fell apart at five hundred feet into a ball of flames. But, look, I have to wave you on now, Dani. Gotta get these vehicles routed over onto Rectory, and as you can see—”
“Is that Chief Dunn’s car over there?” She saw a white and green SUV with the Carbondale police lettering on it, among the many vehicles pulled up in the field.
“I think that’s him. I saw him drive up earlier.”
“Thanks, Wes.” Dani pushed on the gas and caught up to the car in front of her. She got as far as the rotary until she realized she no longer had any reason to be here now. She pulled over to the side and let her head drop against the wheel. Poor Rooster. Her heart felt heavy as she tried to imagine such a grisly descent. Things like this just didn’t happen here. But that was only part of it. Part of what was making her insides feel so worrisome. The rest was what Rooster had claimed he’d seen yesterday, and now he was dead. The fool was going around shooting his mouth off.
He wasn’t alone out there. That wasn’t no accident.
Dani looked one last time at the plume of black smoke. Hot-air balloons just didn’t fall out of the sky.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_da5f2726-8589-542d-bbd2-3d5152bb7cf5)
She waited until the end of the day, until she saw his vehicle parked outside the station back in Carbondale. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to see him at work. Years. Certainly not since her mom had died.
“He’s on the phone,” a female duty officer said. Dani didn’t recognize her.
It wasn’t a big station, tucked into a corner of the Carbondale Town Center. Three or four desks, and some workstations. A room with a vending machine that doubled as an interrogation room. There were one or two detectives; whatever they did, Dani never knew. Any real investigation or forensic work was handled out of Aspen. When Wade took the job—the only job he could get—he joked that it was mostly setting up DUI roadblocks and the occasional marijuana bust.
And now, new state laws had even taken that away from him.
“If you wait over there I’ll tell him you’re here.”
“I’m his stepdaughter,” Dani said. “He’ll see me.”
She went right past her, the duty officer standing up, surprised, going, “Hey!” Wade was at his desk on the phone, his feet propped up against a drawer. The ever-present python-skin boots and that large, turquoise, Indian ring. He’d probably die with them on. On the shelf behind him were a couple of photos. Wade in his glory days. With his arm around Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith. Another with a younger-looking ex-president Gerald Ford. There were a couple of Kyle. One in his army uniform while in Afghanistan; the other, he and Wade fishing up in Idaho. Apparently, Dani hadn’t make the cut. There were a couple of AA books stacked on the credenza, and an empty bourbon bottle, which he always said he kept close as a constant reminder of worse days.
“Let me know when they finish up …” Wade was saying. He eyed Dani unhappily, as the young officer who had asked her to wait rushed in after. Wade waved her off with a Don’t worry about it gesture, motioning Dani into a chair.
