01 Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

  “This guy” he said. “Mike Miller. Sounds like a real prospect. He was fired from the ski school for banging one of his clients.”

  Lee raised an eyebrow at him. “They’re firing ski instructors for that now?” she asked incredulously. “It’s a marvel that we’ve got any left.”

  Jesse grinned. “This was a little different. Her husband caught him and our friend here beat him up pretty bad.”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “So he’s got some history of violence, okay. But that’s a long way from murder.”

  “I agree,” said Jesse. “Except when this guy was fired, he threatened to get even. Went close to ballistic, according to Ben Fuller.”

  She pursed her lips, looking from him to the name on the page before her. “That’s pretty thin,” she said, at length.

  “Tell me about it. I said there were no probables.”

  “I thought you were just being conservative,” she said, then fingered the second name.

  “What about this guy here—Anton Mikkelitz?”

  He looked at the name, turned up one of the pages below the one she was looking at and checked the details he’d noted there.

  “Some previous history,” he said. “Not a lot, but some. He was a paramedic with the Denver Fire Department, then a smoke jumper in Oregon. Came up here for the season three years back and joined the ski patrol. Opie got rid of him because he was always turning up late for work. Sometimes he didn’t turn up at all.”

  Her eyebrow rose again. “Tardy is hardly a reason to suspect a man,” she said. He shook his head.

  “It was his reaction to being fired that got him on the list. Seems Opie got mad when he ran into him on the mountain one day. The guy had called in sick and there he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a group of friends. Opie kind of lost it. Reamed him out at the entrance to the Storm Peak chair, in front of maybe a hundred people. Mikkelitz didn’t like it. Told Opie he had no right to do it that way—to humiliate him like that.”

  Lee shrugged. “Funny how people can be in the wrong and they’ll blame everyone else for it.”

  “Too true,” Jesse replied. “Anyway Mikkelitz and Opie were yelling at each other and finally Opie had had enough. He said something along the lines of ‘Try this for humiliation: you’re fired.’ ”

  “And?” Lee asked.

  “And the strange thing is, Mikkelitz went real quiet. He went pale, then turned around and stormed off, shoving people out of the way. Opie never saw him after that. He left town.”

  Lee chewed her lip thoughtfully.

  “You said he had some previous history?” she prompted.

  “I checked back with Denver PD. He’d had a few priors. Nothing serious,” he added, before she could ask. “Just seemed he had a habit of getting into brawls in bars. One of his victims pressed charges, then dropped them after a week or two.”

  “Jesus,” she sighed, beginning to sound discouraged. “That’s even thinner than the first guy.”

  “Well,” he said, a little defensively, “it shows a possibility of unstable behavior—and a tendency toward violence.”

  Lee let go a long breath. “Yeah, I guess it does,” she said. She didn’t sound anything like convinced. Before she could ask about the third and fourth names, Jesse gave her the details.

  “Number three was with the mountain grooming staff. Oliver Prescott by name. Fired for theft from the locker room. Nothing big. Also has a prior for grand theft auto, going back six years in Boulder. Did time in the state pen.”

  She went to voice the obvious and he forestalled her.

  “I know. I know. There’s no history of violence there. But … he’d been in the slammer for two years. Maybe he learned something there. Could have picked up on jiggers in there. Some of the gang members who used them would have been doing time around then.”

  The water was boiling on the stove. He paused to pour it over the ground coffee in the pot, wincing slightly as the cloud of steam scalded his hand lightly.

  “And don’t say it. I know it’s thin. They’re all thin. Number four’s no better. Ned Tellman. He was a chef in Hazie’s. They canned him because it turned out he wasn’t qualified.”

  “And I guess on top of that, he had a long list of unpaid parking tickets?” Lee asked sardonically. Jesse couldn’t argue with her. He grinned a little wearily.

  “Actually he had a conviction for armed robbery up in Wyoming,” he told her. She sat up a little straighter at that.

