Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

  She attached the photo to a larger sheet of paper, fed it and the details sheet into her fax, checked the return number on the fax sheet from Routt County and punched it in. She waited for the metallic shriek that told her the faxes were connecting, then hung up the receiver and watched the sheets of paper roll into one side of the fax and out the other. Technology, she thought, was a wonderful thing.

  It might have been an even better thing if it had provided Routt County with a fax that could receive two messages at once. Because as Carrie Tolliver was sending the details of Anton Mikkelitz through, Annie Dillon was attempting to fax a file on Wilson Purdue to the same number. She sighed with frustration as the busy signal beeped back at her. She broke the connection, hit the redial button and waited.

  Just as the second sheet in Denver was feeding into Carrie Tolliver’s fax.

  Again, Agent Dillon heard the mocking tone of the engaged signal. It was a sound that seemed to be designed specifically to annoy, she thought. She let it beep for several seconds, then broke the connection again. Her finger was reaching for the redial button once more when the fax rang. She started with surprise, then realized that the function display panel on the machine was registering “Receiving.” The first of an eighteen-page report on new office communications procedures was coming in from Washington, DC. She saw the cover sheet as it rolled out, read the legend “page one of eighteen,” and sighed in exasperation. She could have left the fax machine on auto redial but she didn’t know that. She picked up the Purdue file and returned to her office. Routt County would just have to wait a little longer.

  FORTY-FOUR

  There was something wrong. Lee knew it. She could sense it, feel it and see it in every line of Jesse’s body. He was ill at ease with her, and his gaze slid away from hers when they met in the parking lot outside the Safety Building.

  “So, where were you last night?” she asked, trying to keep her voice easy. That was when Jesse’s eyes had refused to make contact with hers. He suddenly noticed that one bootlace wasn’t sufficiently tight, dropped to one knee, undid it and made a production of re-tying it, getting it just right.

  “Last night?” he said, then replied with a question of his own. “Were you trying to reach me last night?”

  She hated this. She’d actually begun the conversation quite innocently. She’d assumed he’d gone out for a beer or a meal at the Tugboat. All she wanted to do was to bring their relationship back to normal. She’d realized after she’d hung up on him the night before that she’d overreacted to the situation. She’d spent the next hour wondering why the thought of Abby had made her so defensive, so much on the alert. Then, around eight, she’d phoned Jesse to apologize for her attitude. To set things right between them again.

  And got nothing but an unanswered ringtone.

  She’d tried again around nine with the same result. After that, she’d gone to bed early and laid awake till around one, feeling like a fool. She’d made up her mind that, first thing in the morning, first chance she got, she’d set things right. Just start up a normal, unimportant conversation to let Jesse know things were fine between them. And to give him a chance to let her know the same.

  And then, damn it, before she could stop herself, she’d picked the one topic that made her sound as if she were checking up on him. Where were you last night? Jesus! she thought, what a question to ask him. It smacked of accusation. And now, just to make it worse, it seemed that Jesse had been somewhere, with someone, that he didn’t want to discuss. She tried to lighten the subject, made her voice very matter-of-fact, tried to make it sound unimportant.

  “No. Just called you back around eight. Figured you’d gone out.” She gestured to the Book Store Coffee Shop on the corner, determined to get off the subject of Jesse’s evening. “Want to grab a coffee? The muffins should be just coming out of the oven right about now,” she added with a slightly forced cheerfulness.

  Jesse chose to ignore the invitation, and the opportunity to change the subject. He seemed to come to a decision. He rose to his feet, and this time, met her gaze. His eyes were a little angry she thought.

  “I went out,” he said flatly. “I took Abby to dinner.”

  And there it was. Their eyes were locked. She didn’t want hers to be searching for an answer, but she knew they were. And she saw the answer in Jesse’s anger, his stubborn refusal to accept the sidetrack she’d offered. She shrugged, tried to look casual.

  “Fine,” she said. “I guess she deserved it after the good PR she gave us.

