The Aspen Account

by Bryan Devore

  56

  HOPKINS WATCHED THE video monitor from the security room, panning through different video feeds until he saw Jason Kano leaving the premises. Then he flipped to the upstairs hall monitors and saw Michael walk into Seaton’s study.

  Closing the door to the security room, the butler pressed the speaker button on the gray Avaya phone beside the monitors. The speed dial’s tone trilled a few seconds before Seaton answered.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, sir, but I have a rather urgent matter to discuss.”

  “Go ahead, Hopkins,” Seaton replied.

  “Sir, we have just received a visit from a U.S. Marshal Jason Kano. He claims to be heading a statewide manhunt for Mr. Chapman. He wants him in connection to Lucas’s death. Mr. Kano said that Chapman is the lead suspect in the investigation of the accident.”

  “What did you tell him?” Seaton asked.

  “I told him that I met Mr. Chapman at the twins’ party a month ago and hadn’t seen him since.”

  “Thank God, Hopkins,” he said, his relieved sigh audible over the line. “Listen, this is a trifle hard to explain, so I need you to trust me. Lance and Lucas have been trying to undermine my efforts to fight the proposed merger between X-Tronic and Cygnus. They wanted the merger to go through so they could hide accounting frauds they have been instigating at X-Tronic. I believe they are trying to take control of X-Tronic’s operations after the merger, and they are determined enough that I even believe they were responsible for the death of an external auditor a few months ago. Michael also discovered the fraud, and when the boys found out, they tried to kill him. Lucas died during the attempt on Michael’s life. I know this sounds crazy, but I need you to do everything you can to protect Michael Chapman from the police. I’ve arranged for him to take my jet back to Denver so he can work on some important items for me. The pilot’s been instructed to do whatever is necessary to get Michael to Denver tonight. Do you understand? Hopkins, I need your help on this not just as an employee, but as a gentleman and a friend.”

  “I quite understand,” Hopkins replied, trying to blot out images of the twins playing in the woods behind the mansion as children, trying not to think of all the times he had taken care of them.

  Seaton continued, “Whatever happens, it is imperative that Michael leave for Denver on my jet this evening. He may need your help getting past the authorities. I don’t know how they managed to link me to his whereabouts, but you must assume that they have the estate under surveillance. I’m counting on you, Hopkins. You must make sure Michael gets away.”

  “I understand, sir,” Hopkins said. Seaton ended the call, and he turned to look back at the monitors, watching Michael move through the hallways. So you killed a prince of Camelot, he thought to himself. And now even the king has gone mad!

  Michael had just finished outlining part of the presentation that Seaton would need for the X-Tronic shareholders’ meeting. He disconnected the thumb drive from the computer and slipped it into his pocket. Then he placed an emergency call to the First United Bank after-hours line to schedule a meeting Sunday to retrieve the X-Tronic documents in his safety deposit drawer.

  As he finished the call, he noticed Hopkins standing in the doorway. “Is the marshal gone?” Michael asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What did he want?”

  “You,” Hopkins replied.

  Michael frowned. “Did he say why?”

  “Yes.” A long silence followed.

  Michael didn’t know how much Hopkins knew, so he decided to ignore the subject unless the butler pressed it. But Hopkins hadn’t sold him out. If the marshal had received the least intimation that he was here, local law enforcement would have stormed the mansion and he would already be in custody.

  “Mr. Seaton needs me to travel to Denver tonight,” Michael said, a little louder than he meant to. It made him nervous that Hopkins lingered in the doorway without actually entering the room. “I am to leave for the airport in an hour to catch his jet.”

  “Yes, sir, I’m aware of your schedule. I spoke with Mr. Seaton a moment ago. He wants me to make sure no one interferes with your making that flight. Sir, I recommend that you leave through the back of the estate. I’m told that you are already familiar with the landscape, so I will have a car waiting for you on the other side of the property wall. I will send a decoy vehicle out the front drive since they will surely be watching.”