  “Armed robbery?” she said, showing more interest than she had over the previous three candidates. “What was the weapon?”

  “A knife,” he replied. Then, as he saw her draw breath to say something, he held up a hand to stop her. “I know, Lee. That’s the closest to the current MO we’ve got. But it was thirteen years ago. He was fifteen at the time and he’s had a clear record ever since.”

  She wasn’t convinced. “Except for lying about being a chef,” she said. He conceded that with an inclination of his head.

  “Hardly a felony” he said dryly. She had to agree.

  “I guess I’m grasping at straws,” she said. He poured coffee into two cups, took the sheaf of notes from her and laid them gently aside.

  “Aren’t we all?” he told her. “Look, Lee, it’s always been a long shot that something concrete would turn up. All we can do is check out the names of these people and hope we can find some sort of link to our killer here. At the moment I’m concentrating on any of them with any sort of criminal record. If that doesn’t pan out, I guess I’ll have to look for something else.”

  “Like what?” she asked. She blew lightly on her coffee to cool it before taking a sip. Jesse shrugged at the question.

  “I’ll let you know when I think of it.” In an attempt to cheer her up, he added, “Mind you, I’m still waiting on answers from interstate PDs on some of these names. And I’m still looking for addresses on at least a quarter of them. Maybe something more concrete will turn up.”

  “Maybe,” said Lee, without a lot of hope in her voice. “In the meantime, I guess your best lead is this”—she hesitated, pulled the notes toward her again and read the name of the first suspect they’d discussed—“Michael Miller guy.”

  “The ski instructor?” Jesse said. He wrinkled his nose in a negative expression.

  “Face it, Jess,” she said. “He’s proved he’s capable of violence, and he threatened he’d get even, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding totally unconvinced. “I just don’t think he’s the one.”

  “Any concrete reason?” she asked and he shook his head, laughing softly at his own stubborn attitude.

  “Not really,” he said. “Just that he was the first name to come up when I was asking around. He’s got a temper. He loses control and he’s got a grudge. I just don’t trust anything that comes to me too easily.”

  There was a long silence. Then a slow smile spread across her face.

  “I hope you don’t include me in that category,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “You call waiting eighteen years easy?” he asked her. “I’d damn near given up hope that you might walk through that door one night and have your way with me.”

  He managed to duck the teaspoon that she threw, just in time.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Denise, the overworked clerical assistant in the Routt County

  Sheriff’s Department, dropped a two-page fax onto the conference room table, close to Jesse’s boot heels.

  “What we got there, honey?” the deputy asked. He was leaning back in the chair, eyes seemingly closed. He’d heard her and felt her presence rather than saw her.

  “Fax from Quantico,” she said briefly, and was rewarded by the sight of Jesse snapping upright, swinging his legs off the table and grabbing for the fax in one fluid movement.

  “Nothing in it,” she added, just a little too late to save Jesse the effort. He nodded, the sudden burst of energy dying as he scanned the negative report.

&nbs
p; “Seems there never is,” he said tiredly.

  “You ever thought of doing this by email, Jess?” she asked. “Might be quicker and less cumbersome.”

  He tapped the sheets of paper in his hand. “Never been comfortable with emailing, Denise,” he said with a half smile. “Too easy for people to ignore. There’s something about an actual piece of paper arriving on your desk that gives you a sense of urgency and imperative. It’s there. You can see it. It’s not so easy to ignore.”

  “Some folks manage it,” she said as she turned toward the door.

  Jesse gave her a tired smile.

  “You’ll get a break soon, Jess,” she said. She liked the tall, quiet deputy. She’d sensed there was something special between him and Sheriff Torrens, which only served to increase her approval rating for Jesse. Lee Torrens was a good boss, a good cop and a woman, all of which Denise found to be sterling qualities.

  Anyone Lee Torrens liked was okay by Denise.

  “Jeez, I hope so,” Jesse said fervently.

