Zero-Degree Murder

by M. L. Rowland

  CHAPTER

  50

  DIANA stopped in the middle of the trail. She listened, but heard nothing above her own breathing. She peered ahead, but saw nothing but the veil of white cloud.

  She wasn’t certain how far down the trail she had traveled. She had been moving for half an hour. Maybe more. She sensed that she had passed the rock outcropping, but couldn’t be sure.

  She slid her feet along the trail.

  “Zdravo, Diana,” came a soft voice out of the cloud. Hello, Diana.

  Diana screamed and turned to run, but hands grabbed her arms in a vise grip, anchoring her where she was. Her knees gave way beneath her, but the hands kept her upright.

  With tears streaming down her face, she looked up.

  Milocek smiled back at her, a death mask.

  The Surgeon had come.

  CHAPTER

  51

  ROB wasn’t going to make it to the trailhead. In fact, after only a half an hour of climbing, Gracie knew he wasn’t even going to make it a quarter of the way up the side of the canyon to the trail. He was limping so badly even with the splint and both trekking poles that he was spending more time stationary than moving. His pallor had returned to pasty gray.

  “Stop,” she said. “This isn’t going to work.”

  Rather than arguing as Gracie expected, Rob sank to the ground without a word and rested his forehead on his knee. His chest heaved with exertion.

  “I’m sorry, Rob,” Gracie said.

  Without raising his head, he lifted a hand in response.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  CHAPTER

  52

  RADOVAN Milocek gritted his teeth. With the back of his hand, he swiped away the thin line of sweat that had slid down his temple to burn one eye.

  He was naked except for the knit hat he had removed from Tristan’s body. The damp cold raised goose bumps on the exposed flesh and made him shiver. But he ignored the cold, knowing it was only temporary and that the work ahead would warm him sufficiently.

  With the effort of sawing through tendons and ligaments, his skin gleamed with a fine sheen of sweat. Pine needles dug into his knees as he knelt on the ground. His wet hands, stiff with cold, slipped on the short stub of branch as he scraped a shallow furrow into the dirt.

  The larger parts he would bury first with a layer of earthy matter, then with stones and rocks he collected from around the site. Other, smaller parts he would scatter around, not bothering to cover them up. There was no need to invest the time or energy. Animals and the elements would do the work for him.

  CHAPTER

  53

  GRACIE lay stiff as a snowboard, arms folded across her chest, feet jiggling inside the sleeping bag.

  Refusing Rob’s offer of help, she had constructed another shelter alongside the massive trunk of a fallen tree, longer and wider than the first one, but with less headroom. Again she had anchored the plastic with rocks and tree limbs.

  Deciding that once his being reported missing hit the newsstands in England, his sister had probably postponed her wedding anyway, Rob visibly relaxed. After a half-hour nap, he had roused himself and was sitting up inside his sleeping bag, drinking a cup of a watered-down hot chocolate and reading Gracie’s laminated survival cards by the combined light of the lantern flashlight and a stubby candle stuck with melted wax to a flat rock.

  Gracie’s stomach churned like Mount Etna about to erupt. As the afternoon dragged on, anxiety at the delay in the arrival of the relief team and the real possibility that something horrible had happened to Cashman took its toll on her overstretched nerves. Not to mention that a killer might be lurking about in the canyon looking for them. And she had only one piece of bubble gum left. “There’s not a damn thing you can do about any of it,” she muttered, “so focus on something else. What’s another word for restless?”

  “Royal pain?” Rob said without looking up. “No, wait. Did you say something?”

  “This immobility is killing me,” Gracie said. “I feel like in one day we’ve devolved from bipeds to amoebae!”

  Rob squinted over at her. “What is your problem?”

  “I can’t stand this waiting. I can’t stand lying here doing nothing. I need to be doing something.”

  “Teach me something about survival then.”

  Gracie ignored his suggestion. Her eyes roved the interior of the tiny shelter, the bark of the fall log, the slanting ceiling, the backpack propped in the doorway, eventually settling on her own hands. She spread her fingers wide in front of her face. Dirt embedded under short, ragged nails. Torn cuticles. Dried blood on skinned knuckles. “Yow,” she whispered. “These hands are either a manicurist’s wildest fantasy or her worst nightmare.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I need a bath.”

  “A what?”

  “I can feel every teeny particle of dirt on my body. One whiff of my armpits would make a New York City garbage collector weep. I need a bath.”

  “But I’m kind of enjoying that rotting cantaloupe smell,” Rob said so quietly Gracie wasn’t sure she heard him correctly.

  She rolled over to face him. “What?”

  “I was joking. You know, a joke?” He smiled down at the cards and continued reading.

  Gracie propped her head up with her hand and studied Rob.

  Abrasion scabs and dirt smudges still showed beneath the thirty-six-hour beard stubble. His hair curled out from beneath the fleece hat like a Chia Pet. He looked adorable.

  Somehow, Gracie observed, the grubbier Rob became, the more attractive he became, the more male, if that was in any way possible with someone who had Testosterone Machine practically tattooed on his forehead. She marveled that someone that good looking and famous and rich could be such a regular guy. She had never met anyone as famous as Rob, but she had known a number of good-looking wealthy men in her past life. The vast majority of them were Absolute Shits.

