Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

  “Tell him I’ll meet him at the weather station in thirty minutes,” he said. Jenny thumbed the talk button again.

  “Opie? Jess says he’ll meet you in the station at”—she checked her watch, then continued—“twenty after.”

  “That’ll be fine, Jess. See you there. Zero one out.”

  “Base out. Keep warm, Opie.” She grinned at Jesse as she added the last few words. Up the mountain the wind was cutting like a knife, dropping the temperature to well below freezing. Jesse thought ruefully of the long trek up the exposed slope to the weather station. Maybe he should have suggested that Opie meet him at the Four Points Hut farther down. Then he shrugged. He must be getting soft. Time was when a little walk uphill in the cold wouldn’t have phased him any, he thought.

  “Thanks, Jenny,” he said, heading toward the locker room behind her where he kept his skis, boots and ski-patrol uniform.

  “We’re here to serve, Jess,” she said lightly, picking up the paperback novel she’d been reading when he came in.

  In the locker room, he changed his jeans for the windproof GORE-TEX ski pants that were part of the uniform issue. Then he pulled the blue and yellow parka on over his plaid shirt. Not that he needed to go up in uniform, but it was proper cold weather gear and there was no point in freezing his ass off in jeans and a bomber jacket.

  He forced his feet into the hard, unyielding Lange boots. He hadn’t worn them in over a week and they felt stiff and unfamiliar. He stamped them once or twice to settle his feet in, wiggled his toes experimentally and wondered how the hell he could ever believe ski boots were comfortable, then clumped into the ski room to collect his Rossis and stocks.

  There was a one-way door from the ski room, letting out onto a metal grill staircase that led down to the gondola level. He clanged down it, clumsy in the forward canting boots, and headed for the gondola.

  The mountain at Steamboat Springs was separated into two parts. The Silver Bullet, as the gondola was known, served the lower half of the mountain. From the top of the gondola, at Thunderhead, Jesse skied down a short way to pick up the fast quad chair that ran up the second half of the mountain to Storm Peak.

  His patrol uniform let him skip to the front of the lines at the gondola and the chair. Not, he noticed sourly, that the lines were anything much to speak of. Normally, in a season like this, with excellent snowfalls and superb fresh powder conditions out on the mountain, he’d expect a lift line that took at least five minutes to move through. Today the lifts were barely populated.

  He took a four-seat chair to himself, noticing that other solo skiers were making sure they did the same. Nobody wanted to share with a stranger these days. Not since Harry Powell had got on the Storm Peak Express alive and come up stone cold dead at the other end.

  The chair clanked past a pylon and Jesse surveyed the tree runs below him. The killer had gone somewhere down there, he thought. The wind was blowing half a gale up here at the top half of the mountain and he pulled the hood of his parka up, tugging the draw cords tight. Tiny, frozen daggers of snow stung his face. He pulled the collar up farther, closing the gap between it and his goggles and shrank down into it, away from the wind.

  He skied off the top of the chair and turned left, poling to get as much momentum as he could, to get as far up the slope to the weather station as possible before his speed died and he was reduced to walking. Morosely, he thought that he should have borrowed a pair of cross-country skis from the patrol office. Their bases weren’t slick like downhill skis. They were designed for walking up slopes like this. Downhill skis were designed for just what the man said: downhill. He ran off the last of his speed and set into a dogged herringbone walk, splaying the skis out in a wide V-shape and setting the edges to get purchase against the slope. He glanced up into the driving wind. The weather station building huddled in the snow, a good quarter mile away. He sighed and kept on herringboning.

  It was a long, cold walk for not very much.

  Opie checked over the list of names. There were fewer on this list than the one Jesse had left with Ben Fuller. He shrugged. He could remember one or two of the people, but only vaguely.

  “I’ll have to check with the office, Jess,” he admitted. “I can’t really remember too much about some of these. They go back three or four years. Offhand, I don’t know why they were fired.”

  Jesse leaned near the woodstove that was kept burning in the weather station.

  “I’d appreciate your thinking about it, Opie,” he said. “Anything you come up with could be useful.”

  The patrol commander folded the sheet of paper and put it carefully into an inside pocket in his parka.

  “Of course, you could be barking up the wrong tree, checking ski patrol and ski schools for expert skiers,” he said.

  Jesse sensed a slight feeling of resentment. Opie didn’t like the idea that anyone who’d worked for ski patrol, even though he might have eventually been fired, could end up killing people in cold blood.

  “Thing is,” Opie continued, “most people who get a job for the season end up pretty damn good. Every second shift waiter on this mountain is probably an expert.”

  Jesse nodded agreement. “True enough, Opie,” he said. “But I guess I’ve got to start somewhere. And it gives me a sense of purpose to eliminate suspects in groups like this. Doing them all in one hit would just be too daunting.”

  “I guess,” said Opie, sounding unconvinced. Then he zipped the front of his parka closed and headed for the door. “I was going to head over to the East Face and check the snow there. Tad thinks it might be building up for an avalanche too. Care to come along?”

  Jesse hesitated, glanced at his watch. The afternoon was mostly gone. There’d be no one else for him to question until the morning and suddenly the thought of the stuffy windowless office at the Public Safety Building was decidedly unattractive. He tugged on his gloves.

