Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

  Once, years before, she’d hit a rabid dog at over two hundred yards from this shooting position but, she remembered grimly, the dog hadn’t been moving. There was no problem with the gun reaching the distance. The .44 Magnum is a high-velocity load and her Blackhawk had the extra accuracy of a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. The only limitation in this situation was the shooter’s ability to keep a steady hand and she figured that she’d given herself the best position for that. The knee rest was steadier than a two-handed shot, and it allowed her to set the pistol a little farther away from her eye, in effect making it a longer gun and reducing the angular variation in the shot.

  Now she could see the Polaris, just ten yards or so from the edge of the frozen lake. Fortunately, there was an upward incline for a few yards and it slowed the little machine down. She centered the blade foresight on a point five yards ahead of the machine and, just before the snowmobile had reached the point, she stroked the trigger lightly.

  The original specification for a Magnum load came from the Highway Patrol. The requirement was for a handgun that had the hitting power to stop a moving car. The .357 Magnum, the first load of its kind, coupled a comparatively enormous charge with a hard-jacketed, high-penetration slug. Tested by the Highway Patrol, the .357 Magnum slug had gone clean through the trunk of an Oldsmobile, ripped through the rear seat, front seat and firewall as if they weren’t there, penetrated the cast-iron block of the engine and jammed one of the pistons on its downstroke.

  Effectively stopping the car.

  The slug Lee fired was also hard-jacketed. It was a heavier caliber and it had an even more explosive wallop behind it. And it was hitting something a good deal lighter than an Oldsmobile.

  The thin fiberglass cowling of the snowmobile barely slowed the big .44 projectile. Then it slammed into the aluminium alloy of the single-finned cylinder head and blew an enormous chunk of it into aluminium dust. The gaping hole in the side of the head released the rapidly moving piston from its tightly contained world of controlled combustion and let it blow out to one side in a sudden explosion of gas and smoke. The connecting rod shattered, shards of metal exploded in all directions and the drive train virtually destroyed itself in the space of half a second.

  As the drive track seized solid, the snowmobile slammed to a halt as if it had hit a brick wall. Miller shot forward, his face slamming into the instrument binnacle, shattering his jaw and knocking him unconscious.

  He rolled sideways off the wrecked snowmobile, blood from his battered face staining the snow bright scarlet.

  Lee maintained her position for a few seconds. The enormous recoil of the gun had slammed her right arm almost vertical again and it was second nature for her to re-cock the hammer for another shot on the return movement. She held the long barrel lined up on the inert figure in the snow until she was sure there was no likelihood of him moving. Then she came to her feet and, with gun still ready, began to pick her way down the steep side of the hill, through the scrub, the stunted trees and the deep snow to where he lay.

  It took her over five minutes, sometimes sinking thigh deep in the thick snow. He was beginning to stir when she reached him, but was still only semiconscious. Grabbing the back of his collar, she dragged him through the snow a little closer to the wrecked snowmobile, then snapped her cuffs onto his right wrist. She looked for a suitable anchor-point on the snowmobile, found it in the support strut for the left front skid and clicked the other half of the cuffs shut on it.

  “Stay here,” she told the semiconscious man, and began to leg it back up the slope to where she’d left the Renegade.

  She was ten yards short of her car when she became aware of a familiar buzzbox whine of a small, worn-out engine at high revs. She stopped and looked back down the road toward the town. Jesse’s battered little Subaru wagon was rocketing toward her, seeming to rear itself up from the ground as he kept the pedal firmly nailed to the floor.

  She waited while he veered onto the shoulder of the road just past her and came to a halt in a welter of snow, ice and gravel. The driver’s side door shrieked open and he was out of the car and running toward her.

  He stopped a yard away, his eyes frantic.

  “Lee?” he said, staring at her arm in horror. “Are you okay?”

  She glanced down, realized for the first time that she had some of Miller’s blood soaked onto her sleeve. It must have happened when she dragged him toward the snowmobile, she realized. She grinned at him reassuringly.

