Killer View

by Ridley Pearson

  Crabtree wasn’t paying attention. Walt followed his line of sight: spotting a couple of pickup trucks coming up East Fork Road and then, in the far distance, a cruiser. His backup, still a mile away.

  Walt thought he could use this. “Running out of time here. When was the last time you saw Kira Tulivich?”

  Crabtree refocused on Walt’s stern face.

  “When I seen her, I thought it was her, but I ain’t never seen her all dolled up like that.” The boy’s eyes drifted back to the advancing patrol car.

  “Forget about that,” Walt said. He radioed the unit to hold off. The cruiser pulled to the side of the road just as the two pickups drove out of sight. “You saw her?”

  “I said I did, didn’t I?” Crabtree sounded irritated, and more nervous than a few minutes earlier. “Walking…on the side of the road…”

  “Walking? What road?”

  “And I stopped to… you know.”

  “Let’s assume I don’t know,” Walt said.

  “She got in. But she was fucked-up.”

  “You knew this how?”

  “Because she was fucked-up. Shit, Sheriff. Fucked-up. You don’t know fucked-up?”

  “In what way?”

  “High. Real high. Barely recognized me. Barely standing up. That kind of fucked-up. Real fucked-up.”

  “Intoxicated.”

  “No. More than that. High. Boozed-up, yeah, but fried, you know? Spaced. And I say, ‘Get in,’ and she gets in, like it’s cool. You know? With me. I mean, that’s like totally not happening. And I say, ‘Where to?’ And this is, like, I don’t know, the middle of the fucking night.”

  “And she was on which road?” Walt asked.

  Crabtree looked as if he’d been slapped. “This road,” he said, pointing. “East Fork. Headed down toward the highway.”

  “And you were headed where at that time of night? The middle of the night?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t remember. Smokes, I suppose? Mountain View,” he said, referring to a gas station quick stop.

  “Okay.”

  “And once she’s in the car, you know, I see she’s all messed-up. The dress is toast. Her face looks like shit, like she’s been beaten real bad. Her left tit comes out of the dress and she barely notices. Stuffs it back in and looks over at me with these creeped-out, dead eyes. And now I’m thinking she’s loopy because someone hit her too hard or something. Like my moms used to get…And I’m no longer asking her, ‘Where to?’ I’m booking it for the hospital.”

  “You took her to the hospital?”

  “I dropped her there, yeah. I thought about taking her in, you know, but what was going to happen to me? I’d be talking to you. The way I am right now. And no one would believe me, just like you don’t believe me. That’s how it is with me. That’s how it always is, so fuck that. I just dropped her. Let her figure it out.”

  “You came to my house the other night,” Walt said. “The back door.”

  “That wasn’t me.” Spoken too quickly, and with his eyes to the ground.

  “Were you thinking about telling me about Kira?”

  The boy had tipped. He was bursting to tell all. Wished for a quiet room, other circumstances. But Crabtree looked at the cruiser again and the light went out of his eyes. He fumbled for a cigarette. The moment had passed.

  “There are a couple things that need to happen now,” Walt said.

  “I promise you, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do shit to her, Sheriff.”

  “You don’t have to go down for this. But I need more. Did she say anything to you? A name, maybe?”

  Crabtree tightened. He took a long drag off the cigarette, and the smoke disappeared inside him. “You look scared, Taylor. Real scared. Of me? Of the possibility of prison? Or something else?”

  It took Crabtree a long time to speak. “Something else.”

  “A rape conviction puts you in the sex offender database. It’ll follow you the rest of your life. People will put posters up on telephone poles near your house. They’ll cross the street to avoid you.”

  Crabtree twitched at the mention of rape, his eyes narrowing: he hadn’t known. A weight lifted from Walt. A smile slipped across his face, but he wiped it off with the back of his hand.

  “Blah, blah, blah.” Crabtree glanced around again, either afraid to make eye contact with Walt or plotting an escape.

