Read 01 Storm Peak Online

Authors: John Flanagan

Tags: #Mystery

01 Storm Peak (5 page)

BOOK: 01 Storm Peak
8.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
He slid farther down the rope until he judged that the red dot of light was no more than twelve feet below him. Then he shrugged off the strap retaining the skis and let them drop to the snow.
As they hit, he released another eight feet of rope in a rush and slid down to where he was skimming just above the surface of the Heavenly Daze run. He’d timed the release of the skis perfectly. As he hit his final point and checked for a moment, he was facing almost directly downhill. He let the last four feet of rope slide through his bands, felt his feet brushing the surface of the snow, bent his knees and let the rope go entirely.
He hit, absorbing the shock with his flexed knees, and rolled.
There was little impact from the height he’d dropped. The main effect was from the speed he was traveling. But he’d landed on almost friction-free snow and he simply allowed himself to roll.
It was easier than a parachute landing, he thought.
Above him, the gondola cable creaked and hummed as it carried the cabin away down the hill. The released end of the rope snaked up farther and farther until it eventually passed over the rail again and fell in an almost straight line down the hill below him. He began pulling it in, coiling it between his elbow and his wrist as he retrieved it, then finally stowed it back in his rucksack.
He took a moment to dust the snow off his clothing, then looked up again at the dim shapes of the gondola cars passing overhead. He allowed himself a small grin of satisfaction.
“This is going to work just fine,” he said.
And turning, he began to trudge up the hill to find his skis.

 

