01 Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

Annoyed, she flipped on the TV again. Letterman was explaining to a New York audience how they’d arranged for a man leading a tame bear to try to get entry to the Russian Tea Room. A remote camera was following the action. The studio audience shrieked. Letterman arched his eyebrows and his bandleader sidekick made a few seemingly serious protests. If you believed the studio audience, it was hilarious stuff. Lee watched it, stone-faced.

  On the other channel, Jay Leno was interviewing one of the seemingly endless succession of near identical Baldwin brothers on the latest in a seemingly endless succession of near identical action movies. They showed a clip. The Baldwin brother was hanging off a train as it sped into a tunnel. There was a ball of flame as the carriage exploded—Lee wondered why a railway carriage would explode in a ball of flames. Then a stuntman leapt from the exploding/burning carriage onto a grassy slope beside the tracks, tucking into a ball and rolling. Then, in close up, the Baldwin brother—she thought it might be Alec—rose groggily to his feet, wisps of grass in his hair and dust covering one shoulder of his carefully ripped leather jacket.

  She killed the TV for the second time in half an hour.

  Damn! she thought. What was it? What was the small detail that was gnawing away at her subconscious? She’d tried ignoring it, tried to concentrate on other things, hoping that would allow her brain to sort it out and present a solution to her out of the blue.

  Only it hadn’t happened. So now she tried the other way. She dropped into her customary armchair, hooked one leg over the arm and concentrated. In her mind, she went over every detail of her time in the apartment.

  The empty wallet. The clothing scattered across the floor. The dead body, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

  No powder burns. Was that it? She shook her head. Doc had explained the absence of powder burns, with his theory of a cloth wrapped around the killer’s gun.

  Was it something that the victim’s friend had said? She racked her mind again, going over his words. She rose, went to where her cold weather uniform jacket was hanging on the back of the kitchen door, took out her leather-bound notebook and checked through the notes she’d made.

  She had an uneasy feeling that the fact had to do with someone other than the victim and the killer. Someone she’d seen in connection with the crime. Unbidden, a picture of Packer Thule came to her.

  Packer, in her office, in his blue and yellow patrol uniform, worried that someone might have a grudge against the ski patrol. Was that it? Was that the reason for the killings?

  She shook her head irritably. The first three victims had no connection at all with ski patrol.

  Maybe that was the killer’s plan? Kill three unconnected men to throw suspicion away from his true aim—to kill members of the ski patrol? No, damn it. It was too bizarre.

  She got up abruptly, pacing the room in long, impatient strides. The wood in the slow-burning stove was almost consumed, so she fed another two logs in, moved them around with a poker so they were settled in the hottest section of the embers. That killed three minutes or so. She glanced at her watch. Twenty-seven minutes past ten.

  “Shit,” she said quietly. She hated it when this happened.

  She moved to the bedroom, shivering a little as she left the warmth that the stove provided to the kitchen and living room. She preferred to sleep in an unheated room—it was just the transition from one to the other that was a problem. Quickly, she stripped off her plaid shirt, jeans and underwear, folding the shirt and jeans carefully and laying them on her bureau, kicking the underwear into a half-full laundry hamper by the door.

  Her naked skin goose-bumped in the chill air and she felt her nipples harden. She glanced down at them idly, couldn’t help thinking about Jesse and felt a quick wash of sadness over her. Nude, she slid under the down-filled duvet, shivering slightly at the cold touch of the sheets. She curled up, waiting for her body heat to warm the bed around her, wished that Jesse were there, then wished that she hadn’t thought of him. Her hand crept to the warmth between her thighs, hesitated a moment. Then she swore quietly, knew if she started that she’d start thinking about Jesse even more. She rolled over abruptly, shivered again as her skin made contact with a new, ice-cold part of the sheets and tried to sleep.

  It was over an hour before she managed it.

  FIFTY-THREE

  The early morning sun streamed into Lee’s bedroom, moving with deceptive speed as it traced a path closer and closer to the bed. Finally, the first rays touched her face. She frowned, still sleeping, as she felt the warmth, then suddenly was wide awake, sitting bolt upright.

