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

by Patrick F. McManus

  “I had to get some of my troops activated. Now do you think your mutts can get me to the top of that ridge up there?” He pointed.

  “They would love to. But don’t call them mutts. They have feelings too, you know.”

  “Sorry.”

  Tully climbed aboard the sled and got a good grip on both sides. Janice yelled, “Mush!” The dogs took off in a spray of snow and tails. They reached the top of the ridge much faster than Tully had even imagined, the dogs scarcely breathing hard.

  “Can you run me down the ridge now?” he asked.

  “How far?”

  “Several miles. I’d like to look at the avalanche from the top side.”

  “Mush!”

  Tully pulled his stocking cap down over his ears, crossed his legs, and rested his head on the back of the sled. The runners sizzled through the snow. The mountains around were achingly beautiful. Far down below he could see the black line of the river wending its way through the canyon. He could even make out some of his favorite fishing holes, as well as the campsite of his and Susan’s aborted tryst. He thought he should put up a marker. Maybe in a year or two he would think of the proper wording. He was still pondering the words for the marker when they reached the avalanche site. Susan shouted “Whoa!” and jammed down the brake. She then put down the snow hooks to keep the dogs from running off with the sled. He pushed himself up and walked over to the edge of the ridge. The slope had been scraped nearly bare by the rush of snow, ice, trees, and rocks. Several minutes passed before he found what he was looking for, a line of gray spots that ran across in a line a hundred feet or so down from the top of the ridge. Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache as he studied the spots. He walked back to the sled and sat down on it.

  “Home, James.”

  “We’re not moving an inch until you tell me what you found out.”

  “Just the ordinary,” he said.

  “And that is?”

  “I think somebody might have tried to kill me. And maybe Pap, too, for good measure.”

  “Not again!”

  “Afraid so.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You see those gray spots down there in the snow? I’m pretty sure somebody laid out a line of ditching dynamite. The concussion from one stick sets off all the others.”

  “Why in heaven’s name would someone want to kill you?”

  Tully laughed. There are plenty of reasons. “The real question is how did they know we would be coming along that road when we did?”

  “Maybe it was just a coincidence you happened along at just the right time. You ever hear that coincidence confounds reason?” She sat down on the sled next to him. The dogs, sprawled out along the towline, turned and looked back, apparently wondering what the next move was.

  “Even if you won’t sleep with me,” she said, “I hate to think about somebody trying to kill you.”

  He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Well, while we’re up here, I better check in with the office and make sure things aren’t falling apart there.” He pulled his cell phone out of his jacket and dialed.

  Daisy answered. “Boss! We were worried sick waiting for you to call. You might have been buried in that avalanche!”

  “Almost was. Pap said if it had led us a bit more it would have. Smashed up the Explorer pretty good but didn’t hurt us.”

  “We’ve got some news here, too. I’ll let Herb tell you.”

  Herb Eliot came on. “Bo! Man, are we ever glad to hear from you!”

  “How come? Somebody steal the town?”

  “Not quite. But somebody murdered Horace Baker last night.”

  Tully sat in silence for a moment.

  “You there, Bo?” Herb asked.

  “Yeah, I’m here. I’m getting a bit overloaded, though. How do you know Horace was murdered?”

  “He was shot in the back of the head!”

  “That’s a pretty good indication. Who found him?”

  “His secretary, Irene Pooley.”

  Janice put her hand on Tully’s arm. “Stop tugging on your mustache like that. You’ll pull it out.”

  Tully put his hand in his lap.

  Herb went on. “He’s still in his office. We left him just like she found him, waiting for you to get back.”

  “It’ll be a while before I get back. The road’s blocked by the avalanche. Besides, we still need to find out what’s happened to Mike Wilson.”

  “I was saving the kicker for last,” Herb said.

  “And the kicker is?”

  “Mike Wilson is Horace’s partner in that development deal.”

  “The one the county turned down?”

