"Damned if I know. The whole business is hush-hush. My guess is Shipton either said something to someone before he croaked or he's still alive and talking. I thought he was a goner before we even got him out of the gorge. Everyone was pretty damn busy wrapping him up to haul him out of there, just trying to keep him alive. His head was bloody, he looked like shit, and at least one of the medics thought he was already dead. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That's a hell of a distance to fall and live to chit-chat about it." The lawman climbed into his Cherokee. "Don't tell the big boys I gave you a heads-up on this." He started the vehicle and left.
Dean managed to whistle down a young boy who agreed to use his snow blower on Dean's unfinished sidewalk, for an amount Dean considered ridiculous, but he knew he needed to get up to snuff on Shipton's fall before he was totally on the defensive. Thankfully, Janet arrived to take up the inside tasks of Bird Song. Dean let Fred follow along, list in hand, as he poked into Edith's room, which Jerome had recently shared.
The room remained basically unchanged. Most of the climbing gear was absent, presumably picked up by Weller at the ice park. There was an empty sack which had contained the climbing rope but it was empty and Dean put it aside. There remained a second rope, various books on the sport of ice climbing and a few pitons. All of the luggage was still strewn about the room. Only Donnie's clothes were neatly stacked. Neither Shipton appeared to consider tidiness a high priority. A half-burned candle sat in a dish on the bureau, perhaps signs of Edith's fascination with the last century. Dean found nothing useful until he looked in the trash.
Crumpled in the waste paper basket was a small piece of white paper with a telephone number. It began with the digits 3-2-5, indicative of a Ouray number. Dean recognized the rest of the number as belonging to Janet O'Brien.
"What in hell would Jerome Shipton be doing with Janet's telephone number?" Dean asked, as much to himself as Fred O'Connor.
"Maybe she dropped it herself, when she was cleaning," Fred answered.
"Janet's not Jeopardy material but she ought to be able to remember her own phone number."
Fred peered at the paper. "It's not her writing. She writes itsy-bitsy numbers. I've seen her grocery list. I wonder where Shipton got it."
"Probably from the men's room wall at a local bar," Dean grumbled. " More importantly, I wonder why he has it."