Killer View

by Ridley Pearson

  “May I?” Walt said, indicating the girl’s hands.

  He donned a pair of gloves and a pair of glasses, then picked up her limp right hand, leaning close.

  He asked Fiona for some photographs and she went to work.

  “She was bound,” he said, addressing the nurse. “Wire or plastic tie. You’ll scrape the fingernails, as part of the kit?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’d like her fingernails clipped and bagged, please, if that’s possible.”

  “Of course.”

  He indicated the paper bags on the stand.

  “Her dress, a piece of panty hose. Shoes. I’ve held off on the rape kit, as I said.” She sounded a little defensive. “She’s wearing a strapless bra. It was not in place, and I’ve left it where it was. There’s bruising visible on both breasts. No underwear. Probably torn off during the attack.”

  The possibility of evidence left behind at the scene sparked a moment of optimism in him.

  “Alcohol was also involved,” the nurse said, interrupting. “She tested point-one-four upon arrival.” She answered Walt’s inquisitive expression. “We ran a Breathalyzer as part of admittance.”

  “Point-one-four?” Walt said. “That’s juiced. Well over the limit.”

  “A good wedding, I suspect,” agreed the nurse.

  Walt and Fiona exchanged a glance.

  Concerned over the chain of evidence, Fiona donned a pair of surgical gloves and photographed the clothing and personal effects in the bags without removing them.

  “You never can have too much documentation,” Walt said.

  Fiona went about this methodically, bag to bag.

  “I still need her last twelve hours,” Walt repeated, as if no one had heard him the first time. “What about security cameras?”

  “I know there are some here, outside ER,” the nurse said. “I’m not aware of any out front, but maybe.”

  “No one beats a woman and then drives her to the hospital,” Fiona said with the sound of authority. “That just doesn’t happen.”

  “That’s why we need the driver,” Walt said. “If he wasn’t involved, why abandon her?”

  The nurse crossed her arms tightly and looked at the girl sympathetically. “Unfortunately, Sheriff, I don’t think she’s going to tell you much.”

  “Then maybe this will,” Fiona said, pointing into the white paper evidence bag.

  Walt saw two dirty high-heeled satin shoes. “Mud,” he said.

  The shoes were caked in it.

  “She didn’t just step in some road sludge,” Fiona said. “She sank up to her ankles.”

  “Her legs are the same.” The nurse gently and carefully pulled up the sheet to reveal the girl’s lower legs. They were splattered with dried mud.

  “But the ground is frozen solid,” Fiona said. “Has been for a couple days at least. A week or more.” She ran off several photographs of the shoes in the bag, then glanced up at Walt. “So where was she?”

  12

  THE ICY SURFACE OF THE ROADS CARRIED A THIN SKIM OF melt. Walt drove cautiously-there was little more embarrassing than the sheriff needing to be towed out of a snowbank. Ketchum, the town that serviced the Sun Valley hotels and condominiums, was nestled at the base of the ski mountain. In the 1960s, the north-facing slopes had been developed along Warm Springs Creek and a like-named road, surrounded by desirable real estate. Warm Springs continued as a dirt track for some twenty miles, past the small village of ski shops and restaurants that had grown to service the condominiums and second homes. A hundred years earlier, the road had provided access to small mines that had never proved lucrative. Despite the avalanches that closed the road regularly in winter, a few daring souls had built past Board Ranch, which for generations had been the last stop on the road. They’d left Fiona’s Subaru at the hospital, ostensibly because of the remote location and the treacherous road conditions. But there was an undercurrent of something more to her request for the ride, a sense she had something on her mind.

  Walt, even more socially incompetent than usual, couldn’t find a way to prime the pump. Fiona tried to pick up the slack.

  “Couldn’t it just be that they wanted to grieve as a family? Together? That they’ve gone off on a retreat-a friend’s ranch-to pull themselves together?”