  “Don’t try it,” Walt said.

  “What?”

  “Whatever it is you’re planning.”

  “Are we going to do this or not?” He held out his hands to be cuffed.

  “Work with me, Taylor.”

  Crabtree looked Walt squarely in the eye. “Fuck you and your posters.”

  “Please,” Walt pleaded.

  “Do what you gotta do,” said Crabtree.

  41

  THE TERRAIN ROSE UP THROUGH THE TANGLED FOREST, THE dark bark of the trees like burnt offerings against the sparkling, sun-dappled snow. A snowmobile whined as it followed a game trail, its motor straining, its tread spewing ice and elk scat in its wake. The irritating sound grew fainter as it was swallowed by the landscape.

  Along that same route stood a majestic fir tree, battle-scarred from a lightning strike forty years earlier. It was split from the first long-dead limb to its four-foot-diameter base. While half the tree had died as a result of the strike, new growth extended up the other half, with gnarly, tightly grouped branches, scarred with veins of charcoal, running like arrows toward the sky. The split gave the trunk a charred, inverted V shape that, at its base, looked like a door to a teepee. It was just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, which was exactly what Mark Aker had done hours earlier. He’d done so without leaving the game path, without causing any prints or impressions that might reveal his hiding place.

  Forcing his way through the split in the tree, he’d fallen into the cavity, two feet below the snow’s surface, and onto a bed of leaves. Aker had burrowed down into the leaves, using them as both insulation and camouflage. He passed the coldest hours of the night drifting in and out of sleep, knees to the chest. The buzz of the snowmobile woke him, steadily approaching like a nagging insect. As it tore past his hiding place, he realized that at least for now he was safe. And, though he was regaining strength, if he hoped to save his feet from frostbite, he would have to get moving soon. At some point, he’d have to leave the game trail for deeper snow, even though it would create a path for his captors to follow.

  He waited over forty-five minutes for the return of the snowmobile, sunlight blazing on the very tips of the trees he could partially see through. Coats had stripped him of his watch, but he was guessing it was late morning or early afternoon. The horrid machine came back more slowly than it had gone out, Gearbox no doubt at the controls and paying closer attention, attempting to track him. Aker hoped he’d done his job well enough; and when the snowmobile’s whine grew faint, he allowed himself to relax and plan his next move.

  42

  WALT WAS REELING WITH REGRET WHEN HE TURNED CRABTREE over to booking. The kid was eighteen now; Walt could no longer protect his record.

  He ate a muffin to settle his stomach, but the lukewarm coffee chaser only added to his discomfort. Among his many phone messages were several he found impossible to ignore: a pair from Congressman McMillian, inquiring about Walt’s participation in the national law enforcement conference, and another from James Peavy. He couldn’t ignore them. He was an elected official; he needed both the support of his party and his party leadership, especially given that it was an election year.

  “McMillian first?” Nancy asked him.

  “Let’s hold off on that. Any word from the people out at the INL?” The possibility of radioactive water had led Walt to the obvious call: the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory, a facility covering nine hundred square miles in the center of the state and containing over thirty active or retired reactors.

  “I’ve called a couple different people out there. They’ve all refused appointments. They were
polite enough about it. But I get the feeling it’s not going to happen.”

  “Okay, one more time: get me the director out there.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.” Walt stood there while Nancy made the call. She was put on hold several times before she eventually thanked someone and hung up. “Unavailable. He’ll return the call when he’s free.”

  Walt considered the situation. The smart move would have been for them to take the meetings and calls and issue a string of denials. By refusing him, it implied they needed time to coordinate their denials, and that seemed to him the most advantageous time to strike. “Get hold of Fiona. Find out if she’s available for me later today. It may involve night photography, so tell her to bring the appropriate gear, and tell her to dress warmly.”

  “Should I contact the Butte County sheriff and let him know you’re coming?”

  “No. Call over to Sun Valley Aviation and see if you can get me a time for a tow.”

