Chocolate Diamonds (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 2)
Page 26
Jill thought they would be back to Europe for work soon as they had made a positive impression on both the Belgian police and Interpol. Certainly from Jill’s perspective as a former medical examiner, she would like to see Belgium improve their autopsy process to reduce the opportunities for the perfect murder.
She would be picking up Trixie, her beloved Dalmatian, from a friend’s house later that day after she landed in San Francisco. Tomorrow she would take Trixie for a run and see if she could reduce the impact of all the beer she had drank in the last two weeks. She hoped she had a little time to get over her jet lag before she took on her next suspicious death, but in her line of work she almost always had to start a case within hours of a death or she’d lose valuable information.
Jill was looking forward to reviewing Angela’s scrapbook of their vacation; she thought it would likely take her friend to new literary heights explaining some of the photos. Thankfully, there were no photos of their brief appearance in the red-light district in Amsterdam. That would have been the one photo none of them ever wanted to see on the internet.
Life was good. They’d a great vacation, brought resolution to Henrik, and helped to take down one of the worst female serial killers of all time. The four friends had renewed their friendship, and perhaps one of them had found a new love.
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Acknowledgements…
…
Thank you GMM for being my third cold eye. Many thanks to the blog site The Kill Zone for making me a better writer and helping me navigate this world of publishing.
Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won’t you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer?
Thanks!
Alec Peche
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author and the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in review.
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A Breck Death by Alec Peche,
Prologue
Joseph Morton was skiing down the final eighty yards to the bottom of the chairlift for peak six. As usual the sky was a very pretty blue with fluffy clouds that were blowing by fast as the wind was howling. It would be even worse at the top of the mountain. Joe would just have to grin and bear it until he could drop below the peak and gain some cover from the wind. Not many skiers were on this lift today as it was mid-week, and this particular mountain wisely scared off intermediate skiers. Lots of chairs traveled up the mountain empty. It was steep just below the top of the lift and that steepness could be seen below at the lift line. Then there was the sign at the chairlift advising advanced skiers only. Colorado had more than usual snowfall for November, so the resort had opened early for the season.
Joseph liked this chair because the lines were short to non-existent and the mountain offered a challenge. He hadn’t fallen on it the previous ten times he skied it, but he could increase the difficulty by increasing his speed and being more aggressive at attacking the mountain. His partner was giving his legs a break today and he was shopping in town. Usually they skied together, but today he had the mountain to himself.
Seated next to Joseph was a complete stranger. If you knew the mountain, then you liked to have someone on the lift with you as it reduced the chair swinging in the wind. At 12,000 feet of altitude, it didn’t take much for nausea to hit and a swinging chair could put him over the edge. Silence reigned on the chair with each man in his own thoughts. Perhaps thinking about the ski run or maybe about a problem at work or home, or just happily enjoying good music coming through the ear buds. With all of the clothing, helmets, goggles, and gloves that people wore on the mountain it was hard to tell age and sometimes even the gender of the people on the chairlifts.
The chair hit the fiercest part of the wind and swung back and forth as they hit the last pole of the lift before the top. He had always liked the juxtaposition of the strongest wind hitting the chair while the ski resort provided the helpful signage that you could raise the restraining bar on the chair. As if you would want to do without your restraining bar, exactly when you feel like the wind is going to dump you off the chair.
Joseph exited to the right. He usually skied to the left as he loved the steep bowl, but on the right side, it was a little less steep and a skier reached the trees sooner. After this run, he was planning to head back to the intermediate runs as his legs were tired from the aggressive day. After adjusting his gear at the top in the wind, he just wanted to get below the summit. He started off heading straight down, doing just enough turns to slow his speed to his comfort zone. He would stop and catch his breath midway down since by then he would be out of the wind, but he would also be low on oxygen with his leg muscles pumping hard on the way down.
Joseph reached an area of less wind and took some gulping breaths of the thin cold air. He could see the fall line below him with the clear visibility of a sunny day. He looked over his shoulder before starting up again to avoid any collisions with other uphill skiers close by. His chair mate from the lift had stopped just above him and also seemed to be taking a break. He didn’t see any other skiers around which was surprising, but then he looked over at the chairlift in the distance and it was stopped - that would certainly prevent people from reaching this path. He pushed off and descended into a lower altitude where trees actually had enough water and warmth to live and grow. Based on the pattern of tree growth, it would seem that the snow on this particular trail rarely melted enough for trees to flourish.
Joseph continued farther down to where the trees grew heavier, looking for a place to ski inside the forest. Sometimes you could feel a little like James Bond skiing through the trees flying over some bumps, ducking under branches, almost losing control, while some mad psychotic assassin was on your heels. Joseph had to smile at his fanciful imagination. Whatever motivated you to have a good time flying through the trees. He located the end of his tree ski run up ahead and thought too bad it’s over, this was fun.
Those happy thoughts were pretty much his last thoughts as he felt a strong pinch in the center of his back. Given the trees and his speed he couldn’t afford to look back and see what had caused that discomfort, and then it didn’t matter as he felt his legs collapse underneath him. He keeled over on his skis, lying next to a tree, with his hand on his chest. He couldn’t move, he tried to reach his cell phone to call for help but his arm didn’t follow his brain’s commands. He felt like he was suffocating, unable to draw a breath. Then the panic was over as he lost consciousness from the lack of oxygen feeding his body.
The stranger who had shot him in the back with the veterinary dart gun just waited, watching the minute hand on his watch. He unscrewed the scope of the gun in well-practiced moves, and fit it back inside his backpack. He moved closer noting the man’s eyes were open and unblinking and removed the dart from Joseph’s back. He wanted it to look like just another heart attack on the mountain and leaving a dart filled with curare would dispel that theory. When ten minutes had passed he sent a text to someone else, and a minute later the ski lift resumed its motion, and he continued down the mountain. He wondered when the body would be discovered, when would the next skier with a desire for tree skiing take this particular path and come upon his target?
It turned out to be about three hours. J
oseph didn’t appear at the cabin he and his partner, David, shared. When he didn’t answer his cell phone, David contacted the ski patrol. They organized a search and rescue group up on the mountain. Since Joseph was wearing a multi-day pass ticket, the ski resort tracked every run he took and was able to identify that his last chairlift was to peak six. The group was soon searching both sides of the lift, checking close to all the tree bases as that was typically how skiers were injured. His cold body was found shortly thereafter. Apparently, no one else had had a desire to tree ski in that particular location that day, or he would have been found sooner.