by M. K. Wren
Will headed him toward the stairs. Someone was supporting him on the left. Demara. As they moved up the steps, Will snapped orders. “Loanh, get my medical case from my room. Kim, I’ll need all the heat I can get in his room. Turn on the heater in the bathroom and get a fire going in the fireplace. Tiff, run some warm water in his tub. Not hot, just—”
“Approximately one hundred degrees,” she said with surprising steadiness as she hurried past them up the stairs.
“Right. Demara, you had any first-aid training?”
“No, but I’m strong, and I’ve never run into anything that shocked me.”
By the time they reached Conan’s room, every light was on, Tiff was in the bathroom filling the tub, Kim at the fireplace lighting a fire, and Loanh hurrying in with Will’s medical case. He sent her out again for extra blankets, and Kim departed with her, then Will sat Conan down on the bed and opened the case. Tiff came out of the bathroom, said, “I need a thermometer, Will.”
“You’ll have one in just a minute. Demara, start unlacing his boots—carefully. Might have some frostbite.” He slipped a sterile cap on a digital thermometer, and thrust it into Conan’s mouth, then felt his damp Levi’s and gloves, muttered, “Hell, Conan, what’d you do? Take a swim?” He hurriedly removed Conan’s parka, pulled his sweater and T-shirt up, pressed a stethoscope against his chest, and listened for a few seconds, then when the thermometer beeped, took it, frowning at the reading. “Ninety-four point seven. Well, at least that classifies you as mild, so I don’t have to worry about fibrillation so much. That’s what usually kills severe hypothermics. Tiff! You can use this thermometer.” When she bustled out of the bathroom to get it, he asked, “By the way, how’d you know about the water temperature?”
“Oh, hypothermia treatment is in the first-aid curriculum we offer at Trinity.” And she bustled away, her pink robe fluttering behind her.
Demara finished unlacing Conan’s boots. “You want these off?”
Will took a pair of scissors from his case and began cutting away Conan’s right glove. “No, let me do that, Demara. People with frozen feet have been known to take off their toes with their boots.”
Conan groaned, and Demara hissed, “Jesus, Will!”
“That’s my best bedside manner. Don’t worry, Conan, I doubt you were out long enough for that kind of frostbite.” He removed the glove and examined Conan’s hand. The skin had a fish-belly pallor, and the heat in the room was already arousing a burning ache. Will began cutting away the other glove. “Next time, wear mittens.”
Conan cleared his throat, a little surprised to find he could speak clearly now, except for the shivering that wouldn’t stop. “I’ll remember that next time I get caught in a blizzard. Is there a radio in the house?”
“Yes, but we couldn’t pick up anything except static tonight. The power’s out, by the way. We’re running on the generator now. Oh, thanks, Kim.”
That as Kim brought in an armful of blankets. She left the blankets on the bed and headed for the door. “If you don’t need me for a while, I’m going to get some warm clothes out of A. C.’s trunk. We may all need an extra layer or so before this is over.”
Will nodded without looking up from the task of slipping Conan’s boots off, then his socks. “Good boots. Toes don’t look too bad. Okay, let’s get the rest of your clothes off. Tiff, how’s the water?”
“A hundred one point two,” she called.
“Close enough. Conan, don’t try to help. Just relax.”
He nodded, surrendering himself to being undressed like a child. He was too spent and shaky to do more, and certainly beyond modesty when Will and Demara had stripped him of his wet, icy clothing. Will wrapped a blanket around him, then checked his blood pressure. The constriction of the cuff on his arm made his fingers ache. Will didn’t comment on the reading, but delved into his medical case and came up with a syringe, which he filled from a rubber-capped vial.
Conan asked, “What’s that?”
Will plunged the needle into Conan’s left deltoid with a lack of finesse that made him flinch. “Demerol. You’ll thank me when you start thawing out. If you’re wondering about the rush, quick thawing is the latest thing. Okay, Demara, let’s get him into the bathroom.”