  “I have a rented Volvo just outside the back of the property,” Michael said.

  “Not anymore. Mr. Graham moved it into the garage early this morning.”

  “Marcus did? How? I still have the keys.”

  “He is a very talented man,” Hopkins said evenly. “Don’t worry, we will have someone leave a new vehicle for you—something better suited for these weather conditions should you have need of additional performance . . . and you might. Trust me, the marshal is having the estate watched.”

  Michael pondered Hopkins’s words. “How do you know?” he asked, still lost in thought.

  “We have cameras around the property—quite well concealed. He has three vehicles out front and two in the rear of the estate, on the road leading to the pass. But they left an opening. They don’t have anyone on the service road through the Parks and Wildlife land on the other side of the hill. It passes down by the creek bank and leads directly to the airport highway. You’ll be using an off-limits government road to avoid the government,” Hopkins said, giving the closest approximation of a smile that Michael had yet seen from him.

  “A government road? Sounds like a good place for a trap,” Michael pointed out. “No offense, but am I sure I can trust you?”

  “Mr. Seaton trusts you, I trust Mr. Seaton, and now it appears that you must trust me—it seems to be the only way you’re going to make it back to Denver tonight.”

  Michael smiled as he looked at Hopkins in a new light. Perhaps this was not the reserved butler he had taken him for. “Hopkins, I think you and I would get along well if we had a chance to grow on each other.”

  “If you think so, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Michael said. Hopkins nodded before leaving the room, and Michael was grateful that he had not been obliged to explain Lucas’s death to him.

  He turned out the lights in the study and moved through the shadows toward the window. Through the sliver between the curtains, he tried to look past the falling snow into the dark, cold wilderness beyond. His training gave him confidence enough to keep his cool and focus on the situation the way a good chess player would, thinking five or more moves ahead instead of just one or two. But this man Kano had training, too, and was good enough to track him here. That worried him.

  He stepped away from the curtains and stood in the center of Seaton’s dark den. Things had gone much further than he ever intended, and he would have to push them further yet if he wanted to follow this through to the end.

  57

  MICHAEL LEFT THE mansion through the kitchen, the same way he had entered last night. He stood in the dark for a few minutes, allowing his eyes to adjust to the faint light in the backyard. Pressing the dim LED on his watch, he read “8:24:38”—only twenty-two more seconds before he would run. By now Hopkins would be sitting in the ’63 Rolls-Royce Phantom, waiting for the precise moment. The backyard security lights had been disarmed. Everything was ready. He crouched like a sprinter in the blocks, resting a hand against the cold door, and got ready to run faster than he ever had in his life.

  Jason Kano stood next to three Aspen police jeeps on the snowy road hidden from the mansion’s front gate. Vapor from his breath rose into the night as he panned the binoculars across the terrain. The front entrance to the mansion was partly visible between the trees.

  “What makes you think he’s in there, Marshal?” asked a young Aspen police officer who stood next to him.

  “Can’t say if he’s in there or not, but that butler was sure hiding something.”

  “How do you know?”

&nbs
p; “His eyes widened slightly during the conversation,” Kano responded. “That’s his tell. He had been very reserved at first, but his eyes widened when I asked about Chapman and mentioned he was a murder suspect. It was only for a second; then his eyes returned to normal when he answered the question. That’s when I knew he was holding something back.”

  Suddenly the front lights of the mansion blazed on, and a silver Rolls-Royce pulled out of the five-car garage. “This is it!” Kano announced into his radio to the other patrol cars in the area. “Watch the lead man and concentrate on the target! Hit ’em hard, boys! Go, go, go!”

  Michael exploded from the back of the mansion as the front lights blazed from the other side of the estate like an exploding star. He tripped and fell in the deep snow as he entered the woods, then pushed himself up to continue his hell-for-leather sprint. Slipping wildly in the snow, he scrambled through the woods, which darkened around him as he got beyond the range of the house lights.