  Nancy looked up at him quizzically. “The glider?”

  Walt smiled for the first time all day.

  WALT AND THE PILOT of the towplane coordinated the release of the glider. As the Cessna banked slowly to the right, diving below and away, Walt piloted the glider higher and slightly left.

  “It’s noisier than I’d imagined,” Fiona said from behind him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” she said. “I told you: I have no problem with small planes.” Walt had flown gliders since his early twenties, his interest born out of an envy of eagles and hawks and a budget that couldn’t afford renting single-engine airtime.

  The glider suddenly caught an updraft off the base of the hills and gained a hundred feet in a matter of seconds, leaving both their stomachs somewhere up on the Plexiglas cockpit cover.

  “Still okay?” Walt asked.

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  He saw the towplane now. It had come fully around, on a line with the Arco airstrip about twenty miles ahead. As arranged, rather than returning to Hailey, it would wait in Arco for them.

  “Are we high enough?” Fiona shouted, to be heard over the roar created by wind over the wings. There was no motor, just the rush of the glider slicing through the sky.

  “I’m working on it.”

  Walt worked the glider into a wide spiral, climbing into an azure sky, carried aloft by thermals generated by the mountain landmass below. Killer view, Walt thought. To their right, the vast central plain of Idaho stretched out like a lake of desert sand, interrupted occasionally by volcanic cones dormant some ten thousand years. So random were these buttes, they appeared artificially placed. They saw bunkerlike buildings surrounded by tangles of pipes and aprons of parking lot. So secret was the work done here, so important to national security, that the entire area was grayed out on Internet-accessed satellite maps. Not even the topography was properly mapped-and it was the terrain and topography that most interested Walt.

  Rivers and streams flowed out of the mountains roughly west to east. For Walt’s theory of contamination to hold up, there had to be underground water flowing northwest from the INL. He’d made a quick study of the massive northern Rocky Mountain aquifer that stretched from Canada all the way to Mexico, but it too flowed predominantly south and slightly east. He wanted a bird’s-eye view, to validate or invalidate his theory, but the INL airspace was restricted and those restrictions strenuously enforced.

  His decision was to stray over the airspace, what he would call “a regrettable but unavoidable piloting error.” He counted on the evening thermals to hold the glider aloft long enough for him to maneuver into position. Pursuing more altitude, he continued the elegant, half-mile-wide spiral ascent. At eleven thousand feet above sea level-six thousand aboveground-Walt kept the glider shy of an altitude requiring supplemental oxygen.

  “Everything ready?

  “Yes. Good to go.”

  “I have no idea what they’ll do when we enter their airspace, but I don’t see them shooting us down or anything.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring.”

  “Get everything you can, everything we discussed.”

  “Will do.”

  “And if we are forced down, whatever you do don’t surrender your equipment. Under no circumstances will you take that camera off your neck. They will claim all sorts of rights, but I think they’ll stop short of actually physically removing the camera.”

  “And if they think otherwise?”

  “We’ll move it up a level to the attorneys.”

  “And if the attorneys fail?”

  Walt said nothing.

  “Walt?” she said, trying for an answer. Then it hit her. “Oh! Goddamn you! You wouldn’t stoop to something… You wouldn’t use me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You were the one who told me Roger’s company, Semper Group, is under contract with the government to manage nukes, among other things. The INL is a Semper contract, isn’t it?”

  “It is, but-”

  “Did you honestly think I’d call Roger for you if you get busted in here? Is that why you asked me along? I’m your safety valve? How self-serving is that?”

  “It never occurred to me. I just need photographs.”

  “But you didn’t need me to take them.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “You’re banking on my relationship with Roger to get you out of trouble. It’s despicable.”

  “You’re overreacting.” He directed the glider toward the alluvial plain, the sun bloodred as it edged ever closer to the western horizon. “I thought you’d like it up here.”

  A difficult silence followed. It was too loud for him to hear her preparing her equipment. She said, “It just so happens that I do.”