  “Jesus,” she said to herself. “The closet. It’s the closet.”

  She tossed back the bedclothes and ran to the door. The remnants of the logs she’d put on the fire the night before were still glowing in the stove and the room was a good ten degrees warmer than her bedroom. She barely noticed it as she scooped the keys to the Renegade from the bench that divided living room and kitchen and jerked open the front door of the house, gasping as the intense cold hit her.

  The Jeep fired on the second crank and she jerked it into drive, the wheels spinning as they cut through the crust of snow, then biting on the tarmac underneath. She hesitated at the intersection, saw there was no cross traffic, then gunned it toward the town center.

  The low angle, early morning sun reflected blindingly from the snow on the sidewalks, trees and buildings. She fumbled in the glove box of the Jeep, found a pair of Ray-Bans and put them on one-handed, flinching slightly as the ice-cold metal made contact with her skin. There wasn’t much traffic around at this hour of the morning. She glanced quickly at her wrist to see the time, remembered that she’d left in too much of a hurry to put on her watch. It was still on her bedside table. The dashboard clock read 6:25.

  Six twenty-five on a perfect, sunny, ice-cold morning.

  The lights were with her as she came to Lincoln. She turned right, barely slowing down and letting the Renegade fishtail just a little. She thought of winding up the siren and beacon, decided she didn’t need them. There wasn’t enough traffic around to warrant it. And besides, she’d done enough racing down Lincoln with the siren howling this week, she thought. She shifted uncomfortably as she remembered the last time-and the aftermath.

  She was coming up on the Ham Hockery now. She eased up on the gas, waited for a gap in the light traffic coming in the opposite direction, and took a left into the alley beside the restaurant, parking behind the Dumpster.

  She sat for a moment, studying the area. The crime scene tapes were still in place. A team of Felix’s men would be back later in the day to continue sifting through every possible shred of evidence in the little apartment. She took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped down from the Renegade. A passerby stared curiously at her as she made her way to the wooden stairs. She nodded good morning but he continued to stare. She frowned slightly, then shook her head and dismissed him from her thoughts.

  She went up the stairs deliberately. It was the closet. She knew that. Something in the closet. She didn’t know what it was, just knew it was there. She reached the top of the stairs, reached for the door handle to the vestibule and paused, conscious of a muttering of voices below her. She glanced down into the alley. There were half a dozen people there now, along with the man she’d just passed, all staring up at her, all muttering quietly to each other. Something about her seemed to fascinate them.

  She ducked under the yellow and black striped tapes, let herself into the vestibule, tried the door into the apartment.

  Locked, of course.

  A thought came back to her. Something the dead man’s friend had told her. She reached to the lintel above the doorway, felt along it and, sure enough, there was a key. She could imagine him now, on the morning of the murder: finding the key, unlocking the door, replacing the key, entering and finding his friend dead on the living room floor. She slid the key into the lock, cracked the door a couple of inches, then replaced the key in its hiding place.

>   She stepped into the apartment. The body was gone, of course. In its place was the yellow chalk outline, covering the floor and overlapping onto the splintered remains of the coffee table. There was a dark stain on the carpet in the area marked by the head of the chalk outline. No need for DNA tests to prove whose blood it had been, she thought.

  Apart from the missing body, everything else appeared to be just as it was when she was last in the room. She crossed quickly to the bedroom.

  Bed still unmade. Socks and underclothes scattered in front of the closet. One drawer upside down on the floor in the middle of the confusion. The wallet was gone, of course, bagged and tagged and taken away as evidence: Exhibit A. Empty wallet. Proof of motive: robbery.

  “Maybe,” she muttered to herself. She was beginning to think that this case wasn’t as cut-and-dried as it seemed. She stood for a long moment, looking at the closet. The door to the hanging space was closed. She frowned. She didn’t remember leaving it that way. Maybe Felix’s men had closed it after they’d inspected the contents.

  She reached her hand out to the wooden handle, seized it, hesitated. She didn’t know what she was looking for. She didn’t even know why she was looking for it. She just knew that there was something in this closet, something out of place. Something not right. She jerked the door open.

