Killer Summer

by Ridley Pearson

  20

  As Walt pulled up to the picket fence that fronted his house, a house he wasn’t sure he’d live in much longer, because of the divorce, he flashed the Cherokee’s brights, flooding the porch and signaling his guest.

  Fiona Kenshaw waved at him from the Smith & Hawken bench by the front door. He’d given Gail the bench on their tenth anniversary. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever sat in it before. It was more a monument to his picking the wrong gift. Gail had gushed over it, unwrapped it on the porch, and had left it there, never to look at it again.

  “Hey there,” he said, climbing the steps.

  “Hey there yourself,” she said playfully, in a voice he didn’t recognize.

  She looked beautiful despite the glow of the yellow bug light overhead. He tried to think of her only as a professional-a part-time crime-scene photographer, an associate-but failed miserably.

  Seeing her with Hillabrand had caused him a moment of unease. He hadn’t processed it at the time but recalled it now, feeling squeamish. There had been a time, not long ago, when he’d have felt awkward having a woman other than his wife on his front porch. But it was just the opposite: he wanted to wake up the nosey Mrs. Mer imer, and all his neighbors, and show them he’d picked himself up. Like Gail, he too could move on.

  “This is a surprise,” Walt said.

  Fiona patted the bench beside her.

  “Would you like to come in?” he asked. He pulled open the screen door and held it with his foot.

  “No. It’s a gorgeous night.” She patted the bench again.

  Walt sat down beside her. She smelled like lilacs, or maybe the bench was scratch-and-sniff.

  Her hands-they were rough from all her hours in rivers as a fishing guide-twisted in her lap. He’d never known Fiona to be the nervous type. Single-minded, independent, socially cautious, to be sure. But agitated and uncomfortable?

  “How was the dinner?” he asked. “I’m assuming you did one of the private dinners.”

  “Surreal,” she said. “Six courses. Too much wine. Way too much.”

  Then he saw it: she was drunk. “Did you drive yourself?”

  She put her arms out. “Cuff me.” But her eyes sparkled, and he felt tempted to kiss her wet lips.

  “I’m driving you home,” he said.

  “Party pooper,” she said. “Do you know what the Brits used to call spirits? Maybe still do, for all I know.”

  “I’ve never been good at trivia,” Walt said. “Unless the chosen topic is forensics, dogs, or wildlife.”

  “Courage,” she answered.

  “Okay,” he said. He clawed at the knees of his pants, suddenly extremely uncomfortable.

  “So I’m just going to say this whether you want to hear it or not, because I may never be like this around you again. Feeling my courage, that is. Carpe diem, and all that.”

  “And all that,” he echoed.

  Then she said nothing. His throat had constricted to the width of a cocktail straw. He was afraid to try to talk for fear he’d merely squeak.

  “You listen, but do you hear?” She turned her head to face him, and he felt a jolt.

  “I definitely hear,” he said. “I promise, I’ll hear whatever you have to say.”

  “You were jealous tonight,” she said.

  “Guilty.” Gail had complained he was never honest with her. He had vowed to not repeat that mistake. “I’m not exactly sure why.”

  “It’s because we both feel this thing between us. You know that’s true. I feel it too, Walt. I’d love to go on pretending I don’t, because I don’t want to feel it, acknowledge it, but I do. And so do you, whether you’ll ever admit it or not, because I saw it on your face tonight at the tasting. It made the whole rest of my night a lie because it was all that I could think about. You… were all that I could think about, which was hardly fair to Roger.”

  “You looked like you were having a good enough time.”

  “You’re a better judge than that. I have no idea what Roger must have thought. But the point is… Well, that is the point, isn’t it? I don’t know what the point is, and there’s something sad about it taking way too many glasses of the best wine to convince me to say something about it. Especially when I don’t know what exactly it is I’m trying to say.”

  Walt looked away from her, out to the empty street and the porch light on Mrs. Merimer’s cottage. He had a resuscitation kit in the back of the Cherokee. He wondered if she’d know how to use it on him. He felt as if he was going to blow a valve.

  “You are going to say something, right?” Her voice sounded terrified.

  He nodded, hoping that might do until his pulse leveled off.

  “Say something, Walt.” She sounded dangerously close to being angry.

  “I’m trying,” he managed to choke out.

  “Don’t leave me hanging here. I don’t think I can take it. Tell me I didn’t just make a complete ass out of myself. Oh my God,” she said, leaning over with her head between her legs.

  He tentatively reached out and rubbed her back. She was hot and damp.

  She rushed forward then, grabbed the rail, and threw up into the lilacs.

  He hurried to her and again placed his hand on her back.

  “Okay?” he said.

  “Do I look like I’m okay?” Fiona sounded as if she was crying. “Could I bother you for a paper towel?”

  He hurried inside, composing what to say in order to rescue the moment. He did feel the same as she but hadn’t known it until she’d confronted him. He wasn’t sure he knew how to explain himself. Gail. Brandon. His two girls. The house.

  He heard a car engine start.

  He ran to the porch, the damp paper towel in hand.

  Taillights.