J
esse Parker awoke in an instant and sat up straight in bed.
“Damn!” he said. “He wanted us to find it!”
It was chilly in the large room that served as both sitting room and bedroom in his small cabin. The wood-burning stove in the corner was damped right down. There was only a faint glow from the thick, heatproof window in the door. He shivered and reached for a sweater tossed on the chair beside the bed.
It was after three o’clock in the morning. A half moon had risen over Rabbit Ear Pass and its pale light, amplified by the snow all around, was pouring through the uncurtained windows of the cabin. Jesse made a mental note that the lack of curtains also contributed to the lack of heat in the room. Reluctantly, he peeled back the warm blankets and swung his bare legs out of the bed.
The boards of the floor were cold underfoot as he hurried to the stove and opened the bottom vent. There was a slight hesitation, then the dull red glow inside turned to a brighter orange flame. Quickly, he flicked open the door of the stove and tossed a couple of short pine logs in, then slammed it shut again. The flames picked up even more and he began to notice an increase in the heat radiating from the old potbelly.
He struggled into a pair of worn sweatpants and shoved his cold feet into some moccasins. Finally, he felt a little better.
He paced around the room, thinking through the idea. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he was right. He flicked on the lights and reached for the old black phone on the deal table that was the centerpiece of the room. He began dialing the sheriff’s office, then stopped, realizing that it was quarter after three. Lee would have gone home hours ago to her small cottage on Fish Creek Falls Road. He set the phone down again, picked up a battered, leather bound notebook that lay beside it and leafed through it for Lee’s home number. Finding it, he began to dial. He’d dialed three numbers when he paused again. After all, it was a hell of a time to be calling someone. Then he shrugged and continued. Lee was a cop. If you wore the badge, you had to put up with phone calls at inconvenient times. Besides, Jesse wanted to discuss his theory. Wanted to see if she could shoot holes in it. He finished dialing the number.
He listened to the low, insistent burr that told him the phone was ringing at the other end. It rang eight times, then Lee’s foggy, muffled voice came through the earpiece.
“She’ff Torrens,” she slurred. “And this had better, by God, be very important.”
“Lee,” he said impatiently. “It’s me. Wake up.”
“ ‘Me’?” came the sleepy voice, but now with the faintest thread of venom in it. “ ‘Me’? Who exactly is ‘me’?”
“C’mon Lee, it’s Jess. Now wake up and get your brain in gear. I’ve had an idea.”
There was a long pause. An ominous pause, while Lee considered and discarded various unpleasant and painful things she might like to do to Jesse next time she saw him. Finally, she croaked at him, “Christ, Jess! It’s three fifteen!”
“Three seventeen,” he said, unmoved. “Now wake up.”
“I’ll kill you for this,” she threatened, but he heard a rustling of movement at the other end of the line that told him she was sitting up in bed. Then she said, “Hang on a minute. It’s freezing here. Let me get a sweater or something.”
More movement. More rustling of cloth. Then Lee, sounding more awake but no less displeased, was back on the line.
“All right, what is it?”
“Tell me, Lee, why do you think our killer dumped the dentist in the trash container?”
Lee’s temper finally took over. “Jesus suffering Christ on a bicycle, Jesse! Because he didn’t have a coffin handy, I suppose!”
Jesse refused to rise to her anger. “Come on. Think now.”
Her voice was heavy with sarcasm when she replied, “Well, let’s see: those trash containers are picked up and taken out to the county dump beyond Hayden, then the contents are dumped and bulldozed over. I guess that he was trying to hide the body, don’t you?”
“That’s certainly what it looks like,” Jesse agreed. Another flood of sarcasm rushed down the line.
“Well, I’m glad we agree on that! Now could I please go back—” He interrupted her. “I said that’s what it looks like. And, of course, all the pickups and the dumping are done automatically, aren’t they? Chances are, no one would spot the body during that process, right?”
She breathed heavily, then said with great control, “Right.”
“So …” he said, continuing very deliberately. “That’s why the killer left our dentist’s hand hanging out through the hatch. He did it on purpose. He wanted you to find the body!”
“What? Are you crazy? Why would anyone want the body found if they’d just pulled off a murder?” The anger and the sarcasm were gone now. She was wide awake and listening, although she couldn’t see how he’d reached his theory.
“Think about it, Lee,” he said eagerly. “You kill a man and dump his body in a trash container, right?” He paused for an answer.
“Right,” she said. “Go on.”
“Now, that body was pretty much on the floor of the container, correct? The trash was on top of him.”
“Pretty much,” she agreed. “There was some trash already in it when he was put in there, but not a lot.”
“Right. So, except for maybe a few inches of trash under him, he’s on the floor of the container? So how does his arm manage to stand up at a forty-five degree angle so that his hand can be caught halfway up the hatch?”
There was a pause. It hung there on the line between them. Finally, Lee began to answer, slowly, “Well … he maybe got it caught on something when he …” She stopped.
“On what, Lee? Remember, he would have put him in through the hatch. The hatch was open. So there was nothing there to stop the arm just flopping down beside the body. Now maybe if that hand had been caught down near floor level, that might have been accidental. But think on it! Where did those cops say the hand was?”