  Walt smiled to himself, eased the joystick forward, and the glider quickly picked up speed as it dove, racing now into the restricted airspace.

  43

  ROY COATS BROUGHT THE MAUL DOWN ONE-HANDED, SPLITTING the log in a single stroke and sending a shudder of pain through his wounds. Standing a few feet off to the side, Gearbox eyed the sharpened edge of the maul, as it caught the mottled sunlight.

  “I have to meet with her.” Coats spoke cautiously through a clenched jaw. Any movement of his facial muscles sent white pain down his neck and into the scissor wound in his armpit. His unmoving lips resulted in a menacing tone. “She makes the drop, and we don’t give a shit about this guy. Let him freeze out there. But I can’t count on her making the drop. So I’m not leaving here until I know we have a backup in place. That means you’ve got to find him.” Coats wound up the maul and split another log, again in a single stroke.

  “As if we haven’t been trying.”

  “Find him,” Coats repeated. He took off his glove and gingerly touched where the stove had branded his cheek. There was yellow pus on the tip of his finger. He wiped it off on his jeans. The burn needed medical attention, a primary reason he wanted the vet recaptured. “He’s on foot in a fresh snowfall. We’re on snowmobiles. Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “But, with the dogs…” Gearbox said.

  “We don’t slow down, waiting for them.”

  “But Bill said-”

  “Fuck Billy! If the dogs get here, they get here. But every minute he’s out there, he’s farther away. And you know what’s worse? It’s worse if he dies out there. Until I say otherwise, we need him.”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Gearbox said.

  He cowered as Coats turned slowly. The maul swung like a pendulum at his side.

  “We’ve been up and down that track a dozen times,” Gearbox complained. “The game trails too. Without the dogs, we got nothing.”

  “Fuck the dogs!” An idea hit him. “Okay,” Coats said, his anger briefly subsiding. “You remember that time we lost the cat over in eastern Oregon?”

  “Sure,” Gearbox said, nodding.

  “We’re going to do it like that: a pattern search. All we’ve gotta do is cross his tra
cks at some point. He can’t be far.”

  “Okay,” Gearbox said. He didn’t sound convinced.

  “I’ve got to keep that meeting with her. Are you listening? If she delivers that drum like I asked, within a week there’s not one person on this planet won’t have heard of the Samakinn. They’ve got, what, ten thousand of those drums stored out there? Twenty? All containing ‘low-level waste,’” Coats said, making finger quotes in the air. “You think they’re going to miss one? It’ll be the first time it’s ever been done. Shit, that kind of thing doesn’t make news; it makes history.”

  He couldn’t stop the grin from finding its way onto his face, but, this time, the accompanying agony was well worth it.

  44

  MARK AKER’S BEST CHANCE TO OUTRUN HIS PURSUERS WAS to find a river, someplace he wouldn’t leave behind tracks or a scent to follow. He used the trees effectively, dodging under the umbrella of green branches that reduced the accumulated snowfall to a dusting. He would cut across the base of a tree, dragging a sprig behind him and erasing his tracks as he went. When the trees were positioned closely enough together, he could make it fifty yards or more without tracks to follow. But eventually he was faced with deep snow again, forcing him to reveal his route. In summertime, he would have been nearly impossible to follow, he wouldn’t have been battling the elements, and he would have had an abundant source of water and food. As it was, he was sweating, cold, hungry and thirsty, and still trying to hold off using any of what he’d stolen from the cabin for as long as humanly possible.

  Then came the sound he’d been outrunning all day: the distant whine of the snowmobile. It wasn’t that they were close; it was their determination that ate away at his confidence.

  What he saw next intrigued him: a low, inverted semicircle amid a rock escarpment, fifty yards to his right. The formation began low and grew into a collar that wrapped around a small hill. Seeing the rocks rise out of the snow, and that small semicircle of dark in particular, gave him another idea. If he could reach the windblown rocks, he’d leave no trail to follow.