  A swarm of bugs were circling the porch’s yellow light, a light that was supposed to repel them. A dog barked a block away. A drip of the water fell from the paper towel striking the toe of his boot. A feeling of remorse overcame him, of loss, of missed opportunity. More water hit his boot, and he caught himself having squeezed the paper towel in his fist.

  He turned and headed inside, straight to the phone.

  The scent of lilacs was gone.

  21

  Squinting through the blinds of her hotel bedroom, Summer Sumner watched a Zamboni crawl across the ice of the lodge’s outdoor skating rink, leaving behind a wide swath of clean ice like a glistening silver ribbon, mirrorlike in the morning sunshine.

  The bedside CD/iPod/clock radio read 10:34. A fairly typical rising time for her, but-and she was certain of this-unacceptable to her early-bird-gets-the-worm father. He’d have been up since five A.M. negotiating some deal with someone five time zones away. She felt sorry for him: he could never turn it off. She assumed that, even at the wine tasting the night before, he’d been talking up some film or television deal, a deal that would never get off the ground.

  She wondered what he’d thought of the note she’d left him. Certainly, he’d seen it: she’d placed it front and center on the table just inside the door. Impossible to miss.

  As she crossed the bedroom, she happened to glance into the living room and see her father’s laptop up and running on the desk, alongside a pile of papers and his BlackBerry. There was also some pocket change lying there and… his keys.

  But he was nowhere to be seen.

  She heard the toilet seat clunk down, the rustle of newspaper, and knew he’d be a while.

  Wearing nothing but a T-shirt and briefs, she hurried across to the desk, nervously glancing back toward the suite’s powder room.

  His key chain required unscrewing a tiny sleeve that sealed it shut. She squeezed and turned the sleeve, but it held tight. She tried again, and this time it gave. She spun the sleeve out of the way, then sorted quickly through the keys to find the strangely shaped one to the jet. She freed it and was screwing the sleeve back in place when his BlackBerry rang.

  Summer heard the toilet flush.

  Impossible! she thought, p
anicking.

  “I’ll get it!” she called out, trying to buy herself an excuse for being caught hovering over his things.

  He came out the door, fastening his belt.

  “I’ve got it,” he said.

  But she answered it.

  “Hello?” she said.

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  Her father crossed the room.

  “I’ve got it, Summer.”

  “I’m calling for Teddy Sumner,” said a man’s voice.

  She’d heard the caller’s voice before and tried to place it. Her father would be proud if she presented herself correctly.

  “This is Summer speaking. Whom may I say is calling?”

  Her father stood there, his hand out, wanting his phone.

  “Is your father there?” The voice was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t dredge up a face to go along with it.

  She handed her father the BlackBerry.

  “Thank you,” he said, though he didn’t mean it. He didn’t want her answering his calls.

  “Sumner,” her father said into the phone, sliding down into the chair.

  Summer stood there, her eyes on the key chain, which she’d set down, but not where she’d found it. She shuffled closer to her dad, putting herself between him and the keys, wanting the chance to slide them back toward where they belonged.

  “This is a business call,” he said, cupping the phone, clearly wanting privacy.

  Her hands behind her back, she moved the keys back in place.

  “Sure,” she said, wondering what was up with him. He was constantly on the phone. He never gave a damn about what she overheard.

  “We have a court in twenty minutes,” he said, wanting her out of the room.

  “I know, Dad,” she said, heading back to her room, glancing at the keys on her way out to confirm that she’d left them where she’d found them. Gripped in her right hand was the key to the jet. As she shut the door to her room behind her, she was already celebrating her triumph.

  22

  Tell me again why I’m awake at this ungodly hour?” Fiona asked. It was five-thirty A.M. A melon-colored light graced the ridgetops of the eastern mountains, as seen from the asphalt of the small Sun Valley Airport. She wore a down vest zipped snugly over a blue jean jacket, the July dawn registering only forty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

  She’d reluctantly accepted Walt’s invitation to a predawn flight in his glider, an olive branch he’d offered via voice mail following the debacle of the night before. She didn’t love the idea of the flight-her last flight with him had landed her in federal custody-but his voice mail had left her smiling, and here she was. She nursed a slight hangover with a cup of green tea.

  The glider was towed to ten thousand feet and released, the tow plane banking sharply away and leaving them to the whine of wind over the wings and the orange sun rising over the horizon.

  She sat directly behind him, her camera around her neck, brought along voluntarily this time. She took a series of pictures, working with the play of morning light as it caught the western spine of mountains framing the Wood River Valley, the ridges aflame with a yellow light that sank slowly down the slopes toward the valley floor.

  “Outstanding,” Fiona said into the headset’s microphone.

  “This is my form of meditation, where I come to find myself… whatever that means.”

  “I can’t believe all the planes at the airport,” she said, looking down. A lower ramp packed with parked aircraft revealed itself from the air.

  “The wine auction.”

  “There must be fifty jets, or more.”

  The glider bumped and shook as he found and caught a thermal uplift. They spiraled higher, approaching eleven thousand feet.

  “We’re going to dive lower in a minute,” Walt warned. “There’s nothing to worry about, okay? I want to get a look out Democrat Gulch… where we found the wrecker.”

