Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries)

by Patrick F. McManus

  “I said, ‘Uh.’”

  “Just ‘Uh’?”

  “Yeah. Then Susan scooped up my pants, dug in a pocket for the keys to the Explorer, spun around, and stomped out of the tent. I was up and standing there in my underwear when the Explorer roared to life. I could hear the tires spitting rocks as it headed back toward the West Branch Road. The next morning, Herb Eliot drove up in front of the tent, helped me pack up, and drove me back to town.”

  “Ha! And what did Herb say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. He never so much as smiled. That’s why he’s still alive. Susan had run the siren and emergency lights all the way back to town. Probably scared all the drunks on the road half to death. No matter, I like Susan a lot. I’m pretty sure someday she’ll look back on her little adventure and laugh.”

  “Sure,” Pap said, grinning. “But by then she’ll be a little old lady. What good will that do you?”

  Shortly after they turned off onto the West Branch Road, a full moon emerged from the clouds and brightened the canyon. Sheer rock walls fell away on their left and rose sharply on their right. Massive icicles hung from the rocks. Far below them Tully caught brief glimpses of the river glistening in the moonlight. After a few miles, he had the distinct feeling the canyon walls were closing in on them. The road had been cut into the sheer sides of the rock walls. Down below them they could see an occasional snow-covered point reaching out into the river.

  “Good fishing down there,” Tully said.

  “For what?”

  “Brown trout.”

  “I never heard of nobody catching brown trout down there.”

  “You’re hearing it now, from one who does.”

  “Really? How big?”

  “Ten pounds. Occasionally, some a lot bigger. You drift a weighted, double-hook fly along the bottom. The double hook keeps the fly from snagging in cracks between rocks.”

  “How about drifting a gob of worms?”

  “Probably work. You have to fish the West Branch in the winter, though, you want the big ones. The big browns in the West Branch seem to bite only in winter. You can catch rainbows anytime but the browns seem to bite only when it gets cold.”

  “I’ve never seen any ten-pound browns you caught.”

  “That’s because I release them.”

  “Release them!”

  “Listen, the next time I catch a big brown I’ll keep it, fillet it out, and bring the fillets to you and Deedee. Then you can crank up that fancy barbecue apparatus of yours and cook them, while I sit in a chair and watch. And drink your whiskey and smoke your Cuban cigars.”

  “Cuban cigars are illegal.”

  “So?”

  “Somehow I get the feeling my cigars and whiskey are pretty safe, if I have to wait for you to catch a ten-pound brown. If you don’t mind my asking, what are you packing these days?”

  “A Colt Combat Commander, in a shoulder holster. Fits in horizontally, with a Velcro strap. Comes out fast.”

  “That’s a .45 caliber, ain’t it? How come you gave up the .38?”

  “The bad guys are a lot meaner and tougher these days. And quicker. I keep it locked and loaded. All the deputies are required to wear a vest while on duty. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the guys even sleep in them.”

  “Hard to believe the bad guys are meaner than in my day. Why—what was that?”

  “That rumble?”

  “Yeah! Sounded kind of like an explosion. It’s getting louder!”

  “I can feel the ground shaking!”

  Pap scrunched down in his seat so that he could peer upward out his window. “Hit the gas, Bo! It’s an avalanche!”

  Tully punched the Explorer into four-wheel drive and floorboarded it. Snow hit the roof of the vehicle and dislodged the emergency light bar. Gobs of white sploshed onto the windshield. Tully flipped the wipers back on. They strained at the gobs of snow. Snow, trees, and rocks poured into the road behind them and then spilled over into the river below. The Explorer burst through piles of snow that had slid into the road ahead of them. At last they reached the protective cover of a large stand of trees stretching up toward the top of the canyon. The Explorer slid to a stop.

  Tully’s hands were still clenched around the steering wheel. Sweat dripped off his chin.

  “I thought we was goners,” Pap said. He was shaken and pale. “If it had led us a bit more, Bo, it would have got us for sure.”