  “Yeah,” Herb said. “You remember Horace threatened he was going to put in a giant pig farm on the land instead? A thousand pigs! So right there we have a couple hundred people wanting to kill him, the neighbors to the pig farm, for example, some of them very capable of doing it. Anyway, his secretary, Irene, says Horace was meeting somebody in his office later that night.”

  “Who?”

  “She said Horace didn’t say who, and she didn’t want to ask. He had apparently told her numerous times that if he wanted her to know something he would tell her. Irene is pretty shaken up by the whole thing. Guess she liked the miserable old devil quite a bit despite everything.”

  “He doesn’t have any family that I can recall. Irene is about it.”

  Tully began to sense his rear freezing to the sled. He stood up and began stomping his feet. “Anything at the scene that might give you a clue to the killer?”

  “Just that Horace had poured a glass of whiskey for someone. It was sitting across the desk from him, apparently untouched. So he obviously knew the person, knew he drank whiskey. Or she did, as the case may be.”

  “And he was shot in the back of the head, while seated at his desk?” Tully said. “I didn’t know Horace well but I know he wasn’t the kind of man to let one of his enemies get behind him. I’m slowly freezing to death up here, Herb. I’ve got to go. Get Lurch and Susan Parker over there to investigate the scene. See if Susan can pinpoint the time of death. I’ll be in touch later today.”

  “With me or Susan?”

  “You.”

  “Right, boss. Now I’ve saved the really bad news for last.”

  “What?”

  “Clarence is back!”

  “Clarence! Nooo!”

  “Yup. He’s been gone over a month and I know everybody was hoping he’d been shot or run over or something.”

  “We can’t have idiots shooting at him in the city.”

  “Couple have already tried and missed. We confiscated their rifles. They said how come, for shooting at Clarence? I said no, for missing!”

  “I don’t want any shooting in the city. Someone will get killed. You catch somebody shooting, throw him in the slammer. I know what we’ll do with Clarence if we catch him again. The last time we tried to keep him in the Playpen, he scaled the chain-link fence and wiggled through a coil of concertina wire. What’s he been up to this time?”

  “Just the usual. He hides under people’s cars and sneaks out and bites them on the ankles.”

  “Well, stay after him. And, Herb.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want to hear any more of your problems.” He pushed the off button on the phone.

  Janice was leaning into him, her head against his chest. She felt warm and surprisingly soft. That was one of the things he liked best in women, their softness. He caught himself thinking that Tom Duffy had never really been that good of a friend.

  “So who’s Clarence?” she said into his chest.

  “A little brown-and-white dog.” He gave Janice a hug. “Would you mind if we ran down the ridge as far as it’s groomed? Shouldn’t be much more than a couple of miles. There’s no reason for skiers to come out here, so I’d like to see if there’s some reason to be grooming the ridge.”

  A mile or so later, they came to the place where the Sn
o-Cat had turned around. No reason was evident for the Sno-Cat to have been driven down the ridge. They turned around.

  “Maybe the person was out for a Sunday drive,” Janice said.

  “Could be,” Tully said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to make one more detour.”

  He had Janice stop at Cabins One and Two but found nothing of interest there. Then she stopped at Cabin Three. It was several hundred feet up a trail that led back into the woods from the groomed area. “I’ll only be a minute,” he told her. “Might as well check it out, while we’re here.”

  Janice sat down on the sled, her chin in her hands. Tully pushed open the cabin door. He looked up. The ceiling was open to the rafters. A piece of plywood had been laid across two of the rafters. He dragged over a chair from the table and climbed up on it. Then, with considerable grunting, he pulled himself up to the rafters until he could see on top of the plywood. Nothing.

