The Never Game

The death occurred around six hours earlier — 1 a.m. Sheriff Blanche found a patch of wet leaves that might have been slick with an early frost. One step on them, with the incline, and Ashton would have gone over.

The glint that Colter had seen was the sun striking the chrome receiver of the Benelli Pacific Flyway shotgun. It was lying on the ground, ten feet from the edge, where it had flown after Ashton made a frantic grab for nearby branches to arrest his tumble.

Another possibility was in everyone’s mind but on no one’s tongue: suicide.

To Colter, though, both theories were flawed. Accident? Twenty percent. Suicide? One percent.

Ashton was a survivalist and outdoorsman and conditions like slippery foliage would have been just one more factor he’d have tucked into the equation on a trek, like gauging the dependability of ice on a pond or how fresh a bear paw print was and how big the creature that had left it.

As for suicide, Ashton Shaw’s essence was survival and Colter couldn’t envision any universe in which his father would have taken his own life. Mental issues? Sure. Yet as mad as he could be, his affliction was paranoia — which is, of course, all about protecting yourself from threats. He was also carrying a 12-gauge shotgun. If you want to end your life, why not just use a beloved weapon, like Papa Hemingway? Why tumble over and hope the fall will kill you? Colter and his mother had discussed it. She was as sure as her son that the death was not self-inflicted.

So, an accident.

To the world.

But not to Colter Shaw, who believed — around eighty percent — his father had been murdered. The killer was the Second Person, who had followed Ashton from the cabin and who had then become the pursued — after Ashton’s clever canoe trick at Crescent Lake. The two had met atop Echo Ridge. There’d been a fight. And the killer had pushed Ashton over the edge to his death.

Yet Colter had said nothing to the police, to anyone, much less to his mother.

The reason? Simple. Because he believed that the Second Person was Colter’s older brother, Russell.

Ashton would have been following the shadowy figure along the rocky ground of the ridge, the bead sight of his weapon on his back. He’d have demanded to know who he was. Russell would have turned and a shocked Ashton Shaw would have seen his eldest son. Dumbfounded, he would have lowered the gun.

Which is when Russell would have grabbed it, flung it away and pushed his father over the cliff.

Unthinkable. Why would a son do that?

Colter Shaw had an answer.

A month before his father died, Mary Dove was away; her sister was ill and she’d traveled to Seattle to help her brother-in-law and nieces and nephews while Emilia was in the hospital. So very aware of her husband’s troubles, she had asked Russell to drive up to the Compound from L.A., where he was in grad school at UCLA and working, to look out for her younger children in her absence. Colter was sixteen, Dorion thirteen.

Colter’s brother, then twenty-two, sported a full beard and long dark hair — just like the mountain man he was named after — but wore city slicker clothes: slacks, dress shirt and sport coat. When he’d arrived, he and Colter had embraced awkwardly. Quiet as always, Russell deflected questions about his life.

One evening, Ashton looked out the window and said to his daughter, “Graduation night, Dorion. Crow Valley. Suit up.”

The girl had frozen.

Colter thought: She was no longer “Button.” Ashton’s daughter was, in his mind, an adult now.

“Ash, I’ve decided. I don’t want to,” Dorion said in an even voice.

“You can do it,” Ashton said calmly.

“No,” Russell said.

“Shh,” their father had whispered, waving his hand to silence his son. “Mark my words. When they come, it’s not going to do any good to say, ‘I don’t want to.’ You’ll have to swim, you’ll have to run, you’ll have to fight. You’ll have to climb.”

Graduation was a rite of passage Ashton had decided upon: an ascent, at night, up a sheer cliff face, rising a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of Crow Valley.

Ashton said, “The boys did it.”

That wasn’t the point. When they were thirteen, Colter and Russell had wanted to make the climb. Their sister didn’t. Colter was aware too that Ashton had only proposed this when Mary Dove was away. She supported her husband, she sheltered him. But in addition to being his wife, she was his psychiatrist too. Which meant there were things he couldn’t get away with when she was present.

“There’s a full moon. No wind, no ice. She’s as tough as you.” He started to pull Dorion to her feet. “Get your ropes and gear. Change.”

Russell had then stood, removed his father’s arm from his sister’s and said in a low voice, “No.”

What happened next seared itself into Colter’s memory.

Their father pushed Russell aside and grabbed Dorion’s arm once more. The older son had learned well and, in a flash, he slammed his open palm into their father’s chest. The man stumbled back, shocked. And as he did, he reached for a carving knife on the table.