  Yep, she decided, Rob Christian was just a regular guy. More than that, he was kind of . . . She searched for the right word. Nice.

  Tears blurred Gracie’s vision. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve before Rob noticed. The last few days had taken a toll on her physically and emotionally, strip-mining away the protective outer layers like geological strata, allowing horrible, unspeakable things to rise up to hover beneath the surface, things like emotions. “Okay,” she said, “what do you want to know about survival?”

  “Oh, good.” He straightened. “So tell me, oh, guru of all that is the outdoors, what is it like to freeze to death?”

  “I don’t think this is a good time to talk about that,” Gracie said. She sat up and crawled over to her pack. “Why don’t I beat your arse in a nice game of poker instead? Somewhere around here I have the world’s tiniest deck of cards.”

  “Don’t blow me off. Please.” His voice was low. “I’m not asking out of morbid curiosity. I’m looking for information. The unknown sucks. Knowledge, even if it’s bad, affords equilibrium.”

  Succinctly put, Gracie thought, and filed the phrasing into a mental manila folder for future reference. She sat back and pulled her sleeping bag up around her shoulders. “Let’s see. Freezing to death. Not really such a bad way to go.”

  Rob’s eyebrows merged into a frown. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Not that dying is a pleasant proposition. But some ways of biting the dust are more preferable than others.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “The team’s had lots of discussions about this at the bar during our after-meeting meetings. The consensus is that dying in one’s sleep is, of course, hands-down the preferred method. Stabbing, bludgeoning, and being killed by a wild animal are horribly violent and painful. Suffocation and drowning are claustrophobic and torturous.”

  “Do tell,” Rob said.

  “Burning to de
ath is the worst. Beheading is quick, but the anticipation sucks.”

  Rob chuckled, bobbling his cup. “I almost spilled my cocoa. Or whatever this foul, barely potable concoction is I’m being forced to drink.”

  “Bite me,” Gracie said.

  “I’m getting used to it, you know. The insipid flavor is growing on me.” He had a Puckish gleam in his eyes. “Kind of like a fungus.”

  “Har-dee-har,” Gracie said. “May I please continue my pontification?”

  “By all means.”

  “Strangulation is probably the best violent death if there is such a thing. You lose consciousness quickly and have no idea what happens after that. That’s it. That’s all I can remember.”

  “So . . . freezing to death is a good thing?”

  “Not so bad. Relatively speaking of course. Aside from the initial shivering and extremity pain, the mind and body gradually shut down and you just ease on down the road. So relax.”

  “Doesn’t any of this search and rescue stuff . . .” He gestured with his hand as he searched for the right word. “. . . Scare you?”

  “Scare me?” Gracie thought for a moment. “This is what we train for. Most of the time you don’t think about what you’re doing, whether it’s dangerous or whatever. You just . . . do it. So scare me? Not really.” She added under her breath, “It’s the normal, everyday crap I can’t handle.”

  “What was that last part?”

  “Nothing.”

  Rob smiled down at the cards.

  Gracie lay back down again, closed her eyes, and tried to take her own advice and relax. She concentrated on clenching every single muscle in her body all at once, then releasing them. Clench. Release. Clench. Release. Tension drifted away.

  She was almost asleep when Rob said, “What would I do if I got caught in an avalanche?”

  “I’m taking those cards away from you.”

  “Come on. I want to see how much you know.”

  It took several seconds for Gracie to wake back up sufficiently to put her train of thought on the same track as Rob’s. “The textbook answer is that as soon as you get swept up in an avalanche, make swimming motions through the snow and try to stay as close to the surface as you can. And keep your mouth shut.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Since it was apparent that napping wasn’t in her near future, Gracie turned over again and propped her head up on a hand. “So when you stop, you don’t end up with a big plug of snow in your mouth.”

  “Bugger.”

  “If they don’t get squished to death by the slide itself, a lot of people suffocate. When the avalanche stops, the snow sets up like cement, like a really cold body cast. If you’re still conscious when the slide is stopping, you cup your hands in front of your face like this . . .” Gracie covered her nose and mouth with her hands. “. . . So you have an air pocket. Then maybe, maybe you can keep yourself from suffocating to death.”

  “Bugger,” Rob said again. “How would you know which way is up?”

  “Drool. Whichever way the spit slides is down. If they haven’t found you within about thirty minutes, you’re probably dead.”

  When Rob looked thoughtful, she added, “The best way to survive an avalanche is to not get caught in the first place.”

  “And how would one accomplish that? It doesn’t talk about that on the cards.”

  “Glaring omission,” Gracie said. “A lot of factors create prime avalanche conditions. Recent heavy snow. How steep the slope. Moisture content. Aspect—what direction it’s facing. Signs an avalanche has passed that way before.”

  “What signs?”

  “No trees. Only young trees. No branches on the uphill side. Or if you’re walking across a snow field—which, by the way, I would not advise. But say you are . . . If, when you take a step, the snow sends out cracks? Or if you hear a loud kind of a crack? Or a weird echoey whoomph sound?”