  “Possible,” he said. “But I don’t know…”

  The road wound through stands of lodgepole pine, spruce, and aspen, all covered in a dusting. Strong sunlight, slanting through the limbs, forced harsh shadows onto the undisturbed rolling white carpet of fresh snow. A pair of magpies flew across the road and landed on an old rail fence. High overhead, a jet’s vapor trail cut a pure white line across the rich blue sky.

  “Times like this,” she said, “I could just keep driving.” She caught herself, embarrassed by the sentiment. Opened her mouth to say something but then coughed out a self-conscious laugh and turned toward the side window.

  “It’s real pretty,” Walt said. He wondered if his boot would fit in his mouth along with his foot.

  He four-wheeled, following car tracks out to some natural hot springs. Fiona remained in the car as Walt surveyed the area. The year-round hot springs were well known to locals; it made sense that a drunken wedding or Halloween party might have driven out and skinny-dipped during a snowstorm. Made sense that this might have been where some guy had assaulted Kira Tulivich, out where no one would hear her screams.

  To Walt’s disappointment, he found no signs of recent activity around the pools. No mud. With no tracks leading to the pools, and no sign of the telltale mud, Walt had to rethink his theory.

  Another mile out Warm Springs Road, they reached Randy’s cabin. It had been part of the Board Ranch, a cattle-and-horse operation that had gone bust in the 1960s. The owners had wisely retained the property, selling off fifty-year leases, most of which had been sublet a dozen times by now. Its eight hundred acres lay directly in the shadow of Bald Mountain. A satellite dish hung beneath the south-facing eave, and somehow broke the romanticism of the setting. Walt and Fiona followed tracks-fresh tracks-to the cabin’s door. They found it unlocked, which was not at all surprising. Until recently, locals had commonly left their keys in the ignition while at the grocery store. On frigid days, cars were left running out in the parking lot. Much of that had changed with the white flight from Los Angeles in the early 1990s. Celebrities had followed their affluent friends and agents who’d come to Idaho in response to the riots and wildfires. With Sun Valley in the tabloids, ten years of constant development had transformed a modestly popular ski resort into an enclave of the very rich and very famous. All of which had pushed locals like Randy Aker to less expensive housing on the outskirts of the town.

  “Start shooting when you’re ready,” Walt said, banging the snow off his boots and stepping inside. “I’m going to look around. I want everything in here documented. Anything and everything.”

  They stood in a single open room, with a woodstove in the righthand corner, a small love seat facing it. A TV, on a low table, viewable from the couch. Bookshelves along the near wall, crowded with videos, DVDs, and books. A small kitchen was just beyond, its U-shaped countertops framing a butcher-block island. A small table for two that backed up to the love seat. The bedroom and bath were to the left. Electric baseboard heat fought to keep the temperature in the low sixties, the woodstove no doubt contributing when lit. Walt kept his coat zipped but removed his winter gloves in favor of a pair of latex.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” Fiona asked.

  He shrugged. “We’ll know when we find it.”

  She started making pictures, her camera flashes annoying him. To the left of the front door was a narrow harvest table and a laptop computer.

  More flashes.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little weird for a veterinarian to have animal heads on his walls?” There was a bull elk, a buck deer, and, more of a surprise, the head of a mountain goat, a protected animal.

  �
��Anyone local-and the Akers are local-hunt. They do it for food. For tradition. Because their granddads taught them to.”

  “I still think it’s strange,” she said. “They heal them Monday through Friday and kill them on the weekends?”

  “I doubt they’d see it that way,” Walt said, having trouble taking his eyes off the goat head. Mountain goat hunts were by lottery, with only a few tags sold each year. And they were the most expensive tags offered, along with bighorn sheep and moose. He thought he would have heard from Mark if Randy had bagged a goat. Considering the dust on the elk and deer, the goat was a recent trophy.

  He searched all the kitchen cabinets, the refrigerator and oven, knowing people hid things in strange places. He tapped the plank flooring, listening carefully for a hollow sound. If the rumors about Randy’s illegal poaching were true, Walt expected to find some evidence. The goat head wasn’t proof of anything. He wanted a bank account, checkbook, or a cashbox. He planned to take the laptop with him.

