Inspector Pascal has reached the end of his line – off a cliff! INSPECTOR PASCAL MYSTERIES 4000 # 3 Cliffhanger, by T.K. Naliaka ©2017-2023 New, classic-style mystery-adventure short-story fiction for all ages at TIPTOPduTOP blog INSPECTOR PASCAL MYSTERIES 4000
# 3 Cliffhanger by T.K. Naliaka ©2017-2023 It was a lesser-traveled trail that meandered a mile along a cliff under a clear blue afternoon sky dotted with scattered white clouds. A lone day hiker in a khaki tan shirt and pants walked leisurely along in the mottled shade at the forest’s edge, enjoying the views enhanced by the sing-song chattering of birds busy with their nests and territories marked out among the trees, and pleasing aromas of pine needles and sweet scents of blooming honeysuckle. “Hey, mister!” Startled, his idle gaze went from the clouds to a large older man urgently waving at him ahead on the trail. He picked up his pace to meet him. “What’s the problem?” “I was hiking along the bend - about one hundred yards back and I spotted a fellow right over there hanging! He didn’t look good and he doesn’t reply when I hail him!” “Your name?” “Volk… and yours?” “Pascal.” The big man pointed to the cliff. “If you can climb – be willing to go down and just check him? I’m too old, but I can help you, get you anchored solidly; I can manage all that. I used to be in the fire department.” He gestured to a collection of ropes and carabiner clips on the ground. “I haven’t seen anyone else, but that guy left enough gear there for two climbers.” Pascal grimaced as he peered down, indeed below them there was a man suspended motionless. “I’ve done some – I can try.” “Thank you!” Pascal was impressed; Volk worked fast anchoring the ropes they needed around a boulder, then helped Pascal secure the harness around his legs and hips and efficiently knotted the lines to attach them with the carabiners. As Volk quickly tied a cord that would enable Pascal to control his descent speed, Pascal remarked. “Were you in rescue services?” “Yes.” He shook his head wistfully. “It’s been ten years and too many old injuries. I’m really not as fast as I was.” “I understand then why you stopped and want to help.” Volk gave him a wry smile. “Thirty years – it’s what I know to do.” He tugged at the ropes. “When you need to come up, you start climbing and I’ll keep taking up the slack and get you over any tough spots and the edge. Have you done that before?” Pascal nodded. “I know what I have to do for that.” Volk gave Pascal his phone number. “Call me - tell me what you need… ready?” Pascal nodded. “I’ll see if there’s anything we can do for him. I can’t do more than that.” He held out his hand. “I’m counting on you, Volk.” Volk put his hand out and they shook. “I got you, Pascal.” Pascal stepped backwards, took a deep breath, then backed off the edge of the rim and belayed down the cliff in short hops. Twenty meters below he eased himself step by step down to stop next to a man of about forty-five years old hung like a marionette from his ropes. Pascal grimaced as he saw the man’s blood-soaked trouser legs. He locked and reached over to press his fingers against the man’s neck to feel for a pulse, found none, then he tapped the man’s cheek for any response. The man’s face was cool but when Pascal felt under the man’s vest he was surprised that the man’s body core was still very warm. He checked his watch to note the time, then tugged at the man to turn his body slightly. Pascal froze, startled as a cold chill went down his spine at the sight of a large knife embedded in the man’s back. Pascal frowned and looked again in all directions, uneasy. The man had a rack of spring-loaded cam devices and torque nuts so he un-clipped it from the dead man’s belt and clipped it to his own, then also took the man’s spare coil of rope. He eased over and pushed his right hand into every pocket he could feel… matches, a folding pocket knife… but no wallet. Overhead, a black raven suddenly screeched, startling him and it was so close he heard the whoosh of its ebony wings as it launched itself from its perch and glided down to the forest below. Pascal hurriedly un-clipped a cam and worked it into a crack, tugged on it, then attached a carabiner to it. He shook out the short coil of rope, knotted it through the ring and fastened it to his harness. Pascal quickly fished his phone out of his pocket, turned it on and called, muttering with rising dread as one ring slowly