Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

  “Good cops, tough job” was a whole lot less likely to impress the network than “Hick cops fuck up.” Jesse knew it. And if he did, he was sure that Abby knew it as well.

  He shrugged, stopped gazing at the phone and moved to the kitchen, where a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s was waiting on the bench. He poured himself a slug, thought about adding ice, decided it was unnecessary, and sipped at the smooth fire of the liquor.

  He wondered if Lee was all right. It was sometimes hard to tell what a person was really thinking when you were talking on the phone. Jesse liked to be able to see a person’s eyes when he was talking to them. Eyes found it difficult to lie. If you could see the eyes, he felt, you could see what the person was really feeling.

  The phone rang. Taking his glass with him, he crossed the room and picked up the receiver, expecting it to be Lee, calling him back after dealing with whoever it was who had called on her.

  “This is Jesse,” he said.

  “So it is,” Abby replied. “I guess I’d know that voice anywhere.”

  Ready to hear Lee’s voice, he was taken aback.

  “Oh, hi there,” he said lamely. He could hear the smile in her voice as she replied.

  “Hi there? I bust my buns singing the praises of the Routt County Sheriff’s Department on network television and all you can say to me is ‘Hi there’?”

  “Sorry, Abby,” he said, recovering a little. “I was sort of expecting someone else to call, I guess.”

  “Lee?” she asked, her tone light and seemingly unconcerned. He wondered if he’d been wrong about the possibility of jealousy between the two women—at least on Abby’s part.

  “Yeah, well, I was speaking to her earlier and we got cut off, you know,” he said.

  “So, did she see the piece?”

  He knew that, at heart, reporters were just like any other performers. They all needed praise for their efforts. He guessed that was fair enough. They got their asses kicked often enough too.

  “She saw it, yeah,” he said carefully.

  “And?” she pushed gently.

  “And… great!” he said, forcing the enthusiasm a little, and wondering if Lee had thought it was great. He decided to get off that uncertain ground. “I thought it was great too.” This time he could be sincere. “I was going to call to thank you,” he added.

  “You ‘were going to call,’ ” she said, just a hint of disbelief in her voice. “How often does a girl hear that little phrase?” She laughed softly to let him know she was joking—just a little.

  “I’m sure you don’t hear it too often, Abby,” he replied seriously. There was a second or two of silence before she continued.

  “Not often. Just from people I … care about,” she said. He said nothing to that. There was another silence, this one stretched a little longer. Then, finally, she broke it. “Would you really have called me, Jess?”

  He hesitated a second, considering his answer. Then he said, truthfully, “Yes. I would have called, Abby. It was a good piece and we owe you.”

  “We?” she repeated, teasing slightly. “Just who is we, Jess?”

  “All of us in the sheriff’s department,” he said evenly. But she wasn’t going to let him get away with it quite as easily as all that.

  “That includes you, of course?”

  “Of course.” He wasn’t sure where she was going with this. He wished she’d drop it. But she wouldn’t.

  “So, in that case, you owe me, as well as all those others, right?”

  “Well, I guess I do, Abby” he said, keeping his tone light, trying to make the conversation a joke. But there was an undercurrent here that he wasn’t comfortable with.

  “Right,” she said briskly, springing her trap. “I guess if you owe me, you can settle that debt with a good dinner. How does that sound?”

  “Sure,” he said, still trying to keep things nonspecific. “Any time at all.»

  “Tonight,” she said triumphantly and he tried in vain to back off

  “Tonight, Abb? Well, I’m not sure about tonight. I’m up here in the cabin and it looks like it could snow anytime soon …” He let the sentence hang, hoping she’d take the hint. Naturally she didn’t.

  “Oh come on, Jesse!” she said, a slight edge creeping into her tone. “Surely we can see each other just once for dinner? We’ve hardly said two words to each other all the time I’ve been here!”

  “We said plenty yesterday—” he began. But she wasn’t letting him get away with that.