  “Why not?” he said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  He leaned on the wooden railing of the terrace outside Hazie’s restaurant,

  I watching as the late afternoon sun dipped lower and lower over the Yampa Valley. In a few more minutes, it would be dark enough.

  From his position, he could see the endless stream of gondolas surging out of the upper station, swaying their way down the mountain. None of them were full. He could tell by the skis mounted in the racks outside the double doors. Some had three skiers, some four. A reasonable proportion had one skier only. That was what he was looking for, of course. He hadn’t ridden the gondola since he’d murdered Andrew Barret. He thought it might be pushing his luck—just in case he came up against the same lift attendants who’d been on duty that evening. Of course, he’d been heavily disguised, but you never knew what a person might remember. You never knew that you might not have developed some noticeable little piece of body language that could stick in a person’s mind. So he’d avoided the Silver Bullet. Until tonight. Because tonight he wanted to confuse that overconfident, cocksure deputy.

  They develop a pattern, the man had said, that becomes their signature. And then they don’t deviate from it. Well, tonight, he was going to deviate. Not so much that they might think there was another killer out here. But enough to make them stop and wonder if they were heading down the right track.

  He smiled to himself. He was sure that whichever way they were heading, it wasn’t the right one. He’d watched that long-legged deputy tramping all over town a few days back, trying to establish some link between the three men who’d died. Some reason why they had been selected, over the hundreds of other possible candidates.

  The smile broadened and he actually laughed softly to himself. The truth was, there was no link. There was no reason. They were available and that was all there was to it. There were in the wrong place at the right time to serve his need. So they died. He glanced westward again. The sun was balanced on the rim of the valley, dropping faster and faster. The shadows were deepening on the mountain below him. He turned an
d went back into the restaurant, passing through and down the stairs on the far side.

  Here, outside the building, the light was almost gone. He collected his skis from the rack by the double doors and waited, watching the last of the skiers coming down the short run that connected from the top of the Elkhead chair. Most of them peeled off to the right and headed for the higher reaches of Valley View run. But a few were heading into the gondola station, planning to download rather than ski down the second half of the mountain in the gathering dusk.

  The small numbers suited him just fine. That would mean no line waiting to load at the gondola station. So he could pick someone traveling by themselves, wait a few seconds for them to go into the station, then hurry in after them and board the same cabin at the last moment. And for them, it would pretty much be the last moment. He watched and waited and finally saw his chance. A girl in her early twenties. Not a very good skier judging by the uncoordinated way she was struggling up the slight slope to the gondola station stairs. She stopped a few yards short, breathless, and with evident relief, shoved her pole down into the release lever on the back of one binding, then another. Stepping clear of her skis, she bent and picked them up. For a moment, she juggled skis and poles, then got things organized and clumped up the steel mesh stairs, stamping her boots to clear them of excess snow as she came.

  She sensed his eyes upon her glanced across and gave him a tired grin, blowing a wisp of hair back from her forehead.

  “Why do we do it to ourselves?” she said wearily. He smiled, nodded and said nothing. She hitched her skis over one shoulder and walked, with the awkward rolling gait of a beginner in ski boots, into the gondola hut.

  He came to a decision rapidly. That would be the change he wanted. Three men killed, and now, a total change of pace. A young, attractive girl. That should stop any half-formed theories about some kind of homophobic campaign being waged. It should confuse the issue nicely, he thought, give the FBI and that damn deputy something new to think about.

  He waited a few seconds, then swung his backpack over one shoulder. He grabbed his skis and poles and followed her into the loading bay.

  He’d changed his outfit this time. He was no longer dressed and equipped as a cross-country skier. His skis were last year’s model Atomic carving skis—an intermediate level ski. People tended to notice experts and their equipment and today he wanted to be just an average Joe—anonymous. Similarly, he’d abandoned his cross-country parka and ski pants for a more stylish one-piece suit. Not too new and expensive. And so, not too noticeable. Just another average skier in an average outfit, with a small backpack slung over one shoulder.

  His abseiling rope was coiled in the pack, along with the mechanical ram he’d devised to force the gondola doors apart. Ironically, he thought, it was basically a scaled down version of the Jaws of Life instrument used to free trapped drivers from crushed cars.

  The jigger was in a pouch he’d sewn to the inside of his ski suit. He moved his elbow slightly to feel the reassuring hardness just under his left armpit. Now he was inside the gondola station, and he could see the girl, stumbling slightly as she climbed into one of the slowly moving cars. The lift attendant had taken her skis and was settling them into the rack. He’d timed it just about perfectly. The gondola cabin had another twenty feet to go before the doors closed and it swung onto the main cable.