It was only a few steps, but Conan surrendered to their assistance in this, too. Will sent Tiff out, and Conan surrendered to being helped into a sitting position on the side of the tub, turning, and having his feet eased into the water. He stiffened with the pain that made his feet feel as if they had been submerged in molten lead. Demara and Will lowered him into the tub, while he gasped like a porpoise, and Will murmured, “Just lean back…that’s right…you’re doing fine…” The messages Conan’s nerves were sending made him doubt that, especially when Will said, “You’ve got to get your hands in the water, Conan,” and forced his hands down into the molten liquid.
The pain was pure and white, and he couldn’t contain a muffled cry, while Will kept promising, “The Demerol will kick in soon.”
Conan doubted that, too, but he wasn’t sorry to be proven wrong, even though it seemed to take an inordinately long time. Gradually the pain retreated to a bearable level, and the water began to seem warm and comforting, rather than scalding and excruciating. Finally he closed his eyes, letting the tension ease out of his fatigued muscles, surrendering again, only vaguely aware of Will periodically checking his pulse and temperature, or adding water to maintain the ideal hundred degrees, or occasionally offering a glass of lukewarm water.
The only problem with this comforting submersion was that it left his mind free. Free to remember Lise’s despairing why? Free to remember Albert Charles King and his sons around a campfire by Loblolly Creek in the tentative first stages of reconciliation. Free to remember that stunning explosion, the rumble of tons of rock smashing down on the two tents. Free to imagine being in one of those tents, waking a split second before the boulders—
No!
“Conan? What’s wrong?”
He had spoken the denial aloud. He murmured, “Nothing, Will.”
Don’t imagine, he admonished himself. Think.
But that wasn’t easy now, between his exhaustion, the Demerol, and the warm water. His mind was nowhere near sleep even under their influence. He just couldn’t think coherently.
Still, one thought was trenchantly clear: He was dealing with premeditated murder designed and committed by one of the people who had Friday evening shared a meal with the victims. One of the family.
Timing and the locale were vital to these murders, and who would know that A. C. and his sons always camped at exactly the same place on this particular weekend? Who would know about the unstable talus slope looming over that campsite? Only someone who had made the trek. No one outside the family except Will and Conan.
Will’s voice derailed his train of thought. “Okay, Conan, temp’s almost normal, and you’ve got a nice, rosy glow on your toes and fingers. I don’t think they’ll even blister. Of course, they’ll never let you forget what you did to them for the rest of your life.”
Conan opened his eyes, wondering how long he had been steeping in this enervating warmth. At least half an hour, he guessed. Demara was still here, studying him with an oddly dispassionate gaze.
He again surrendered to Will and Demara’s ministrations, while they got him out of the tub, dried him, and clothed him in flannel pajamas that he guessed were A. C.’s. He hadn’t owned a comparable set since he left Eastern Oregon. Will also provided a pair of lambskin scuffs. Conan leaned heavily on him during the short walk to his bed, easing his weight onto his feet. Kim was standing by the fireplace, a brittle tautness in her face, but she remained silent until he was in bed and under the covers, his aching hands at his sides under the sheets.
Then she came to the foot of the bed and said flatly, “Conan, I’m sorry, but the rest of us have to deal with this tonight. I mean, begin to deal with it. We have to know what happened.”
He considered ho
w much to tell her, finally said, “All I know is I woke up about eight and realized it had turned cold, and the wind had come up. I walked to a clear-cut about a quarter of a mile away, thinking I could get a good look at the sky, and that’s when I heard the rumble. I ran back to camp, but…” He didn’t try to finish that.
Kim only nodded. It was Demara who asked, “But wasn’t there any warning? I mean, rocks don’t just fall off mountains. Do they?”
Will said, “In that particular spot they do. I’m no geologist, but even I could tell that slope was unstable. Always made me nervous, the times I went on the hike. Now, let’s get out of here and let Conan sleep. Thanks for the help, Demara. You’d make a damn good nurse.”