  “I guess she did,” he said.

  The smile was locked on her face. She couldn’t let it slip, couldn’t let on that she knew. He’d taken Abby out. They’d had dinner. They’d fucked. She felt like a gargoyle with that ridiculous smile plastered to her face. They’d fucked? Why not think of it as “they’d made love”? Maybe it was more than just physical. Maybe there was still a spark there and the situation had fanned it back into a flame. She nodded several times, meaninglessly.

  “Well …” she said, finally. “Coffee?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll take a rain check,” he said. “I’ve got to go back to square one, start going through the list of suspects again.”

  “I guess so,” she agreed, glad that they were finally talking business, glad she could unfasten that idiotic smile and put it away again. “I’ve got a few calls to make. I’ll see if I can give you a hand in an hour or so, maybe review what we’ve got so far.”

  He nodded heavily. “Ain’t much,” he said. “I’d like to know where that Purdue fellow has got to in the last few years though. He’s our best hope at the moment.”

  They mounted the back stairs and went inside. Lee breathed a sigh of relief to be in out of the cutting wind. She loosened the zipper of her jacket.

  “Thought you were going for coffee?” he asked as they reached the door to the conference room he had claimed. She shrugged.

  “Maybe later. Remembered I had a few too many things to attend to.” She turned away heading for the end of the corridor and the door to her own office. “I’ll catch you later,” she said back over her shoulder. He nodded, said nothing.

  He stood for a few seconds, hand on the doorknob, watching her walk away. Her long-legged stride had a feline grace about it. Below the short waistline of the jacket, her behind stretched the denim of her jeans into a perfect, rounded shape. He felt a surge of desire for her, then shook his head in self-disgust.

  Jesus! Can’t you make up your goddamned mind? Angrily, he flung the door open and went into the conference room, shutting the door behind him a little more forcefully than he’d intended.

  He slumped into the nearest chair and stared moodily at his notes on the whiteboard. The photos of suspects and victims were taped along the bottom of the board. He noticed one gap in the photos and leaned forward to peer closer. Mikkelitz, he noticed dully. The former paramedic from Denver. He was sure he’d put through a request to the fire department for a copy of his ID photo. He shrugged. Probably got lost in someone’s in tray he thought. He made a mental note to call Denver later and put in the request verbally.

  He guessed that the next step would be to take all the ID photos and canvass the witnesses he had available, to see if any of them looked familiar. Mrs. Hollings would be the best chance, he thought. At least she’d seen the killer’s face, if only for a few seconds. But he’d also try the lift attendants and the gondola attendants who’d seen the mysterious cross-country skier. Maybe they’d remember something. Maybe one of the photos would trigger a memory.

  Maybe.

  Maybe hell would freeze over one day.

  Damn Abby! Why did she have to come back now, just when he and Lee had finally got themselves sorted out.

  He loved Lee. At least, he thought he did. No, he was sure of it. Almost sure.

  So, he asked himself, if he loved her, if he was so sure, how come he’d spent the previous night screwing Abby till the early hours of the morning? His groin hardened again at
the thought of it. What did he feel for Abby? It was physical, sure. He had the evidence of that between his legs. Hard evidence, he told himself grimly.

  But there was something more than just a physical attraction. Maybe it was history. He’d loved her once, he knew that. Maybe he was falling in love with her again. Maybe she really had decided to give up her ambitions for a network spot. They’d talked about that and she certainly sounded genuine.

  Still, he cautioned himself, Abby sounding genuine and Abby being genuine were not necessarily the same things.

  Complicating matters, he did believe that she loved him. That made it difficult to assess his own feelings for her.

  All he knew was, whenever Lee’s level gray eyes looked into his, he was sure that she could see images of him betraying her with Abby. He knew he’d hurt her. Badly. And he’d never wanted that.

  Miserably, he put his head into his hands. He’d never wanted to hurt Lee, he’d just wanted to fuck Abby three or four times.

  “Jesus,” he said to himself.

