Killer Weekend

by Ridley Pearson

  “Said he was here for the long weekend, that maybe we’d have dinner or something. You, him, me, and Mom.”

  “You’ve got to distance yourself from him, Kev.”

  “Grandpa?” Kevin asked.

  “Don’t twist things around on me. Tell me Crabtree being here had nothing to do with drugs.”

  “Jesus, you’re not my father.” Kevin paused. “I suppose you want to come in and look around.” He swung open the screen door and held it.

  “I’m not coming in. Shut the door.”

  “What about it? Seeing Grandpa?”

  “Your grandpa and I are having dinner later at the Pio. Why don’t you and your mom come up around eight for dessert?”

  “Seriously?”

  “I won’t be wearing my uniform.”

  “That doesn’t bother me.”

  “Sure it does,” Walt said.

  “Yeah, kinda.”

  “Eight o’clock, all right?”

  “Got it.”

  “Crabtree.”

  “I know.”

  “All right then.”

  Sixteen

  T revalian worked efficiently in the bathroom of the suite adjacent to Nagler’s. One misstep, and he’d be at the center of a fire so hot, so incendiary, that it would easily consume him and a wing of the hotel before help arrived.

  The litter of packaging overflowed the wastebasket into a pile on the tile floor.

  He finished assembling the Coleman camp stove. He’d removed the vent grate, allowing him to clamp and duct-tape a battery-operated fan into its rectangular hole, allowing the fan to evacuate the soon-to-be-toxin-ridden air more quickly. He lit both of the Coleman’s burners and began to hum quietly.

  He inspected his various purchases. He’d bought no more than two items from a single store. Untraceable. Undetectable. Unbelievably easy. To the left of the sink he found the bottle of bleach. He broke its seal and filled a Pyrex bowl, then, with the fan running, brought it to a boil. He weighed out the table salt substitute and added it to the bleach and continued boiling until the battery tester registered FULL CHARGE. Full charge, indeed. He removed the bowl and set it to cool in the ice-filled sink. He then filtered out the crystals, recovering the bleach to boil it again. An hour later he was heating distilled water with the crystals and filtering this as well. At the end of this process of fractional crystallization, he had relatively pure potassium chlorate, which he ground to the consistency of face powder.

  He melted equal parts Vaseline and wax, dissolved it over the camp stove, and then poured it over the potassium chlorate in a large Tupperware bowl. Wearing a pair of rubber gloves, he kneaded this until thoroughly mixed and set the bowl outside, in the corner of the balcony, pulling a potted plant over to conceal it.

  He double-checked that the PRIVACY PLEASE tag was on the door and the dead bolt was still engaged. As a finishing touch, he angled the desk chair beneath the inside doorknob. Ensured no one could enter the Meisner room without a battering ram, he then cleaned up the bathroom, grouping the various ingredients in a brown paper bag beneath the sink.

  He entered Nagler’s room, closed and locked the connecting door, pausing only briefly to once again reconsider each and every step. Lightheaded with excitement-or was it the fumes?-he proceeded to the mirror in Nagler’s bathroom and resolved himself to the patient application of the facial hair, the clothing, and finally the milky contact lenses that made him blind.

  He had a party to attend.

  Seventeen

  W hat have I gotten myself into?” Liz Shaler asked Jenna, her plain-faced executive secretary who’d worked with her for nearly ten years. Liz was putting the finishing touches on her face, in front of a mirror in what had once been her parents’ bedroom.

  “You’ll be fine,” Jenna assured her.

  “I’m whoring, and we both know it. I might as well just spread my legs and get it over with.”

  “Just don’t let the tabloids see you.”

  “I’ll bet I’ve had a half dozen of these very people, or at least their companies, under some form of investigation or inquiry in the past six years. And now I’m asking them for money? How hypocritical is that?”

  “You’re not asking anyone for money.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “You’re going to make your positions clear, and if some of these people choose to support those positions, then fine.”