  “That was work,” she cut in briskly. “I mean talk. Catch up on old times. Tell me how you’ve been doing. Hell, Jesse, you know damn well what I mean!”

  “Well, maybe tomorrow night,” he stalled, but again she cut him off.

  “I’m heading back to Denver tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight’s the only time we’ve got. Now come on, Jess! I won’t bite you.”

  He hesitated again. Part of him did want to see Abby Part of him always did. But he knew that when he did see her, he always ended up confused. She was a breathtakingly beautiful woman and she knew how to use her looks.

  He knew too that she still felt a strong attraction to him. Those two facts made a dangerous combination. He knew he shouldn’t really see her tonight. But he felt his breath coming a little shorter just at the thought of doing so.

  Besides, he thought, he did owe her. The department owed her. And somehow, he didn’t see Lee being prepared to settle the debt by buying her dinner. He shook his head angrily. It didn’t do to think about Lee when he was talking to Abby.

  “Okay,” he said abruptly, before he could change his mind. “Why the hell not?”

  A small gurgle of laughter echoed down the line.

  “How could a girl possibly refuse such a gallant invitation?” she asked.

  “Give me half an hour,” he said, now committed to the idea. “I’ll pick you up at your hotel. 11

  “No,” she said quickly. “I’m just heading out for a workout. You know where the gym is at Sundance Plaza?”

  “I know it,” he said. There was a gymnasium, complete with indoor running track and pool.

  “Pick me up there at seven thirty” she said.

  “Okay” he said. “Seven thirty it is. Where do you want to eat?”

  “Surprise me,” she replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “Somewhere reasonably expensive.” She paused, then said, only half joking, “Not the Tugboat, okay?”

  He laughed. “Okay. The Tugboat is out.”

  “Any good music in town this week?” she asked. He knew by good music she didn’t mean classical. One of the few areas of agreement they shared was a love of country music.

  “There’s a tolerable bluegrass band on at the Barn,” he suggested.

  “They do a mean steak there too, as I recall?” Abby said, and he had to agree.

  “The meanest,” he said. “Let’s hit the Barn then.”

  “You got it,” she said. “See you at seven thirty.”

  He waited, listening to hear her hang up. Then he set his own phone down in the cradle thoughtfully. He picked up the receiver again and reached for the old-fashioned circular dial. He dialed the first two digits of Lee’s number, then stopped. Then firmly set the receiver down again.

  He felt vaguely guilty. Then, realizing he had nothing to feel guilty about, he felt angry.

  Then he felt guilty again.

  FORTY-ONE

  He sat through the report with a mounting sense of disbelief. At the beginning, he’d made sure that he didn’t show any of the sense of anticipation he was feeling. It wouldn’t do to have Mrs. McLaren, or any of her other guests, get the idea that he was in any way pleased about the way the sheriff’s department, and that long-legged deputy in particular, were stumbling and fumbling along in his wake.

  He’d assumed a thoughtful expression as the elderly landlady had turned on the big color set in her parlor. She always watched the six o’clock local news from Denver. Sometimes she might miss the
later network bulletins, but the state news always held her attention.

  Tonight, of course, even more than usual. Because tonight there was going to be a special report on the killings that had happened right here in Steamboat Springs. Two other guests, both elderly men, had quietly taken seats in the parlor to watch.

  “It’s that Abby Parker-Taft doing the report too,” she’d told him with a certain air of confidentiality. “She’s almost a local girl you know. She was married to one of the local boys here a few years back. ”

  Mrs. McLaren was a faithful viewer of the morning talk show on which Abby was co-anchor. She watched every morning. It made her feel that somehow Abby was an old friend.

  As the report came up on-screen, he allowed himself the small celebratory gesture of popping the top on a can of Coors. None of the other people in the parlor noticed the gesture. Or if they did, they didn’t read anything undue into it. As Abby began her preliminary remarks, he raised the can to his lips in a silent toast to the upcoming public ridicule of the Routt County Sheriff’s Department.