followed another, “Vite… reponds… reponds.” Suddenly he heard a cheerful voice, “Good afternoon, sir! Are you back already?” Pascal spoke low and urgently, “Sergeant Braque! Listen carefully! I am at Mount Georgina, about mile eight on the Mica Trail! I was asked to check if a climber needed medical help, but now I am hanging off a cliff beside a just-murdered man! I believe the killer was interrupted and he was unable to complete what he had planned! If I had suspected this, I would not have belayed down to him!” “I’m sending help right away!” “Sergeant! It was no accident! If I cannot, you must testify for me! The man was stabbed to death! It was murder!” “SIR!” Braque realized he’d shouted so he quickly brought his voice under control. “What’s the victim’s name?” “I don…” There was a sudden shudder in his line. Pascal grabbed for the rock face of the cliff. He watched, aghast, as his phone plummeted 150 feet to the ground before smashing into pieces against the jumble of boulders below. Braque shouted into the phone, “SIR! SIR!!” A minute later, Lieutenant Klein looked up as his door was flung open, “Yes, Sergeant Braque?” “Sir! Inspector Pascal is at Mount Georgina…” “Yes, I heard he was given the week off.” “Sir! He walked into a murder scene!” Lieutenant Klein rolled his eyes. “Some people have all the luck.” “Sir! He’s hanging off a cliff and he’s convinced that the murderer is close by! All the murderer has to do is cut his lines and he’ll be killed!” Klein flushed and quickly reached for the phone. “Where did you say he is?” Pascal forced his rattled mind to think. He took several deep breaths before noticing that the man had a slim camera on a thin safety strap around his wrist. Pascal worked it free to hang it around his own wrist and straightened his legs to prop himself against the cliff to take photos, of the position, the cliff face above and below, the corpse and the embedded knife. Pascal stowed the camera securely inside his left pant cargo pocket, then stared at the knife for a very long moment. Driven in to the hilt, the grip was made of polished hardwood, possibly teak with what looked like ebony and ivory inlays and bronze. Pascal regarded the dead man, slumped in his harness, then with a deep breath he reached out, grimly closed his right hand around the knife grip and gave it a hard tug. Pascal swore as his effort caused the body to swing away from the cliff wall for a second, with the knife still embedded in it. Pascal let go, set in a torque nut to anchor his line better and planted his feet to keep himself from spinning at the end of his ropes, then he reached over and grabbed the knife again. There was a whistling whoosh overhead as sixty feet of nylon rope collected in a loose heap on the man’s head and over Pascal’s shoulders. Pascal let the knife go and raised his arm to bat it away from his head. It slid like a serpent off the two of them to dive to the earth. Pascal looked up, but from where he was he couldn’t see anyone – but someone had to have done that. The man was still hanging by one rope so Pascal quickly reached out, seized the knife and yanked hard. Pascal gasped as the full weight of the man was suddenly on the knife – just a split second, but enough to haul him around and nearly upend him, then he looked uncomprehendingly as the bloody eight-inch blade unexpectedly came up in his hand, just jerked out by the sudden force. He looked down, then cringed as the body smashed against the boulders at the base of the cliff. Sickened, he clutched at the rock face for several long moments, then Pascal slid the knife into his right pant cargo pocket and pushed the nylon closure shut. He reached up and wrestled to turn himself around to get himself upright and to find a better place to prop himself. Jarringly, Pascal suddenly dropped four feet, then was brought up with a hard stop thanks to the torque nut he’d placed. He grabbed at the rock wall and held on with his heart pounding, unable to move. He forced himself to inhale deeply to calm his nerves, then looked up, then down. Instead of being secured far above him, his safety line hung from his harness – sixty feet of line hanging then below him. He reached his right hand out and pulled himself to a shallow ledge. Pascal suddenly felt a tug, then a steady pulling at his belay line. He frowned, then grabbed at the cliff face as his feet began to drag along the meager piece of horizontal plane, then