Vengeance: A Reece Culver Thriller - Book 1

by Bryan Koepke

  Zimeratti let Crystal lead, admiring her form as she sped off down the steep run, carving turns back and forth. He loved skiing and had raced on the high school ski team back in Chicago, before his father’s decision to move the family to St. Louis. He looked ahead and saw Crystal a hundred yards in front, skiing back and forth following the steep fall line down the mountain. The wind blew through his hair on the sides of his helmet and felt good. He needed to get out and do this more often. Skiing helped him reconnect with his youth.

  Up ahead, she slid sideways, stopping at the top of one of the stair steps on the ski run. He himself did a hockey stop, shooting snow sideways at her, and came to a halt only a few feet above.

  “Nice, she said, grinning at him despite all the snow sprayed on her. “God, I love it up here. I never want to set foot in Denver again.”

  “You shouldn’t have to. You’ve paid your dues long enough.”

  Her mouth twisted into a frown. “Paid my dues? What do you mean, Michael?”

  “I mean, you’ve been daddy’s girl long enough. It’s time you do something for yourself.”

  Crystal looked away from him into the tall pine trees to one side.

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be done helping Vinton. He’s done so much for me in my life. He saved me from that orphanage. He adopted me and put me through law school. I owe him my life,” Crystal said.

  Michael pulled his helmet off and pointed his skis downhill, gliding forward until his left ski slid in between hers. He was close to her and wanted to grab her, but waited.

  She stiffened, almost as if bracing, as he tried to take her into his arms. She turned her head sideways, looking down the slope. “We should keep going. We came here to ski.”

  “No, not yet,” Michael said, planting his lips on her cheek. Crystal turned toward him with a funny look. He was trying to read her. He wanted to figure her out. He decided to take a chance and pressed his lips against hers. She kissed him back, halfway at first, and then gave in. They both dropped their poles, and she wrapped her arms round him, kissing him like she meant it.

  “It’s okay, Crystal. I’ve got the means to help you now. You can free yourself from him. I see it in your eyes. You love him, but he scares the hell out of you too. You—”

  “No,” Crystal screamed, pushing away from him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s okay. You can tell me. I’m here for you. You can tell me all about it,” Michael said, moving closer to her again.

  “I do love Vinton, or at least I’ve tried to. It’s not been easy,” Crystal said with tears streaming down her red face in the bright sunshine.

  “It’s okay, baby. I’m here for you,” Zimeratti said. He watched her come toward him with her lips parted. They kissed and ran their hands over one another for a satisfying long while. Despite the cold, he was getting plenty heated.

  Finally, he suggested they finish the ski run. He followed her once again, thinking about her relationship with Vinton Blackwell as they skied. Zimeratti had always wondered if she’d been sexually abused. A guy like Blackwell didn’t care about anything but what he wanted.

  After a few more runs they got in the line for the three-person chair lift that ran to the back bowls of Vail. The strong sunshine felt good beaming down onto his face. He noticed the stern look on her face and wondered what she was thinking about.

  “Michael, I was wondering if you know what Shanks is planning to do next. He must know Agent Cox is still looking for him. Especially since you guys bugged out of the casino back in Tulsa just before his planned raid.”

  “That’s probably true. Shanks has been out of the country for the past few days, coming up with a plan, but there are a few problems.”

  “Problems? What do you mean?” Crystal said, skiing into the lane in front of the coming chairlift. Michael followed and they settled onto the green padded seat as it came and took them up the slope.

  “We have more personnel problems,” Michael said, unbuttoning his helmet and clipping the strap to his jacket.

  “Personnel problems. What do you mean? Is there someone else in Shanks’ organization working for the feds?” Crystal asked.

  “No. Someone has stolen a major piece of artwork.”

  “Who?” she asked, pressing against his shoulder.

  “It’s just a suspicion right now, so I really shouldn’t be talking about it.”

  “That’s not fair. You’ve brought me this far. Who does Shanks suspect is stealing from him?”