  Sprinting around a hummock of aspens, he vaulted a thick stone wall and fell into a deep snowdrift on the other side. And there, glowing like a beacon, not forty yards away, he saw the parking lights of a Range Rover. The keys were in the ignition. There was no trace of whoever had brought the vehicle. He started the engine and within seconds was rolling quietly along the snow-covered road, toward the airport.

  Kano waited impatiently for news from the checkpoint officers at the bottom of the hill. He wanted his men out of sight of the mansion when they stopped the Rolls, but the minutes it was taking for the patrol jeep to intercept it felt like an eternity.

  “Marshal Kano?” a voice finally broke through the radio. “We’ve searched the vehicle. Our man’s not here. Over.”

  “Who’s in the car? Over.”

  “Two men who claim to be the butler and the master chef. Their IDs check out. They say they’re heading into town for some supplies.”

  Kano shook his head in frustration. “Let ’em go,” he said, swearing under his breath. Then a thought occurred to him, as he flashed back to the privileged lifestyle of his childhood. His father had been one of the top heart surgeons in the San Francisco Bay area, and young Jason had attended plenty of black-tie parties. Even as a child, his gift for identifying individual behaviors had been well developed. He turned to the young officer standing next to him.

  “Butlers and cooks don’t get along.”

  “What . . . ?”

  “Conflicting orders, constantly stepping on each other’s toes. I’ve never met a butler and a cook that got along. They’re not going out to get supplies, not together . . . not on a night like this!”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Kano closed his eyes to finish his thought. “The blast lights at the front of the mansion came on before they left, but they were already in the car. They didn’t need the lights to move from the house to the garage. They wanted to get our attention. They wanted us to see them. They needed the cook so we’d see two people in the car! They wanted us to focus on the Rolls! Is there another road from the mansion? Something besides the mountain pass road behind the estate? Something smaller . . . a service road—anything.”

  The officer didn’t know.

  Kano ran toward his jeep. “Chapman’s out!” he yelled into the radio. “Chapman’s out of the mansion. Block off all roads around the estate, shut down the highway, and lock down all activity at the airport. He’s on the move, trying to slip out. Close off every possible route from the area. He’ll have nowhere to go.”

  58

  MICHAEL SAW THE police checkpoint outside the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport at the last moment. A car was idling in front of him, its driver speaking to the lone officer. He couldn’t escape. He waited until the officer had let the other car go and waved him over. He inched the Range Rover forward and stopped a few feet short of the checkpoint, forcing the officer to walk towards him. He lowered the window as the man raised a flashlight and aimed it inside the vehicle.

  “Sorry to bother you this evening, but we’re having a little activity in the area at the moment. We’re checking everyone’s identity as they enter the airport. All departing flights have been grounded indefinitely.”

  “Really?” Michael said, trying to act surprised.

  “Sir, could I please see some identification?” the officer asked.

  “Yep, just a sec.” Michael slid his hand into his pocket and tapped nervously on the mace canister Hopkins had given him before he left the Seaton estate. “What’s all the hubbub?” he asked.

  “We’re looking for a fugitive we believe is in the area.”

  “Just one?” he said with a disarming smile.

  “Just one. Identification, please.”

  Michael looked into the officer’s eyes, desperately searching for a way out. He could tell that the man was getting suspicious—his fumbling hesitation was too obvious.

  “Sir, could I ask you to step out of the car?”

  Michael tightened his grip on the canister in his pocket. Looking at the officer, he nodded reassuringly, then whipped the mace from his pocket and sprayed him in the face.

