Zero-Degree Murder

by M. L. Rowland

  Gracie watched the scenery flow past as Cashman launched into a lengthy diatribe of the previous night’s recovery, railing about the mistakes everyone else made and why they should have done an infinitely riskier technical ropes litter raise instead of unglamorously hoofing the body out, and why maybe it was time Hunter retired and someone else (namely Cashman) was elected the team’s Commander.

  A dense forest of yellow pines scrolled by on their right. On their left, rounded hills dotted with piñon pines and manzanita with Joshua trees behind fell away to the desert beyond. In the distance, milk chocolate–colored mountains glowed pink as the sun sank lower in the west.

  The Suburban tires squealed as they rounded a tight curve and drifted over the double yellow highway line into the oncoming lane which, thankfully, was unoccupied. Gracie clutched at the armrest with both hands.

  Cashman swerved the Suburban back into its own lane and shifted his monologue to the present search. “Maybe we’ll make the news,” he said with a grin. “That would be fuckin’ awesome.”

  Gracie rolled her eyes at the pines.

  The Suburban crested the summit. Across a wide valley on the right loomed the monolith that was Mount San Raphael.

  Imposing, forbidding, the mountain’s austere beauty beckoned unsuspecting hikers and mountaineers into its ice chutes and rocky canyons, every year claiming lives of men and women alike for its own. An early-season snow had draped a white shroud atop the mountain’s barren dome. Behind it, delicately fringed mare’s tail cirrus caught the late-afternoon sun to blaze tangerine fire against the turquoise sky.

  The Suburban picked up speed on the downhill and sailed around a curve. San Raphael was swept from view.

  CHAPTER

  11

  DIANA grabbed the toes of her tennis shoes with both hands and flexed them up and down to get the blood flowing again. The lower half of her body felt like a block of ice from sitting in the same position without moving for so long.

  How long had she been there crouching between the two rocks? How long had it been since the devil had passed her by and continued down the trail? She had no concept of the passage of time, only of the paralyzing terror and the violent images that played and replayed in her mind’s eye.

  She took several long swallows of water, emptying her water bottle.

  Tristan’s bright blue eyes and his smile with its crooked lower tooth filled her vision. A single sob forced its way past her lips and tears stung her eyes. She rubbed them with her fists and steered her thoughts back to the others at the trailhead. What were they doing now? Had they called the police? Was someone out there looking for her?

  “Please God,” she whispered. “Please let someone be looking for me. Please let someone come and help me.”

  She lay back, stretching out full-length on the thick, soft cushion of pine needles, and stared up at the sky. The sun had dropped behind the western peaks, drawing shadow—blue and cold—across the valley. Pink and orange clouds swirled directly overhead. As Diana watched, the last blush of color faded to rust, then charcoal as swiftly and silently as death.

  The feeling in her body crept back, a thousand tiny ice needles pricking her feet and moving up her legs.

  The chill of early evening deepened. In spite of her heavy coat and hat, she shivered. She needed to move. She needed to try to get back to the trailhead, to the others, to safety.

  She gathered up the knit gloves she had torn off earlier and pulled them, dirt-covered and stiff with dried blood, onto her hands.

  Then, willing her stiff body to move, she pushed herself to her feet.

  CHAPTER

  12

  “CONTROL. Ten Rescue Twenty-two.”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “We’re turning off Highway 26 onto two Nora zero five.”

  “At sixteen fifty-two.”

  The Suburban turned left off the highway and onto the unpaved Forest Service road. For thirty minutes, it climbed up through the San Raphael Wilderness Area toward the Aspen Springs Trailhead, gaining more than three thousand feet in elevation. The SAR vehicle crawled up through steep-walled canyons swathed in darkness, across riffling late-season creeks, slowing almost to a standstill at the hairpin turns, and rounding curves where, inches from the front tire, the mountain dropped precipitously away for a thousand feet.

  By the time the Suburban rolled into the trailhead parking lot, the sunset was a memory in swirling pewter clouds against the fading blue sky.

  Parked across the entrance of the wide gravel lot was a Sheriff’s Department Chevy Tahoe with a deputy sitting inside. Bright yellow Sheriff’s Department tape cordoned off the entrance to the trail itself. At the far end of the lot sat a giant black motor home and three cars.

  The Tahoe rolled ahead to let the Suburban past, then backed into place. Cashman swung the vehicle wide to park in a space opposite the other vehicles.

  As Gracie stepped out onto the gravel, a blast of icy wind almost lifted her off her feet. “Windy,” she yelled. She grabbed her parka from the backseat of the Suburban and threw it on. “And cold. Not a good thing for those city people.” She flipped up the hood of her parka. “Unless we find ’em tonight,” she added to herself, “or they have halfway decent karma, this could turn into another body recovery. Or two. Or three.”

  In a churning of dust, Ralph circled behind the Suburban in the team’s Ford utility truck, pulling a refurbished travel trailer serving as the team’s mobile Command Post. With maps, whiteboards, radios, batteries, office supplies, dishes, food, water, blankets, and a combination shower/toilet, it held everything anyone could possibly need to run a search.