  “This is a business trip?” she complained.

  “I can’t pass up the opportunity.”

  “Do you want me to make pictures?”

  “Your call. If we see anything, sure.”

  “Such as…?”

  “Tents… a campground. But I’m not expecting to see anything. Those two fled north, and we never saw any hint of them. That’s been bothering me.”

  “Have I been shanghaied?”

  “Camera work is optional. Honestly, I thought you’d enjoy the view. No ulterior motives.”

  “None?” she said, regretting it immediately.

  “I was an asshole last night.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “I will work on being less of one.”

  “I saved your voice mail.” She regretted he couldn’t see her smiling. “Evidence,” she added.

  “Here we go,” he said, dipping the left wing slightly.

  The view of the terrain from above was wondrous. The rugged landscape of ever-larger mountains and more dense wilderness rose in a progression of deformities like shark’s teeth. North and east of Croy Canyon, where Democrat Gulch lay like a dirt ribbon on the valley floor, there was not a structure to be seen. The barren floor of waxweed and rabbit bush gave way to aspen groves, intermingled with fir and lodgepole pine, from where a blanket of green conifers rose toward the jagged rock and the lifeless realms of gravel fields and ice-all that remained above the tree line.

  Sunlight drew a sharp, brilliantly bright line across the rock, reminding her of a scratched negative. A pattern of shadows moved in unison-deer or elk on the run-then vanished, absorbed by forest.

  Fiona struggled for words to convey her awe, or at least her appreciation, without sounding stupid or overly spiritual. But failing to find any, she raised her camera and recorded the moment instead.

  The glider rose. As her insides pressed through her feet and out through the floor, she rested the camera on her chest and shut her eyes, holding on to the cold frame of the seat for a sense of security.

  “Holy shit!” she said.

  Walt lifted the glider higher in ever-widening circles. It gained over a thousand feet in a matter of minutes.

  “One more pass,” Walt warned. “I saw some shapes in the willows below those mine tailings.”

  She collected herself and pressed the TALK button. “Shapes?”

  “Might be tents or something.”

  “I’ll make pictures.”

  The glider dove. Even the headphones’ noise-cancellation feature couldn’t hold back the roar. She ran off a series of pictures.

  The glider began its lazy climb.

  “There!” he said. “Two o’clock!”

  She aimed and saw the dark shapes, zoomed in.

  Click. Click.

  Fiona listened as Walt contacted the airport tower and asked for a message to be relayed to his dispatcher. He requested a patrol explore the area.

  When Walt was off air, Fiona pushed the button and spoke.

  “I got a pretty good look at those shapes. Smaller than tents.”

  “ATVs?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  “Parasailors,” he said, pointing through the canopy. “Off the ski mountain.”

  Three colorful parachutes-red, green, and blue-hung in the air, with their ribbed foils bulging, just below the top of the Sun Valley ski mountain, the silk caught in the glare of the morning sun. They were too far away for her to see the nylon cords, the jumpers appearing to float beneath their chutes.

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  He steered the plane north, flying directly above the parasailors, and she took more photographs. To the east, the butterfly-winged canvas roof of Sun Valley’s new outdoor amphitheater caught her eye, and, nearby, the enormous white tent that would shelter the wine auction later that evening.

  She thought he might overfly this venue as well, but instead he looped south and soon returned to the airport. In a matter of minutes, they were on the ramp near the hangars.

  “You’re good at your job
. You know that?” she said.

  “I’m a hack,” he said.

  “Why do you do that?” she asked, shaking her hair out. “Why can’t you accept a compliment?”

  “My father makes a point of it when the Express covers my men chasing a bear out of a backyard or arresting a man for riding a lawn mower down Main Street. You say I’m good at it, and I want to agree, believe me. There’s a jazz standard called ‘Compared to What?’ You hold my job up against even a rookie cop in Los Angeles or New York and it looks like I’m sleepwalking.”

  “But we’re not in New York. And I meant it as a compliment.” She paused.

  “Okay. So, thank you.”

  He was dancing on ice. It made her uncomfortable.

  “I’ll e-mail you the pictures,” she said. She could sense his impatience to get going.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Don’t hide from me,” she said.

  Walt looked at Fiona curiously, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. Again.

  “I’ve known you for, what, two years? I barely know you.”

  “You know me better than most,” he said.

  “Then that’s a shame.”

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “I plead the Fifth, Sheriff.”

  He fought back a grin.

  “I need to hangar the glider,” he said.

  “I’ll help you.”

  “It’s light. One person can do it.”

  “Consider this: maybe it’s easier with two. You think that’s possible?”

  Their eyes met.

  “I’d appreciate the help,” he said.

  “That’s better,” she said, moving behind the wing and awaiting instructions.

  23

  As Walt left the hangar, he heard a radio code spoken over his handset and decided to respond himself. Another day, another weekend, he would have left the call for others-he tried hard to avoid micromanagement-but with his patience worn thin awaiting word from the patrol he’d sent out to Democrat Gulch, he knew the short drive down to Bellevue would keep his mind on other things. Besides, he’d known Bob Parker, the owner of Sun Valley Log Homes, for years.