Four map sheets were taped together with the corners weighted down with rocks so it wouldn’t blow away. The trail was drawn down the middle of it in red marker.
Roy found Twin Lakes and followed the red line south until he crossed the Lake County boundary into Chaffee County. He was squatting over the map in an equipment bay at the county road yard on the north end of Buena Vista. At the far end of the building was a grader with its blade down. The building smelled noxious so Roy had set the map up near the rolled up doors with a beautiful view of the sun going down over the mountains.
Sheriff Bob Sandoval had been standing, staring at Roy and the map for the past twenty minutes. The Sheriff had his hat in hand, looking very western.
Roy liked him.
“That’s 306,” Sandoval said. “Cottonwood Pass Road. Twenty miles of pavement from the town limit to the top, and then you’re in Gunnison County going down into Taylor Park.”
“Who’s up there?”
“There’s two campgrounds and a lodge and cabins up on the reservoir. It’s Friday, so a couple hundred people, and more tomorrow.”
“How many other ways off it?”
“None. It’s a canyon most of the way and then it climbs up above the trees.” Sandoval pointed at the map. “Now, Chalk Creek is here, that’s 162, and 285 runs the whole valley, and I can have a car sitting at Clear Creek by dark if you want one—”
“One road,” Roy said.
Sandoval put his hat on and carefully straightened it.
Roy’s phone buzzed. It was Odom. He picked up and walked out into the yard, past a row of dump trucks with sand still in them. He got in his car with the door open and ate a bite of Deb Rickert’s casserole cold out of the pan.
“The registered agent came back,” she said.
“And.”
“The engagement letter is signed by Reed. The filing fee was on his personal credit card. The third principal has an address in Wilmington that is shared by about two hundred thousand other companies.”
“Okay.”
“Meyer’s flying out Sunday.”
Roy watched a man in a county shirt back a pickup into the bay.
“Denver wants a second supervisor on it,” Odom said. “My bet is the plan is that he won’t be the second one for long unless you find them soon.”
“Fuck.”
He had worked with Ben Meyer twice and knew he was competent. However, Roy wanted to be running this case on Monday. He didn’t know what they had told Meyer, but Roy knew he was being set up to be the fall guy if one was needed. He’d been playing the game a long time. You didn’t have to watch police procedurals on TV to know what the setup was.
He hung up and walked slowly back to the equipment bay, dragging his feet on the ground as he went. Head down, he realized he was tired, both from the effort and the bullshit he knew was just around the corner.
Something barked from the radio on the shelf by the door that Roy couldn’t make out. Sandoval put a hand up, and Roy stopped and listened to a woman’s voice give a mile marker and a string of numbers that meant nothing to him.
“Car in the river south of town,” Sandoval said. He keyed his own radio and sent two people to it.
“I’m beat. I’ve been on for eleven days,” Roy said.
“Ten for me at the end of the day.”
Roy looked at the twenty miles of road on the map.
“Close it,” he said.
“The whole road?” Sandoval asked.
“From the town limit up. Six tomorrow morning.”
“My attorney is going to want that on paper,” Sandoval said. “And he’s going to ask me why this road. The public is going to be ripshit about this given that it’s the weekend.”
Roy put two fingers down on the map, one on Twin Lakes and one on the top of 306.
“Nobody has put eyes on them since Wednesday. There’s one road across all of that county. Get out your pen to write this down.”
Sandoval got both out of his shirt pocket and looked curiously at Roy.
“At the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Roy said, “Chaffee County Road 306 is closed to through traffic west of the Buena Vista town limit, effective six a.m. Saturday, in support of an ongoing federal investigation.” He waited for Sandoval to catch up. “The subjects are believed to be on foot. It will be reviewed every twenty-four hours. Residents, permit holders, and emergency traffic will be passed.”
Sandoval read it back to him.
“Okay,” Roy said. Sandoval handed Roy the pen and pad. Roy signed it, took a photo of the paper with his phone, and texted it to Odom with a message to put it in the file. He handed the pad back to Sandoval, who tore off the top sheet and carefully pocketed it.
“One thing,” Sandoval said. “There’s no gate on 306. Anywhere. The road just goes.”
“Then put something across it.”
“Across the road.”
“A truck. Something with a county seal on the door.”
Sandoval went to the bay doors and shouted to a woman crossing the yard with a clipboard under her arm. She came in and leaned against the corner of the entrance to the bay.
“Vera Dunn,” Sandoval said. “She runs road and bridge.”
She was maybe fifty. Roy described the truck he wanted across the road.
“Sounds like my truck,” Dunn said.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
She scribbled something on the paper on her clipboard.
“Where does the trail cross the road?” Roy asked.
“It doesn’t. It comes down to the parking lot at the top and goes up the other side.” Dunn looked at the map for a moment and then pointed. “There’s two toilets up there and about an acre of pavement. On a Saturday that lot is full by ten.”
Roy looked at the top of the road.
“Put four people in the parking lot,” he said.
Sandoval wrote it down.
“What time can your truck be at the bottom,” Roy said.
“Six.”
“Five thirty.”
“Six,” Dunn said.
Roy nodded his head and went back to looking at the map.