  There was a light tap at the door. Wearily, he raised his head, leaned back in the chair, then realized that this position made his physical arousal a little too evident and hunched forward, elbows on the table.

  “Yeah?” he called, “Come on in.”

  For some reason he was expecting Lee, maybe because he’d just been thinking of her. He was a little relieved when Denise entered, a couple of sheets of paper in her hand.

  “Fax for you, Jess,” she said, dropping the sheets on the table in front of him. “From Denver Fire Department,” she added.

  He brought his mind back to the investigation with an effort.

  “Oh, fine. Thanks, Denise,” he said, rubbing his eyes with forefinger and thumb. Denise looked at him critically.

  “Late night, Jess?” she asked. His eyes were red-rimmed, she noticed, and assumed it was lack of sleep. He shook his head. Last thing he wanted after telling Lee he’d taken Abby to dinner was talk around the office about him having a late night.

  “Just couldn’t sleep, Denise,” he smiled tiredly. “Got a few things on my mind.” He indicated the fax on the table, and the whiteboard full of notes, photos and fact sheets. Denise nodded sympathetically

  “I can imagine,” she said. “Get you a coffee if you’d like one?” she suggested, and his smile widened a little.

  “I’d probably kill for one, honey” he said and she smiled.

  “No need to go that far. Just black?”

  “Just black.”

  She nodded and slipped out, closing the door softly behind her. Idly, Jesse inspected the ID shot that Carrie Tolliver had finally sent through by fax.

  Anton Mikkelitz was a reasonably good-looking guy apparently in his mid-thirties with a thick head of blond hair. There was nothing outstanding about him. No scars. No distinguishing marks. No swastikas tattooed on his forehead. No sign around his neck reading “Serial Killer. Keep clear.”

  He rose, moved around the table to the whiteboard and taped the photo in position.

  Now everything was in its place. Everything was complete. And he was still nowhere.

  Then a thought struck him. Of course, everything wasn’t complete.

  He reached for the phone, checked on one of his yellow legal pads for the FBI’s number and punched the buttons.

  Agent Annie Dillon’s mind was slowly turning to oatmeal as she tried to compare the list of real aviation spares with the false ones. The parts had serial numbers up to thirteen digits long, with sub-classifications and model categories added to that. The variations between real and counterfeit were absolutely minimal and they tended to occur anywhere through the serial number. Just keeping track of them was enough to make an agent weep, she thought. But she’d already isolated one likely distribution center in Topeka, and now she thought she was onto a second in Oregon.

  The phone beside her rang and she answered it irritably. For a few moments, she wondered why a deputy sheriff from Colorado would be calling her. Then she remembered the information request that she’d tried to fax through. She hesitated guiltily.

  “Oh Jesus, I’m sorry Deputy Parker,” she said. “I’ve been really snowed under here.”

  “I know how it can be.” The voice on the other end of the phone was friendly and unhassled. If he’d been at all argumentative, she would have probably told him to take a flying leap and hung up on him.

  “As a matter of fact, Deputy, I tried to fax that sheet through a while back and your line was engaged. I meant to get back to it but I completely forgot. I’m real sorry I’ll send it through right now.”

  The deputy paused a moment. “No rush,” he said finally “I’m just heading out for an hour or so and it’s a long shot anyway. Send it through when you get a moment.”

  She glanced at the tables of figures on the screen of her computer, hazarded a guess at how much longer she’d want to work at them before she was driven screaming into the rain outside.

  “Forty minutes, no longer,” she promised. “I’ll send it through in forty minutes or so.”

  “That’ll do just fine,” Jesse told her. He broke the connection and she hung up. She turned back to the computer, then stopped, shuffled through the papers on her desk until she found the forgotten dossier and placed it conspicuously on top of the pile.

  She didn’t plan to forget it again.

  FORTY-FIVE

  When the fax about Wilson Purdue finally came through, Jesse was out doing what cops spend most of their time doing: pounding the pavement.