  Cashman swung open the back door of the Suburban and lifted out his pack. “He hauled ass up here.”

  “You made great time, Hunter,” Gracie called over to where her teammate was already out of the truck and chocking the trailer tires.

  “I gotta piss so bad my eyes are yellow,” Cashman said and trotted off in the direction of a boulder the size of an elephant sitting at the edge of the parking lot.

  “I’m going to talk to the deputy,” Gracie yelled to Cashman’s back. She yelled the same information to Ralph, who gave her a thumbs-up in acknowledgment.

  Leaning into the wind, Gracie fast-walked across to the Tahoe and tapped a finger on the driver’s-side glass. The window slid open.

  The Deputy inside sure was cute. Gracie wished she could remember his name. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” the cute deputy returned.

  “You interview the RP?”

  “RPs. As in plural. They’re in the motor home,” he said indicating the RV with a nod of his head. He handed her a copy of the team’s own LPQ—Lost Person Questionnaire. An accurate, complete LPQ provided a Fort Knox of invaluable information: clothing, equipment, experience, mental state, medications. An already completed questionnaire would save them half an hour, maybe an hour, and could literally mean the difference between a successful mission and not, between life and death, between rescue and recovery.

  Gracie glanced down at the form. Half the questions remained blank. Only the most basic—contact information and physical descriptions of the multiple missing persons—had been completed in the deputy’s neat cursive.

  “Sorry,” the cute deputy said. “It’s all I could get out of them.” He followed up with a brief overview of what had happened, which essentially was that fewer people came back than had started out.

  “Okay, thanks,” Gracie said. “Guess I’ll go over and give it a try.”

  “Good luck,” the cute deputy said in a tone that implied Gracie was really going to need it.

  The Tahoe window whispered closed.

  CHAPTER

  13

  THE wraith that was Diana crept down the trail.

  Overhead the last of daylight’s glow outlined the ragged mountain peaks.
But the black velvet curtain the approaching night had already laid across the canyon was so opaque, so complete, that Diana could see nothing of her hands stretched out in front of her. The harsh wind moaned up the canyon, rocking and creaking the unseen trees on all sides.

  Diana slid her feet along the ground, feeling for the smooth dirt of the trail. She squinted ahead, but saw no sign of anyone, no movement ahead on the trail. She listened, but could hear nothing above the wind.

  She froze.

  She had caught a hint of something in the air.

  What was it?

  She closed her eyes and breathed in the frigid night air.

  Cigarette smoke.

  Her eyes flew open. She half turned, muscles tensed to run. Her breath came in quick shallow puffs through her nose.

  She peered down the trail over her shoulder.

  Then she saw it—a black shape moving slowly, methodically up the trail. The burning end of a cigarette flared—a red eye winking in the darkness.

  Milocek.

  Searching for her, for where she had left the trail.

  Panic rose as sour vomit in Diana’s throat. She took a step backward. Then another. And another. Until she rounded a curve in the mountain.

  Then she turned and sprinted on silent feet back up the trail.

  CHAPTER

  14

  GRACIE slammed the door of the Command Post trailer so hard the windows rattled. The clock on the wall shook loose from its nail, zipped past Ralph’s right ear, and smashed onto the metal desk an inch from his arm. The single battery flew out of its casing and landed in the wastebasket next to the door.

  Without so much as a flinch, Ralph swiveled around in his chair sat and glowered at Gracie.

  “Sorry,” she said, pulling off her gloves. She flopped into another chair, forgetting about its broken back, and almost tipped over backward. “Dammit!” She flailed with her legs to regain her balance and plant her boots back on the linoleum.

  “All right, Kinkaid,” Ralph growled. “Spill it.”

  The use of her last name told Gracie that the reason for her behavior and the near-miss with the clock had better be a good one.

  • • •

  PAVEMENT QUEEN, GRACIE thought as she crossed the parking lot to the sleek black motor home. How did they get this behemoth all the way here?

  She stopped in front of the door at the side of the RV, the butterflies that always made a cameo appearance whenever she had to actually socialize with strangers pirouetting in her stomach.

  This was one part of the job she dreaded—talking with people she didn’t know. But who the hell else was going to interview the RPs? Cashman?

  Inside her fleece gloves, her palms were as sweaty as if she had been clutching a handful of pennies. She pulled the gloves off, tucked them into a pocket, then wiped her hands dry on her parka.

  Her legs were trembling.

  Dammit, Kinkaid! Get a grip.

  She sucked in a long, heavy breath through her nose, blew it out through her mouth, and rapped on the door.

  Her knuckles had barely left the metal before the door swung open revealing a woman with shoulder-length blond hair and water-balloon breasts so enormous they threatened to burst out of her fuchsia cashmere sweater.

  Gracie actually took a step backward. Self-consciousness flared up and she threw off her hood in an attempt to look slightly less dorky. “Sheriff’s Department. Search and Rescue,” she announced, employing her official voice. “I’d like to ask you some more questions— Crap!” She slammed her hand on her head to anchor her beanie as a gust of wind almost lifted it right off.