  “It was the job we did in Tulsa. An article afterward in the paper listed the works of art we got,” Michael said. “There was a small Van Gogh painting of yellow poppy flowers. It’s valued at something like $55 million.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of that painting. It’s one of Van Gogh’s small works. What did the article say about it?”

  “It was listed as stolen during the job, but when we inventoried the paintings, it wasn’t one of the works in the vault,” Michael said.

  He imagined that she had a good idea who could have stolen it. “Maybe it was never taken. I’m sure that sort of thing happens all the time.”

  “It wasn’t a case of insurance fraud, Crystal. It’s your stepfather, Vinton Blackwell. He wants out.”

  “You’re mistaken, Michael,” she said too quickly. “Vinton would never steal from Sam. They’re like father and son.”

  The chairlift reached the top of the mountain, and Michael pushed up on the steel bar they’d been resting their skis upon. He watched her ski off the chair, wishing he’d never brought up his suspicions about her stepfather. He knew he’d hit a nerve. He wanted to help her, pry her free of her controlling stepfather. Zimeratti knew Blackwell wouldn’t be joining them in Uruguay. Shanks had been losing interest in Vinton ever since he’d killed the blackjack dealer in Tulsa. Shanks wanted rid of his nemesis, and setting him up to take the fall in Ecuador was the perfect plan.

  Zimeratti watched the top of Crystal’s pink helmet disappear down the ski terrain. Straightening his skis, Michael shot down the steep hill after her. He was gaining speed when he caught an edge on a sheer piece of ice. Crouching downward, he began sliding out of control and braced, ready to fall. He managed to turn and slide, then pulled upward, and was back in control. Michael slid to a stop, glad he hadn’t crashed. Pivoting, he looked back and saw a bunch of skiers coming.

  Michael pointed his skis downward and picked up speed racing down the mountain. As he turned back and forth, carving turns, Crystal had stopped up ahead on the edge of a stair-step section. He skied toward her. She turned back, making eye contact with him, and then pushed off, zooming downhill. Michael felt his tired thighs burning. He needed to stop and rest. He wasn’t as young and tireless as he had been in past years. Crystal was going straight down the hill, not turning to control her speed. Zimeratti worried about her. If she fell, she’d break a leg. She was so sensitive, yet so in command when she wanted to be.

  He came down the hill and saw that she’d stopped a few hundred yards before the roped-off area that led to the lift. She was waiting for him. He came up alongside her and stopped. Michael smiled but stayed silent, waiting for her to make the first move. She motioned toward the three-person ski lift that serviced the steeper terrain and stepped left, skiing toward it. He followed and skied into the lift line behind her. They were all by themselves and got right to the lift. She scooted onto the chairlift bench and he followed, taking a seat beside her with his thigh pressed up against hers.

  Crystal took off her helmet and goggles, and clipped them onto the side of her coat. Zimeratti followed suit and pulled his sunglasses from his pocket. He looked over at her, expecting to hear angry words, but she was smiling.

  “The bright sun feels good,” Crystal said. She turned back, looking down the hill toward the empty chairs behind them. “We’ve got the whole lift to ourselves.”

  “It’s probably the terrain. No one has the guts to ski this stuff,” he said with satisfac
tion. Down below them, the steep slope was narrow, mottled with large sections of snow-covered rocks. The wind had picked up and the chair bobbed. He grabbed the pole beside himself to hang on. The chair was rising above the slope, until they were at a high point a couple of hundred feet above the rocky slope. The wind tore at them and he sank down into the collar of his coat, blocking his face from the biting cold. Down below, he noticed, more skiers were finally getting on.

  “Ahh!” Crystal yelled.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She sounded like she was in awful pain. “I’ve got a cramp in my left calf. Oh, it hurts so bad, Ahh.”

  “What can I do? Can I help you?” Michael said, rubbing the top of her thigh with his gloved hand.