  “Not a good thing,” Rob said.

  “Definitely not. If you hear that sound, you better hightail it outta there or you can kiss your ass good-bye.”

  She looked up to find Rob staring at her. “Quit looking at me like that,” she demanded. “It’s really starting to get on my nerves.”

  He grinned. “You have so much knowledge about things I don’t. In fact, I never knew enough about them to know I didn’t know anything about them.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m an actor. From the city.”

  “Ya think?”

  “My life is movies. Make-believe.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Will you shut up and let me express this without any editorial comments? This is some kind of epiphany for me.”

  “I’ll be good.”

  “I won’t hold my breath,” he said, winking at her, which, much to her surprise, made her stomach do a backflip. “Movie’s aren’t the real world.”

  Gracie stifled the urge to say “Ya think?” again.

  “But this.” He threw out his arms. “This is the real world. What we’re doing here is the real world. And it’s fantastic. You are the real world and you’re fantastic.”

  “And you’re whacked.”

  CHAPTER

  54

  MILOCEK examined the ground where he presumed Rob had landed when he jumped from the outcropping.

  He had cleaned and dried himself off with water and his cloth handkerchief and pulled his clothes back on, all the while reformulating his plan. There was no longer any need to wait, to remain inactive, passive. He was on the offensive.

  Dodging search teams along the trail had cost him precious time, and the day had slipped into afternoon. By the time he made it back to the outcropping, he had only two or three good hours of daylight left.

  A few feet away from the base of the promontory, he found Rob’s blue knapsack lying on the ground. Reserving a thorough search of the contents for later, he threaded his arms through the straps and shrugged the pack onto his back. Then he followed the path down the side of the canyon.

  For several hundred feet the trail was clearly visible and easily followed. But as Milocek descended, the trail grew more and more diffuse until eventually he lost it altogether.

  Like a bloodhound that has lost its scent, he scoured the ground with his eyes. Bent low to the ground, he made long, slow horizontal sweeps back and forth and back and forth across the incline, dredging for any sign of human passage. Frustration grew inside him like volcanic pressure pushing up the earth’s crust. His nostrils flared with each heavy breath. Thick, stubby fingers clenched into tight fists, unclenched, and clenched again.

  Halfway down the incline, he stopped to straighten and stretch his aching back.

  The cigarette stopped midway to his mouth. The faint, but distinct sound of human voices wafted up from the canyon.

  Milocek flicked away the cigarette and plunged the rest of the way down to the bottom of the canyon.

  A few feet from the embankment that dropped down to the water, he stopped and stood without moving for more than thirty minutes.

  He heard nothing above the rippling of creek water.

  A furnace of rage seered his chest. His head swiveled from side to side like an angry bull. Every nerve reached out as if with internal radar, every ounce of energy focused toward the detection of the tiniest movement, the merest whisper of sound that might lead him in the right direction.

  Milocek took one final drag of his cigarette and flung it down to smolder on the damp ground.

  He turned abruptly and climbed back up the side of the canyon.

  CHAPTER

  55

  GRACIE crouched on the ground several feet up the hill from the creek embankment, eyes fixed on the partially smoked Camel nonfilter lying at her feet. Three cigarette butts lay nearby.

  As the afternoon crawled toward evening w
ithout the appearance of Cashman or a relief team, Gracie had been forced to accept that she no longer controlled the situation, or the search, and conceded that she and Rob would be spending a second night in the field. Rob accepted the news with equanimity and lay down again for another nap.

  Gracie had lain dozing for a few minutes, then while Rob still slept, she crept out of the shelter. As a surprise for Rob, she fashioned little pillows for them both by stuffing pine needles into bread bags kept in her pack.

  Then she hiked down to the creek to replenish their water supply. After refilling and adding iodine purifying tablets to both her water bottles and the hydration bladder from her pack, she climbed up the embankment and stopped at the top to readjust her pack. As she loosened the straps, something white standing out against the dark brown of the earth thirty feet away caught her eye.

  Crouching on the ground, she drew off her glove and pinched the burned end of the cigarette between her fingers.

  Still warm.

  Not very long ago, while she and Rob were in the shelter, possibly even while she was hiking down to the creek, someone had stood in the same place long enough to smoke four cigarettes.

  Gracie pushed herself to her feet, the hair rising on her scalp. She turned in a slow circle. The heavy cloud had lifted somewhat, not sufficiently for her to see all the way up the canyon, but enough to take stock of the area. There was no further sign of a human being, no movement, no unnatural color. She heard nothing but the rippling water of the creek below.

  She studied the ground again and found where someone had stood for some length of time, but no definitive footprints led in any direction. The muted light was the worst possible for tracking.

  Gracie slid back down the embankment, stepped stone by stone across the creek and scrambled up the other side. She followed the creek up for a short distance to where the pink flower of flagging tape still hung from a branch. She slit the ribbon with her knife and gathered up the strands, stuffing them into a pocket of her parka. The sandwich bag containing the note she tucked into the same pocket. One by one, she picked up the stones of the giant arrow and placed them at random around the site. Then she crossed over to the other side of the creek and crept up the side of the canyon.