A Breck Death (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 3)

by Peche, Alec

  “I mean no disrespect to Mr. Morton, but my favorite kind of book is murder mystery so please let’s continue the conversation in my office. I’ll also facilitate your meeting with our IT department to discuss your technology request. I’ll do what I can to help you solve this murder.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your help and cooperation.” Looking at Kate, Jill inquired, “tell me about the search and rescue operation. Tell me how you were notified and walk me through from beginning to end what happened.”

  Using the paper report to refresh her mind, Kate began describing the search for Mr. Morton.

  “We received a call from his partner and your client, Mr. Gomez, close to five in the afternoon. Most of the employees had left as the lifts were closed. We sent a text out to our employees checking for interest in participating in the search and began the search about ten minutes later. We had employees returning to the mountain over the next twenty minutes to assist in the search. Then I put a call into our IT staff at our corporate headquarters to see if they could tell us what the last chair was that Mr. Morton rode.”

  “Had you led a similar rescue like this before?” asked Jill wondering how often people failed to come off the mountain at the end of the day.

  “Yes it happens once or twice a month during ski season. This is the first time there has been a dead body at the end of the search. Usually, it is an inconsiderate kid that forgets to tell his friends that he is meeting someone at a bar or private residence. We’ll start to marshal resources for the search, be looking into the lift records, and we’ll get a call that calls off the search. Friends will use social media to find their friend. We occasionally have to do a search after an avalanche, but that is extremely rare, it only happens about once every five to ten years.”

  “Okay, so you were quickly putting together a search team.”

  “Yes, fortunately we had only one Joseph Morton in our database. We knew his last run was the peak six chairlift, so we started our search there.”

  “Do you routinely notify law enforcement when you start one of these mountain searches?” asked Jill.

  “Yes, they usually assign an officer to join us. Sometimes the officer goes up on the mountain, other times they wait in the area where my office is to monitor the situation.”

  “Did an officer join you on this search?”

  “No, we were pretty quick getting up the mountain. Once we discovered Mr. Morton and recognized that he was dead from an apparent heart attack, we notified the police. To my recall, they were never involved on-site, which was probably appropriate as we knew on the ski trail that it was an apparent heart attack. They made arrangements for the medical examiner to get the body and that is all I really know about law enforcement’s role.”

  “So when did you decide which ski slope to point the search to?”

  “Almost immediately. We have had the ability for at least five years to check ski passes in this manner - checking the location of the last pass scan. So even as I spoke to Mr. Morton’s friend, I was typing in his name and coming up with the last chairlift that he rode.”

  “So what did you do next?”

  “I dispatched staff to re-open the lifts necessary to reach that area. We can take snowmobiles and reach the area faster but on really steep slopes and for a larger number of searchers, the fastest way up is to turn the lifts on high speed. Also, it may take more than one run down a slope before a person is found. I also sent a snowcat with several ski patrollers aboard up to the top of the mountain, but they didn’t find him on the first pass down the hill. We needed additional searchers and multiple trips. Once we found the body, the snowcat took him down to the base.”

  “Let’s back up and talk about when you found the body. How many trips down the mountain had you all made before you discovered Mr. Morton?”

  “It was our third trip. The first two trips were spent looking at the tree wells on and off the main trail. On the third pass, we widened our search to several groups of trees and started skiing through them. One of my staff and I took the tree group where we located Joseph. We could tell before we knelt in the snow that he was dead. I connected with all of the other searchers stating that we had found him. Some folks left the mountain; others came over out of curiosity or a desire to help.”

  “Did you recognize everyone in the area?”

  “If you’re asking if someone could have joined the search who wasn’t supposed to be there, I doubt it, there should have been someone at the base guarding the lifts making sure everyone had employee identification. I don’t know all of the employees on the mountain and so there were faces I didn’t recognize, which I would have expected. This is the way that searches go; you need manpower on the ski slope conducting the search.”

  “What was the lighting like when you found Mr. Morton? Was it dusk? Did you need flashlights?”

  “Dusk was fast approaching. We were not using flashlights at the time of the search, until we started looking into the tree clusters. The trees don’t let much light in so between the sun going down and being inside a mini-forest, the lighting was dim. Fortunately with white snow as your backdrop it is easier to see things. Since he had dark clothing on it was even easier to spot him. Here is a piece of advice - never wear white on a ski slope; it is much harder for us to see you against the snow. Wear a fluorescent orange, yellow, green or pink.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I update my ski clothing. So you spotted a dark spot on the snow and as you got closer, you saw it was Mr. Morton?”

  “Yes, we were moving slowly shining the flashlight back and forth, when we got sight of a large black lump with a white top. His jacket was black and his helmet was white, his goggles were still on his face. We ran forward but could quickly see that he was dead. His lips were blue, his face a pale white. We checked for a pulse and found none, then reached under his clothing to find no body warmth whatsoever. He was wearing his ski pass so we knew it was Joseph Morton.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I discussed the options for moving his body off the mountain. We could have skied down, but it was getting dark and for the safety of all involved we decided to put him in the snowcat and head to the base. I wanted to give my ski patrol staff who had participated in the search the opportunity to make sure the mountain was empty and that all of the searchers safely reached the base. I wasn’t really sure what to do about notifying Mr. Gomez. So I waited until we got the body down to our first-aid station, and with Tom’s advice, we asked for the resort’s on-call physician to pronounce Mr. Morton dead. He then made the call to Mr. Gomez.”

