The Alpine Nemesis

by Mary Daheim

  “What the hell … ?” Milo was bending down over the fourth and final body.

  From the angle at which I was standing, all I could see were a pair of high-tech outdoor shoes and black pants. “Who is it?” I asked, wondering if I dared take a closer look.

  “I don't know,” Milo said. “How about you, Dustman?”

  Dustin also bent down. “Gee … he does look kind of familiar, but I can't place him.”

  Reluctantly, I inched closer. It was the face of a young man, bruised and discolored. He was wearing a blue and black parka, and his matted hair was brown. I'd like to say he looked peaceful, but he didn't. Frankly, he appeared to have been in pain when he died.

  I kept staring, forcing myself not to cringe. Like Dustin, I thought there was something familiar about him. His eyes were closed, his mouth was slightly open. He was clean-shaven, with a broad face and a short chin. In death he looked painfully young, though I guessed him to be in his late twenties.

  “Well?” Milo said.

  The face metamorphosed not into a real live person, but a black-and-white photograph. “My God,” I whispered, “it's Brian Conley!”

  “BY GOD,” MILO said softly, “you're right! Those pictures we got from his family or whoever—the ones we posted after he went missing. I remember now.”

  “Me, too,” Dustin agreed. “I knew I'd seen that face somewhere.”

  Milo stood up, his expression utterly bewildered. “How the hell did he get in here?”

  I wanted to know the same thing, of course. But I felt the pressure of time. “Check, see if you can tell how he died.”

  “Exposure, probably,” Milo said, shaking his head over and over. “We'll have to get Doc Dewey to take a look. Dustin, give him a call. If he's not in the O.R., I'd like him to come over pronto.”

  Dustin started out of the locker, but I grabbed his arm. “Do me a huge favor, please?” I gave him my best middle-aged vamp look, which was undoubtedly hampered by my queasy stomach. “Don't mention this to anybody outside, especially not to Spencer Fleetwood.”

  Earning my endless gratitude, Dustin grinned and nodded. “Got it. He's kind of a dork, isn't he, Ms. Lord?”

  “That describes him,” I called after Dustin as he left. “And after all this time, you'd better start calling me Emma.” I turned to Milo, who was studying the

  late Brian Conley. “How do we keep Fleetwood out of here?”

  “We can't,” the sheriff replied, looking me straight in the eye. “How many times have you told me that the press—and the public—has a right to know?”

  “Damn.” Milo was right. It was an old argument, which I'd often used on him to elicit information for the paper. “Maybe Fleetwood's squeamish.”

  “Could be,” Milo allowed, and continued to cautiously poke and prod the body. “Hey!” he exclaimed, his voice low. “Look at this.”

  I looked, though I didn't really want to. My stomach was still threatening to rebel, but I fought back the urge to be sick. Milo had turned Brian over onto his side. The back of the dead man's parka had been slashed, and a crusty dark stain spread over the blue Gor-Tex fabric. Getting down on his hands and knees, the sheriff scrutinized what appeared to be a wound.

  “Knife, I'd guess,” he finally said, getting on his feet again. “Doc Dewey will know.”

  “Call me,” I said, backpedaling out of the locker. “I'm going to the office and get this extra edition off the drawing board.”

  I saw Milo's hat nod before I turned around and scooted through Barney Amundson's office. Outside, Spence, as I supposed I ought to call him since everybody else did, was still talking to Barney. I moved furtively across the parking lot, hoping my nemesis wouldn't see me.

  But he did. “Emma!” he shouted in that mellifluous radio voice. “Big news, huh?”

  I winced, then faced Spence. “How's Barney doing?” I asked, sounding sour.

  Spence put a hand on Barney's shoulder. “He'll be fine. Quite a shock, though. I haven't come across anything like this since Chicago.”

  I didn't respond to his allusion. Spence would have everyone believe that he'd covered not only Al Capone, but the Hindenburg crash, the Battle of Britain, Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, and Marilyn Monroe's wedding to Joe DiMaggio. “You'll make the ten o'clock news, I imagine,” I remarked, trying not to be annoyed by his customary supercilious attitude toward me and the rest of Alpine.