  “Can you reach my boot? Get the top buckle undone. That would help. Oh, ouch, it hurts. It’s like a knife. Can you reach it for me?”

  He leaned toward her and shoved his ski poles under his right thigh to free his hands. Michael let go of the bar on his right, and with his left hand pressing down on the seat of the chairlift leaned out over her legs. He was reaching for her boot, trying to grab the buckle.

  “Ahh, it’s so bad,” Crystal said in an agonized voice.

  Michael touched the buckle of her hot pink ski boot with the tip of his index finger, but it wouldn’t unlatch. He felt her hand on his shoulder and was thankful she was keeping him in his seat. He looked down at the jagged snow-covered rocks a couple of hundred feet below. The wind was blowing hard, and the chair lift was swinging side to side in a steady rhythm.

  “Can you get it? I’ve got your shoulder,” Crystal said in a weak, pain-ridden voice.

  Michael leaned out farther toward her boot. Finally he had the buckle. It flipped open.

  Without warning, her hand on his back gave a hard shove. He slipped forward, off balance, and reached desperately for the bar on the side of the chair lift, but missed it. He felt himself falling. The rocks far below came up at him much too fast to survive.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Crystal watched Michael Zimeratti’s body plummet toward the rock-covered slope below. Michael let out a faint scream just before he hit the ground with a splash of snow. She smiled, then turned back and yelled.

  Crystal saw the top of the mountain coming. She started smiling broadly, thinking about how easy it was to fool Zimeratti. Now he wouldn’t be able to carry out whatever foul mission Sam Shanks had planned for her stepfather.

  Crystal saw the ski patrol sign next to the lift and knew she needed tears to be convincing. She took herself back to the day the police found her and her two brothers alone in the bus station. A feeling of true sadness and dread came to her. Crystal bit down on her lip, feeling the pain and fear of her childhood. She thought about the last time she saw her brothers. She felt the flush rise up within her, and was back at the day she rode to the orphanage with a female social worker in Tulsa. Tears bubbled up in the corners of her eyes. Crystal was afraid and all alone. Soon she was crying and moaning, rocking back and forth on the chair lift.

  The look on the face of the young ski lift operator in the lift booth confirmed she was in the right state of mind. Crystal skied off the lift but almost immediately kicked off her skis and hobbled in her bulky ski boots toward the lift operator’s hut. The man jumped out of his seat and opened the door.

  “Oh God, I need your help. My friend. He fell, oh God, oh God, I hope he’s…” Crystal screamed through her tears.

  “Your friend fell off the lift?” the lift operator yelled, hitting the bulbous red button on his operator’s console. The ski lift wheel above their heads groaned as it slowed and came to a halt. The lift operator ran out his hut and looked down the long line of the lift carriages, dumbfounded.

  Crystal saw the faces of two skiers that had been following her up the slope about ten chairs back. The horror they showed confirmed that Michael didn’t make it. She fought off the urge to smile.

  “Come this way,” someone said from behind. A handsome ski patroller in a red ski suit had appeared. “It’s okay we’ll take you down to him,” the man said, taking her arm. The ski lift started back up, and then she followed the man in his red ski patrol outfit with a large white cross on his back. He was talking on a radio and pulling her with him. The handsome man stopped and motioned for Crystal to get her skis on.

  Together they headed down the slope, him towing an orange plastic sled, the kind they use to take injured skiers off the mountain. Two other ski patrollers joined them. She kept concentrating on the orphanage. The tears came easy. She was sniffing and snorting and crying as she followed the others down the steep slope toward Michael Zimeratti’s broken body. Crystal had seen him fall head first off the chair and slam into the jagged rocks. She knew he couldn’t survive a fall like that. He had to be dead.

  That was good. She wouldn’t want him to be able to tell anyone what happened.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Reece took a long swig of his scotch and savored the relaxation he felt coming. Charlie Anders was on his feet coming toward Reece with the bottle. Reece held up his hand, signaling he didn’t want more, but the old man ignored him and poured the liquid into his highball glass until it was half full. Reece watched him retreat to his recliner. His dog Manchego was now permanently parked at his side, and every once in a while the old man would reach into his box of treats and reward the dog.

