Death Takes a Honeymoon

(Carnegie sneaks into the smokejumper base after dark, searching for her friend BJ’s missing necklace.)

“Hello?” Even my half-whisper sounded loud. “Hello?”

There seemed to be no one around, although a couple of cars, including hers, were still out in front of the ready shack. Beyond them a Douglas D3 and a Twin Otter, the jump planes, stood silent and unattended.

I passed the little office building and pushed open the door of the ready shack, flinching as it squeaked. Most of the lights were off, and I left them that way. Once my eyes adjusted I could get by on the faint glow coming through the uncurtained windows.

I’d already decided what to say if I ran into anyone: I was checking out the facilities for the bachelor party. True, eleven p.m. was an odd time to be checking. And the party wasn’t until Thursday, so this inspection could easily have waited for the light of day tomorrow. But I’d bluff my way through that if I had to.

And what if I ran into Danny or the Tyke? Could I bluff them? Don’t think about it. Just get BJ, get the necklace, and get out. I took a few reluctant steps into the ready room, the dispatch area where the jumpers meet for briefings and suit up for fires.

“BJ?”

To my right, behind the dispatcher’s desk, a large whiteboard gleamed ghostly pale in the dimness. It was marked up with names and notes, all circled and arrowed into hieroglyphic columns that I couldn’t quite read. Facing the desk were a few disorderly rows of plank benches, and beyond them stood a metal rack with a row of helmets making bulbous silhouettes along the top.

Below the helmets, I could see four Kevlar flight suits with high Elvis collars waiting on the speed racks for jumpers to step into them and race out to the planes. The suits dangled there in the dark like scarecrows.

But I didn’t see BJ, and I didn’t see any lockers. I tried to reconstruct the smokejumper base I had visited in Boise. Office, ready shack, parachute loft, computer center, gym…

The gym! Physical conditioning was so vital to the job that each base had its own workout room with weight-lifting gear, cardio trainers like bikes and rowing machines, and showers. Surely showers meant lockers?

I cut behind the dispatch desk and through to the next area, which turned out to be the sewing room. It housed a central row of tables, their surfaces littered with fabric and yardsticks, tangles of strapping, piles of buckles. Along the sides were ranks of ironing boards and heavy-duty sewing machines, each with its own work light, swivel chair, and wall bracket holding oversized spools of thread.

Smokejumpers have time on their hands between fires and they employ it well. They make almost all their own gear except the parachutes themselves, and repair all of it, chutes included. Besides being brave and strong, the warriors of fire are excellent seamstresses.

With the work lights off and the equipment idle, this site of industrious activity felt eerie and abandoned. The heat of the day still hung in the air but I shivered anyway, and stood motionless a moment to listen. Silence. Then I hurried past the sewing machines into the next area-and stopped in my tracks, to gaze around in wonder.

In the dusky gloom, the space before me seemed to be hung with vast filmy curtains. Suspended parallel to each other, end-on to me, they made wide aisle ways along the floor. Even before I looked upward, the vault of open space high above my head made itself felt on my over-sensitive skin.

I was in the parachute loft, where the chutes are spread on long rods and winched up for inspection. Forest Service parachutes are round, with the classic dome-shaped canopy. But I knew that the BLM used these “square” chutes, which aren’t square at all but rectangular, like hang-gliders.

What I didn’t know was how huge a parachute is, close up. As I made my way cautiously down one of the aisles, the silken rectangles were like walls on either side of me, soft walls that swayed and billowed gently. In the hush they made a faint whisper, even fainter than my own.

“Hello?” A noise, sudden and furtive, came from nearby. Very near. “Who’s there?”

More small, brief noises. Somewhere to my left, screened from my sight, a soft object dropped to the floor and was snatched up again. Someone was in the loft with me, and I was dead certain it wasn’t BJ. Time slowed. I drew a guarded breath, open-mouthed, soundless.

If I can’t see him, then he can’t see me. For a long moment I strained to listen, hearing nothing but the hollow thudding of my own heart. I turned to retreat, taking one stealthy step and then another, trying not to run.

Then I heard rushing footsteps, and I ran. Ahead of me, a bulge in the silken wall thrust into my path. I dodged around it, but it thrust further and a veiled hand caught at my shoulder. I wrenched away in the opposite direction, lost my bearings, and when my sandal caught in the lower edge of a parachute I stumbled and lurched forward.

As I fell, my foot came out of the sandal and my fingers scrabbled in vain down the smooth fabric to the floor. I found myself on hands and knees, gasping and winded, shrinking away from the expected blow.

It never came. The footsteps hesitated, moved away. I slumped there in relief. Thank heaven. But then relief gave way to a reckless determination to learn the identity of my attacker. I guess adrenaline makes you stupid.
“Hey!” I yelled angrily, clambering to my feet. “Hey, stop!”

I’d barely gotten the words out when the walls came tumbling down. A creak of pulleys, a hissing slither of rope, and I was shrouded in what seemed like acres of thin, tough fabric. The more I flailed about, blind and panicky, the more I felt myself entangled like a doomed fly in a spider web.

And then I stopped flailing as fear coursed under my skin like a hot, prickly fluid. The footsteps were coming back. From a different direction? Hands grabbed at me, I struggled in darkness, the darkness parted as the fabric lifted and I saw…

“BJ? What do you think you’re doing?”

“What do you mean, what I am I doing?” Her eyes were round. “I was just coming up from the gym. Who were you hollering at?”

“I’m not sure, but come on!” I rushed for the building’s exit, but the intruder had vanished into the warm, still night. I heard a car moving away in the distance.

Swearing in frustration, I turned around, thinking BJ was right behind me. But she wasn’t there, and I heard her voice, quavering oddly, from back inside the loft.

“C-Carnegie? W-what…?”

I was at her side in seconds. She stood with a fold of the fallen parachute in her hand, gaping down at the floor. A humped form lay at her feet, half concealed by swaths of fabric. I gaped at it myself, and a roaring darkness filled my eyes and ears.

The form was a man, a heavyset man in a gray uniform with a badge sewn to the front pocket. I studied the badge in numb detachment. It was shaped like a shield, and said “Wood River Security Services.” But as I watched, the W and the S were obscured by a liquid stain creeping slowly across the man’s chest. The stain showed black, but in brighter light it would be red, the unmistakable red of fresh blood. I took a long, shaky breath and forced my gaze across to the other side of his chest.

The man was dead, of course. How could he be otherwise, with an ax head biting deep into his heart?