  Spence glanced at his watch, which I'd been told was a Rolex. “Can do. But I'd better get going. Got Tim Raf-ferty and a couple of students from the college on the air right now. See you in the funny papers, Emma.”

  “Ha, ha,” I said, looking in my handbag for my own watch, the band of which I'd broken two weeks earlier and hadn't gotten around to replacing. It was nine-forty. I stuffed the watch down into the deep bottom of my purse—and stabbed myself in the hand.

  I let out a little yip, but no one noticed. Annoyed, I dug around in my purse for the offending object. It was a corkscrew that Tom and I had taken on a picnic to Deception Falls. The damage to my hand was minimal, but the awful idea I got from the corkscrew was as brilliant as it was sinister.

  Milo hadn't come out of the warehouse yet. Barney and Spence were still chatting. The ambulance drivers were talking to each other. The rest of the crowd, maybe close to forty people, milled around, shaking their heads and staring at the building's entrance. Word was spreading fast, as it always did on Alpine's grapevine. But the locals were convinced that any event was real only by reading about it in print. Or hearing it on the blasted radio.

  I was unobserved, so I went over to Spence's BMW, quietly opened the door on the driver's side, inserted the corkscrew into the ignition, and turned it with all my might. The sound of wrenching metal was faint, but the damage was sufficient. Spence wouldn't make a hasty getaway.

  I practically ran all the way back to the office. Scott was busy at the word processor, Vida and Leo were having a heated exchange, and Kip and Ginny were huddled together by the coffeemaker.

  “The O'Neills! And that snowboarder!” Vida cried. “I must go over there at once.”

  “No, you mustn't,” I said. “Didn't Scott tell you we were putting out a special edition?”

  “Yes,” Vida began, “but—”

  “No buts,” I interrupted. “Start writing up a background piece on the O'Neills. Leo, can you throw in a couple of ads from the school's-out edition? We'll only go two pages, but we can't fill them up with copy. Scott, whatever you're doing, stop. I'll take the lead story—you do the one on Conley from the files. Let's go, I want this on the street in an hour.”

  Scott seemed excited, Leo was shaking his head, and Vida looked dismayed. “Really, now!” she exclaimed. “Are you sure this is wise?”

  “Vida.” I turned my most severe expression on her. My House and Home editor often has a problem remembering who is the boss, and not without good reason. Vida's older and wiser, and I'm inclined to defer to her, but not this morning when the news and my temper were at the boiling point. “Don't you think we owe this to ourselves?” I asked in a solemn voice.

  She whipped off her glasses and punished her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Ooooh … I don't know. It seems so … peculiar.”

  I leaned on her desk. “Do you want the Advocate to get beat on the biggest story that's come along in the past ten years? Spence is already bragging that he's covered this kind of wholesale mayhem in other places. So he makes it sound like nothing to him, but it's something to us because this isn't Chicago or New York or L.A.”

  Vida's chin shot up. “It certainly isn't,” she agreed. “This is Alpine.”

  Fighting words to Vida. She put her glasses firmly in place and turned to her battered typewriter. “Paddy O'Neill arrived in Skykomish County in nineteen thirty-six. He was fifteen years old, and had ridden a freight train from the Twin Cities,” she said aloud, and then went silent as the rattle of her two-fingered typing filled the office.

  I went into my cub
byhole to begin the lead story. I wished I'd spoken to Barney Amundson, but the risk had been too great. Spence had monopolized him, and I didn't want to lie to Barney about the other body. He'd find out soon enough. I supposed that he'd start crying all over again.

  I didn't have time for tears. At ten-twenty, I'd finished the story, except for a couple of gaps I needed to have Milo fill in. I'd asked Ginny to listen to KSKY on the hour. She came into my office to tell me that the warehouse bodies hadn't made the news.

  “One of those college kids read the stories,” Ginny said. “They sounded like the same ones I heard when I was driving to work at eight o'clock.”

  I heaved an enormous sigh of relief. In the newsroom, I discovered that Vida had dug out the history of Alpine Meats, Leo had found photos, if not very good ones, of all the O'Neills, and Scott had pulled the picture of Brian Conley that we'd run when he'd been reported missing. Ordinarily, Scott isn't the fastest guy at the word processor, but he'd outdone himself. Pushing his hard copy at me, he raced off to Buddy Bayard's studio to retrieve the photos he'd taken earlier.

