Chapter 16
“Mr. Drewe is here,” said the assistant, peeking into Cash’s office at CBI.
“Give me a minute,” Cash said. An assistant in her office had gone through the tedious process of contacting all the hikers who had pulled wilderness permits for the Flat Tops.
There weren’t many—-ever since the Neander business the Flat Tops had been mostly deserted.
The assistant had passed on to her a few names of possible interest, and she had called them this morning.
There had only been one that she was interested in talking to.
He was now waiting outside her office, a hiker named Robert Drewe, and he seemed to have solid and potentially important information to give her related to the case.
She hit the intercom. “Ready for Mr. Drewe,” she said.
The hiker came in, looking nervous. Cash invited him to sit.
Drewe had pulled a permit to backpack into Edge Lake and camp for four days—-around the area known as Meachem.
He had told the initial CBI interviewer that he had seen lights in the same approximate location and time as the woman, Sassafras Newton, from the gas station.
Fortunately, Drewe was from Denver, and she’d persuaded him to come in for an interview.
Here he was, adjusting and readjusting himself in the chair, sweat breaking on his brow, looking so nervous that you might think he was guilty of something.
But Cash figured he was probably just one of those people uncomfortable with law enforcement, or maybe just awkward. She could respect that.
“Mr. Drewe, thanks for coming in,” she said. “Can we get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
“No thanks.”
He was small and nearly bald, despite his age, which couldn’t be more than twenty--five.
What little hair he had hung down his back in a long, limp ponytail.
He had a wispy bit of blond hair underneath his lower lip—-what did you call that?
—-a soul patch. A sharp runny nose, skinny physique, and a tense air rounded out the picture of a most uncomfortable young man.
“Mind if I record?” she asked.
“Do you have to?”
“I don’t have to, but it would make my job a lot easier.”
“All right.”
She laid her cell phone down and turned it on and went through the usual preliminaries of name, date, time, and permission.
“Mr. Drewe, could you please tell me in your own words the details of your trip into the Flat Tops?”
He began speaking very fast. “I hiked in on June 5. I had a four--day permit to camp at Edge Lake, so I was there from June 5 to 9.”
“Where did you hike in from?”
“The trailhead at Sweetwater Road.”
“How long a hike is it?”
“It’s twenty--three miles into Edge Lake.”
“Wow—-you hiked twenty--three miles in a day?”
“Well, yeah. I got an early start.”
This guy was more adventurous than he looked. “Did you see anybody on the trail?”
“Not really. There’s almost nobody in the Flat Tops these days, on account of the Neanders.”
“So you weren’t concerned about the Neanders?”
“Not at all. In fact, it’s a good thing—-emptied out the place, turned it back into a true wilderness.”
“Okay. So you arrived at Edge Lake. What time?”
“Let’s see.” He thought for a moment. “I got there around sunset—-I guess that would be around eight thirty. I never carry a watch.”
“And then?”
“Set up camp, made dinner, ate, then settled by the fire reading a book. When it was completely dark, I saw lights on the slopes of Dome Peak—-that’s a small mountain at the far eastern end of Flat Top.”
“What time was that?”
“I’m not sure, but it was maybe an hour or two after sunset, so I guess around ten or ten thirty.”
“What kind of lights?”
“Bright lights. Not flashlights. Way too bright. It seemed weird to me. I mean, nobody’s in the Flat Tops these days. And up there on those slopes, there’s no place to camp. And the lights were moving around.”
“How many?”
“Maybe four or five?”
“For how long?”
“It’s hard to say. Two hours?”
Cash now reached down and pulled out a USGS topographical map, 1:24,000 scale, which she unrolled and placed in front of Drewe on the table, weighing down the corners. “Can you mark where you were camped and where you saw the lights?”
Drewe bent over the maps and quickly made a mark at the shores of Edge Lake. Then, after some thought, he drew a large circle on the western slope of Dome Peak. “They were moving around inside that circle, more or less.”
“That’s half a mile in diameter.”
“It was night and I couldn’t really see the outline of the mountain. And they were moving a lot.”
“In what way?”
“They were moving back and forth. Lights blinking on and off, on account of all the trees, I guess.”
Cash felt a tingle of excitement. “And you’re sure of the date? June 5?”
“I’m sure because it was my first night at the lake.”
“And they went from ten to when, around midnight?”
“I’m just guessing, but yes, I’d say around midnight.”
“Did you see the lights any night after that?”
“No. And I looked. It was kind of freaky.”
Cash thought for a moment. “Did the lights ever cease moving and, say, come together in one spot?”
At this, Drewe’s face brightened. “Yes, now that you mention it, they did. At one point, they sort of bunched up before they spread out again.”
“And then around midnight, what happened?”
“They came together again, and then they all blinked off.”
“You seem to have been watching rather closely,” said Cash. This guy was a good witness.
“There wasn’t much else to do. I’d stopped reading because I wanted to save my batteries. It seemed pretty strange to me, to be up on that mountainside at night walking around.”
“You sure you didn’t see anyone in your four days up there? Anyone at the lake or coming back on the trail?”
He cocked his head to the side. “Like I said, nobody’s out there on account of the Neanders.”
Cash collected the map and rolled it up. “Anything else you think we should know?”
He shook his head, hesitated. “Can I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“Did … the Neanders do it?”
“You mean, murder Willy Grooms?” She shook her head. “No. He was killed by regular old Homo sapiens.”
“Really?” Drewe, to her surprise, looked disappointed. “You think they’re still in the Flat Tops, or do you think they went north like everyone says?”
“The FBI’s taken over the investigation,” she said, “so I’m not up on the latest.”
“I hope,” he said, almost to himself, “that they never catch them.”
Cash was startled. “And why do you say that?”
At this Drewe flushed. “There’s something … I don’t know, thrilling in having real live Neanderthals living in the Colorado Rockies. I mean, we drove them to extinction once, but now we’ve brought them back to life. It’s sort of like … atonement.”
Cash said nothing—-but she wondered how many others thought that way.