he felt himself being lifted. He pulled out his own small, serrated pocket knife and desperately sawed at the rope. The cords separated, freeing him and he wobbled crazily on his toes for a moment trying to keep his balance. The end of the belay rope flew out, then disappeared from his view as unseen hands pulled it up. He set in another cam and worked what he had of his safety rope through another carabiner to secure himself. He considered the valley, the cliff, then the pine forest far below him and then rested his forehead grimly against the cool rock face and closed his eyes, trying to think how long he could stay like this, and having no idea when help would arrive. After a long while, and feeling as if every muscle in his body was fatiguing from maintaining this awkward standing position, he checked his watch. It had been over two hours since he’d first stepped over the edge far above to belay to the dead man. Pascal was still; it was quiet, except for a gentle murmur of the breeze, then he heard it again – a scratching noise. The hair on the back of his neck rose. To his right, like a silent and still spider studying its prey, with white chalk-powdered hands, a man was about twenty feet from him, paused to assess the threat before making his next move. His head and face were obscured by a desert tan knit mask, but Pascal could see the rest of him – he was about average height, with a tanned, lean-muscled and wiry build as an experienced free climber would be expected to have. The man saw Pascal was studying him as intently. He gestured casually and Pascal was almost startled to hear a voice. “Hello friend! We were worried about you up there! You didn’t answer our calls! Stay there!” When Pascal didn’t reply, he continued on in a conversational tone. “I came down to assist you!” The masked man eased around a smooth outcropping, with his hands and feet expertly finding every crack and handhold the weathered granite stone face offered to them. “I heard your name is Pascal. Is that your name or your surname?” Pascal glanced around. The man spoke reasonably. “I see that you’ve done some climbing before, but I don’t think quite enough for this situation! You need to be careful!” Only five feet out of the man’s arm reach, Pascal suddenly stepped back off his ledge. The man swore as Pascal landed on his feet twenty feet lower, set in a cam and with three huge heaves, yanked his doubled line free before the man could grab it. As the man looked for a path to follow him, Pascal quickly worked in another cam, hurriedly threaded the line through its carabiner and dropped again. Before Pascal found another crack where he could set in either a torque nut or cam, he cringed at a loud bang and his head and face were stung by rock chips. He flattened himself against the cliff and ducked his face under his arm as a second bang closer than the first peppered his head again with stone chips and loose gravel. He opened his eyes to see a rock the size of his fist sailing away on a long arc before disappearing into the pine trees below. Pascal straightened to set a cam and had to duck again as small pebbles rained down on him; he protected by only a slight curve of the cliff that kept deflecting the dropped stones into the air. He glanced up and found the man had managed to close half the distance between them. The rock face of the cliff seemed to be almost as easy and regular as a ladder to negotiate to this man as he worked his way towards Pascal’s position. He had dropped the pretense of friendliness and was coolly dismissive. “You are not going get out of this, mon ami.” Hearing the French, Pascal frowned and glanced up. Pascal’s hazel eyes narrowed with anger as he muttered. “We’ll see.” He called out. “Qu’est ce que vous-voulez?” There was a long pause, as if the man was considering which language to use, then he continued. “Je suis ici pour vous aider. You don’t want to end up like that poor fellow, do you? It was a terrible accident to fall so far like that!” Pascal considered the man’s words then countered coldly. “Yes, it’ll be almost impossible for the coroner to discover the fatal wound when the body is brought in for autopsy!” “You’ve been hanging here out in the sun too long! Your mind is imagining things!” Pascal nodded slightly. “That’s why I kept the knife, to assure me that it was real!” The man inadvertently glanced down to the smashed body far below, then up to glare at