  He’d spent the last two days phoning police departments in four neighboring states, trying to trace names on the list, checking to see if any of them had criminal records. So far, his efforts had met with a total lack of results-if you didn’t count the blinding headache that was pounding behind his right eye at the moment.

  “Like a coffee, Jess?” That, if nothing else, was a measure of her regard for Jesse. Denise was not one of those clerical assistants who saw it as part of her job description to fetch coffee for deputies-unless she approved of them.

  “I’d kill for one, honey.” Jesse smiled at her, just as the phone on the table beside him erupted in a shrill burr. He hooked it to him, leaning back and swinging his feet up onto the table again.

  “’Lo,” he answered. “Yeah, Tenille, I’m expecting a call from the Ketchum Police. Put them through.” There was a slight pause, then he spoke again. “Hello? Yes, Chief Ferris, this is Deputy Parker. I appreciate your calling back … uh-huh.”

  Denise had paused on her way out as the phone rang. She didn’t know why. Maybe she’d thought that someone might be looking for her. Maybe she’d just been curious. But now, she saw Jesse’s whole body become alert, and the legs swing down off the table again as he reached for a pencil and a yellow legal pad among the piles of papers there. He looked up, saw her still watching and mouthed the words “Get Lee.”

  She nodded and, infected by the sense of urgency in him, hurried from the conference room and headed for the sheriff’s office at the end of the corridor.

  Lee was consoling Tom Legros over another fruitless night spent in the warming hut—actually a tent—at the snowmobile rental ground.

  “Damn it, Lee,” the somewhat overweight deputy was saying. “Those little bastards know I’m out there, so they spend their time hoorahing up and down the streets in town.”

  Lee nodded in sympathy. “Can’t be helped, Tom,” she said, trying to suppress a smile. Tom’s battle with the local kids racing around on snowmobiles was becoming an obsession. The boys weren’t doing any real harm but they’d challenged Tom’s authority Now honor wouldn’t be restored until he’d caught them red-handed. She thought it was worth trying to distract him from the case.

  “You want to take a break from that and look into these 7-Eleven breakins again, Tom?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he said stubbornly. Then, with an air of appeal, “Hell’s fire, Lee, they’re making a joke out of this and I have to do something about it. People are starting to laugh.”

  She understood. In a small community like this, a lot of a cop’s authority hung on his reputation and the way people thought about him. Tom felt he’d been made a fool of and his authority might suffer accordingly if he did nothing about it.

  On the other hand, there was a time to cut your losses. If he became obsessive about the kids and their snowmobiles, he might quickly become a figure of ridicule. It was something of a gamble.

  “Okay Tom,” she said. “Hang in there, but don’t get yourself painted into a corner, okay?”

  He nodded unhappily. He knew the risks as well as she did. But he also knew he had to stay with this one a little longer. How much longer was going to be the tricky part.

  There was a brief rap at the door, then it opened enough for Denise to put her head around. She saw Tom in the far corner of the office, acknowledged his presence with a nod.

  “Pardon me, Tom,” she said, then to Lee, “Sheriff, Jesse said can you come down to the conference room? Looks urgent.”

  Lee was out from behind her desk in one smooth movement, heading for the door. Denise stood aside to let her pass, following behind her, having to half run to keep up with the sheriff’s long-legged strides.

  “It’s a call from Ketchum PD, Sheriff,” she explained, a little breathlessly. “That’s over in Idaho, isn’t it?” she added.

  Lee nodded. “Close by Sun Valley” she said. She knew that, in addition to the FBI, Jesse had contacted police departments or sheriffs’ offices in all the major ski resorts in Colorado and nearby states, circulating his list of names to see if any of them rang a bell with local police departments. It was a worthwhile route to follow, since most itinerant workers in ski towns tended to work the circuit, going from one resort to another over a series of years.

  Now, possibly the idea had paid off. Possibly she repeated to herself.