  He got down off the chair and searched the bedroom. He found nothing there. Then he went out the back door to the privy. It had a quarter-moon hole cut in the door. He turned the latch and went inside. There was no evident place to hide anything there. He climbed up on the bench for the toilet seats and looked for any nook or cranny where an object might be concealed. Nothing. He got down and started out. The latch had slipped down over the door. He took out his pocket comb, shoved it through the crack at the edge of the door, and pushed the latch back up. On his way back to the cabin, he even stopped and looked in a bird feeder. Not even any bird seed in it. For some unknown reason, he had begun to feel extremely uneasy. He walked through the cabin and out the front door and started up the walk. Suddenly he detected a movement off to his right. He spun and crouched, the Colt .45 coming off his shoulder holster.

  “Get down!” he yelled at Janice.

  She threw herself flat on the sled. The dogs had leaped to their feet. “Whoa!” she yelled at them.

  He had the gun leveled at the unseen menace.

  A large black shape flapped off through the trees. A raven. He couldn’t remember having drawn on a bird before. Something about the missing man and the murder in town was starting to get to him. He swept the gun back and forth, watching for any movement in the trees. He saw nothing. Slowly he stood up and put the Colt back in its holster. Slightly embarrassed, he walked over to the sled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I felt something. Guess I’m getting way too jumpy.”

  “I felt it, too,” Janice said.

  “Let’s mush back to the lodge. I’ll buy you lunch, if you don’t mind the company of a couple old geezers.”

  “You’re not so old.”

  “I was referring to Pap and Dave.”

  She laughed.

  12

  THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE lodge shortly before lunch. While Janice returned her dogs to their pen, Tully stopped by the office to inform Mrs. Wilson that so far he hadn’t found any sign of her husband. He didn’t mention anything about his suspicion that the avalanche had been deliberately set off to kill him and Pap. He would tell her later. Maybe she already knew. He then went up to his room, took off all his clothes, ran a tub of hot water, and lay on his back in the tub with his knees bent up, so as not to get the bandages wet. He thought it might be okay to remove the bandages but at the moment wasn’t up to any unnecessary pain. He studied his stomach. It was fairly flat, at least while he lay on his back. That pleased him. He worked the faucet with the big toe of his right foot, keeping the water as hot as he could stand it. Grady, he thought, must be running the powerful generator almost full-time, to keep the water hot for the guests. On the other hand, maybe the tub water came from the hot spring. It didn’t smell of sulfur, though. He got up and dressed in the clothes he had just taken off, the blue Pendleton wool shirt, the black wool hunting pants, wool socks, and insulated boots. The one exception was a two-piece set of clean silk underwear. You never knew when you might need clean underwear, particularly if you were a cop. He studied his alligator-skin boots standing next to the bed. That alligator must have been allergic to water, he thought, either that or a really cheap alligator. He went downstairs for lunch.

  Most of the lunch crowd had left by the time Tully got to the dining room. The few that remained, idling over their drinks, appeared to have all been clothed by L.L. Bean. By comparison, the occupants of his own table looked a bit ratty, although no one could have been more outdoorsy than his own private dog-team driver. Janice’s rough wool shirt and well-worn jeans seemed to match her tanned face and hands perfectly. Altogether, she looked pretty good to Tully, including the short bob of her curly blond hair. Dave and Pap were seated with her, and he could tell her looks weren’t being wasted on either of them. He was pleased to see Lindsay at another table across the room, engaged in her usual animated conversation but now with a middle-aged couple. He was willing to sacrifice the couple. Anything to keep her away from Pap.

  “I guess you’ve all gotten to know each other,” he said, pulling out a chair.

  “Oh, we’ve all met before,” Janice said. “I’ve known Pap for years and had the World Famous Chicken-Fried Steak quite a few times at Dave’s House of Fry.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Dave said. “I once even escorted her and Tom around my reservation.”

  “That must have taken a good five minutes,” Tully said, sitting down and spreading the linen napkin over his lap.

  Janice laughed. “It’s quite a small reservation but very nice.”

  “If we’re done discussing our fraudulent Indian here,” Pap said, “our tracker may have turned up some significant sign.”