Pascal. Pascal pulled the big knife from his trousers pocket and held it up, “How about a deal?” The man snorted, “Deal? What do you mean, deal?” “I want out! I’ll give you the knife! You leave! I leave! Silence!” The man shrugged. “That’s fair! I’ll take it!” Pascal curled his lip slightly. “But how do you guarantee that you won’t use it on me or just push me off?” I give you my word!” “That’s very, very appealing, but what is your name to be a man so good to his word?” “My name?” He chuckled. “To know a man’s name is to have power over him! You are Pascal! I prefer leaving it like that, having power over you!” Pascal countered angrily. “I promise you, you will regret our encounter here! That man you killed - he has a name, too! One name leads to another!” The man shook his head. “He’s gone, as you will be! No one will know you had even been here!” Pascal’s jaw clenched with fury. He growled. “What did you do with the other man up there?” “Volk?” He was dismissive. “It was a pity that he didn’t pass by instead of being so concerned about someone who would have done nothing for him had their circumstances been reversed!” Pascal felt a hot surge of rage. They held each other’s hostile gazes, then as one they heard it – a steady thump-thump-thump-thump becoming louder and louder and both turned to look. Two helicopters were making their way just below the top of the ridge, slowly moving along, as if searching for something or someone. Pascal pushed the knife back into his pocket, shoved himself out and dropped twenty feet, jammed in another torque nut, held on, yanked down his rope, ran it through and dropped another twenty feet, did it again, but to his horror, this placed him at a smooth, unmarred bulge of the rock face. He shuffled left, then right unable to find anywhere in reach where he could set in a new torque nut and release the rope. He heard a cruel laugh. Pascal saw the man had realized his predicament and was moving diagonally to intercept him. Pascal reached up and desperately heaved on the doubled lines to climb back up to re-position. His shoes slipped across the smooth rock as his arms strained to left his weight. Pascal glanced over and saw the man closing, scuttling crab-like across the rock face, then he suddenly swung himself the last two meters and grabbed onto Pascal’s line. Pascal quickly let himself down two meters, but the man was above him and sliding down the doubled rope. Pascal ducked as the man’s foot swept out to stomp his head. As his foot came down a second time, Pascal suddenly lunged up with the small torque nut in his hand and gouged one of its hard metal corners just above the man’s ankle. The man kicked Pascal’s hand away and swore as he felt the burn and saw his blood oozing red from a deep gash. An amplified voice suddenly blared from the helicopter. “This is the park police! If you do not surrender immediately, you will be shot!” He snarled at Pascal. “I don’t need you to give me that knife! I’ll take it out of your pulverized corpse!” Pascal shoved the bloody torque nut into his pocket and shouted. “It doesn’t matter now! I will know your name!” The man looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment then he glanced at where his skin had been dug from his ankle and his face colored red with rage. He pulled out a pocketknife from his pants, opened it, reached below and cut Pascal’s line. Rifle shots boomed from the helicopter and bullets pinged crazily following the man as he swung from perch to perch, scrambling to disappear behind an outcropping. Pascal’s palms were scraped raw as he slid on his stomach down the smooth bulge; then his feet were suddenly free in the air. He cried aloud and his arms threw out as he tumbled over, flailing for anything to stop his fall. But instead of a long, long, long empty drop, abruptly he hit hard, with an almost explosive cracking and snapping as he sprawled, then he began to tumble again. But it was real and his hands closed on anything solid they could grab. It took him several long seconds of utter confusion and stunned disorientation to discover he was clinging to an old, gnarled cypress tree stubbornly growing horizontally out of a fissure. Not comprehending what had happened, he finally reached one arm up to pull his body over the thicker trunk, but the limb he’d touched had been cracked when his body had hit it, so it snapped. Almost over-balancing, shaken, he tried again with a sturdier