  “It’s not mine,” she said. “I’m just fine.”

  She felt the relief radiating off him. He hesitated, then grabbed her in a bear hug, holding her tight against him and she thought how damn good it felt to have someone do that. Particularly him.

  “Jesus,” he said quietly. “I thought I’d go crazy when Denise said you were going after Miller on your own.”

  She leaned back in his arms, frowned lightly at him.

  “That is part of my job specification, you know,” she said and he nodded hurriedly.

  “I know. I know. You’ve done it all before. But now it’s different.”

  And she thought about that and decided that that felt pretty damn good too. Then Jesse was looking around, a question in his eyes. Before he could ask it, she gestured toward the dirt road leading back to the cabin.

  “He’s in there a piece, handcuffed to a snowmobile. I was just getting the Jeep to fetch him out.”

  “He’s alive?” Jesse asked, not caring too much if the answer was a negative.

  Lee nodded. “Got a broken jaw, I’d say. Other than that, he’s fine. Crazy as a bedbug, but fine,” she added.

  Jesse fell into step with her and they walked the remaining few yards to the Renegade. She fished in her shirt pocket for the keys and unlocked it. As she was doing this, Jesse looked at her curiously.

  “You break his jaw?” he asked, finally. She shook her head.

  “Snowmobile did that,” she told him.

  He nodded, digesting that piece of information. “What did you do?”

  “I broke the snowmobile,” she said simply and he nodded again.

  There really wasn’t any answer to that.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Miller, dazed and delirious with pain, was regaining consciousness by the time they got the Renegade back to the site of the crash.

  Lee frisked him, found no weapons. She unlocked the cuff holding him to the Polaris and together they half-led, half-dragged the groaning man to the Jeep.

  Lee tilted the passenger seat forward, and they heaved the injured man into the rear of the Jeep. It had been specially fitted out in the event that Lee might carry a prisoner there. There were several solid steel rings welded to the rear seat frame. Jesse snapped the empty cuff onto one of these, securing Miller once more.

  “You read him his rights?” he asked, climbing into the passenger seat. Lee backed and filled several times, turning the Jeep around in the narrow track, then fed in power slowly. The wheels spun a little, then the snow tires bit down through the snow, packed it hard and found purchase, and the Jeep lurched and crabbed its way back up the trail.

  “No point to it yet,” she said. “He’s so whacked out he can’t hear a word we say.”

  Jesse leaned down to peer up the slope to the point where Lee had fired from. He raised one eyebrow in admiration.

  “You shot from way up there?” he asked.

  “Didn’t have time to pick a better spot,” she replied evenly. He nodded several times to himself.

  “That was one hell of a shot,” he said.

  “I guess,” she replied, her attention on the snow-covered track before them.

  He looked at her with respect. Lee had a disturbing habit of hitting what she aimed at. Jesse glanced back at the prisoner. Miller was lolling on the metal floor of the Jeep, his eyes half-closed, blood streaming from the shattered jaw. Normally, Jesse knew, Lee wouldn’t shackle a badly injured man in the back of the Jeep like that. But this was the guy who’d kille
d Walt and, somehow, Jesse didn’t feel any sympathy for him.

  “So, what was it that put the finger on our friend back here?” he asked.

  “Walt knew him,” she replied. “The woman heard him say the name ‘Mike.’ Put that together with the facts you’d already dug up on him, then add in that one of Felix’s men actually ran into him in town a few nights ago and there you have it.”

  “A cop recognized him?” Jesse said incredulously. “Why the hell didn’t he think to tell someone?”

  “No reason why he should,” she replied. “We didn’t circulate a list of suspects. You were just asking around employers to see if any of them could shed a little light on things.”

  He realized she was right.

  “Then, when I got here, he was acting crazy, yelling at the trees and throwing things. Seems he got some idea that I was here and he tried to light out on the Polaris. I gave him one warning shot and he just kept going. That sort of clinched it. I figured if he wasn’t our man, there was no reason for him to run.”