  My phone rang and I raced into my cubbyhole to pick it up. Thank God, it was Milo.

  “Looks like a stab wound to Doc Dewey,” the sheriff informed me. “A hunting or fishing knife, he figures. The guy's been dead for a long time, probably since he disappeared on Tonga Ridge.”

  “You mean he was murdered, too?” I said.

  “What'd you think?” Milo said dryly. “He stabbed himself in the back?”

  “No, no, of course not,” I responded. “It's just that… well, it wasn't the Hartquists who killed him, right?”

  “I wouldn't think so.”

  “What about them? Have you heard anything from the deputies?”

  “Jack phoned in a few minutes ago,” Milo replied. “The Hartquists are holed up out at what's left of their place on the Burl Creek Road.”

  Milo referred to the Hartquist house that had been partially burned more than a year before in yet another incident involving their feud with the O'Neills. At the time, I'd thought the two-story frame structure was a total loss, but they'd patched it up and stayed put.

  “You mean it's a siege?”

  “Let's put it like this,” Milo said. “My guys are outside and the Hartquists are inside. Call it what you want.”

  I called it tricky, not just for Milo and his men, but for me. “Is an arrest imminent?”

  “Hell, no,” Milo said. “Do the usual—'persons of interest' or whatever. We want their cooperation. Et cetera.”

  “I know the drill.” I sighed. “Okay, call me if you find out anything new.” I started to sign off, then remembered to ask Milo about Spence. “Did he fly off with his hot scoop?” I asked innocently.

  “Skunk Nordby had to give him a lift,” Milo said. “I guess some kid jimmied his ignition when nobody was looking. I've told Spence to lock up that fancy piece of automobile when he parks it. But he thinks Alpine is safe compared to the city. Maybe he'll learn that there are troublemakers even around here.”

  I didn't remind Milo that finding four bodies in a meat locker indicated that we had more than just troublemakers in Alpine. “Have you called the state in?”

  “I contacted them, but they're tied up on some other stuff in Seattle and Tacoma,” Milo said, sounding disgusted. “Us little guys don't count for much in their scheme of things. They'll get back to me.”

  “You can handle this,” I said, wanting to give Milo's ego a boost. Having punctured his self-esteem when we broke up, I owed it to him.

  “Hunh,” Milo responded. “Let's hope.”

  By ten thirty-five we had all our copy, photos, and ads ready to go. Kip, who had already contacted our carriers, took over in the backshop. The first copies of the special edition would be on the streets by eleven. I felt vindicated as a journalist.

  But I felt horrible as a person. The sick feeling I'd had since seeing the bodies inside the meat locker washed over me again. Having used up my adrenaline rush along with every ounce of energy and determination, I caved in. My head touched the desk; my knees turned to jelly. It was all I could do to move far enough to throw up in my wastebasket.

  As usual, the door to the cubbyhole was open, but my staff members didn't notice. Vida was on the phone, no doubt making contact with her myriad sources, many of whom were related to her by blood or marriage. Scott had left to see what was going on with the sheriff and the Hartquists. Leo had gone off to soothe the advertisers he'd pulled from the regular Wednesday edition and put in the special issue. Ginny was in the front at the reception desk. Kip was readying the paper for distribution.

  I threw up again, laid my head back down on the desk and panted. It was Kip MacDuff who found me still lying there several minutes later.

  “Hey, what's wrong?” he asked in alarm. “Emma?”

  Slowly, I raised my head. “I'm okay,” I said, and knew that the shaky voice, green face, and glazed eyes told Kip otherwise. “Can you grab me some paper towels from the newsroom?”

  “You don't look okay,” he said, stating the obvious. “Are you sick?”

  “I was,” I said, glancing in distaste at the wastebasket.

  “Oh, boy,” Kip said softly. “Be right back!”

  Vida had just hung up the phone. “What on earth's the matter?” she demanded.

  “Emma's sick,” Kip replied, ripping off a half-dozen or more towels and racing back into my office.