  Gracie was expecting anything from Lauren Bacall to Betty Boop, but the voice that said, “Come on back,” definitely sounded Midwestern.

  Without waiting for an answer, the woman climbed up the stairs, leaving the door open behind her.

  Gracie clumped behind her, feeling even more acutely like the Michelin Hippopotamus. She pulled off her beanie and tried in vain to smooth down the wisps of static-cling hair floating around her face.

  Polished wood, black leather, and mirrors were all Gracie noticed about the interior of the motor home. The blond woman slid behind a table in the kitchen, which, Gracie noted with dismay, was bigger than her own.

  Sitting around the table were another woman and three men, all as physically flawless as air-brushed fashion models, all looking some combination of unhappy, unfriendly, and bored.

  The detritus of a high-rent brunch littered the table: half-empty bottles of champagne and vodka along with several containers of what Gracie guessed were various juices, a giant platter holding the remnants of Brie, prosciutto, melon slices and kiwi, and other Epicurean delights that Gracie couldn’t identify.

  She slid into the only empty seat, trying not to think about her own pathetic dinner of a peanut butter sandwich and a PayDay candy bar. She cleared her throat, introduced herself, and explained that she needed to go over some of the information the deputy had already covered.

  “My name’s Michael,” said an angelic-faced man who looked young enough to be taking Beginning Composition at Hollywood High. “What’s your pleasure? Mimosa? Bloody Mary? Something stronger?”

  Love to, Gracie thought. She declined with a smile and a shake of her head and cleared her throat again. “First off, the faster I can compile this information, the more quickly we can get into the field and begin looking for your friends.”

  “They’re not my friends,” said an Asian woman, wearing a mink fur vest that left Gracie feeling slightly nauseated, whose stunning beauty was marred by a perpetual pout.

  “Shut up, Monica,” grumbled one of the men who Gracie identified from the LPQ as Jeremy and who she would swear was wearing clear fingernail polish.

  “To confirm, there are three people we know to be missing.” She glanced down at the LPQ. “Rob Christian, Joseph Van Dijk, and Tristan Chambers.”

  “That woman is with them, too,” said the blond woman whom Gracie identified as Brittany.

  “She would be,” Monica sneered.

  “No, she’s not,” Michael said, taking a lazy sip of mimosa.

  “Who cares if she is?” Jeremy asked.

  A man with sculpted muscles and skin the exquisite color of rubbed mahogany introduced himself in a deep voice as Erik. “The woman’s name is Diana,” he said, sounding utterly embarrassed by the rest of the group. “I don’t remember her last name. It’s unusual. Eastern European maybe. Anyway, she’s an actor.”

  “Wannabe,” Monica added.

  “She went back down to the hotel with Cristina and Carlos,” Michael said.

  Gracie scribbled furiously.

  “She hiked on with the others,” Erik said. “But Cristina and Carlos drove back down to the hotel.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  Erik ignored the interruption. “They were heading back to L.A. for the weekend.”

  Gracie fastidiously filled in the gaps about the physical descriptions of all six possible MisPers about which there miraculously was some consensus. Everyone agreed that Rob and Joseph wore black North Face down jackets. Tristan wore a bright red down jacket over a neon yellow shirt. That tidbit everyone agreed upon since apparently the colors had been the subject of a lengthy discussion about the current trends in men’s fashion. Diana wore a full-length maroon coat, almost to her ankles, and multicolored knit gloves and hat, which Monica described: “It had a pom-pom, for God’s sake!” Cristina and Carlos wore matching black leather biker jackets with silver studs and blue jeans.

  Brittany raised her hand and ventured, “Tristan’s wearing tennis shoes.” She dropped her hand. “If that helps any.”

  “It helps a lot,” Gracie said and smiled at her.

  “Nikes,” Jeremy said.

  “They’re Reeboks,” Monica said, her mouth
looking as if she had just sucked on a lemon.

  Gracie’s attention sharpened. Nikes or Reeboks? She had tracked people wearing both brands in the past. The Nike swoosh or the entire word Reebok could often be seen in the dirt as clearly as if it had been made with a rubber stamp. She scribbled both brands with question marks next to where the cute deputy had written “white sneakers.” Maybe she would get to do some tracking after all. Tracking was time-consuming, fatiguing, back-breaking, but, in Gracie’s opinion, one of the surest, most reliable ways to locate a missing person.

  “Rob’s are some kind of regular shoes,” Erik said. “Or boots.”

  “Black,” Brittany offered, more boldly this time.

  A long way to hike in city shoes, Gracie thought.

  Nothing about the footwear of the other four was known except that Cristina and Carlos were wearing black boots of some kind.

  Gracie felt sweat forming at her temples and unzipped her parka. “Are any of them familiar with the area?”

  Erik said, “No,” while several heads nodded.

  “Any have experience in the outdoors?”

  Erik said, “Joseph, I think,” while others shrugged their shoulders.

  Her question of “Did anyone have a map of the area?” was met with a deafening silence that Gracie translated as “What the hell is a map?”

  Fielding bits and pieces of the story thrown at her from all sides, Gracie was able to fill in some of the gaps of information gained during the briefing.