  They’d arrived back at the clearing by the cabin. She eased the Jeep to a halt and opened the driver’s side door.

  “I guess we won’t have to look too hard to find enough evidence to tie him to the killings,” she said, leading the way to the cabin.

  Where she found how wrong she was.

  They were looking for rope—after all, they knew the killer had abseiled out of the gondola when he killed his first victims. But there was none. Nor was there any sort of tool that he might have used to force the gondola doors open.

  There was no rucksack. No cross-country skis. There was precious little but a duffel bag containing Miller’s clothes and a surprisingly large number of cases of beer and cartons of cigarettes.

  “Maybe he left his gear in a locker,” said Lee, a horrible fear growing in the pit of her stomach.

  “Maybe,” Jesse agreed. But he didn’t sound convinced. Lee swung on him defensively, hearing the doubt in his voice.

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, Jesse! If he wasn’t guilty, why did he light out like that? You tell me.”

  He shrugged. He was frowning at the stack of cartons by the wall.

  “This guy must be one hell of a heavy smoker,” he said. He flipped through several cartons, reading the brands. “Winston, Pall Mall, Marlboro … He doesn’t seem to stick to one brand, either, does he?”

  “Maybe he plans to sell them, not smoke them,” Lee snapped angrily, tossing the army surplus blankets off the old wooden bunk in one corner. There was nothing under them, so she dropped to her knees and peered under the bed, saw a gleam of metal and reached for it.

  “Oh Christ,” she said softly as she saw it. And suddenly she knew why Miller had so many different brands of cigarettes, so many cartons of beer. Suddenly she knew why he’d run when she’d appeared. Only guilty men run. She knew that. And now she knew that Mike Miller was guilty all right. He was guilty as all hell. He just wasn’t guilty of murder.

  Jesse heard the change in her voice and looked across the room at her, curiously. Then understanding dawned as he saw the crowbar that she’d retrieved from under the bed.

  “Oh Christ,” he echoed. They looked at each other, and both of them felt a racking surge of bitter disappointment.

  “He’s the 7-Eleven burglar,” Jesse said softly.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  They left Miller in a secure room at the hospital with one of Felix

  Obermeyer’s men on guard outside. The same young doctor had examined Miller. He looked harassed and overworked, and Jesse guessed that was exactly what he was. Doctors in ski towns in the middle of ski seasons often were, and this town was having a whole spate of exotic injuries in addition to the mundane run of breaks, sprains and twists from the ski fields.

  Miller’s jaw was badly broken in two places. The doctor had sedated him and he was unconscious now. He’d looked sidelong at Jesse and Lee when they’d brought the injured man in.

  “He could have used an ambulance with these injuries,” he said pointedly.

  Lee ignored the implied note of criticism.

  “Doctor, we were looking for a man who has killed four people. Don’t ask us to treat him with kid gloves, all right?”

  The doctor straightened, turned to face her again. “You may have been looking for a killer,” he pointed out, “but this isn’t him. This is just the guy who’s been stealing beer and cigarettes.”

  And, of course, there was no answer to that.

  “There’ll be a police officer on duty outside this room,” Lee said. “I’d appreciate it if you’ll let me know as soon as Miller is fit for questioning.”

  The doctor grunted. “Be sooner if he’d been treated properly on the way here,” he said, refusing to acknowledge the more placatory tone she’d used.

  Lee and Jesse exchanged a glance and left the doctor to it. Outside, they hesitated beside their cars, not sure what to do next.

  “I’ve got more steaks at my place. You planning on eating?” she asked. He nodded.

  “Eventually. Planning on a good solid drink first.”

  “Got that at my place too,” she said and he grinned at her.

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  A thought struck her. “Give me a few minutes. Got a couple of things I should tidy up at the office anyway.” She reached into her shirt pocket for her keys. “You can go on back to my place and wait if you like,” she suggested, sorting through the bunch till she found the brass Yale key to her front door. Jesse stopped her before she could detach it from the ring. He put his hand over hers, enjoying the contact.