  Vida was on his heels. “Good heavens!” she cried. “Emma, do you need a doctor?”

  Feebly, I shook my head. “No, it's just shock.” I took the paper towels from Kip and wiped my face. “I'm better now. I just have to sit for a minute.”

  “Let me empty that,” Vida said, grabbing the waste-basket and marching off to the rest room next door to my cubbyhole.

  “You sure you're okay?” Kip asked.

  “I will be. Honest.” I attempted a smile that must have been a pathetic imitation. “Is the paper out?”

  Kip nodded, beaming. “That's what I came to tell you. I got hold of six of our carriers. They're already headed out, with two of them covering downtown. The rest are going door to door to the residential customers. I'll take the van and do the routes outside of town.”

  “Wonderful, Kip,” I said, my smile growing stronger. “Go ahead. I'll be fine.”

  Kip left and Vida returned. “My word,” she said, sit-

  ting down in one of the chairs and studying me closely. “You're so pale. Maybe you should go home to rest.”

  “I can't,” I said. “I've got to keep on this story. It's huge.”

  “Scott and I can manage,” Vida declared.

  I shook my head. “No. It's a matter of personal pride— professional pride, too. Besides, how could I miss out on something like this?” Like this terrible tragedy, I thought, with four people dead, and three more possibly headed for prison. Alas, the catastrophes of others are a boon to those of us in the media. There were times when I hated my job, yet some part of me thrived on disaster. My evil side, I often thought, but salved my conscience by telling myself I was only human.

  I made a pit stop to repair my makeup and brush my hair. I looked god-awful. My short brown hair was sticking up in several directions, my skin was sallow, my eyes had developed dark circles under them, my usually trim figure slumped.

  To hell with it, I thought, closing my handbag with a defiant gesture. I was after a big story, and looks didn't count.

  In the reception area, Ginny was on the phone. She paused, put her hand over the receiver, and looked up at me. “They're ringing off the hook. I haven't put anybody through because I knew you were all tied up. What's this business about Mayor Baugh and a toilet?”

  “It'll keep,” I said. “Thanks, Ginny.” I dashed out through the front door, then realized I didn't know where Milo was. He could have called from anywhere, including en route to the Hartquists' on the Burl Creek Road.

  On Front Street, all of Alpine appeared to be cong
regating in little knots of threes and fours. Some people were heading for Alpine Meats. Many were already holding copies of the Advocate. I tried to stifle a triumphant smile as I turned toward the sheriff's headquarters a block away.

  Several people attempted to waylay me, including Father Dennis Kelly from St. Mildred's.

  “Is it true?” he asked, his earnest cocoa-brown face full of concern. “All three of the O'Neills?”

  “I'm afraid so,” I said as a half-dozen others pressed around us. I pointed to the newspaper that my pastor held in his hands. “It's all in there, so far as anyone knows at this point.”

  “And that poor snowboarder?” Father Den shook his head. “It seems like yesterday that I celebrated the Requiem Mass for Paddy O'Neill.”

  I had seldom seen any of the O'Neills inside of St. Mildred's. But they were Catholics, and entitled to burial from the church. “This will be a triple for you, Father,” I said ruefully.

  Den nodded slowly. “I assume the boys didn't ever mention being shipped to Ireland like their father. They weren't born there. Do you realize there've been two funerals in town during the past six months involving bodies being sent over there?”

  I had, in fact, forgotten that Liam Rafferty also had requested that his remains be buried in Ireland. “That is unusual,” I remarked, trying to break away tactfully. “But both Liam and Paddy had come from Ireland. I suppose it made sense to them.”

  A slight smile touched Father Den's mouth. “I may be a Kelly, but I doubt that most of my ancestors came from there. More likely, the name came from one of my great-great-grandfather's plantation owners.”

  I smiled at Den. “You don't want to be buried in Africa, I take it?”

  “I don't even want to go to Africa,” he replied. “I have no missionary zeal.”

  I smiled some more, waved, and hurried on down the street. Another gaggle of Alpiners called out to me; I waved and smiled at them, too. The special edition was out, I wasn't really in a rush, but I didn't want to spend the rest of the day fielding questions. Everything I knew so far was in the Advocate's extra edition.