  “Can you describe the position of the body when you found it?”

  “He was lying on his back and a little on the left side, head uphill, skis still attached, eyes were open behind the goggles, and one arm was sort of stretched out. We wondered if he had been reaching for something,”

  Jill was trying to think of all the questions she should ask about the body’s position, and after a pause she asked, “Do you think Mr. Morton fell that way to the ground, or did it look like he had been placed in that position?”

  “I am no expert on how a body should fall to the ground, but it looked natural and comfortable. He wasn’t grasping a leg or anything like that.”

  “Is there anything else that I haven’t asked or that you have thought of while we were discussing the rescue operation?”

  “Mostly I hate the fact that someone was murdered on my mountain. It had seemed to be the one violence free zone left in the world and now that pristine mountain is gone for me.”

  “If you think of anything else, here is my card. I’ll be staying in town for another four to five days at a minimum. Thank you for your time,” said Jill as she stood up to leave the building. Looking over at Tom she asked, “When my security expert is available to study your data, should I contact you? He could be ready as soon as within the next few hours.”

  “Yes that would be best. The people at headquarters
will assist with pulling data, but I warn you, they only work day shift, so unless the company clears this as an emergency and the employees are willing to stay and work on the data, you have about two hours of time before that function closes down for the day. I will put in a request to use overtime, but it is not under my control. I would guess that the company would want to cooperate and would authorize the overtime.”

  “Thanks Tom I appreciate your help,” replied Jill with a wave as she left the office heading for her ski equipment. She was soon putting on her skis and taking the chairlift to go up the mountain from one peak to the next so she could reach the gondola to get back to that base. Traversing a mountain was more than reading a trail map. Occasionally a skier could get caught by an uphill trail that didn’t appear to be uphill on the map. Jill was lazy when she was on the mountain so she always avoided uphill efforts.

  Chapter Seven

  When she arrived at the base on the gondola, she checked in with Nick to see if he had arrived in town. She texted him ‘have you arrived?’ A minute later, she got a text back, ‘yes just checked into my room.’ She texted back, ‘awesome!heading back to the hotel now see you in fifteen.’

  A few minutes later she walked into her hotel. She wanted to get out of her ski gear and enjoy the lightweight feeling of her regular shoes. A few minutes later she finished changing and asked Nick to meet her in the lobby bar. She wanted to drink lots of water while she filled him in and encourage him to do likewise. She was soon giving him a hug and they were seated in the bar area.

  “Nick, how do you feel? Have you ever been at this altitude before? Did you get any sleep on the way here?”

  “Hey Jill, you still have that staccato fire questions at people trait, I see. I got some serious sleep on the plane so I am well rested. I have been at this altitude before but only at the top of the mountain, I haven’t tried to live in it. In Austria some of the peaks are the altitude of this town, it will be a new experience for me to go higher to ski. Regardless, I have been at sea level for several months so there is no avoiding the effects of the altitude. I am up to chasing after any bad people, but I think I’ll run out of steam after about one hundred meters.”

  “You and me both. Let me catch you up on the case and then I would like to take you over to the Ski Resort Management offices so we can begin working on the security tapes. They close in about an hour and a half so we need to leave soon to drive there. Tomorrow I would like to take you up to the location that they found Mr. Morton just to see if your police brain sees something that I missed.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I took some time while on the plane to sketch out a few reports that I would like to retrieve from the ticket pass system. Since we have limited time to speak with those folks, why don’t you tell me about the case while we travel to the resort’s offices?”

  Jill notified Tom that they were on their way to his office. Like Jill, Nick was dumbfounded that Jill and David found the phone at the crime scene two days later. He had watched many American cop shows on television and had expected that they would be far more aggressive in investigating Joseph’s murder. This newest case of Jill's was getting more interesting by the moment and tomorrow he had Jo and Marie’s arrival to look forward to. Angela would be arriving the day after. Since meeting in Belgium, Nick and Angela had stayed in touch through videoconferencing, emailing, and texting. They were taking their friendship very slowly as neither had figured out a future given the distance between their two homes. He was very fortunate that he had been able to hop aboard Henrik’s plane to the United States. It was a nice break to his usual routine; he was grateful that he had good supervisors in place that allowed him to leave on short notice.

  They arrived back at Tom’s office and introductions were made. The resort had agreed to put an employee at Nick’s disposal to pull data. Nick had a short list of data needs and depending on how quick the employee was to write the reports that Nick needed, they might be done by close of business this afternoon. Nick learned he would need to deal with a different person for the cameras sprinkled around the resort. Henrik had connected Nick to an engineer of his company that would do any facial recognition software searches that Jill’s team needed with him so he could do some data manipulation with the camera feeds.