  “So, what were we talking about?” Anders said. “I mean, I know what we were talking about, but what was your questions?”

  “When the police reported your sister missing. Did you suspect her husband, Owen Roberts?”

  “Well, Reece, I guess I did at first. I guess I thought she and Owen might have gotten into a fight and something happened, but the few times I met Owen, he didn’t seem like that kind of a guy.”

  “What kind of a man did he seem like?” Reece asked, not knowing anything other than what he’d heard from his client.

  “He seemed like a caring man, vulnerable somehow.”

  That was completely at odds with the portrait he’d gained so far. “Mr. Anders, do you know why Owen didn’t take custody of the children?”

  “Call me Charlie,” he said. “Well, I guess I’d say he didn’t have the money to take care of three children on his own. A few weeks before Tracey disappeared, she came over to the house. We were living up in Claremore, Oklahoma, back then. I remember how upset she was when she’d found out he was gambling away their savings.”

  “Did you or your wife ever hear from Tracey again after 1989?”

  “No, not a word, which if she was still alive seems very odd to me. Tracey and I were pretty close growing up, and during the few months she lived in Tulsa with the kids, we saw her at least once a week if not more.”

  Reece pulled out the concert ticket he’d borrowed from Ann Fletcher’s house and handed it across the couch to the old man. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  Anders took the ticket from his hand and read the date off the top of the Rolling Stones Concert ticket. “Where’d you get that?”

  “I visited Crystal’s Aunt Fletcher a week ago. I saw this on the bulletin board in the room Crystal used to stay in when visiting. I did some quick math and came to the conclusion that this had to be something from her mother Tracey,” Reece said, hoping he wouldn’t be irritated by the small theft.

  “How is Ann Fletcher?”

  “She seemed reasonably well for an old woman on oxygen with a tobacco habit,” Reece answered in full honesty.

  “Still smoking those damn cancer spikes,” Charlie said. “Reece, this concert ticket has a lot of history to it. My sister was very unhappy back then. That was when she first discovered the true character of the man she’d married.” Charlie raised his glass and drained the yellow liquid down into the ice. “That was the summer after she started nursing school. Sometime during the previous winter she’d discovered Owen had a compulsive gambling problem, and had squandered their entire bank account, and the boy’s college
fund to support his habit,” Charlie said, looking sad for the first time. “I remember asking her about her concert after she came back.

  Reece had been idly studying the walls of the den as he listened, and he noticed that almost every picture contained the old man and his wife.

  “It took a long time for her to tell me the whole story. She went to the concert that November of 1981 with a pack of girls from school. They met some guys and she liked one of them more than the rest. His name was Vinton. He was tall with piercing green eyes and long blond hair. I think she used the term dreamy.”

  Reece came sharply to attention with the mention of the name. Vinton was an unusual name, and in this context there couldn’t be more than one of them.

  “Tracey left the concert with this guy, and they spent the next three months touring the west in his Volkswagen bus. I remember Owen calling in a panic the day after the concert. He was going to call the police and file a missing person’s report, but then he told me about a fight they’d had, and he decided to wait a few days. I got a postcard in the mail from Tracey telling me she was okay. She just needed a little break from Owen.”

  Reece was paying close attention. That ticket stub had turned out to be gold.

  “Three months into her trip with this guy Vinton, she found out she was pregnant with his child. They had a big fight, and he left her at the Berkley bus station with fifty bucks,” Charlie said with a frown.

  “Do you remember this Vinton guy’s last name?” Reece asked.

  “Yeah, Vinton Blackwell.”

  “What happened next?” Reece asked, wanting to hear the end of his story.

  “Tracey called Owen, and he told her to come back home. She had the baby the next August, and they named their new baby girl Crystal, after Owen’s mother.”