  Except it never came. He watched in puzzled silence at first, as Abby refrained from criticizing Sheriff Torrens. He thought that maybe she was saving the coup de grace till later in the piece, building a picture of a fair-minded, evenhanded report before she stuck the knife in. Then, as the report progressed, and Jesse Parker appeared on-screen, with Abby’s voice-over detailing his experience and record as a cop, he realized that the report was going to be a whitewash.

  He drank a little faster, gulping the beer. It didn’t help to notice that Mrs. McLaren was nodding her head wisely whenever Abby referred to “hardworking cops, waiting for that one vital piece of information that would break the case open. Without realizing it, his grip had tightened on the almost empty beer can, crushing it out of shape.

  He felt angry and cheated. The news was a lie. The report was a farce. He’d had the cops chasing their own tails for the past two or three weeks. They knew nothing now that they hadn’t known at the beginning of the whole thing. They had gotten absolutely nowhere with their investigations. They had made no progress.

  He’d laughed to himself the day before, at the news of the farcical capture of the petty criminal who’d been stealing liquor and cigarettes from convenience stores in the area. He’d been shot at, apparently beaten up—he didn’t for one moment believe the story about the suspect breaking his jaw in a snowmobile crash—all because that damn fool sheriff and her cretinous deputy thought they had cornered a murderer.

  Now, according to this broadcast, that arrest was presented as groundbreaking, the result of first-class police work, and not the dumb mistake that it really was.

  “They were married, you know,” Mrs. McLaren was saying. He didn’t catch the words the first time, glanced up at her, hastily wiping the look of anger from his face.

  “Say what, Mrs. McLaren?” he asked. The landlady repeated her former statement, this time amplifying it to make sure he understood clearly.

  «They were married: Jesse Parker and that Abby Parker-Taft. Couple years back when he was down in Denver. Then they broke up and Jesse drifted back up here.”

  He nodded to himself. Maybe that explained things. Maybe that was why that blond bitch was going so easy on the local cops, trying to make them out as hardworking heroes instead of the ham-fisted fuckups that he knew them to be.

  “Shame, isn’t it?” Mrs. McLaren was saying. “I don’t know that young folks today really try to keep their marriages together, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Murphy?”

  He’d learned that whenever Mrs. McLaren had that philosophical tone to her voice, it was wisest to agree to anything she said. Otherwise, the result was a long and usually exceedingly boring discussion.

  “I think you’re right there, Mrs. Mac,” he said, forcing a tone of interest into his voice. “My pa always said, when he was younger, divorce just wasn’t an option. ”

  The landlady nodded agreement. “Too true, Mr. Murphy,” she said. “Why, my husband and I, we had our rough patches. There were times we could have just let go and said, ‘The heck with it, let’s get divorced.’ But folks just didn’t do that in our day. There’s just too much divorcing going on entirely these days. ”

  “It’s the children who suffer too,” he added shrewdly, anticipating that this would be her next tack. He’d found that staying in agreement with someone like Mrs. McLaren was a good safeguard against having her ask too many questions about his background, or becoming too interested in finding out more about him. When you agreed with people, he’d found, they tended to believe they already knew enough about you.

  “That’s the truth, Mr. Murphy,” she said. “That is the sure enough truth. ” Then she added, “Though Jesse and that Abby girl never had no kids that I heard of.”

  They lapsed into silence again, watching the screen.

  The report was running to its end now. They watched as Abby promised the viewing audience that the killer would be caught. He had to restrain his lip from curling. Then the blond reporter was back to sign off.

  Obviously the report on air pollution in Denver held little interest for Mrs. McLaren. She folded her hands in her lap and nodded agreement with the sentiments expressed in their report.

  “They’ll catch him too, mark my words. She knows what she’s doing, does Sheriff Torrens. ”

  Perhaps unwisely, and against his normal practice, he decided to risk a mild disagreement. He was angry. The report was biased, one-eyed and inaccurate. It told nothing of the truth. It cunningly disguised the fact that he was the one who was setting the pace. Parker and the sheriff were simply dancing to his tune—and getting nowhere. He had killed, repeatedly, and left no clue, no trace that the police could follow up. It was that frustration that led him to disagree with her. Even so, his instincts made it seem like a reluctant disagreement.