  Tully stared at him. “I thought you were smoking a cigarette.”

  Pap looked around. “I was but I don’t see it anywhere. I must have swallowed it.”

  The light bar was hanging by its wires alongside Tully’s door. He pushed it away, got out, and jerked it loose. He laid the bar down alongside the road.

  The avalanche was still spilling trees, rocks, and snow down into the river behind them. Pap walked around the Explorer and stood alongside Tully, watching the tail end of the avalanche. He got out his makings and started pouring tobacco into a cigarette paper. His hands shook so badly he spilled most of it on the ground.

  “It looks like we may be spending more time up at the lodge than we figured,” Tully said.

  “We’re trapped all right. It’ll be a spell before the highway department gets the road cleared. Like next spring!” He licked the cigarette paper and sealed it with quivering fingers.

  Tully walked over to the edge of the road and looked down into the canyon. “Oh no!” he said.

  “Don’t tell me,” Pap said. “I don’t want to hear.”

  “The water seems to be backing up. I think the avalanche has dammed up the river!”

  “I hope the lodge ain’t close to the river.”

  “No, it’s back up on the side of the mountain. But if I remember right, there’s a cabin down close to the river not far from here.”

  “I don’t care if there is a cabin,” Pap said. “I’ve had enough heroics for one day.”

  “I didn’t notice you do any heroics.”

  “It’s what I ain’t done that’s heroic.”

  5

  THE FULL MOON STILL ILLUMINATED the canyon. Tully cleaned the snow off the windshield of the Explorer and its hood. Then they drove up the road, neither man talking. Tully thought it unusual for Pap to be so quiet. He guessed he was still shaken by the close call. He glanced over at him. Pap seemed deep in thought. Tully turned and looked down at the river, a black streak etched against the snow. Then he saw the cabin. It was down close to the river, with a car parked in front of it. He hit the brakes and slid to a stop.

  “What now?” Pap said, irritably.

  “There’s a cabin with people in it down there! It’s got a car parked out front. The river has backed up almost to it! We must have passed the entrance to the access road without seeing it. The water is already over the road.”

  He grabbed his flashlight, jumped out of the Explorer, and went down the hill in long, stiff-legged jumps, digging in the heels of his boots at each landing. When he reached the access road, the water already swirled over the bottoms of his boots. He hit the cabin door with his shoulder and knocked it open. A boy and girl blinked in the beam of his flashlight, holding up a blanket as a screen in front of them. They both looked terrified.

  “Get up!” Tully shouted. “Get up and get out of here! Now! The river is backing up and about to take out the cabin!”

  The boy leaped up and ran out the door stark naked.

  “Forget the car!” Tully yelled after him. “It’s done for! Climb straight up!”

  He turned to the girl. She was still seated in bed. The water was coming in the door now and rising on his boots.

  “Come on!” he shouted at her. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  She threw back the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She too was naked. It was then Tully saw that one of her feet was in a cast. She started to cry.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll carry you.” He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. The water was n
ow halfway to his knees. He scooped her up in his arms and rushed out through the door, the water splashing up and soaking his pants. Desperate as he was, he still thought of his boots. They’re alligator, after all. Water shouldn’t hurt alligator. The girl was small and thin but surprisingly heavy. She still whimpered but now also trembled from the cold. He started up the steep slope, his flashlight tumbling away behind him. Climbing blindly, he stumbled and almost went down. The girl reached up and locked both her arms around his neck, taking some of the strain off of him. The bank was almost solid rock and steep, only inches in front of his face. He could feel the sharp edges of rocks tearing at the knees of his pants. “I’m sorry,” he gasped to the girl. “I can’t carry you in my arms any longer.”

  “Don’t leave me!” she cried.

  “I won’t leave you but I have to throw you over my shoulder.”

  “Nooo!” she cried.

  She made an oofing sound when her belly hit his shoulder.

  The spotlight hit him in the eyes, blinding him. Pap had pulled the Explorer over to the edge of the road, so he could shine the light down the slope.

