Storm Peak

by John Flanagan

  There was a long-line parka draped over the handlebars of the snowmobile and he was shrugging himself into it now, fastening the zipper clasps at the bottom and pulling the zipper up.

  “Where—” she began, but her voice betrayed her and the word was a cracked little sound. She swallowed and tried again. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Up the mountain a ways,” he said, leaning down to find the fuel tap on the two-stroke engine. He turned it to open and thumbed the tap once or twice to prime the carburetor.

  “I left some things up there the other day. We’ll go up and get them, you and me,” he said, and smiled easily at her.

  And right then, when he smiled, so friendly and unthreatening, was the moment Abby knew she was going to die.

  SIXTY

  The roadblocks were in place. One by one, the confirmations came in over the radio to the sheriff’s office in the Public Safety Building. As the last exit from Yampa Valley was sealed off, Lee gave a small grunt of satisfaction.

  “State Police are in position on 129 to Hahn’s Peak,” she said, setting the phone back in its cradle. Felix, standing by the large-scale wall map of the area, marked a final X on the acetate sheet that covered it.

  “That should just about seal it off,” he said, looking critically at the circle they’d drawn around Steamboat Springs. “He wouldn’t have got halfway that distance by now, less that old Dodge Ram has sprouted wings.”

  “Unless he’s switched cars,” Jesse put in, eyes fixed on the map, and the network of smaller roads they’d have no chance of covering. “Or unless he’s just holed up somewhere inside the circle here.”

  “Best we can do, Jess,” Lee said simply, and he nodded, acknowledging the fact.

  “I know it, Lee. It’s just that knowing it and feeling happy about it are two different things. I don’t believe our boy has ever planned to try to get out of the area.”

  Obermeyer shrugged. “You saying you want us to call in those roadblocks, Jess?” he asked. Jesse glanced at him sharply. Felix could be one damn sarcastic sonofabitch when the mood took him. He could also be supremely obtuse at times and Jesse wasn’t sure which quality had prompted the remark.

  “No. I’m not saying that, Felix. We’ve sure as hell got to go through the motions, just in case. But I reckon we’re going to find Mr. Mikkelitz somewhere close to Steamboat Springs.” He walked over to the map, stood in front of it, rocking slowly backward and forward on his heels.

  “That’s where all his activity’s been concentrated so far,” he said, almost to himself. “That’s where he’ll keep it going.”

  Lee joined him, looking at the map as if it could tell them something—almost as if she expected the scene of the next crime to light up somehow of its own accord.

  “You don’t think he’ll make a run for it, Jess?” she asked. The deputy rubbed one hand across his jaw before he answered.

  “He’ll make a run all right. But not the way we’re expecting.”

  “I guess he could even have a light plane stashed out to Hayden somewhere,” Felix offered. “We’re covering the commercial flights but he could fly private.”

  Lee shook her head. “Thought of that,” she said. “The tower isn’t giving any clearance to private flights out unless one of your guys out there gets to eyeball the pilot and any passengers.”

  “You think he’ll try to take Abby with him then?” Felix asked. He was way out of his league with this one. The town police usually dealt with traffic offenses, drunken tourists and domestic arguments in town limits. He asked the question of Lee, but it was Jesse, still standing, apparently engrossed in the map, who answered.

  “No. He’ll kill her first. Then he’ll get out,” he said simply. The other two cops looked at him. Both felt the same sense of horror at the matter-of-fact way he stated it. He met their gazes, looking away from the map for the first time in some minutes, and shrugged apologetically.

  “Only makes sense,” he said. “He’s been building up to something bigger every time; first it was a body in the trash; then one in the gondola; then he killed in broad daylight on the Storm Peak Express. And then tried it again when he knew we were waiting for him and watching the chairs. He’s been thumbing his nose at me”—he stopped, and amended the words, although it was obvious he still meant them in their original form—“at us, I mean, for weeks now. Then the other night he tried for Abby. I guess he knew that she and I were … connected.”