  “Still and all,” he said, “you have to wonder if they’re any further along than they were last week. They sure don’t seem to be. ”

  She shook her head dismissively at this idea. “They know what they’re about. They’ve probably got a whole pack of clues they aren’t telling us. ”

  For a second or two, he wondered if she might be right. If the police might know something and not be letting on. Then he thought of the tired, defeated look about Lee Torrens, and the lack of conviction in her eyes. It was the eyes that told you every time. No, he thought. They knew nothing. He decided to stir the pot a little.

  “Well, maybe so,” he said, making sure he sounded reluctant to say it. “But you have to wonder about a sheriff’s department that can’t catch a bunch of boys on snowmobiles. They can’t do that, how they going to catch a murderer?”

  She turned to look at him with new interest.

  “Those boys been back again?” she asked. A few nights back, a group of teenagers on snowmobiles had careered through the snow-covered fields behind the boardinghouse, shattering the night with the roar of their engines and the shouts of the boys. Mrs. McLaren had been suitably scandalized at their behavior. He shrugged now.

  “Heard them again last night,” he admitted.

  Mrs. McLaren frowned. “Well, I swear I didn’t. ” She turned to one of the others. “You hear those boys last night, Carl?” she asked.

  Carl, a mournful-looking, long-faced clerk at the Rabbit Ear Motel shook his head doubtfully. “Can’t say I did,” he said, then, after a moment’s hesitation, “Maybe I did at that. Heard something late last night, that’s for sure. ”

  Murphy smiled to himself Tell Carl that something had disturbed his sleep and it was odds on he’d agree with you. What Carl had probably heard was what he heard every night: his own thunderous snoring.

  “You should have said,” she told Murphy, forgetting Carl. Mrs. McLaren felt a responsibility for her guests’ well-being and comfort.

  “Nothing much you could do, Mrs. Mac,” he said. “Job for the sheriff or the town police really. ”

  Now she was indignant at th
e thought that one of her guests was being inconvenienced and the local police forces were doing nothing about it.

  “You should complain,” she said, nodding vehemently to confirm the thought. “You should complain to the sheriff’s department. After all, it’s your right to do it. ”

  He spread his hands in a gesture that showed his unwillingness to be a burden to others.

  “They’ve got enough on their plate. Besides, don’t seem right for me to do it. I’m a visitor in your town after all. ”

  Just as he’d hoped, she took the bait he’d dangled out there in front of her.

  “Well, I’m no visitor and I’m not having my clientele”—she savored that word. She loved referring to her “clientele”—“being woken up in their beds by a bunch of boys hoorahing around on those noisy darn machines.” She stood up, full of self-importance and the dignity of a citizen. “I’ll complain to Sheriff Torrens myself,” she said, “next time I’m passing by the Public Safety Building. ”

  “Oh now, Mrs. Mac, no need for you to go bothering yourself and the sheriff …” he began, and let the sentence hang. As he knew she would, she leapt into the breach.

  “Mr. Murphy, you’re my client and I have a duty to you. It’s no bother to me. And if it’s a bother to the sheriff, well maybe she should start looking for another job. ”

  And so saying, she swept out of the room to begin preparing supper. Carl looked at him, long faced, and shrugged. He mirrored the gesture. Inside, he laughed quietly. The blond bitch on TV might have let the sheriff and her deputy down lightly, he thought. But at least now Mrs. McLaren would be there to make their life miserable.

  It was almost an even trade.

  FORTY-TWO

  Abby had chosen her ground carefully. It was no accident that she had asked Jesse to pick her up at the gym. Originally she’d considered suggesting that he call for her at her hotel room, but she knew he’d be on his guard there, ready to resist any invitation to come in for a drink.