She smiled briefly and headed for the door, leaving it open behind her. Kim started to follow, then paused. “Will, we can’t leave the generator on all night. I brought up a kerosene lamp—there on the side table.” She turned to Conan and after a moment said, “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, Conan, and glad you lived through it.”
“Thanks, Kim.”
When she was gone, Will lit the lamp, frowning as he adjusted the wick. The warm, oily smell was oddly reassuring. “Conan, Lise didn’t really mean what she said about—well, you know.”
“Yes, I know. She was hurting, Will, and maybe you’d better go see how she’s faring—and the others, too.”
“Right. Damn, I just can’t believe it yet.” He shook his head and ran a hand distractedly through his red hair. Then he looked around, found his medical case open on the floor by the bedside table. “Better take this with me. Anything I can get for you, Conan?”
He replied lightly, “A cigarette and a good stiff drink.”
“No way. Nicotine and alcohol are definitely contraindicated for hypothermic patients. I’ll check on you later, but just remember, my room is kitty-corner across the hall. Holler if you need me.”
Will turned out the ceiling light and closed the door behind him, and only now did Conan become fully conscious of a sound that had been a subliminal awareness before: an unrelenting, muffled roar. The wind. Outside, a magnificent, indifferent, and terrifying beast commanded the night and laid siege to the lodge.
And perhaps another kind of beast lived within its walls.
Chapter 10
Conan’s body cried out for sleep, but his mind denied him that. He lay listening to the tumult of the wind in a warm cocoon of blankets in a room filled with dim, golden light from the kerosene lamp and the fire.
And he thought about murder.
It was the callous audacity of these murders that kept him awake in spite of weariness and Demerol. Someone had been willing to kill four people, at least one of them—Conan Flagg—an unintended victim. Conan hadn’t been expected on the hike, but the killer didn’t regard his unanticipated presence as reason enough to abort the plan.
Who was the intended victim?
A. C.? That conclusion offered the most obvious motivation: money. At the top of King’s Mountain, A. C. had admitted his fear that his sons were just waiting for him to die. For his money. Conan flinched, realizing that A. C. had been alive to speak those words no more than twelve hours ago.
At least Conan could be sure A. C. had in fact been a victim, intended or not. A. C. was in his tent when Conan left the camp; that snoring was unmistakable. He couldn’t have escaped the rock slide unless he departed the camp immediately after Conan. In that case, Conan would have seen him or a flashlight on the trail, unless he struck off across country. Why would A. C. take such an irrational course? To make it seem he had died in the rock slide?
Conan accepted the possibility that a person might go to great lengths to stage his own death for any number of reasons. But not A. C. King, who, in spite of uneasy relationships with his sons, was so manifestly satisfied with his life. And one thing Conan was sure of: if A. C. staged his own death, he would not kill his sons in the process.
But what about Lucas or Al? Had either of them some compelling reason to make it seem he had died?
Conan was sure that the second tent had been occupied before he left camp. Again, he had heard snoring. But who was in the tent? Both Lucas and Al? Or only one of them?
A distant banging startled him, tightened every muscle. He lay still, breathing deeply. The wind had blown something loose; an eaves trough, probably. Now it thudded incessantly like a funeral drum.
Lucas might have been an unintended victim; no one expected him for this year’s reunion hike, either. On the other hand, he might have come here solely for the purpose of murdering his father and staging his own death. From what Lise had said, Lucas’s hatred for A. C. ran deep, which might be motive enough for murder. Then there was the obvious motive of money. A. C. had not, as he once threatened, disinherited Lucas, and he knew it. Lise had told, him. Lucas was still in line for a share of A. C.’s estate, which, rumor had it, ran into the tens of millions.
There was also that “little problem” Lucas had mentioned. He told A. C. that it was taken care of with a contract to design and build a thirty-million-dollar office complex, which suggested the problem had been financial and not at all little. And A. C. had apparently earlier turned Lucas down when he asked for help in solving that problem.
So, had the problem actually been solved?