  Lee cut in then. “He’s not a local, Jess. And he could have been following her before he saw you.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But there’s maybe a dozen people in town could have told him. Or maybe he just saw us in Hazie’s and decided then and there to go after her. Anyway, the point is, he knows now.”

  “That’s true enough,” Lee admitted.

  “I said before, he’s messing with my mind.” He shook his head angrily. “Damn it. I should have known better than to let Abby plaster my face all over the TV And she should have known better than to do a whitewash on us,” he added.

  Lee cocked her head at him curiously. “You’d rather she’d done the hatchet job we were all expecting?” she said, and Jesse spread his hands in a gesture that just reeked of futility.

  “She might have been better off if she had,” he explained. “Don’t you see, Lee? These killings, they’re a gigantic ego trip for this guy. He’s flaunting them in our faces, saying, ‘Come and get me if you can.’ hen Abby made out that we had the whole thing pretty well under control and everyone had confidence in us, he simply had to do something about it.”

  He paused while Lee and the town police chief digested what he’d said. Then he added quietly, and with a chilling note of certainty, “That’s why he’s taken Abby. She did the report, so she’s going to pay for it. And she’s connected to me, so I’m paying for it too.”

  Nobody said anything. Jesse went back to staring at the map while Lee and Felix exchanged glances. They both believed him. Both knew he was right.

  “Well,” Lee said at length, “I guess we could start out by trying to find that taxi.”

  Felix’s entire force was already deployed on that task. In addition, of course, the state police and highway patrol had blocked all major roads surrounding Routt County.

  “Odds are he’ll have gotten rid of it by now,” Jesse told her. “It’s too damn easy to spot and he’ll know that.”

  “Maybe. But it’ll give us some idea what direction he’s taking,” she replied evenly. Jesse was like a wound spring, she knew, and with every passing minute, that spring was winding tighter and tighter.

  “I know where he is,” he said abruptly. “He’s on the mountain.”

  As he said it, he turned and headed for the door. Lee moved slightly to block him.

  “Jess? What are you talking about?”

  “Stands to reason, Lee. Everything he’s done has been centered on the mountain. Even killing poor Jerry Marrowes.”

  “That happened in town,” Felix put in, not understanding. Lee had seen the connection already and she answered him.

  “Maybe. But the only reason he killed him was to get the ski patrol uniform. And that took him back to the mountain.”

  Jesse nodded impatiently. “Exactly. And that’s where he’s headed now. Bet on it, Lee.”

  He started forward again and she put one hand on his shoulder, gently restraining him. “Just a minute, Jess, think this through. There’s no reason why he should take Abby there now. In fact, if he’s smart, it’ll be the last place he’ll go.”

  “Oh he’s smart, Lee. But he’s working off his own twisted sort of logic. If this revenge theory is right—and it sure looks that way now—then the thing he hates most is the mountain. It’s the center of the town. The whole reason for being.

  “So his final act is going to be there as well. It just doesn’t make any sense if it isn’t.”

  “You’re guessing, Jess. You’re only guessing,” she told him, and he met her gaze fran
kly and agreed.

  “That’s right. And that’s what ninety percent of police work comes down to. I’m heading up there now, Lee. He’s somewhere on that mountain and I’m going to find him.”

  She stood aside then to let him go. Then she asked the question none of them really wanted to face.

  “And Abby?” she said quietly.

  He hesitated. He knew the odds against Abby’s survival grew steeper with every minute that passed. But he had to stay positive.

  “With any luck, I’ll find her too.”

  Lee nodded, then held up a hand for him to wait. She went to the drawer of her desk and took out a handheld comm unit, tossing it to him. He caught it deftly.

  “We’ll stay here and monitor things,” she said. “You keep in touch with that. If you find him, call in and I’ll haul ass up there after you.”

  He looked down at the compact little radio, then up to her steady gray eyes. He nodded once, acknowledging her promise of support.

  “I appreciate it,” he said. Then, pulling on his battered leather jacket, he half ran down the hallway to the stairs.