  By the time Tully reached the road he was mostly climbing with his knees. Pap reached down, grabbed the girl around the waist, and stood her up on the edge of the road. Tully tried to tell him about the cast on the girl’s foot but couldn’t get the words out. She was shaking and crying. Pap reached into the backseat and whipped a blanket off the boy.

  “Hey, I’m freezing here!” the kid yelped.

  “Shut up!” Pap said. He wrapped the girl in the blanket, picked her up, and set her in the backseat. Tully turned and looked back, just as the cabin disappeared into the surging river.

  After his breathing slowed down, he told Pap, “I thought I was going to drop dead.”

  Tully got into the Explorer and rested his head on the steering wheel.

  “I’m freezing back here!” the boy said, his teeth chattering.

  Tully told Pap there were two sleeping bags in the back section of the Explorer. “Open them up and spread them over our two victims, okay?”

  Pap got the sleeping bags and spread them out over the couple. Then he settled himself in the front seat and sat there in silence, not even bothering to roll himself a cigarette.

  “What’s wrong, Pap?” Tully said. “You’re not talking.” He started the Explorer and began driving.

  “I’m just trying to fix an image in my mind.”

  “You’re a dirty old man!” the girl said from the backseat. She had stopped crying.

  Tully laughed. “You’ve just met and already she’s got you figured out, Pap.”

  Tully glanced at his passengers in his rearview mirror. The boy was skinny, with a mop of dark hair that concealed his ears. He was only a few inches taller than the girl. In Tully’s opinion, he didn’t amount to much. The girl was pretty but, even better, cute, with short, curly, dark red hair, large eyes, and full pouty lips. Neither of them could have been older than eighteen.

  “I guess you two probably aren’t married,” he said.

  The boy caught his eye in the mirror and shook his head. The girl snapped, “No way!”

  “Good,” Tully said. “So what brings you up here, other than the obvious?”

  “We came up Friday,” the girl said. “We have a little break before the next semester starts.”

  The boy went on. “We were cross-country skiing at the lodge and Lindsay took a spill and hurt her foot. I took her into the emergency room at Blight City Hospital and they put a cast on it. Then we came back up to stay at the cabin.”

  “That was your idea,” Lindsay snapped. “Taking a girl camping in the middle of winter! I’m a math major. You’d think I’d be smart enough not to get involved with this idiot. I should have gone back to the dorm.”

  “Idiots are a dime a dozen these days,” Tully said. “And what dorm is that?”

  “At Washington State.”

  “You’re both students there I take it.”

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “I’m Marcus Tripp and she’s Lindsay Blair. We’re both freshmen. I’m in pre-law.”

  Tully glanced at them in the rearview mirror. They both had finally stopped shaking. He could feel something warm leaking down both of his legs. He hoped it was blood.

  “Figures,” Tully said.

  “You really think my car is ruined?”

  “It’s history, Marcus. I saw it disappear.”

  “My old man will kill me,” Marcus said.

  “My old man will kill you!” Lindsay said.

  Tully looked at the boy in the mirror. “You’ll get to live a few days longer, Marcus. We’re all trapped up here by the avalanche. It blocked the road behind us, as well as the river.”

  “Oh, that is just great!” Lindsay said. “So I’m stuck up here!”

  “Afraid so,” Tully said. “I suspect the avalanche also took out the power poles and probably the telephones lines, too. We’ll find out when we get to the lodge.”

  6

  THE LODGE SUDDENLY APPEARED, DARK and massive above them. It was four stories high, with sections of logs holding up the roof of a vast covered veranda that swept around the main building. Several windows had dim yellowish lights illuminating them. There were similar lights in the portion of the building Tully knew to be the dining room.

  The parking lot was crammed with vehicles, most of them SUVs. As they pulled into the lot, they drove over a packed section of the new snow. The headlights picked up a red spray. He stopped and backed up. Both he and Pap leaned forward to study the trampled snow.

