Zero-Degree Murder

by M. L. Rowland

  “Tristan? He’s an actor. Don’t really know him that well. Nice enough. Talks a blue streak.”

  Gracie prodded him along with, “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know what it is you’re looking for.”

  “Anything that might help me figure out where he could be. Anything to establish his habits. Thinking patterns. That kind of thing.”

  “What I told you is all I know.”

  “What can you tell me about Joseph?”

  “Joseph?” Rob shrugged. “My manager hired him. He’s a personal coach. Hand-to-hand combat. Excellent at what he does. Otherwise don’t know him very well either. Only up here for a few days. He doesn’t say much. Keeps to himself.”

  “That it?”

  “Yeah. That’s about it.”

  “What about Diana?”

  “Actor. Minor role.” He shrugged and looked over at her. “Sorry. I’m not being much help.”

  “What about the couple? Cristina and Carlos Sanchez?”

  “Leather’n’Studs?” At Gracie’s look, he grinned. “I heard someone call them that once. That’s all I know.”

  “There was some disagreement as to whether they had been hiking with your group or not.”

  “That one I do remember. They were not.”

  Gracie sat up straight. “They weren’t?”

  “When the others left to go back to the motor home, they stayed behind at the lunch spot. They were making noise about driving back down to the city. They were still sitting there when we left to hike on a bit.”

  “Really.” Here finally was relevant information. Carlos and Cristina not among the MisPers reduced the number of still missing from five to three: Tristan, Joseph, and Diana.

  Gracie processed the information.

  Three missing hikers. Rob’s memories of someone dying. A woman screaming. The bloodstain. Rob’s injuries. The tracks.

  Tristan was wearing tennis shoes, probably Reeboks. The prints leading back down the trail were honeycomb pattern and lug sole, those of Diana and the only person left: Joseph. But then the honeycomb had also continued on past the promontory.

  Rob pushed himself off the rock. “I’m going back in.”

  Gracie watched as Rob hopped on one foot back to the little shelter, dropped to his knees and crawled into the shelter.

  For several minutes, Gracie stood motionless outside the shelter, staring into the mist, thinking about the tracks and the implications, thinking about Tristan, and Diana, and Joseph, and the fact that Cashman hadn’t returned.

  She unsnapped the keep on her hunting knife and crawled into the little shelter.

  CHAPTER

  43

  “MONKEYS fucking a football,” Ralph growled as he strode down the gravel berm at the edge of the highway. Taking a last drag off his half-smoked cigarette, he broke his own rule by flicking it, still lit, onto the asphalt. It rolled away in a flurry of sparks.

  The vans, cars, lights, cables, and satellite dishes of the media, interspersed with reporters and technicians, choked the shoulder on one side of the highway. Looky-loos and groupies lined the opposite shoulder, forcing Ralph to park almost a quarter mile back from the Sandy Flats Visitor’s Center, adding compounded interest to his already foul mood.

  A canopy of low clouds hovered over the tall pines lining both sides of the highway, wispy tendrils clutching at the top branches.

  Ralph shivered and zipped his parka the rest of the way up. It was damp and cold. And getting colder. He had checked the thermometer inside the truck as he shoved it into park on the berm. Forty degrees at this altitude would translate to much colder on San Raphael.

  He hadn’t been able to shake the sense of foreboding he’d had ever since he learned the search was still ongoing. During the drive back up to Timber Creek from the desert, Ralph had tried both Gracie’s cell and home phones, but hadn’t been able to reach her. A call to Dispatch told him that not only was the search still in progress, but also none of the MisPers had been brought out of the field. No further details were available. Not wanting to take the time to drive into town to pick up a SAR unit at the SO, he had driven his own truck down to the staging area. Monitoring the search channel on the mobile radio along the way told him the Command Post had been moved from the Aspen Springs Trailhead parking lot down to Sandy Flats.