  And screamed.

  Pinned to the back wall of the closet by a long, needle-sharp spike that transfixed his heart, his eyes staring widely, tongue lolling grotesquely. Dead. Dead. Dead.

  Jesse.

  She screamed again, the sound rising from the pit of her gut, bursting out through her throat and her mouth as she slammed the door of the closet on the horrific sight, as if closing it from sight would make it not be.

  She staggered blindly from the bedroom, stumbling across the living room to the door, scattering evidence in the crime scene as she blundered into furniture, hurled it from her path. Oh God. Not Jesse. Not now. Not ever. She was sobbing, her hands across her eyes in a vain attempt to wipe the scene from her memory.

  The eyes. The tongue. The dried banner of blood that trailed from his chest down the front of the old, worn denim shirt. The feet in their supple old cowboy boots, lifted neatly off the floor of the closet. Oh Jesus. No. No. No!

  The door slammed open against her weight. She staggered through the vestibule to the top of the stairs, went out the second door and stopped.

  Faces below her. A small crowd now, waiting for her to re-emerge. Staring up at her and Christ Jesus, Jesse was dead back there and there was no point calling for help. He was beyond help.

  He was dead.

  And the first man she’d seen in the alley was stepping forward and pointing at her and laughing and saying something to the man beside her. Laughing, while Jesse was dead. Pinned to the back wall of a closet. And he was laughing. Instinctively, her hand dropped to where the butt of the Blackhawk should have been, felt the bare flesh of her hip. She looked down, puzzled, confused, realizing she was standing at the top of the stairs, bare-ass naked except for a pair of Ray-Bans. Remembering now, throwing back the bedcovers and running to the Jeep without pausing to cover herself.

  And woke up. This time, for real.

  Soaked with sweat. The sun through the open curtains flooding the room as before. She’d tossed the covers off in her dream and she lay there now, her breasts heaving as she felt an intense flood of relief flow through her. She’d been dreaming. The drive through the early morning streets, walking naked through the alley, Jesse’s body in the closet. None of it had been real.

  “Jesus,” she muttered, grinning weakly to herself. No wonder the guy in the alley had stared at her. No wonder the crowd had gathered, waiting for her. She sat up, wiped the sweat from her shoulders and breasts with the sheet. Outside, the temperature hovered around zero. In here, with the sun streaming through the double glazed windows and filling the room, it was positively hot. Almost tropical. She slumped back against the pillows, letting the sun wash over her. Eyes closed, she felt the warmth on her face, could see the red glare of it beyond her eyelids.

  Dreams, she thought. Where was the logic in them? Why had she dreamed she’d driven nude through the town to find Jesse’s body stuffed in a cheap, plywood closet? She shuddered uncomfortably at the memory of the sight, pushed it quickly away.

  Unbidden, the scene returned, as her hand reached out for the closed door of the closet, grabbed it and …

  The closet!

  Her eyes slammed open. Suddenly, she knew what it was that had been haunting her. She could see the one small detail that was wrong in the overall picture. She hesitated, making sure that this time, she was really awake. Then, satisfied that this was the real world, she slipped from the bed and padded barefoot to the shower.

  There was no need to revisit the crime scene. She knew what she’d seen there. Or rather, what she hadn’t seen. She showered, dressed and drove to the Public Safety Building.

  Grabbing a coffee and a muffin from the Book Store Coffee Shop, she went up the back stairs two at a time, checking first in the conference room to see if Jesse was in. She hadn’t seen his Subaru in the parking lot, but she checked anyway.

  There was no sign of him so she headed for her own office. She’d barely got the lid off the cup of steaming coffee when Tom Legros put his head around the door.

  “Sheriff?” he said hesitantly. “You got much on this morning?”

  She smiled to herself, thinking about running around stone-cold naked in her dream. It put a different spin on his choice of words.

  “What’s the problem, Tom?” she asked, realizing that he was frowning at her, wondering what she was smiling about. Hurriedly she got rid of the smile.

  “Well, it’s that Miz McLaren …” he began. She frowned slightly, not recognizing the name.

