01 Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

  Under those conditions, Jesse was pretty sure the lift attendant in question, Clive Wallace, would have taken no notice at all of the other rider on the chair, who’d skied off into the trees.

  And he was right. Morosely, he wondered why he had to be right on that particular item. Wallace stared blankly at the six photos, then shook his head.

  Strike two.

  It was Randall Hollings’s wife who made the first positive identification.

  Her husband was still recovering in the local hospital. He checked his notes and confirmed that she was staying at the Torian Plum condos, overlooking the lower slopes of the mountain. He called the condos, found her and arranged to meet her.

  Emma Hollings was eager to help. Her initial, angry reaction to Lee had been the result of shock, nothing more. As the days passed and she realized how lucky her husband had been, and how tragically Walt Davies had died, she had calmed down. Now she was willing to do anything within her power to help the Routt County Sheriff’s Department in its hunt for the killer.

  And she told Jesse as much over the phone.

  He parked outside the elegant timber building and took the elevator to the third floor. Emma Hollings was waiting for him. She offered him coffee, which he refused, thinking that another cup would set his kidneys into overdrive. As he had with Clive and John Hostetler, he explained that he was following up on a minor chance, just letting her see photos of some possible suspects in case one might jog her memory.

  He spread the photos out for her on the coffee table and she hunched forward, frowning, to look at them. After a few moments, she smiled at him apologetically.

  “Excuse me, Deputy Parker,” she said, rose and went into the bedroom. When she emerged, she was carrying a pair of half-frame reading glasses, which she perched on the end of her nose as she studied the photos once more. She glanced up, smiled again, a little sadly.

  “We’re none of us getting younger, are we?” she said.

  Jesse shrugged. “Can’t remember what it felt like to be that way” he admitted.

  She nodded once, then went back to her perusal of the six photos. She hooked one of them toward her with a forefinger. Jesse held his breath, leaned forward a little to see which one it was. It was Anton Mikkelitz, he saw—the paramedic from Denver whose photo had come in that morning. Then she frowned again, shook her head and muttered “No” under her breath and pushed the photo back into line with the others.

  Jesse leaned back, allowing his pent-up breath to escape slowly in a long, silent sigh.

  Mrs. Hollings’s forefinger was patrolling the line of photos again, wavering back and forward along the line, her elegantly shaped and varnished nail hovering.

  Then, it stabbed down. Definite and unwavering, like a red hawk dropping onto a jack rabbit.

  “Him,” she said briefly. “I’m sure of it.”

  Jesse looked quickly at the photo skewered by her fingernail.

  “You’re sure?” he asked. “You only caught a brief—”

  She didn’t let him finish.

  “I’m sure,” she said definitely. “I may have only seen him for a few seconds, but it’s imprinted on my mind. I can see him now. I guess when the adrenaline is running, you see things more clearly, don’t you? You notice things. That’s him. Definitely.”

  And to emphasize her point, she tapped her finger on the photo of Detective Sergeant Miles Ferris, of the Denver PD.

  Strike three, thought Jesse.

  He had no better luck with the lift attendant who’d been on duty the same day.

  Inevitably, the lift attendant had been diverted by the crumpling figure of Randall Hollings as the killer shoved him free of the chair and the injured man fell in the path of unloading skiers. His first instinct had been to drag the fallen man clear—to avoid one of those much-hated stoppages if he could. It was only then that he’d realized that Mrs. Hollings was screaming and struggling with the other occupant of the chair.

  But by then, Emma Hollings was sprawling in the snow, the killer’s back was to him and he was skiing flat-out for the trees above the Triangle 3 run.

  End of the innings, thought Jesse.

  He sat in the little Subaru in the no parking area by Gondola Square. While he’d been interviewing the witnesses, some eager-beaver new kid from the town police had written a parking citation for the Subaru and left it under the windshield wiper. He leaned back, rolling his shoulders and neck to ease the cramp there. He was tired and dispirited and at a dead end. Some time later today he’d have to get Denise to sort out the traffic citation with Felix Obermeyer’s office. He cursed quietly. Didn’t the dumb bastard of a cop notice the shiny new police department radio that was installed under the dash of the battered little wagon?

  As he thought about it, the radio crackled to life.

  “Jesse? You there? Come in please if you are?”

  He smiled tiredly. Radio discipline in the mountains wasn’t quite the way it had been in Denver. Then he’d been Tango One Four and calls to him from base had been a damn sight more formal than a simple: “Jesse? You there?”

  He unhooked the mike, thumbed the talk button.

  “This is Jesse, Denise. Talk to me.”

  “Jess, that fax you been waiting for came in an hour or so ago. Just noticed it in the tray and I thought you’d like to know, case it’s urgent or something.”

  The carrier wave hissed briefly as Denise released her mike button. He pressed his again. “Thanks, Denise. It’s not too urgent but I might as well head back and take a look at it.” He paused. “Did you show it to Lee at all?” If there was anything significant in the fax, Lee would have noticed, he thought.

  “Uh, no, Jess. Lee’s out Emerald Meadows way. Been a fight in a bar there and she went out to sort things.”