  Tully said, “Looks like blood to me.”

  Pap said, “From my vast experience with blood, I’d say this comes from a fistfight.”

  “I think you may be right.” Tully backed into an opening between a Yukon and a Lexus sport utility vehicle. “I’ll go in and see if I can round up some clothes for these two. And a pair of crutches.”

  Lindsay said, “I still have a room here. All my stuff is still in my room, number 222. They can get me some clothes from there.”

  “I have a room too,” Marcus said. “Room 318.”

  “You each have a room?” Tully asked. “So what were you doing in the cabin?”

  “I thought it would be romantic,” Marcus said.

  Tully shook his head. “I hope you realize now, Marcus, that romance is not what it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then,” Tully said. “So all we need is crutches for you, Lindsay, and some bathrobes or something so you can get to your rooms.”

  “You actually think they’ll have crutches?” Lindsay said.

  “They ski here, don’t they? Of course they’ll have crutches.”

  He got out and walked up to the lodge. Even in the dark, it was impressive.

  Built in the Twenties, the outer walls had been constructed of stones and logs. He vaguely recalled that a couple of movies had been filmed there. One of the massive doors swung open at scarcely more than the touch of his hand on the handle. A forest of candles illuminated the foyer but nobody was at what he took to be a registration desk. He walked toward the sound of voices and into a lounge area. He stopped a young woman. She was wearing a green jacket with a West Branch Lodge emblem on it. “Ah, you work here,” he said.

  “If anyone is watching,” she said. “I’m Wendy Curtis. What can I do for you?”

  Tully explained about the crutches and bathrobes or other covering for Lindsay and Marcus to get to their rooms. He gave her the room numbers.

  “You look as if you could use some new clothes yourself, Sheriff.”

  “Not as badly as I need a stiff drink, Wendy.”

  “The bar is just around the corner. I’ll take care of the robes and crutches.”

  Tully thanked her and walked into the lounge. A bar ran along the wall to his left. At the far end, a tall, stocky bartender leaned over it in intense conversation with a young woman. Whatever he was selling, the woman wasn’t buyin
g it. She actually stomped her foot at one point. She wore a leather jacket and jeans and even in the dim light Tully rated her somewhere between very cute and gorgeous.

  Tully called down to the bartender. “Excuse me, but could I get a drink here?”

  The bartender glared at him. “Can’t you see I’m busy!” he snapped. He went back to arguing with the woman.

  Tully grabbed the bartender by the hair and smashed his face up and down on the bar. But only in his mind. The man had a neck thick as a rhino’s. Nothing is more embarrassing than grabbing a handful of hair and then not being able to move a man’s head. This had never happened to Tully and he didn’t intend for it to.

  At last the woman pushed back from the bar, still shaking her head, and stormed off. He thought he detected cheeks glistening with tears when she went by him. Another good reason to whomp the bartender’s face up and down on the bar. Perhaps they were having a lovers’ quarrel. The bartender couldn’t have been out of his twenties. A lock of dark hair curled down onto his forehead. Youth. Muscle. Looks. It was hard to imagine a more disgusting combination. The man came down the bar toward him, his demeanor suggesting menace.

  “So?” he said.

  Tully undid the badge from his belt and laid it on the bar. “What will that buy me?”

  “Oh-oh,” the bartender said. “You must be Sheriff Tully. You have to admit you’re kind of a mess.”

  “Mess or not, I’m young Sheriff Tully. If I were old Sheriff Tully, you’d be dead by now. Or wishing you were.”

  “I’m sorry. I mistook you for one of the locals.”

  “The locals?”

  “Yeah, they’re kind of a rough lot—no offense. The mountains back here are full of them. We had one in a few nights ago, got drunk, did a striptease right in front of everybody. I chased him all over the ballroom, him giggling like a fool and jumping from table to table. I dragged him stark naked out the door and threw him down the front steps. He probably froze to death. I hope he did, anyway. Is that a crime, Sheriff?”

  “Hey, you’re talking about my life.”