  He’d make it just in time, and in the hurry to get his skis in the rack, the attendant would have barely no time at all to get a good look at him. His boots echoed inside the concrete and steel room, their sound dwarfed by the muted roar of the drive engine, the clunking and crashing of cabins coming off the main cable. They slowed onto the low speed detached circle, slamming into each other as their momentum, suddenly checked, caused them to swing wildly, their rubber collision strips saving them from any damage. He was alongside the cabin now, with barely ten feet to go. He raised his skis to shoulder height, aiming the butts at the squared off ski holder on the outside of the door, and started to drive them forward. He noticed the girl’s face in the gloom of the cabin, a pale blur turned toward him. Then a hand caught his shoulder and twisted him off balance. The skis missed their target and clattered awkwardly against the concrete floor and he stumbled, trying to recover in time to get them into the rack.

  It was too late. The doors had started closing. The cabin was accelerating. The pale blur of the girl’s face was barely visible now. He swung around angrily on the lift attendant, whose hand was still twisted in the fabric at the shoulder of his ski suit.

  “Hey, buddy!” he said, cold with fury. “Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sorry, pal.” The attendant’s voice was controlled and even. But his eyes were anything but apologetic. He released his grip now and stepped back a pace. He was big and athletic looking and he was ready for trouble, waiting to see which way the angry skier in front of him was about to jump. His right hand curled unconsciously into a fist. He pointed with his left to a chalkboard sign propped up near the head of the loading race. The words “No two people to a cabin” were chalked in rough capitals on the board.

  “Couldn’t send you down with just two of you in the cabin,” he explained. “Rule is one person, or three or more. No twos unless they know each other. ”

  “What? What the fuck is that all about? Since when are we doing things this way?” He was furious now. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of doing it differently this time. The more he liked the idea of leaving them a young, attractive, female body to find and puzzle over. The attendant shook his head, disclaiming responsibility for the sign.

  “Order of the sheriff’s office,” he said, with the air of a man who has repeated the same mantra over and over throughout the day. “Deputy Parker was up here earlier, making sure we keep to it. It’s for safety, okay?”

  He gave the angry skier a meaningful look. All staff had been cautioned about talking too much about the killings in front of customers. Specifically they’d been told not to excuse the new loading rules by pointing out that there was a serial killer loose on the mountain. He hoped the man would take the hint.

  “Parker?” said the would-be passenger. “He’s that tall guy from the sheriff’s office, was in the paper the other day?”

  The attendant nodded. “That’s right. If you want to complain to someone, go see him. ” He grinned slightly, sensing that the situation was calming down a little. “Sorry I grabbed you like I did but it was the only way I could stop you. The doors were about to close. You came out of nowhere. I didn’t even know you were here until you were trying to get your skis in the rack. ”

  “Yeah. Fine. No trouble,” the skier replied. He realized he was spending too much time here, giving the lift attendant time and opportunity to get a good look at him. “Just I’m in a bit of a rush, is all. ”

  He turned away, looking for another cabin. There were plenty to choose from. Most of the skiers coming in now had opted for a few drinks in the Thunderhead bars before heading down the mountain. Cabin after cabin was swinging out into the gathering night, empty.

  The attendant took his skis from him and led the way to the nearest cabin. Deftly, he speared them into the rack and stood aside as the skier boarded the cabin, stooping as he went through the low sill of the doorway.

  The cabin passed the automatic trip set above the cable. The doors sighed shut on their pneumatic pistons and he swung out into the dark. Two hundred yards below him, Julia Dietrich was humming an old Eagles song to herself. One day, thirty years in the future, she’d hum that same song to her twin granddaughters. And neither she, nor they, would have the slightest idea that the song was being performed courtesy of a big, athletic-looking lift attendant in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

  Jesse tilted the straight-back chair onto its back legs. The papers spread out on the table before him were blurring into one inchoate mass. He pressed the heels of both hands into his eyes and rubbed. He groaned softly to himself.
This was the part of a case that he hated. It was boring, unrewarding and soul destroying. It made digging ditches seem fascinating by comparison.

  He’d tramped the length and breadth of the mountain, stopping in at the ski school, ski patrol and the seemingly hundreds of bars, ski shops, restaurants, hire shops and ski tuning establishments with his list of names. Asking the same questions over and over again, trying to piece together some picture of the men who’d been fired from the resort over the past few years. Looking for that one, casually mentioned piece of information that might just make one name stand out from the others. “Oh sure, Deputy I remember him. He used to say that one day he’d come back here and stick a sharpened steel spike into people. That’s the guy for certain.” He shook his head to clear it a little, reached for the cup of coffee he’d poured a few minutes ago, took a sip and pursed his lips in displeasure. The coffee was stone, motherless cold. Those few minutes, he realized now, were closer to half an hour.

  He picked up the sheaf of notes he’d been compiling and began to check them again. There was pitifully little to go on. The former ski instructor fired by Ben Fuller was a standout so far. But instinctively, Jesse distrusted the lead. It had come too easily. It was the first name thrown up. He glanced at the name again.

  “Michael Miller, Michael Miller,” he muttered softly to himself. “Where are you tonight, Michael?”

  “You gonna start talking to yourself, it’s time you went home,” said a soft voice behind him. He turned, wincing slightly as his stiff shoulders protested against the move. Lee was standing inside the door of the conference room, leaning on the jamb and regarding him with a small frown.

  “Working late?” she asked unnecessarily. He glanced at his old Seiko and noticed, with mild surprise, that it was after eleven.