  “I’ve got money says she will,” he said quietly. Then, into the radio, “Okay Denise, I’ll head back in now. Out.”

  “See you, Jesse,” she replied. She didn’t bother with “out.” She rarely did. He fished in his jacket pocket for his keys, inserted them in the ignition and cranked the starter. The engine caught on the third try and he swung in a wide circle toward the road back to town. The wind caught the parking citation on his windshield and whipped it away fluttering in his wake. He glanced in the mirror and saw the paper blowing across the road toward the pile of dirty, discolored snow melt that had been piled on the road’s edge by the snowplows.

  “Best place for the goddamned thing,” he muttered.

  FORTY-SIX

  Wilson Purdue was dead.

  Jesse sat in the stuffy little conference room, surrounded by his notes and his sheets of legal pads and his scribbling on the whiteboard, staring at the sheet of fax paper in his hand.

  Purdue, his strongest suspect from the list of former employees with a possible grudge against the town, had been picked up for armed robbery in California eighteen months ago. Sentenced to five to ten in the State Penitentiary he’d died three months earlier from an AIDS-RELATED disease.

  Pneumonia, Jesse noted dully.

  Well, he thought, that was often the way with AIDS cases. The lack of activity the enforced bed rest, was an almost surefire precursor to pneumonia. And once it set in, with no immune system to fight the effects, the result was usually fatal.

  “Damn,” he said quietly. “Goddamn.”

  He looked at the ID photo of Purdue on his desk, put down the fax sheet and picked up the photo. Very carefully he tore it into small pieces and tossed them in the general direction of the bin in the corner.

  “Guess I won’t be needing you anymore,” he said.

  Some of the pieces made it. Others fluttered to the carpet around the bin. He didn’t give a damn. Someone else could pick them up. Jesus, he thought, what now? He rubbed the heel of his hand into his right eye. He could feel a headache forming back behind that eye, throbbing just below the surface, waiting to blossom into fully fledged pain a little later in the day. There was a tap at the door.


  “Come,” he said listlessly. He didn’t remember closing the door behind him. He must have done it automatically as he walked in from the corridor, reading the mocking words on the fax for the third or fourth time.

  The door opened and Lee was standing there.

  She looked at his slumped shoulders, saw the look of defeat on his face and guessed the worst.

  “Bad news, I take it?” she asked and he nodded.

  “Purdue. Number one suspect. Dead three months.”

  Lee shook her head slowly turned and paced the length of the room while she thought about the implications.

  “Shit,” she said finally and he nodded.

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself,” he agreed.

  There was a long silence between them. Then Lee asked, “So, where do we go from here?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. Didn’t want to put into words the thought that was gnawing away inside him. He swung his feet onto the scuffed tabletop, rocked his straight-backed chair back into a precarious balance on its hind legs.

  “I don’t know, Lee. I just don’t know. I’m beginning to think this theory of ours is way off base. Maybe it’s time to admit we’re barking up the wrong tree and head in another direction.”

  She half sat on the edge of the table.

  “Which direction you got?” she asked, and again he shrugged. It occurred to him that it was a fine day for shrugging. There was a lot of it going on today.

  “Dunno, Lee,” he admitted. “I guess it’s time I sat here and stared at all these damn clever notes I’ve made and found some other connection. I’ll let you know when I think of one.”

  “Shit,” she said again. He tilted his head to one side to look at her.

  “Already said that,” he told her.

  “It bears repeating,” she replied.

  The phone rang. They both looked at it. She was marginally closer to it than he was and she looked at him interrogatively He waved a hand to it.

  “Go ahead,” he said and she picked up.

  “Sheriff Torrens,” she said. Then he saw her stiffen slightly before she continued. “Yes. He’s right here.”

  She held the phone across the table to him.

  “For you,” she said. Then added, without any expression at all, “Abby”

  Their eyes met for a second or two. Then, as they had each time Abby had been mentioned between them, his slid away. He simply couldn’t meet her gaze. She knew why. And he knew she knew.

  He rocked the chair forward, thumping down on its front legs and reached to take the receiver.

  “This is Jesse,” he said, keeping his tone neutral. He was conscious of the fact that Lee was now making a point of not looking at him. She remained half perched on the table, her head turned away, for all intents and purposes studying the notes on the whiteboard.

  Abby’s voice was a purr. “And how are you today lover?” she asked. He glanced quickly at Lee again, fearful that she might have somehow overheard.

  “Um … what can I do for you, Abby?” he asked. His voice was stilted. He knew it. Couldn’t do anything about it. There was a long pause at the other end of the phone. Then Abby repeated, with an incredulous edge in her voice, “What can I do for you? That’s all you’ve got to say after last night?”

  She was amused, he realized. Amused but incredulous. He fumbled for words.

  “Um … yeah well, we’re pretty busy here right now, so—”

  “I won’t keep you,” she said, dropping the teasing tone she’d been using. “I just wanted to know, what are we doing tonight?” She paused, then added with a soft laugh, “Apart from the obvious, I mean.”

  He hesitated. “I thought you were heading back to Denver today?” He was trying to keep his voice neutral and matter-of-fact and he knew he wasn’t doing any sort of a great job of it.