  “It is so much more complicated than that, and you know it. We’re tricking the system, Patrick Cutter and I, and I should know better. This kind of thing always backfires.”

  “You’re doing nothing wrong, nothing illegal. We’ve vetted this six ways to Sunday. Your job is to have fun. It’s only a couple days.”

  “You mean it’s my last couple of days. Feels like some kind of sentence. Everything changes Sunday morning. Don’t kid yourself about that, Jenna: everything.” She dabbed a cotton ball at the edge of her eyes. “We will not have a moment’s rest for the next fifteen months and twelve days. We are going way out on a limb here.”

  “Since when have we not been out on a limb?”

  “I’m comfortable as a whore? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Beats working for a living.”

  The women exchanged smiles in the mirror, though Liz Shaler’s sank into a grimace. “I hope I’m not making a mistake.”

  “Of course you are. But what’s the alternative?”

  “I could be a ski bum,” Liz suggested.

  “Or sit, bored, on a dozen boards.”

  “You made your point,” Liz chided. She’d heard this often from her advisers: nowhere to go but up. “How’s this?” she asked, turning to show her face.

  “A million bucks,” Jenna said.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Liz said, “because we need a hell of a lot more than that just to get out of the starting gate.”

  Eighteen

  S tanding on the U-shaped wraparound balcony that overlooked the living room of his nineteen-thousand-square-foot home, Patrick Cutter surveyed the cocktail party he’d thrown for 125 early arrivals to C3. Below him, the elite of America ’s communications industry comingled and made merry, fortified by the best champagne, liquor, and wines served in crystal flutes and heavy cut-glass tumblers. The appetizers had been created by a chef from a small Provençal gîte located two kilometers south of Gorde. Many of the guests knew one another, contributing to the lively hum of conversation that hit Patrick Cutter’s ears like music.

  His wife, Trish, glanced up from a tightly knit group on the floor below. In February, she’d spent thirty thousand dollars on her face, so this was her coming-out party of sorts. She offered him no wink, no nod, no subtle smile. But the sparkle in her laser-corrected eyes said enough: a success. The conference was off to a good start.

  He hoped it would shape the direction of the communications industry in the months to come. Still these changes were subtle. Sometimes they reached the front page of the Wall Street Journal. This sense of history, and his place in it as a leader, thrilled him. In three days’ time, Liz Shaler was to announce her candidacy for president at his conference. How could pride be a sin when it felt so good? Who would not forgive him that little indulgence? This conference was all about indulgence.

  His gaze swept the crowd. He caught a voyeuristic glimpse down the dress of the lead violinist in the classical quartet.

  Where the hell was Liz Shaler?

  He spotted and tracked the unmistakable red plumage of Ailia Holms as she and her husband, Stuart, stopped and chatted to friends. He made a mental note to keep Stu away from Liz Shaler. No need for a scene. A waitress took drink orders. The group erupted in laughter. He watched as Ailia gave Stu a subtle tug, and then led him over to the head of the world’s leading manufacturer of fiber optic cable. Ailia never missed a beat.

  As Stu engaged in small talk, Ailia rose to her toes seeking out their next obligation. But when she lingered a little too long in one direction, Patrick followed
her gaze to its target: Danny. Alarms sounded in his head: If Ailia wanted Danny, it was for only one reason.

  Patrick sought out the nearest staircase-there were six in this house-and made his move to intervene.

  Nineteen

  W alt parked the Sheriff’s Office Cherokee at the end of a long line of vehicles hugging the shoulder of Adam’s Gulch Road and headed on foot down the curving driveway, adorned with twenty-foot blue spruces and a gorgeous array of flowers, which like so much of residential Ketchum and Sun Valley had been built in the past ten years. That meant each of the towering trees had been purchased mature and transplanted. At a cost of fifteen thousand dollars per tree, it was a most conspicuous display of wealth. But nothing compared to the house itself. Fashioned from five antique New England barns, each dismantled and transported and reassembled into an interconnecting village, the compound looked like a small New England village. Two well-dressed hostesses, both wearing C3 badges, greeted Walt and offered an Orrefors crystal champagne flute bearing a frosted C3 logo. The flute bubbled with a 1990 Krug, judging by the chilled bottles just inside the front door.