  “No matter,” he said. “I’ll come back with you. Want to see if there’s been anything in from Washington.”

  “You still waiting on more news of that Wilson Purdue character?” she asked. He nodded, feeling in the pocket of his parka for his own keys.

  “He’s gone back to the top of our list as a prime suspect,” he said as he turned to his little Subaru.

  She followed him down 7th and across Lincoln, making a mental note to tell him that his right brake light wasn’t working as he stopped at the lights.

  The two cars wheeled into the parking lot at the Public Safety Building, one behind the other. Lee stepped down from the Jeep, waiting by the back door of the Safety Building as Jesse crossed the parking lot to join her. She noticed a Ford station wagon with a Channel 6 logo emblazoned on the driver’s side door. Jesse had to pass it to reach her and as he did, the passenger’s side door opened and a slim figure got out. The area lighting in the parking lot caught her pale blond hair, making it seem almost as if the hair was a source of light in itself. Lee felt her breathing tighten a little. She’d recognize that hair anywhere. She started toward the car as the woman spoke to Jesse.

  “Hello, Jess,” she said. The tone was warm, friendly, intimate. It was a voice that spoke of old memories, shared times, personal moments.

  Jesse stopped as if he’d walked into a glass wall. His face, to Lee, seemed unnaturally pale in the arc lights. He stood for a moment, without saying a word, staring at the beautiful blond woman a few feet from him.

  “Hello, Abby” he replied at last.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Abby glanced around the claustrophobic little conference room that Jesse had made his headquarters. She took in the pages of legal pads strewn across the table, the scrawled notes that covered the whiteboard. Her mouth turned up in a little smile.

  “I see you still like to work in an atmosphere of ordered chaos,” she said.

  Jesse didn’t reply for a second or two. When he did, it was simply to ask, “You like a coffee or something?”

  She leaned over to peer more closely at a note on the whiteboard, frowning slightly in concentration as she tried to make out his scrawl.

  “Your penmanship’s still terrible,” she said lightly. He didn’t reply and she looked from the whiteboard to him as he stood by the door, strained and uncomfortable. She knew then, instantly, that wha
t she’d suspected a few minutes ago was the truth. He’d been sleeping with Lee. As she realized it, she felt an irrational stab of jealousy.

  “Coffee?” he prompted, and she smiled again, nodding yes.

  “Love a cup. Cream, no sugar, thanks.”

  “I know,” he said, and she tilted her head to one side in mock surprise.

  “So, there are still some things you remember?” she asked.

  Jesse returned her look without any hint of a smile. “There are still a lot of things I remember, Abby.” He turned and left the room to fetch the coffee.

  In the small annex at the end of the corridor, Jesse poured a cup of coffee, added cream and started back toward the conference room. He didn’t pour a cup for himself. He paused at the door to the conference room, his hand on the doorknob, looking at the closed door to Lee’s office at the far end of the corridor. As if in response to his glance, the door opened and Lee emerged. She saw him, hesitated as if she might go back into her office, then decided otherwise and came toward him. She had her uniform jacket in her hand.

  “I’ll be heading home then,” she said to him. There was a strained, unnatural look to her. She seemed to be watching him closely, as if she were looking for some message in his bearing.

  “Been a hell of a day” he said, without any particular inflection, and she nodded.

  “How’re things with Abby?” she asked. Lee and Abby had met before, of course, and Jesse had reintroduced them a few minutes earlier in the parking lot. Pleading urgent business to attend to, Lee had left him with his former wife and headed for her office. Now she asked the question almost too casually. Jesse shrugged.

  “Well, she seems fine. Up here to do a piece for Channel 6 on our killer,” he added. That much he’d been able to find out from Abby in the short conversation they’d had to date. “You want to talk to her about it?” he added and Lee shook her head, not even giving the idea a moment’s consideration.

  “You do it, Jess. Your case.”