  An hour later Nick walked away with a report about the skiers that had ridden the chairlift with Joseph over the past week. Naturally at the top of the list was David as they had spent several days skiing together. He also had the pass ID of the last person to ride the chairlift with Joseph. As the person did not purchase a multi-day pass, there was no name associated with that skier. Whoever had killed him had to ride the lift up with Joseph or be no more than a chair or two behind. Otherwise by the time the chair got them to the top of the mountain, he had too many choices of where to go next on the mountain. The killer had to have been one of the ski passes around Joseph’s last ride; the logistics and terrain of the mountain required this close proximity.

  Nick noted that Kate Crenshaw said the ski resort had an interesting mechanical failure shortly after Joseph had reached the top. The chairlift had stopped four empty chairs later and stayed inoperable for a little more than fifteen minutes. The resort maintenance had just about decided to begin manually unloading the lift, when it started up again.

  “That lift failure was odd. I have never been on a lift that stopped for more than about five minutes, and that lift was stopped for sixteen minutes. It is likely that the stoppage occurred during the time that Joseph was murdered. I think we should ask the resort to look at whether something was introduced into the chairlift system’s computer to cause that failure,” Jill suggested. “I don’t like the coincidence of the timing of this failure.”

  “They may not have the technical expertise to do that kind of evaluation,” replied Nick. “Henrik might have an engineer that could evaluate the failure. I’ll ask him if he has that kind of engineering talent in case the resort needs some help and is willing to go outside for it. I agree with you that it is an odd failure. Like you I have never experienced a delay of more than about five minutes on a lift.”

  “Did you see that pass used on any different runs at the resort or on different days? Was it a single day pass or a multi-day pass? Do they know when the pass was purchased and is there a camera on the ticket booth?”

  “Fortunately they gave me the data in an Excel spreadsheet so I will be able to sort it and look at the activity of the skier wearing that pass. It was a pass paid for with cash, so there is no credit card record of the purchaser. I'm going to look into the cameras at the resort tomorrow. There are a lot of cameras all over the resort and I felt like I needed to narrow down time periods or specific camera locations before going back and asking for camera activity recordings."

  "Good point; there are a lot of cameras around this resort. So at the moment you have three avenues that you are investigating,” said Jill as she counted off with her fingers. “One, you are looking at the ski pass activity; two, you're looking into the chairlift failure; three, you're looking next at the cameras to see if we can get a visual identification of the person with the ski pass in question."

  “Yes, that sums up the next few hours for me. What are you working on? We don't seem to have a clue as to why someone needed Joseph Morton dead.”

  “You're correct, I don't have any kind of a motive yet. I wanted to glean all of the information from the crime scene knowing it might disappear with weather changes on the mountain, or in people’s memories as time passed. I really need the skills of Jo and Marie to help me with a motive. I need to take a deep dive into Joseph's company. I need to dive deeper into his immediate family, but something in the way this murder occurred; it doesn’t feel like someone close to Joseph. It’s just a feeling that I’ll have to have validated by Marie’s research. The behavior of local law enforcement confuses me, but at this point I don't believe it's connected to a motive. What are your thoughts about the motive?"

  "I haven't met
David Gomez yet so it is way too early for me to rule out family involvement in this death. I will say it is very exotic for the murder to have occurred where it did. Certainly an ability to ski an advanced slope reduces the pool of suspects. I agree with your approach to concentrate on Mr. Morton’s business. What I have learned from your previous two big cases is that there may be more than one layer of murderers involved that may reveal themselves as the investigation expands. When do Jo and Marie arrive and how long will they be here in Breck?"

  Looking at her watch Jill replied "they should be here by lunch tomorrow. I have given them David and Joseph's names as well as the name of Joseph’s company and they will have internet aboard their flight tomorrow so they will start their search en route to Denver.”

  "Sounds like a plan. Why don't we have dinner now and then we can go our separate ways. I'll be reviewing the lift information and you can begin your search for motive."

  "What kind of food are you in the mood to eat? I don't believe there is a Dutch restaurant in this town. There are several good microbreweries but I would advise against alcohol tonight. Give yourself twenty-four hours to adjust to the altitude and then you can drink.”

  “I am in the mood for one of your famous American cheeseburgers and I’ll follow your advice on the alcohol. I have a little time zone disorientation – I feel rested, but I also feel we should be eating breakfast. I am sure that having a cheeseburger will help orientate my mind and body to this time zone."

  Jill had the perfect restaurant in mind and they exited the hotel to walk to the restaurant. It was below ground level and had a family-style eating area on one side and a huge bar area on the other side with the same menu. They were soon slipping into a booth with Nick finding plenty of tasty varieties of the American cheeseburger. Over tea and burgers they caught up with each other's life. Nick had done more investigation into expanding his business into the United States. His operation was running so smoothly in the Netherlands and Belgium that he had been able to travel to Colorado with little advance notice to assist Jill with this case. Nick was pleased to hear about the success of Jill’s first wine vintage and Nathan’s beer glass design.