  “The glass is compliments of Mr. Cutter,” the blonde informed Walt.

  Walt had worn a freshly pressed button-down shirt and his best pair of chinos, but knew how out of place he looked compared to the linen, poplin, and silk on display.

  The front door, cut within the enormous barn door, opened into a vast space of weathered wood and glass broken into several smaller rooms. The living room’s most prominent feature was a dry stack fireplace with a six-foot-high open hearth that currently held an opulent arrangement of cut flowers and cattails. A balcony surrounded the second floor looking out onto a massive chandelier made of interconnecting antlers.

  Walt tried not to stare at the women, the jewelry, the sheer blouses, the tempting necklines. Tried not to succumb to the swirl of French perfumes, the gleaming white teeth of flashing smiles, and the heady rush from the champagne. He retired the half-filled glass on a passing tray and spotted a few faces he knew, all of whom were private security, keeping to the walls or behind one of the dozen hand-hewn timber posts, allowing their employers free rein. All told, he counted four, one hovering near Bill Gates, another close to Sumner Redstone. He expected to find most of the guys out back with the rest of the help-the drivers, chefs, and personal assistants.

  He looked for Liz Shaler, expecting he’d find Dryer within an arm’s length, and caught sight of Patrick Cutter coming down a staircase, looking very much like a man in a hurry attempting to look casual. In less than a minute, Walt declined offerings from four different hors d’oeuvres trays.

  He watched as Cutter reached the bottom of the stairs and seemed to change directions, heading straight to the front door. Some faces turned in that direction. The buzz of conversation briefly diminished.

  Walt glanced back over his shoulder. New York State Attorney General Elizabeth Shaler had arrived.

  Cutter succeeded in reaching her first, though nearly out of breath.

  Conversation slowly resumed. Shaler’s name echoed around the room.

  Flanked by two men in blue jeans and blue blazers, one of whom was Adam Dryer, she looked right past Cutter and spotted Walt and waved. Walt wasn’t sure of etiquette. He returned a small wave, feeling the eyes of a hundred envious strangers bearing down on him.

  Twenty

  D anny Cutter saw Ailia approaching-without Stu. Wanting to avoid any gossip, he excused himself from a group of his brother’s friends and headed to the toilet. He passed one of the bars, dodged a few greetings, cut through the library (done sumptuously in suede and African leathers) following discreet signs to the POWDER ROOM taped on doorjambs. He needed a GPS. He passed another of the directional signs, noticing that someone had already crossed out the “d” in Powder.

  There had been a time when Danny had been caught up in all this himself: the show, the exaggerated lifestyle, the pretense. There had been a time-prior to the 1990s-when Sun Valley had been about skiing in the winter and hiking, tennis, or golf in the summer. But L.A. riots, earthquakes, and fires had given way to White Flight. The Hollywood set. The arrival of Attitude. The glass and steel replacing the funky log establishments on Main Street. He and his brother were a part of that sea change for the valley, and it wasn’t anything to be proud of.

  Chasing sobriety was about as terrifying as being chased by a cougar. And though Danny was all for success, especially his own, he had no desire to be any of the people in this room, including his brother. Briefly, he thought he’d keep right on walking-out the back door. If he could find it.

  Concerned that Ailia was looking for him, and knowing how easy it was to get caught up in her web, he kept moving. With her husband as a potential investor, he wanted to avoid complication and succeed or fail on his own.

  Finding the powder room occupied, he headed up one of the many staircases. The second of the five connected barns contained a hotel kitchen and a similar sized laundry room on the ground floor, and three guest suites upstairs-living room, bedroom, bath-one of which he currently occupied. He bounded up to the top of the stairs and turned quickly toward his room. This hallway connected to the central barn’s U-shaped balcony that overlooked the living room where the cocktail party now raged. In taking the corner at the top of the stairs too quickly, he nearly knocked over a guest.