  The officer yelled, dropping the flashlight and raising both hands to his burning eyes and throat. He stumbled backward into a snowdrift off the road. Michael jumped from the car and moved toward the man to grab the shoulder radio, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the man reaching for his gun. The blinded officer managed to draw his gun and was waving it wildly in the air. Michael took a step back toward the car. At the sound of the crunching snow, the officer fired two shots that flew past him and pierced the steel doors of the Range Rover. Michael dived into the vehicle as two more shots rang out and the passenger window exploded. Stomping on the accelerator, he sent the Rover lurching forward through the snow. Five more shots cracked behind him as the vehicle raced toward the airport.

  Jason Kano was driving the big Yukon away from the estate when the call came over the radio: “Officer down! All patrols, we have a ten thirty-three at the Aspen airport. The officer down on the scene sighted the fugitive, Michael Chapman, fleeing in a black Range Rover. I repeat: we have a ten thirty-three at the Aspen airport. Officer down. All patrols respond to the location. Over.”

  Kano pushed the floor emergency break with his left foot, forcing the vehicle into a 180-degree slide on the snowy road before popping the release and accelerating in the direction of the airport. What the hell are you doing, Chapman? Kano thought to himself. You’re drawing too much attention. You’ll never get out now. His eyes flipped up to check his rearview mirror. I thought you were smarter than that.

  Within five minutes, the Yukon had caught up with six patrol jeeps, their blue and red strobes flashing as they weaved through the outskirts of Aspen.

  Michael flipped off his lights and turned toward the single runway that ran the length of the airport. The Rover’s tires churned through the snow, and it plowed into the chain-link fence. The fence gave, and the big SUV rolled over it, bouncing violently over the uneven ground. Reaching the runway, Michael turned onto it, racing with his lights out toward the far end of the airport. As green airport lights flashed through the snow flurries, he was too focused on making it to the hangar to notice the flickering train of blue and red lights rolling up out of the distance behind him, toward the terminal.

  He parked in back of the third hangar. Inside he found Seaton’s pilot, Captain Steiner, walking around the corporate jet. He shook Steiner’s hand and then fidgeted while the man continued to walk around the jet, finishing the preflight check. The pilot seemed to examine every rivet and hinge pin. Finally he turned to Michael and gave a brisk nod. “Ready to go,” he said.

  Michael jogged toward the platform stairway. “I want you to turn off all the lights to the hangar and the jet. Do it before you open the door.”

  “I can’t do that,” Steiner protested. “It’s against FAA regulations, not to mention bloody dangerous.”

  “And you can’t radio the tower for clearance,” Mich
ael said. “This will have to be a blind takeoff. Because of the angle of the airport’s location between the mountains, I’m told the runway has only one direction for landings and one for takeoffs, so you don’t need the tower’s radar for takeoff.”

  “Wait a second! What you’re asking is ridiculous—I can’t do it.”

  Michael had assumed he would encounter some problems with the pilot. “Read this, please,” he said, handing Steiner an envelope that Seaton had given him this morning before leaving for Vail.

  The pilot opened the envelope and read the short handwritten note. Then, folding it in half and tucking it into his pocket, he exhaled slowly. “I’ll lose my license for this,” he said, “maybe even go to jail.”

  “You won’t go to jail,” Michael promised him.

  The captain nodded reluctantly. “So what exactly do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to get me out of Aspen. We need to get this jet off the ground in the next very few minutes—before the police discover that Mr. Seaton has a jet here. Once they find out about this jet, they’ll surround the hangar to prevent us from taking off. There isn’t much time.”

  “It may already be too late,” Captain Steiner said, looking through the cracked hangar doors at an approaching police jeep.

  “Damn it!” Michael growled. “Start up the jet and get ready to taxi out of the hangar. Leave the fuselage door open so I can get into the cabin. I’ll stay here to open the hangar doors and make sure no one from the jeep comes over here. I’ll let you know when we need to take off.”

  But the moment he finished speaking, all the runway lights went out, casting the open stretch in front of the hangar in darkness. At the same time, two medium-size maintenance trucks lumbered onto the field and parked in the middle of the runway. After stopping, the drivers jumped out of the vehicles and ran back through the snow toward the terminal.