  She went through the conference room door without bothering to knock. Jesse was just hanging up the phone, a scrawl of notes on the pad in front of him. He looked up at her as she entered and grinned.

  “I think we might have something,” he said. There was a note of deep satisfaction is his voice. Satisfaction tinged just a little with relief.

  She dropped into a chair across the table from him. Idly, she noticed that Denise was hovering in the doorway watching both of them. She contemplated sending her away then decided against it. Denise could be trusted and she’d be seeing the details on Jesse’s pad soon enough anyway, when he had her type them up.

  “So,” she prompted. “Let’s have it.”

  “Name of Wilson Purdue,” he said, glancing briefly at his notes to verify the facts. “Fired from his job as a barman at the Dos Amigos last year. Mad as a hornet when it happened, his former boss told me. It seemed someone had been skimming from the register there for weeks. Couldn’t prove it was Purdue, but it sure as hell couldn’t have been anyone else.”

  “Where’s the connection with Ketchum PD?” Lee asked.

  “Well, it seems the very same thing was happening there, at a place called the Western Saloon,” he told her. “Mr. Purdue was also the barman in residence, was also fired from there. Again, nothing could actually be proved but there was a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing right to him.”

  “And this makes him our serial killer?” Lee prompted. But Jesse was taking his time, building up all the facts for her into a neat little logical sequence.

  “Not exactly,” he admitted. “But it seems that Wilson Purdue was extremely angry about this. He told the owner he’d settle with him somehow. A month later, the owner had his brakes fail totally driving out to the Sun Valley Inn. Luckily managed to stop the car by nosing her into a snowdrift. Shaken up but not hurt too badly.” He paused.

  She knew there was more to come.

  “Seems that the car’s brake lines had been cut through with a pair of metal shears or something similar. When the local cops checked, the guy’s wife’s car had been given the same treatment, and so had his son’s and the car belonging to the bar manager who’d first brought the complaint against Purdue.”

  “What happened to him?” Lee asked.

  “State Police caught him, halfway to Boise. Evidence tying him to the cars was pretty sketchy. They wanted to charge him with attempted murder but the local DA didn’t think he could make it stick. In the end, they plea-bargained and he did eighteen months for attempted assault. He got out of the pen in”—he hesitated, looked again at his notes—“’
98”

  “Where is he now?”

  “That’s the problem,” he admitted, with a wry look. “Last we know, he was here last year. Ketchum didn’t have any other possible address for him. He wasn’t an Idaho local in the first place. Point is, Lee,” he said earnestly, “he’s shown he has a tendency toward revenge. He’s shown that he’s not exactly one hundred cents in the dollar and if his little plan in Idaho had worked, he could have become a serial killer in one hit.”

  She nodded several times, running over his summary of facts about the unknown Wilson Purdue.

  “You think he could be our boy?” she asked, at length.

  Jesse hesitated, then nodded. “I think he’s the best damn lead we’ve had so far,” he said. “Ketchum PD is faxing us his mug shots in the next hour or so.”

  Lee stood. “In the meantime, maybe you should see if the Feds have anything further on Mr. Purdue,” she suggested.

  “That was the next thing I was going to do.” He caught sight of Denise, still hovering, and waved the legal pad at her. “Denise, you want to type up this scrawl and fax it through for me?”

  She moved into the room, took the notes, glanced quickly at them to make sure there was nothing she couldn’t read—she’d seen Jesse’s handwriting before—and nodded briskly.

  “On my way,” she said, and hurried out of the room for the fax machine at the end of the corridor.

  Jesse met Lee’s gaze as the girl left the room.

  “This could be it, Lee,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling about this one.”

  Thirty minutes later, and hundreds of miles to the east, Agent Annie

  Dillon hurried into the FBI comms room.

  Agent Dillon was waiting on a list of specifications and serial numbers from the Boeing plant in Seattle. She was investigating a scam that had already spread across eight or nine states, involving counterfeit airplane spares and components. She needed the serial numbers of a sample of legitimate parts.