  The man, who wore wraparound sunglasses, dropped a cane-a thin, white cane.

  He was blind.

  Danny made immediate apologies.

  Twenty-one

  T revalian had found the perfect view. From the balcony he’d watched Shaler’s grand entrance. Hearing someone bounding up the stairs, he’d turned and forced a collision, to win sympathy over suspicion.

  Now, on his knees, he patted the floor searching for his cane, even though he could see it to his right.

  “Sorry.” The man who’d knocked into him was profoundly good-looking, and polite in his supplication.

  “No problem,” he said, moving tentatively toward the stairs and grasping for the handrail.

  “You’re a long way from the party,” the man observed.

  “Bird’s-eye view.” Trevalian openly smirked at his own joke. “I was taking the dime tour.” He was now halfway down the stairs, and with the man behind him he couldn’t risk observing Shaler as he’d intended. But given that he’d counted at least four security escorts around her, it was better not to test their abilities to spot people like him.

  “If you give me a minute, I could show you back downstairs. I’ve got a fifty-cent tour that might beat your dime.”

  “I can find my way, thank you.” He added to his voice the curt edge of a man who was used to and resented being patronized because of his disability. He followed the banister around the turn of the landing and continued down the stairs.

  A gorgeous redhead arrived at the base of the stairs. “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” Trevalian answered, looking in her general direction and raising his head like a dog sniffing the wind. The air smelled of ambrosia, and something earthy and pungent.

  “You didn’t happen to see…that is, I’m sorry…Did anyone pass by you just now?” she asked.

  Trevalian knew intuitively to stay out of this. The man who’d run into him had clearly been in a hurry: but to make a love nest or to avoid one?

  And then, from above, “Up here, Ailia.”

  Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled. “Excuse me,” she said, hurrying past him, leaving Trevalian awash in her complex scents, and, to his surprise, aroused.

  Twenty-two

  Y ou look a little lost,” a friendly voice said from behind Walt.

  He turned to find Clarence Stillwill, a fixture in the Wood River Valley for the past forty years. He’d been a river guide, a saloon owner, a magazine and book publisher, and was currently an organic farmer on twenty acres outside of Fairfield. And for good measure he and his wife filled in as bartenders for friends who ran the most pop
ular catering company in town.

  Clarence was a big man, but well proportioned so it didn’t show until you stood right next to him, part cowboy, part college professor. He manned a wine bar between two potted trees.

  Walt took a beer.

  “Money like this…”

  “Yeah,” Walt said.

  “This house…he’s here, what, three weeks a year?”

  “If that.”

  “Talk about a crime.”

  “I know.”

  “Why the civvies?” Clarence asked.

  “I’m undercover.”

  “Yeah, you fit right in here.”

  “I’ve got to do the impossible: convince a woman not to talk.”

  “It really is a thankless job.”

  “Jerry’s involved.”

  “How is it between you two?”

  “About the same,” Walt said.

  “Bobby’s death?”

  “The great divide.”

  “It was a real loss. How’s the kid?”

  “Messed up.”

  “Yeah,” Clarence said. “Kinda figured.”

  “We all are. Gail and I…A lot of that was losing Bobby.”

  “I figured you two forever.”

  “You and me, both.”

  “Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em.”

  “Cheers to that,” Walt said, hoisting the beer.

  “In case you missed it, Tommy Lee Jones keeps checking you out.”

  Walt looked to see Dryer staring him down.

  “Guys like that,” Clarence said, indicating Dryer, “they’ll put up a fight, but they won’t take you to the mat. At the end of the day, it’s just a paycheck for them.”

  “Your lips to God’s ears.”

  A waitress interrupted and placed an order. As Clarence went to work, Walt looked up to see Danny Cutter in profile, clear across the room, up on the balcony. He was chatting up a redhead with quite a profile.