  “Over on Laurel Street?” he added. “The kids on snowmobiles?”

  Her memory clicked into gear and she nodded. “Right. Got her. What about her?”

  Tom shifted unhappily. She knew he felt he’d failed over this snowmobile business. In fact, he had, she reflected. But it didn’t really matter too much of a damn. The kids were hardly the James gang on snow. Tom shouldn’t have let the matter get so important to him, she thought. He still hesitated to speak, so she prompted.

  “Tom? What about Ms. McLaren?”

  “Well, hell, Sheriff, seems like one of her customers was complaining to her about the noise and she feels it’s her duty to make an official complaint.”

  Lee spread her hands in acceptance of the idea. “Fine,” she said expansively. “Let her make an official complaint and take official notice of it. You listen to it just as officially as hell, Tom,” she smiled.

  “To you,” he finished, and her smile faded quickly.

  “To me?” she repeated. The overweight deputy nodded several times.

  “To you in person, Sheriff. She was on the phone just ten minutes gone, saying she wanted to speak to the sheriff in person and voice an official complaint.”

  “You tell her you’re the officer handling the case?” Lee asked and he nodded, hesitated, his face reddening.

  “She said something about ‘organ-grinders and monkeys,’ ” he replied.

  Lee nodded sympathetically. “Tom, don’t let this business get you down. It’s just kids letting off steam you know.”

  Legros sighed and walked a few paces around the room. “I know that, Sheriff. Trouble was, I let it get personal. I let those boys get to me.”

  “Well, yeah, that is the trouble, isn’t it?” she said, not unkindly. “Thing is, Tom, if those boys were robbing a bank and you called on them to stop, you could just blaze away at them and you’d be some kind of hero. It’s a mite difficult to open fire on kids playing around on Ski-Doos, isn’t it?”

  Tom nodded mournfully. “I know it, Lee. I handled it wrong from the start. I should have treated it as a joke.”

  There was a silence between them. Lee smiled sympathetically.

&nbs
p; “As I say, Tom, don’t let it get you down. It ain’t that important.”

  Tom sighed again and hitched his gunbelt once or twice. “I know that, Sheriff,” he said. “Thanks for listening. And about Miz McLaren?” He let the question hang there. Lee smiled at him again.

  “I’ll see her when she comes in,” she told him. “We’ll both see her, Tom.”

  That satisfied him. He gave her his trademark salute with one forefinger, hitched his belt again. It slid instantly back down the reverse curve of his belly. He turned to go.

  “I’ll let you know when she comes in then, Sheriff,” he said.

  “You do that,” she said. Then, as he was going through the door, she called after him. “Oh, Tom? Take a look and see if Jesse’s in yet, will you? Ask him to come see me if he is.”

  Legros glanced down the corridor.

  “He’s in sure enough,” he said. “Just saw him going into his room. I’ll tell him you want to see him.”

  He started to move, but Lee held up a hand to stop him.

  “No matter,” she said, picking up the waxed coffee cup and holding it carefully between one finger and thumb. “I’ll go see him myself.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Jesse looked up at the light tap on the doorframe. Lee was standing there, a takeout cup of coffee in her hand. As he looked up, she sipped cautiously.

  “Can I come in for a minute?” she asked. He nodded, waved a hand to indicate the several chairs set around the table.

  “Take the weight off,” he invited, removing the lid from his own cup of coffee. He did it carefully. The girls at the Book Store Coffee Shop tended to overfill the cups so that when you removed the lids, you spilled hot coffee on your hands. He managed to prize the plastic lid loose without losing a drop.

  Lee hooked a chair out with one foot and slid into it. She watched him carefully. He had that haunted, almost hangdog look to him again. She sighed inwardly. He was back to the old Jesse that she’d known when he came back from Denver. Cautious, reserved, with the barriers well and truly up, excluding people from making close contact. For a few brief days there, he’d come out of that shell. He’d been alive again. They’d been alive together. Mentally, she cursed Abby for interfering, then shook herself out of the introspection. This wasn’t getting the work at hand done. She realized that Jesse had finished with the coffee cup lid and was looking up, watching her watching him.