  “You know anything about radio collar hunting?” he asked Fiona, as she clicked off more shots.

  “Isn’t that where these rich golfer types hire someone to tree a cougar, then fly out to shoot it?”

  “Exactly. The guide uses dogs to hunt down the game. It can take days. When the dogs get a cougar treed, they look up at it, barking, and keeping it there. The poachers follow the signal to the tree. They phone their client-it can take most of a day for him to get there-then he climbs out of the helicopter and is handed a rifle. He shoots the cougar, then flies off. Single shot. Ten minutes, max. The cat is taxidermied and shipped to him a few months later.”

  “And that’s called hunting?”

  “It’s called poaching. The collars are illegal to use, and the cats require a tag from Fish and Game. So the whole thing is one violation after another. A hundred-thousand-dollar fine, and up to five years in prison. So it’s an expensive way to hunt. The client pays about ten grand an animal.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Randy’s name surfaced in a bust in eastern Washington. It reached me through a friend. Word was, he’d begun taking clients on his own. And that kind of thing can get a man killed out here.”

  “And Mark?”

  “Probably knew. He has his ear to the ground.”

  “That couldn’t have been easy. And you’re looking for a possible connection,” she said.

  “We are. Yes.”

  “That’s right: I’m deputized.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “You want the contents of the kitchen cabinets?” she asked.

  “Why not?” he answered.

  Walt searched the tiny bedroom and small bath while Fiona sparked flashes in the kitchen. Frustrated by a lack of evidence, or even anything interesting, he climbed on a chair and lifted up all three game heads in succession, hoping an envelope or paperwork might have been hidden behind the trophies. All he got was dusty.

  “Here’s a curiosity,” Fiona called out.

  Walt joined her in the kitchen.

  She pointed to the kitchen cabinets. “Box of nongluten pancake mix. Several boxes of pasta, also gluten-free. And a breakfast cereal- all corn. Lots of rice and rice noodles. No pretzels or chips.”

  “So he’s gluten-intolerant,” Walt said. “Where’s the crime in that?”

  “Check it out, Sherlock.” The toe of her boot pointed at an open drawer. There were some potatoes, a bag of onions, and a loaf of bread. “What’s he doing with the loaf of bread if he can’t eat gluten?”

  “Just because he doesn’t eat it doesn’t mean he doesn’t serve it.” But she’d raised his curiosity. He bent down and retrieved the loaf from the drawer. “And it’s moldy, to boot. Probably forgot he even had it.”

  He balanced and bounced the loaf in his hand a couple of times, weighing it. Unusually heavy. “I want a record of this,” he said as he placed the loaf on the cutting board. He didn’t like that he had missed this; liked it even less that she had pointed it out to him. But there was no changing that now; and he wasn’t going to ignore it simply because she had brought it to his attention, though the thought crossed his mind.

  “Pictures of you opening a loaf of bread? Seriously?”

  “Just shoot it, please.”

  She ran off a series of shots, as Walt unfastened the plastic clip and opened the wrapper. His gloved hand reached in and pulled out the first few slices.

  The center of the loaf had been hollowed out. A brick of money wrapped in stretch plastic wrap filled the cavity.

  Click, click. Fiona gasped while running off more shots.

  Walt peeled back the stretch wrap, revealing one-hundred-dollar bills. Three inches high.

  Walt whistled. “There’s got to be thirty or forty thousand dollars here.”

  “Good Lord,” she said. “I’ve never seen that much cash.”

  “His own little in-joke. Bread? Dough? And that’s where he hid it.”

  “Poaching?”

  “It’s got to be dirty,” Walt said. “But he’s a doctor, don’t forget. It could be poaching. It could be drugs. Abortions. Blackmail, I suppose.”

  “And we’ll never know,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Walt said irritably. “Of course we’ll know! It’s my job to know. To find out. Don’t say things like that, you’ll jinx it.”

  “You? Superstitious?”

