Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

“Things happened up in the aspen grove,” she said. “I am an intelligent woman. I didn’t know that at seventeen — or even at thirty-four. I’ve discovered that since. As I’ve discovered what happened. Twenty years is a long time. The works of Shakespeare, the theory of relativity, a treatment for cancer. What can’t be done in twenty years if one puts one’s whole mind to work?”

“Not everyone can write like Shakespeare,” Michael said.

“But maybe there is a task for everyone,” she said. “A unique task. My task was always Mark, protecting him, searching for him. You might be interested in how I proceeded.”

“It is getting late,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed, “very late. Brian, David, Judy, and one other. Up in the aspen grove. I spoke to the camp manager. He is a rather sour, indifferent man. He remembered drinking, marijuana, loud music. The night Mark disappeared, he heard shouts in the dark, but he was not one ‘to borrow trouble.’ That was his phrase, ‘to borrow trouble.’ He just sat in his office and collected the camp rentals, but he was decent enough to store Mark’s gear.” She reached into her bag and produced a snapshot. “Judy. It took five years to find her. A fortuitous meeting. You know, it was rather sad about her. She died on her honeymoon in Hawaii — one of the very first cases of attacks on tourists. She left the campsite the same night Mark disappeared. I got these from her.”

Michael looked at the photos spread on the table: young men with scruffy beards, shorts, hiking boots, and big rucksacks on frames. He remembered the smell of dust and unwashed socks and hemp. “That was David,” she remarked.

“Was?”

“It only took me three years to find David. An unattractive person,” she added reflectively, “Not the sort of friend Mark had been used to having. He had a motorcycle accident. I read later that they believed he’d been forced off the road by another vehicle.”

“How did you find him?” Michael asked.

“Judy’s snapshots. She knew his name. I found his address by contacting every motor vehicle department in the country. It took a lot of time. David told me about the party. There had been a fight, he thought, but he had been too drunk to remember. In the morning, he said, Mark was gone. I did not believe him.”

“Perhaps you should have believed him,” Michael said.

“But that would have raised other questions. Brian, now, took nearly eight years. He’d gone into camping equipment, working at a mail-order company for serious backpackers and hikers. There are a surprising number of mail-order companies. I paid to have a computer age the image from Judy’s snapshot. And, of course, travel is my business. I found him in San Diego.”

“How did he die?” Michael asked. His voice, sounded hollow, unfamiliar.

She looked at him quizzically. “He died in a fall,” she said. “Ironic for a climber, but he fell down his office stair.”

“Four years ago?” Michael asked.

“Just about. I’d figured maybe another six or seven for you, but there is always serendipity. I saw you sitting here when I least expected to, but of course you’d always been in my mind.”

“Of course,” Michael said.

“And now we must swap,” she said. She laid her handbag on the table. It was the size of a small duffel bag and looked heavy.

“Perhaps you do not really want to,” he said.

“Perhaps you are afraid,” she said. “Afraid to know.”

“None of this has anything to do with me,” Michael said. “Now Mark...”

“Yes?”

“Mark was afraid.”

She waited.

“When it happened — and before — he was afraid...”

“Ah,” she said, “when what happened?”

“The fight, the accident. It really was an accident; it was no one’s fault.”

“Up in the aspens,” she said. “The night of the party.”

“That’s right.”

“He was afraid...” She stopped and, for the first time, hesitated.

“He was afraid of violence, of unforeseen craziness and confusion.”

“Why?” she asked and bit her lip.

“I think that is what you have to swap,” Michael said. The lights were coming on. Their golden pinpoints swam in her dark lenses.

“There was no way he could have known,” she said softly.

“There are always rumors, hints.”

“In a small town, yes, rumors, hints, whispers.”

“And when it happened — we were all drunk, you know — when it happened—”

“It? It?” she demanded.

“You’ve been there,” Michael said. “The loneliness of it, the mountains, the sheet of water with the trees quivering and dancing.”

“The campsite was sordid.”

“In the mountains, you feel small,” Michael said. “The wind comes down and blows your soul away.”

“But if he was afraid,” she said, “he was afraid of himself.”

“He had a temper,” Michael agreed.

“But nothing like...”

“You were going to say?”

“I was going to say, ‘Nothing like his father.’ Nothing like.”

“Yet he worried,” Michael said and gripped the edge of the cafe table.

“There was no sign,” she said carefully. “There was no sign whatsoever. Schizophrenia develops typically in adolescence. His father — his father was ill from the time he was eleven or twelve.”

“A fine father you picked for your son,” Michael said.