  Ralph scrunched closer to the visitor’s center. Clogging the pavement were Search and Rescue vehicles of all makes and models interspersed with searchers, men and women alike, in variations of orange shirts and jackets with shoulder patches and helmet labels identifying individual teams.

  The presence of so many SAR personnel confirmed Ralph’s fear that the search had ballooned far beyond what was needed. And what was prudent.

  A large-scale search was difficult to run, requiring a skill level Ralph knew the current Incident Commander, Nelson Black, didn’t possess. Allow a search to grow out of control and it became unwieldy, a mythical beastie with multiple heads and appendages and a will of its own. That’s when mistakes were made. That’s when accidents happened. That’s when searchers got themselves lost. Or injured. Or killed.

  He was certain that on the previous night Gracie and Cashman had located at least one of the MisPers. Now it appeared, almost eighteen hours later, none of the MisPers were out of the field. He needed to talk to Gracie and find out what the hell had happened.

  The Sandy Flats Visitor’s Center itself was a large stone chalet-style building with a low, sloping, green metal roof. Parked on one side of the building was the Volunteer Forces mobile Command Post—a giant motor home, white and emblazoned on both sides with the Department’s chevron seal.

  Ralph walked past a Sheriff’s Department Tahoe blocking the entrance to the parking lot to all except SAR vehicles, wove his way through the groupings of searchers, and walked up to the sign-in table set up in front of the Command Post motor home. Behind it sat a woman with Brillo-pad hair frizzing out from beneath a Day-Glo orange knit hat. A space heater blew hot air at her feet.

  As Ralph scribbled his name on the sign-in sheet, he asked at what time Grace Kinkaid and Steve Cashman of Timber Creek SAR had signed out that morning. He waited patiently as the woman leafed back through the pages of sign-in sheets.

  “Should be the first names on the list,” Ralph offered, hoping the woman would take the hint and speed up the process. “Timber Creek. Kinkaid. Ten Rescue Twenty-two. Cashman. Ten Rescue Fifty-six.”

  “Sorry,” the woman said finally, looking back up at Ralph. “Don’t see those names on the list.”

  “I was in the Command Post when they signed in last night,” Ralph said, feeling the knot in his gut tighten. “Their names are there. I just need to confirm what time they left the field.”

  Once more, moving at glacial speed, the woman paged back through the pile of sign-in sheets. Once more she looked back up at Ralph. “Sorry.”

  Unable to keep the irritation out of his voice, Ralph asked, “Can you tell me who’s the first name on your list?”

  Flipping to the bottom page, the woman said, “Nels Black.”

  “Time?”

  The woman lowered her face to the page. “We need more light out here.”

  Ralph methodically sucked air in through his nostrils to slow the beating of his heart. “How many teams are in the field? Can you tell me that?”

  The woman’s clipped tone told Ralph that he had lost a friend. “There are six teams in the field. Mr. Black signed in at seven twenty-five this morning.”

  “You’re certain that’s the very first sign-in sheet you have?”

  “That’s the first sign-in sheet I have,” the woman answered, beady eyes blazing back at Ralph.

  Goddammit! Ralph spun around and stalked toward the Command Post motor home.

  They had lost track of two searchers in the field. A monument
al screw-up. Not to mention a black eye for the Department. Personnel would have to be pulled from the search and redeployed to search for the missing SAR members. And on top of everything else—according to the weather on the radio, it was pouring rain in L.A. The massive fast-moving front was heading in their direction, bringing with it snow. Lots of it.

  CHAPTER

  44

  WHERE the hell was the relief team?

  Gracie sat with her nose inches from the peephole, chomping furiously on a stale, tasteless piece of bubble gum. She was running low on gum and reduced to rationing the pieces, stretching out how long each one lasted.

  She calculated how long it should have taken Cashman to hike back to the Command Post, muster a rescue team, and hike back to the bivouac. She got the same answer as the previous three times. They should have been here by now. All of which made her wonder again if Cashman hadn’t reached the Command Post at all.