  “Careful, is how I think of it. The weirdest things can squirrel an investigation. Never speak ill of the dead, and never, ever claim you’ve got a suspect until the court case is over and he’s behind bars.”

  “Sage advice for a freshman deputy?”

  “Just take the pictures, Watson, would you please?”

  Walt began counting the money.

  13

  WALT LOVED TECHNOLOGY. HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND IT HALF the time, but the beauty of good technology was that he didn’t have to understand it. Just use it.

  His patrolmen were currently taking advantage of a quiet evening by updating the score of Monday Night Football over the police band radio, mistakenly thinking their boss off air, otherwise, they wouldn’t have dared do it. In fact, Walt was a Seahawks fan, so, on the ride home, he listened in guilty pleasure.

  Lisa had been kind enough to stay with the girls while Walt had dropped Fiona back at her car. He’d then spent thirty minutes talking to employees at Mark and Randy Aker’s veterinarian practice.

  Jillian Davis was Mark’s head nurse and sometime bookkeeper. She led Walt into the “family room,” where, for an additional fee, boarding pets were treated to a “home environment” that included two couches, some throw rugs, and a television running all the time. The room’s popularity with customers spoke to the excesses of Sun Valley. Mark had turned wealthy guilt into a profit center for his boarding clinic.

  Jillian worked to keep her composure. A sturdy woman in her early forties, with kind eyes and a severe brow, she wore blue scrubs with a pilled cardigan sweater. He’d caught her at the end of what had to have been a long, difficult day. He cautioned her that, for both their sakes, he was going to speak directly, warning her that anything discussed must not leave the room. She agreed, then turned up the television to cover their voices.

  “I have circumstantial evidence that Randy was involved in poaching,” he said. “High-stakes stuff. Probably mountain goat, cougar, and bear. Any talk around here to that effect?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “Only that: talk. It came up when our inventory was off. Incapacitating meds that we rarely use were found to be in short supply.”

  “So Mark knew.” He made it a statement.

  “I’m sure he suspected, as did I. To my knowledge, no one else. And before you ask: if Mark confronted Randy, I never heard about it.”

  “Would Mark have considered the whole subject matter of hunting tags and fees political? Did he look at it that way?”

  “I’ve heard both of them talk about their childhoods, when
there were no restrictions on hunting. Some limits, to be sure, but the state wasn’t running lotteries and such.”

  “Does Mark talk politics with you?”

  “No. Just business. We’re very busy here-all the time, these days.”

  “Was he doing anything political? Volunteering? Fund-raising?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Did you see anyone, anything, bothering Randy? Giving him trouble? Visitors that you wouldn’t have expected? Phone calls?”

  “Nothing like that. We all loved Randy. He was a terrific guy. Really good with the large animals.”

  “Any conflicts in either of their practices lately? Threats? Lawsuits?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. Business was down on Randy’s side.”

  He could read it in her face: she was holding back. “But?” he said. She hesitated. “By talking to me, you’re helping him, Jillian. You have to believe that.”

  “Mark’s been up to something.” It came out of her like a confession; she hung her head, as if ashamed of herself. “Secretive. Brooding, at times. You know how up he usually is. That kind of went out of him lately.”

  “Trouble at home?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. He spent a lot of time here, at the clinic, after closing. And he wasn’t training. Wasn’t doing paperwork. The one time I checked on him, he was in the lab, and he blew up at me for surprising him like that.”

  “Any idea-”

  “No. That’s just the thing,” she said, interrupting. “None. He’s been spending a lot of time at their cabin in Challis. Been going there a lot lately. Sometimes overnight. Was he following Randy or something? I don’t know. Some of our deliveries… he’d put them straight into his truck, and that was always when he’d go north for a day or so.”

  “Do you know what was in those boxes?”

  “No clue.”

  “Receipts?”

  “I could check with Sally, our bookkeeper. There might be records.”

  Walt had forgotten about Mark’s cabin, and chastised himself. “It’s on Francine’s side. The cabin? I didn’t think they used it, some family battle they got embroiled in. A relative lived up there, didn’t he?”