“It was halfway up the hatch. You’re right, Jess. I can’t see any way that it would have stuck up there waiting for the killer to close the hatch on it.”
“Unless he held it there and jammed it in the gap when he closed the hatch.”
Again, another silence that stretched on and on. Finally, Lee had to ask the question. The obvious question.
“But … why?”
And Jesse had the obvious answer. “Because he wanted the body found.”
It was obvious. It just didn’t make any sort of sense at all.
“Damn,” said Lee, with considerable feeling. “I think you might be right.”
“That’s sure as hell what it looks like, isn’t it?” said Jesse, with a strange sense of relief that Lee hadn’t found some obvious, unnoticed flaw in his line of reasoning. Jesse hated being wrong when it came to an investigation. Hated it with a passion. That was one of the qualities about him that had made him such a good cop. On those few occasions when he had been proven wrong, he went out of his way to find the correct answer next time around.
He picked up the base of the old phone now and carried it back to the bed. He sank down on the lumpy old mattress and pulled the covers over his legs again.
Finally, Lee replied, “I’m damned if I can see any other way his hand could have been caught way up there. The sonofabitch wanted us to find that body.”
“He wanted us to know someone had been killed,” Jesse amended slightly. Lee took that on board, then nodded. He couldn’t see her but somehow, he knew at the other end of the line, she was nodding slowly to herself.
And she was. “Okay, Jess,” she said. “So where do we take it from here?”
Jesse thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Nothing much we can do about it at the moment,” he admitted. “You’ve put a request in to the Minnesota State Police and the FBI to see if Howell had any sort of record, or if they had any sort of idea why someone might want to kill him, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Lee replied. “Did that first thing this morning. Expect them to get back to me sometime tomorrow. Forensic boys from Denver are flying up to take a look at the crime scene too.”
“Maybe they’ll turn something up,” said Jesse without a great deal of conviction. “Anyways, not much you can do now until the morning.”
He yawned and stretched. He was feeling tired now. The sudden surge of energy and adrenaline had gone. The blankets felt very welcoming.
Lee said, in a measured, ominous tone, “Nothing more I can do until morning, you say?”
“That’s right,” Jesse yawned again. This time, Lee heard him. “Might as well go on back to sleep, Lee,” he said.
“Well that might be a little hard right now, Jess. Tell me. The forensic boys aren’t coming till tomorrow. The FBI and the Minnesota Police won’t be getting back to me till tomorrow. Is there any goddamn reason why you couldn’t have waited till then?”
Jesse heard the venom in her voice now. He held the phone away from his ear, looking at it curiously.
Finally, he put it back again and said in an injured tone. “Well hell, Lee, I thought you’d want to know about it right away.”
The only answer he received was the sound of Lee’s phone as it was slammed back into its cradle. That simple message spoke volumes to him. He thought it might be a good idea to avoid the sheriff the following day-at least until the afternoon.
SIX
T
he Minnesota Police had no idea why anyone might have wanted to murder Alexander Howell. Lee spoke to the police chief from the small town where Howell had lived for the past seventeen years. Chief Morrison was almost apologetic that he couldn’t offer some skeleton from the past for Lee to hang the case on.
“Just a very ordinary man, Sheriff,” he said after they’d exchanged greetings and Lee could finally ask if he had any information at all on Alexander Howell.
“Aged forty-four. Had a small dental practice here in town. From all I hear, he made a reasonably good go of it. Nothing special. Nothing outstanding, mind you.”
“Were you one of his patients?” Lee asked, hoping that maybe she’d get a personal angle on Howell. The answer dashed those slim hopes.
“Not me. There’re three other dentists in town and Howell’s surgery was way the other side from me.”
“Any professional jealousy? Maybe he’d argued with one of the others over patients? Anything like that?”
“Can’t help you there either. They all seemed to get on just fine. Seems like there was plenty of work for all of them. They even used to get together for a night out once every couple of months.”
Lee frowned. She was grasping at straws but that was all that was being presented.
“Is that usual?” she asked. There was a slight hesitation from the other end and she knew that Chief Morrison felt she was grasping at straws too.
“Well, I don’t know how it’s usual or not,” he said, “but it’s pretty understandable, I would have thought. Dentists are a little like cops, aren’t they?”
“How’s that?” she asked, not following his line of reasoning.
“We-ell, they know their patients dislike ’em, stands to reason they’d get together socially once in a while to tell each other their troubles.” He paused, then added in explanation, “Same way we cops do, without civilians around.”
“I guess so.” Lee sighed. “Anything else? He married? Got a girlfriend? Anything like that?”
BOOK: 01 Storm Peak
8.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

No Stone Unturned by India Lee
Love Jones For Him by Loveless, Mia
The Satan Bug by Alistair MacLean
Love May Fail by Matthew Quick
Some Like It Wicked by Hawkeye, Lauren
A Cup Full of Midnight by Jaden Terrell
All That's Missing by Sarah Sullivan
Alpha Alpha Gamma by Nancy Springer