branch and was able to pull his right leg over the main trunk to lay there on his belly, holding on for dear life, weak and battered. Pascal opened his eyes at last. Below him, almost in reach, the tops of the green pines at the base of the cliff waved slightly in the gentle breeze. He blinked with his eyes tearing from bits of bark until he could look around and see a few scattered trees like the one he was on protruding from the lower cliff face. Above him, the twisted roots of a smaller tree still held what was left of it – most of its gnarled trunk and limbs sheared off when he’d smashed into it. One of the largest boughs from it lay under him, entangled in the lower tree, but it was what was keeping him from falling through that one, too. The remaining length of his severed rope lay draped across the branches, still attached to his harness, but it wasn’t long enough anymore for him to use to descend to level ground. He couldn’t move anyway, his mind and body were simply unable to function. Groggily he opened his eyes; he didn’t know how long he’d been lying there, but oddly, as if in a dream, he was hearing a voice near his ear, firm and stern. “Are you Inspector Pascal?” Too feeble to raise his head off his cheek from where it was pressed against the rough tree bark, he blinked and nodded slightly, but perhaps he only imagined it because everything was dark and quiet for a while. The voice was soothing. “Sir, we’ve got some ropes already secured up here; we’re going to get you down and transport you to a hospital.” This seemed good, so he closed his eyes and thought he should be ready for some cue to do something, but it never seemed to come, only after a long while of darkness he felt a hand squeezing his shoulder. “Sir, I’m here.” Pascal’s head rolled slightly and his eyes opened. It was like a dream, one clear scene followed by another yet completely unrelated, and making no sense, because he was in a sort of metal mesh basket, looking up at a canopy of pine trees instead of down at them, but it seemed quite comfortably horizontal, not that he was feeling anything. The face looking down at him was familiar and reassuring so he felt much encouraged, “Sergeant Braque.” “I’m so sorry sir.” Pascal blinked woozily, “Why?” “I didn’t make it in time for you.” He was perplexed, “But… you’re here.” “I saw you fall. It was awful.” Pascal frowned as he realized his hands were swathed in white bandages, like mittens. “Am I dying?” “Well… n-no sir. You free fell about twenty feet before you hit the trees. Looks like you have some internal bruising, and some gashes and abrasions, but no apparent spinal injury or broken bones. The rangers brought you down, have you on IV and gave you some morphine.” “Ah.” Pascal’s hazel eyes opened wider. “You saw him?” “Yes. He fled. They’re organizing a search and roadblocks. But I saw the way he can move; I doubt they’ll get him.” Braque leaned over. “Sir, what can you report?” Pascal replied. “He has blue-grey eyes, about… 170 cm tall? He speaks English and French… perfectly.” “Is there anything else you can recall?” Pascal was quiet so long, Braque wasn’t sure he was still conscious, then Pascal’s bandaged right hand rose to his thigh pocket and rested there, “The murder weapon.” Braque could see the outline of the big fixed blade. He pulled it out of the cargo pocket. He turned it in his hands. “Very good sir, it’s custom-made. This grip has an unusual design.” “Yes.” Pascal’s hand slowly rose to his trouser pocket. Braque felt inside and pulled out a metal torque nut. Pascal whispered softly. “No matter what happens, don’t lose that.” “Yes sir. Why?” Pascal grimaced slightly. “The name of the murderer is on it.” Braque held it up by its wire rope and turned the small block of metal quickly as he peered at every side. “I don’t see it, sir.” Pascal looked up wanly at him. “You will. Take it to the lab.” Braque straightened and quickly fished out a small plastic bag. “Very good, sir... DNA.” Exhausted, Pascal struggled to say it. “You are my witness, Sergeant Braque.” Concerned, he leaned closer, “Yes sir?” “I will have more of him than he has of me. I will find him and I will bring him to justice.” Gravely, Braque watched him fading to sleep, “Absolutely, sir. That’s what we know to do.” by T.K. Naliaka ©2017-2023, all rights reserved
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January 2019
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