  “He’s right, Bo,” Dave said. “Those tracks you mentioned, there’s something odd about them.”

  “Like what?”

  “First of all, there are no tracks coming back. No tracks going anywhere except to the edge of the riverbank. There’s a sharp drop down to the water there, five feet or so, and the snow is all messed up like someone fell down the bank. There’s a bit of ice along the bank there and it was broken and then refrozen. A couple of large rocks stick out of the bank, and it’s possible a person could have slipped at the edge of the bank and hit his head on them. If he went into the river, he could have drowned.”

  “No sign of blood on the rocks, I take it,” Tully said.

  Dave shook his head. “Nope.”

  A waitress came over. “Would anyone like a drink?”

  Tully ordered a Diet Pepsi. Pap and Dave ordered single-malt Scotches.

  “What kind of pain do you two have?” Tully asked them.

  “Life,” Pap said.

  Janice took a glass of merlot.

  “So,” Tully said, “you think a highly experienced outdoorsman like Mike Wilson slipped and fell into the river and drowned.”

  “It happens,” Pap said. “A few highly experienced hunters go missing in the mountains each year.”

  “There’s one problem,” Dave said.

  “It better be a good one,” Tully told him.

  “I weigh about one-seventy and wear a size eleven boot. Now, don’t get excited, Bo, because I didn’t tell her anything about what we had found, but I did ask Mrs. Wilson about Mike’s shoe size and his weight. According to her, he was about the same size and weight as I am.”

  “So?” Tully said.

  The waitress brought their drinks and stayed to take their lunch orders. All four went with the toasted cheese sandwiches and cups of tortilla soup.

  “So, Dave?” Tully repeated after the waitress left.

  “I very carefully walked along the tracks in the snow, step for step. First of all, there was no fresh snow in the tracks. Which means they were made after we arrived up here, because the snow stopped about nine.”

  “That’s right,” Pap put in. “It stopped just before the avalanche.”

  “Okay,” Dave went on, “first of all, even if Mike Wilson made the tracks, where was he all day Sunday and Monday? People were out looking and supposedly never found a trace of him. Now here’s the strange p
art, I think. The tracks were made by boots almost the same size as mine. But the difference is that my tracks sank a good four or five inches deeper in the snow!”

  “You’re saying that the tracks were made by a person with the same size foot but a whole lot skinnier?”

  “I would say smaller. And here’s another thing. The heels of the person’s boot were digging in at an odd angle, a much sharper angle than the heels of my boots.” Dave stood up to demonstrate. “It looked like the person was stretching out his leg to match the longer stride of Mike Wilson. I’d bet you a World Famous Chicken-Fried Steak that the person who made those tracks was a much smaller person than Wilson.”

  “You don’t think there’s any chance Wilson could have made them?”

  “I don’t see how. Maybe the snow was firmer under those tracks than it was under mine but I doubt it.”

  The waitress brought their sandwiches and soup. “Anything else?”

  Tully shook his head and she left. “Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that some small person wanted to make some tracks in the snow that would appear to be Wilson’s. They end at the river. How does the person get out of there without leaving more tracks?”

  “Have to be by boat,” Pap said, washing down a bite of his cheese sandwich with a swig of whiskey. “Or a hot-air balloon.”

  Tully said, “That would mean the person making the tracks had to have an accomplice.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Dave said.

  Janice sipped her wine. “How are you going to figure out if the tracks were Wilson’s or not? You would need his boots, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Tully said. “And if he’s in the river, he’d be wearing the boots. It may be months before we find the body, maybe never, if there is a body at all. It could be all the way down to the Snake River by now.”

  Janice said, “Do all your lunchtime topics involve bodies?”

  “You brought up the problem of the boots, Janice. I’ve got to preserve one of those tracks before we have another snowfall.”

  “How do you do that?” Pap said. “Put one of them in a freezer?”

  “I don’t think that would work. What I need up here is Lurch. You know what that means, Janice. Another phone call.”