  There was a note of affectionate reproach in Abby’s voice as she answered him.

  “Well I was, Jess, but that was before last night. I’m surely not heading back now that we’re together again.”

  “Yeah,” he said and then dried up abruptly.

  Lee listened to him stumbling through the conversation and felt a sudden, deep running sadness inside her. She hitched herself off the table, looked at him and said, “Maybe I’d better give you some privacy.”

  He covered the mouthpiece with one hand as she headed for the door.

  “I’ll be right with you when I’m finished here,” he said stiffly. She smiled at him—a sad, understanding smile.

  “Yeah, when you’re finished,” she said and went out into the corridor, turning toward her own office, a lifetime away.

  He heard the door click shut softly behind her. Still, he kept his voice down.

  “Abby, I’m not sure I can make it tonight. I thought you were heading back … and …” The words faded away. She let the silence hang for a few moments. Then said, still with that slightly amused edge, “I get it. She’s there, is she?”

  “She?” he asked, knowing full well who she meant. The note of amusement in Abby’s voice now mingled with a touch of hurt as well.

  “Your sheriff,” she said simply. “Lee. She’s in the room, is she?”

  “No!” he said, knowing instantly that he’d said it too quickly. “She’s not here Abby. It’s just I …” Again he ran out of words. To be truthful, he didn’t know what he thought, what he wanted anymore.

  “You know, Jess, I didn’t see last night as some kind of one-night stand.”

  Jesse went to speak, then stopped. He didn’t know how he saw the previous night. He wasn’t sure he saw it any way at all. It had just … happened. That was the best he could do. His silence seemed to tell Abby everything she needed to know.

  “Look, if you and Lee have got something going, just tell me. I’ll understand,” she said. But he knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. For a start, did he and Lee have something going? He’d thought they had, before Abby had arrived back in his life. Before last night. He thought they still might have. But the situation with Abby was confusing the hell out of things.

  “I know you weren’t acting last night, Jess,” she continued. “There’s still the old spark between us, isn’t there?”

  “Abby” he began, then didn’t know where to take it. There was definitely something still there, he had to admit it. “It’s just … I’ve got a lot on my mind right now with this case … you know?”

  He was sliding away from the issue and he knew it. But right now, he needed this sort of complication in his life like he needed a hole in his head. Come to think of it, he thought, rubbing his eye as the headache now throbbed into full life, a hole in the head might be preferable in some ways.

  He could hear the hurt in Abby’s voice as she spoke again. “I think maybe we’d better get together, Jess. We need to talk.”

  He wondered if the hurt was genuine or whether it was another of Abby’s little tricks. She was, he knew, a consummate actor. Even so, he owed her at least a hearing. He needed to say to her face that there was nothing there between them.

  He needed to see her again, just to make sure that it was true.

  “I guess you’re right, Abby” he said wearily. “You say where and when.”

  The answer came so promptly that he instantly found himself wondering if he’d been set up by Abby’s manipulations once more.

  “Tonight. Eight o‘clock at Hazie’s,” she answered crisply.

  “Hazie’s?” he said, a little incredulously. “On Thunderhead?”

  Hazie’s was in an idyllic, romantic setting, overlooking the town and Yampa Valley from the top of the first slopes. It was hardly the place for a serious discussion. More the setting for a romantic tryst.

  “Hazie’s,” she repeated. “I like Hazie’s and I haven’t had a chance to get there this trip. And, God knows, this might be my last one,” she added, turning the guilt screw a little on him.

  He gave in.

  “Hazie’s,” he said. “Eight o’clo
ck.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  It was time to go back to the place where it had all started—the Silver Bullet

  Gondola. He’d lost the jigger—his trademark weapon—in his failed attempt on the chairlift and that still rankled. If he used a knife or a gun now, the tall deputy might not link his next killing with the previous attacks. So he’d go back to the gondola, just to make sure they knew who they were dealing with. He’d thought about it for days, trying to figure a way around that damn deputy’s restrictions on people riding the gondola in pairs. He thought he had the solution to it now. It had come to him the previous day, waiting in a lift line to ski. The key to it was a time-honored practice in ski resorts all over the world. It was something that happened constantly in lift lines. So constantly that everyone merely accepted it and ignored it at the same time.

  But there were a few items of equipment he’d need first, and he knew where to find them. Rather, he thought, with an amused nod of his head, he knew who would give them to him.

  He’d followed his target home from the slopes the previous day. Once the idea had occurred to him, he’d sought out the right person, managed to engage him in conversation and ascertained that today was his day off.

  That was just fortuitous. He would have waited all week if necessary. But once he had found out, he’d waited round Gondola Square until the man came off duty, then followed him home.

  He lived alone, in a small apartment over a cheap restaurant at the bottom end of Lincoln, down by 12th Street. Again, this had been a stroke of good luck. But Murphy believed good luck sought him out. It was his due. As such, he accepted it gracefully. And this morning, he was ready to act on it.

  His hand touched the zipped inner pocket of his parka, making sure the .38 Special was there. He felt its comforting hardness and hurried on, hunched against the cold wind that eddied up the street.