Conan thought irritably that if he could only get to a phone, he could call his friend Charlie Duncan in San Francisco and have him send an operative to Los Angeles to discover the nature of Lucas King’s problem and determine whether it had in fact been solved.
But A. C. had refused to install a telephone in his mountain retreat, and the cell phones were well out of range of any antennas. The nearest pay phone was ten miles away at Government Camp, and until this storm ended, it might as well be a thousand miles.
But if a share of his father’s estate was part of Lucas’s motive, his own faked death wouldn’t help him, although it might solve the little problem in L.A. To escape that problem, Lucas might choose to “die” and make a fresh start elsewhere with a new identity, but a dead Lucas couldn’t collect his share of A. C.’s estate. Not unless…Demara Wilder. If Demara and Lucas were married, it was conceivable, depending on the provisions of A. C.’s will, that as Lucas’s wife and heir she could collect his share of the estate and, after a reasonable interval, rendezvous with him, probably in a foreign country that did not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
But would Lucas trust Demara with his fortune and future?
Possibly. He had seemed hopelessly infatuated with her.
And would Lucas be willing to kill his brother incidental to killing his father? Again, possibly. With Al dead, Lucas’s share of the estate would be that much bigger.
Whatever Lucas’s motive, he had opportunity. He might have planted the explosives days earlier, then made his dramatic appearance as the prodigal son yesterday, taken the hike, but left the camp in the hour after the four of them retired and before Conan wakened. The explosives might have been detonated with a timer or with a radio signal. Lucas could have been miles away at the time of the explosion.
Conan frowned at the waning fire. Already the air in the room had a dry chill, and the wind seemed to have increased in ferocity. The distant banging continued relentlessly, along with the mournful tolling of the bell.
He closed his eyes, consciously relaxing his muscles.
One of the problems with this scenario was transportation. A supposedly dead Lucas couldn’t simply hike back to the lodge for his Mercedes. He could hike to the highway, but would he plan on hitching a ride from there, where he could be picked up or seen by a local who might recognize him? The King family was well known in the area.
Or he might have left another car parked on or near the highway. Demara could have driven one of the cars up from California, or they might have rented one along the way.
Or he might have another accomplice to provide transportation. And would that accomplice also provide the expertise to engineer
the rock slide? That was another problem with this scenario: Lucas was an architect and contractor, and had no doubt worked on building sites where explosives were used, but would he be expert enough to design the explosion that triggered the rock slide? If not, he would need to find someone who was sufficiently expert, and that person might also provide him transportation. For a price.
Yes. Conan sat up, staring into the flickering firelight.
A memory plucked at his sleeve. When he had walked to the clear-cut to search for stars, he saw the light from the lodge and another light, which he assumed to be a car on the highway. It had slowed and stopped not far west of the lodge. At least, the light had disappeared.
With a sigh, he sank back into the pillows. The light might have disappeared because the car went around a curve or behind some trees.
He reminded himself that Lucas was only one suspect.
There was Al King to consider.
The intended victim for Al would be A. C. Al would have known that Mark couldn’t go on the hike, but he couldn’t have known before Friday night that Lucas and Conan would be at the camp site. And Al had twice on Friday hinted broadly that Conan needn’t go.
But so had Lucas. Did that imply prior knowledge on the part of either of them?
As Conan considered those hints—or warnings?—he became aware of voices in the hall that he couldn’t identify over the rush of wind. Probably the family settling in for the night. He heard doors closing. At least Tiff and Mark wouldn’t be alone. He thought of Demara, Kim, and Loanh all facing empty rooms, empty cold beds. And Lise? Where was she sleeping tonight? Certainly not in the studio. Probably one of the small bedrooms at the east end of the hall. She would have Heather with her, and such unquestioning comfort could be vital.
A light tap on the door, then before Conan could respond, it opened. Will Stewart came in carrying a candle in a wrought-iron holder. He asked, “Why aren’t you asleep yet?” then put the candle down on the bedside table and pressed two fingers to Conan’s throat, reading his pulse. “How’re you feeling?”