  An ogre of a thought reared its ugly head—somewhere along the trail Cashman had met up with the killer, possibly Joseph, a man who taught hand-to-hand combat. She mouthed a quiet, “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?” Rob’s groggy voice filtered up from the depths of the shelter where he lay, no doubt trying to sleep.

  “Nothing,” she replied without turning.

  “That ‘shit’ didn’t sound like nothing.”

  “Didn’t mean for you to hear that.”

  “You’re worried,” Rob said, a statement, not a question.

  Gracie swung her feet around so that she faced him. “I’m . . .” She stopped. Up a creek without a paddle? Over a cliff without a rope? Scared shitless? “. . . Concerned.”

  Rob sat up and leaned over to turn on the little lantern, filling the tiny space with its warm glow. “They should have been here to pick us up by now, shouldn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re feeling responsible for me, aren’t you?”

  “That’s because I am.”

  “What do you think has happened?”

  Gracie mulled over exactly how much to tell him. Usually unofficial protocol dictated telling a rescued party as little as possible. She wasn’t sure why, but she thought it had to do with lessening the chances of anyone noticing if somebody on the team screwed up. Regardless, she didn’t want to stir things up with Rob by sharing with him that she knew about the blood on the outcropping and her fear that something bad had happened to Cashman. There were any number of reasons why Steve or a relief team had failed to show up. Everything besides the blood and the tracks on the trail was pure speculation on her part, probably the result of an overactive imagination because of her latest book kick—true crime. Rob needed to be resting and recovering from his injuries, not stressing over what had occurred up on the rock outcropping. Gracie was doing enough stressing for the both of them.

  “There are a number of possible scenarios,” she finally answered. “It might not be logistically feasible. There might not be enough personnel available to send in. Cloud cover could be so bad, they’re holding or pulling teams in from the field. Cashman hurt himself somehow along the way and can’t relay where we are from where he is.”

  “Is that possible?”

  She nodded. “Just not probable. Cashman’s an animal. It would take a lot to take him out of service.”

  “Makes me wonder if what I remembered is really the truth,” he said. “That someone was killed. Maybe something has happened to your friend, too.” His eyes flew up to meet Gracie’s. “Bugger it! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I mean—”

  “You didn’t frighten me,” Gracie lied. “I don’t think anything bad happened to Cashman. Much more likely that he screwed up somehow. He suffers from a terminal case of cranial-rectal inversion syndrome.”

  Rob stared at her blankly for the split second it took him to work it out, then he chuckled. “I’ll have to remember that one. I know quite a few people suffering from that very same malady.”

  Gracie turned back and sank into silence, thinking dark, foreboding thoughts about cats and mice.

  “Tell me about this search and rescue work,” Rob said, startling her.

  Willingly Gracie turned her thoughts away from the terrifying to the ordinary and spun around to face the actor again, noting with no small amount of surprise how quickly she had become comfortable around him.

  “Let’s see,” she said, trying to collect her thoughts. “We work under the Sheriff’s Department. Our county is the largest in the country. Two hundred seventy miles long. It takes over four hours just to drive from one end to the other on the highway.”

  “That’s bigger than some European countries,” Rob said, looking impressed.

  “Our little team is one out of maybe ten in the county. We’re on call twenty-four/seven. We respond to everything from lost kids and hikers and mountain bikers to cars over the side of the highway and airplane crashes.”

  “So this is your job?”

  “Nope. We’re all volunteers.”

  “You’re a volunteer?”

  “At your service.”

  Rob shook his head. “I can’t believe you risk your life for blokes like me. For free. Out of the goodness of your heart.”

  Gracie could feel the warmth of a blush rising and wished fervently that she didn’t possess whatever complexion or genetic makeup was required for her face to turn into a pomegranate at the slightest provocation. “I never think about it as risking my life,” she said. “And out of the goodness of my heart is way too lofty. I have a low boredom threshold and get to feed my adrenaline habit. Simple as that.”

