Mountain Rampage by Scott Graham Read Free Book Online

the mine site. Instead, they could spend the last days of the field school sorting and cataloging the many items they’d discovered beneath the collapsed cabin.
    If they headed for Trail Ridge Road as soon as they emerged from the tunnel, he’d be back at the cabin in less than two hours to make sure Rosie was still on the mend.
    He warmed at the thought of the long, contented summer evenings he’d spent at the cabin with Janelle and the girls these last seven weeks—right up until Rosie’s seizure and trip to the emergency room last night. To assure another field school directorship with Sartore next year—and another summer with Janelle and the girls—Chuck had simply to explain away the mine-floor collapse to the professor as the fluke it was, play down the discovery of the blood by the police, and make sure nothing else got in the way of bringing the field school to a problem-free close on Friday.
    He followed Clarence and the members of Team Nugget out of the tunnel to find Officer Jim Hemphill of the Estes Park Police Department standing in the glaring sunlight, holding out a five-by-seven-inch color photograph.
    â€œAnyone recognize this?” Hemphill asked.
    Chuck shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted at the picture. His brain registered three colors: brown, red, and gray.The brown was the background color of the photograph, consisting of dirt and dry grass. The red was a smear of liquid—blood, presumably—on the pictured object lying on the ground between tufts of grass. And the gray was the object itself, an open pocketknife with a four-inch tungsten handle.
    Chuck recognized the knife immediately.
    It belonged to Clarence.

S EVEN
    Hemphill waited, the photograph outstretched. Chuck held his breath and waited, too.
    Hemphill cleared his throat. “I told you we might need to check in with you again.”
    Chuck inclined his head. The members of Team Nugget edged away from the officer to stand with Kirina and Team Paydirt near the collapsed cabin. Clarence remained at Chuck’s side, the mountain rising behind them.
    Officer Hemphill, in his early thirties, stood a tad under six feet in his black leather sneakers. His large front teeth, pillowy cheeks, and flared nostrils gave him the inquisitive appearance of a squirrel.
    Hemphill’s pant legs were dusty from his hike to the mine. A pair of sunglasses hung from the front pocket of his creased shirt below his brass badge, and a department-issue windbreaker was draped over his arm. A baseball cap rode low on his forehead, the cap’s crown embroidered with the gold letters EPPD . Hemphill jiggled the photograph, causing sunlight to glint off its glossy coating. “I’m hoping you’ll recognize this. We asked the workers in Falcon House, but none of them claimed it.”
    â€œWhere was it?” Chuck asked.
    â€œOutside the back door to Raven House.”
    Chuck’s chest constricted. Should he cover for Clarence? No. Lying to Hemphill would lead to no good. Besides, everybody—the residents of Falcon House included—knew who the knife belonged to.
    Over the summer, Clarence had spent many of his evenings whittling with his knife while he hung out on the front steps of Raven House, visiting with the field school students and the international workers from Falcon House next door. He made no secret of storing the knife in his backpack, which he leftstacked with the rest of the students’ packs in the unlocked Raven House common room each evening, ready to be stowed in the van first thing in the morning for the drive to the mine site.
    Clarence spoke at Chuck’s side. “That’s my knife.”
    Hemphill showed no surprise. He lowered the picture. “Can you tell me why we found it on the ground behind your dormitory with blood all over it?”
    Clarence looked straight at Hemphill. “I don’t know how it ended up where you found it, and I have no idea how