  He’d gathered up the photos of the suspects on his list—the possible suspects, he corrected himself morosely—and had gone to interview the small list of witnesses that he had available.

  Maybe, he thought, there was something in one of the photos that might trigger a memory. A subconscious thought or idea or fact that was lying there buried, just waiting for a small, not-too-well focused ID photo to release it.

  He’d also included a couple of completely unrelated photos in the small pile that he’d gathered. It was a control system that he’d used many times before, when checking on eyewitnesses in Denver. Eyewitnesses, really were the worst witnesses of all. Most people make it a practice not to take notice of the appearance of strangers.

  Sad to say in this modern, caring world, noticing strangers is not always such a great idea. Making eye contact with strangers has led to people having their skulls parted with tomahawks, or their bodies torn apart by high-powered bullets, or ripped with knives.

  As a consequence, most people go through life making sure they don’t notice people around them. Until something happens—and then it’s too late.

  Jesse understood how witnesses could feel embarrassed by the fact. To stand and watch a mugging, or a murder, or a beating and then have to admit that it was the event that drew the attention, not the detail of the perpetrator’s height, size, coloring or distinguishing marks, was none too easy, he knew. A person in that situation could feel like a damn fool.

  And to compensate, all too many witnesses would try to make any available aid to recognition fit the facts. If a perpetrator had been short, fat and swarthy and an eyewitness was shown a photo of a six-foot-tall Nordic blond, more often than not, the witness would discard his vague memories of the event until he would say with absolute certainty that, yes officer, this is the man I saw.

  Otherwise, reason asked, why would the officer be showing me the picture?

  For that reason, Jesse always tried to have as many different photos as he could. It reduced the chances of the witnesses trying to second-guess the investigator. So, along with the photos of Wilson Purdue, Anton Mikkelitz, Ned Tellman and Oliver Prescott, he carried small snapshot photos of old friends-a ski instructor from Copper Mountain and one of the detectives from his old squad in Denver. It rounded the pile out a little.

  So far, none of the photos had struck a chord. He’d called on John Hostetler first. Jesse liked Hostetler. He’d gotten to know him as a noddin
g acquaintance, during his time with the ski patrol. The elderly lift attendant welcomed him warmly looked obligingly through the photos, then shook his head sadly.

  Strike one, Jesse thought.

  Next up to bat was the lift attendant who’d been on duty when Harry Powell, the marketing consultant from North Carolina, had been left slumped in the Storm Peak chair. That killing, Jesse thought, showed a pretty thorough understanding of the working of a ski mountain.

  Any lift attendant would have to be distracted by the sight of a passenger who failed to unload. Passengers like that were the bane of attendants’ lives. Go-rounds, as they were called, meant the lift had to be stopped, then backed up, then stopped again, while the unfortunate person was allowed to dismount. And chairlift stoppages meant disgruntled paying customers. What’s more, each lift on the mountain was automatically monitored, so a record of stoppages was kept each day. As a consequence, lift staff watched for go-rounds like hawks, and any attendant who had two or more in a week was usually in for a torrid interview with the lifts manager.

  Under those conditions, Jesse was pretty sure the lift attendant in question, Clive Wallace, would have taken no notice at all of the other rider on the chair, who’d skied off into the trees.

  And he was right. Morosely, he wondered why he had to be right on that particular item. Wallace stared blankly at the six photos, then shook his head.

  Strike two.

  It was Randall Hollings’s wife who made the first positive identification.

  Her husband was still recovering in the local hospital. He checked his notes and confirmed that she was staying at the Torian Plum condos, overlooking the lower slopes of the mountain. He called the condos, found her and arranged to meet her.

  Emma Hollings was eager to help. Her initial, angry reaction to Lee had been the result of shock, nothing more. As the days passed and she realized how lucky her husband had been, and how tragically Walt Davies had died, she had calmed down. Now she was willing to do anything within her power to help the Routt County Sheriff’s Department in its hunt for the killer.