  Seconds dragged by until Rob asked, “If this is a volunteer thing, what do you do in real life?”

  Shit. Even though the question was predictable, Gracie hadn’t anticipated it. What was she going to say? That she didn’t have some important, worthy job, but spent her time jumping from one low-paying gig with no real responsibility to another? That she wasn’t nearly as strong and confident as she tried to project? That the person to whom he was entrusting his life was a burnout and a fraud?

  What her face registered, Gracie had no idea, but it prompted Rob to ask what was wrong.

  “I’m hungry,” she responded, which was only half true.

  The distraction worked, however, because Rob didn’t press the issue, instead saying with enthusiasm, “Me, too.”

  “Then let’s see what we have to eat.” Gracie tipped her pack away from the shelter door and pulled the drawstring loose. She had won a reprieve, but only a temporary one. Sooner or later, she was going to have to come up with some kind of nebulous answer for what she did for a living. Failing that, she could always take the fall-back position and lie.

  Rob watched as Gracie emptied every pouch and pocket of her pack and parka, laying the items on the sleeping bag behind her. “I can’t believe you fit all that in there,” he said. “You’re like Mary Poppins pulling things out of her satchel.”

  “I like to be prepared. I have backups for my backups. It’s called redundancy.” Or anal retentiveness, she thought and almost told herself out loud to shut up.

  He picked up a mesh bag filled with various odds and ends and scrutinized its contents. “What’s the mirror for? Doing your makeup?”

  She retrieved the bag. “Signaling, dolt.”

  Gracie replaced the pack in front of the entrance and turned back to paw through the pile of detritus. “What all have we got? One package of dehydrated chicken noodle soup. One hot chocolate. One freeze-dried coffee. Another instant apple-and-cinnamon oatmeal.” With two fingers, she picked up a sandwich bag so old the once-clear plastic was milky white. “Gorp.” At Rob’s look, she said, “Peanuts, M&M’s, and raisins.”

  “Mmmm,” was his unenthusiastic response.

  “A bag of stale Skittles. Two peanut butter granola bars. Half a peanut butter sandwi
ch smashed flatter’n a pancake. Two tea bags.”

  “Yippee ki yay,” Rob said.

  Ignoring him, Gracie said, “And most important, my bubble gum. What little I have left. I’m an addict.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Are all actors such smartasses or did I just get lucky?”

  “You got lucky.”

  Gracie picked up a large brown plastic package. “This would be our lunch.”

  When Rob eyed the package dubiously, Gracie explained, “MRE. U.S. Army–issued meal ready to eat. Or meal rarely edible as some people call them. Or meal rejected by everyone.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Or as those politically incorrect are inclined to say: meal rejected by Ethiopians.’”

  Rob laughed.

  She tore off the top of the MRE and poured the contents out onto the sleeping bag. They both stared down at the pile of cardboard boxes that was to be their meal.

  “So this is it,” Rob said.

  “Pretty grim, eh? Especially if we’re stuck out here longer than a day.”

  Rob’s eyes whipped up to meet hers. “Do you think we might?”

  She shook her head. “If it clears soon, we’ll be out of here tonight.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Let’s jump off that cliff when the time comes.”

  CHAPTER

  45

  DESPAIR penetrated every cell of Diana’s being.

  She sat perched on the side of the hill, arms wrapped around her legs, knees hugged in to her chest, unable to stop shivering.

  No one had come for her. No Canadian Mountie. No white knight. As the hours had whittled away the day, hope for rescue faded like green grass after a hard frost.

  She was alone.

  Why hadn’t anyone come looking for her?

  At one time she thought she heard the high-pitched sound of a whistle. With soaring spirits, she slid down to the trail and waited, not daring to call out in case Milocek was somewhere nearby. When she heard nothing further, she crawled back up the incline to her hiding place.