  In the parking lot, he hesitated. His Subaru was wedged in its usual spot. But the worn out little engine and the suspect clutch didn’t fit with his mood of urgency somehow. Closer to hand was a Harley belonging to the town police. He walked quickly to it, noting that the keys were in the ignition. He gave a grim little smile. Cops were notoriously the worst people in the world when it came to vehicle security. He threw a leg over the big bike, turned the ignition on and thumbed the starter. There was brief electric whine, then the 1.2-liter engine caught and thumped to life, setting the whole bike vibrating gently beneath him. He racked the twist throttle once or twice to give it a perfunctory warm-up, slotted her into gear and dropped the clutch.

  The Harley’s engine note rose in a deep-throated surge and he peeled out of the parking lot, heading for the mountain.

  SIXTY-ONE

  The garage door was on a counterweight. Abby watched from her position beside the snowmobile as Mikkelitz heaved the big double door up, getting it moving so the counterweight could take over the effort. Daylight streamed in, drowning the cold glare of the fluorescent lights in the garage.

  He went a few steps outside, checking left and right to see if there was anyone watching. Apparently satisfied, he walked quickly back in, moving to the snowmobile.

  “Get on,” he ordered briefly.

  She hesitated. All her instincts were telling her that if she went with him, she was going to die. She couldn’t see any way out of the predicament. All she could do was delay things as much as possible. He looked closely at her, reading the beginnings of rebellion in her eyes.

  “Get on,” he repeated, calmly. Still she hesitated, unwilling to make the first move toward obeying him. Her eyes dropped from his and she never saw the blow coming.

  He hit her with a closed fist, flush under the cheekbone on the left side of her face. And he hit her hard.

  She screamed briefly with the shock and the instant flash of pain from her face, staggered with the force of the blow and fell across the snowmobile.

  Now she looked up at him. There was no emotion in his eyes. He watched her impassively. It was that, coupled with the unnecessary force of the blow, and the fact that he’d hit her as he would have hit a man, with a closed fist, that finally cowed her.

  Her eyes streamed with tears—brought on by fear as much as the pain. She raised her free hand to the spot where he’d hit her, felt the soft skin of her face swelling immediately into a bruise.

  He took a deep breath, an expression of rapidly dwindling patience, and jerked his head toward the snowmobile again.

  Her nose had started to drip and she wiped it with the back of her hand. He made a little movement toward her and she cried out in fear, shrinking back from him.

  “Scream all you like,” he said. “There’s no one to hear you. The place is deserted. Seems everyone left town on account of this Mountain Murderer.”

  She moved to the snowmobile and threw her leg over the saddle. He nodded approval.

  “Relax,” he told her. “I’m not going to hurt you unless you disobey me. Or try to hold things up like you were just doing.”

  He seized the tab of her parka zipper and tugged it up, closing the parka. “Cold out there on the mountain,” he said.

  He bent down, jerked on the starter cord for the snowmobile and the big two-stroke racketed into noisy life. Donning a pair of Ray-Bans with leather windshields clipped to the sides, he swung aboard the little vehicle and clunked it into gear.

  The hard rubber track made an ugly tearing sound on the concrete floor of the garage, and the front skids squealed on the hard surface as they slithered out of the garage. Then they were across the tarmac parking area and into the snow that the little bike was designed for and the noise fell away.

  He gunned the snowmobile up the narrow trail that Abby had noticed before. Crouched behind his broad back, crying silently to herself, she tried to take note of their surroundings, hoping that maybe someone would notice them, someone would see her plight and somehow tell Jesse.

  She tried to think of Jesse now—tall, quietly spoken and capable. She realized suddenly that it had only been his presence in the gondola that had saved her the previous night. Her skin crawled with the thought of what could have happened. Then, with a rush of terror, she realized that it was probably going to happen anyway, and soon.

  The snowmobile lurched as it hit a small ridge in the trail, canted downhill and, for a sickening moment, she thought it was going to roll and go sliding down into the trees. Her heart lurched, then settled again as he powered up and steered up into the slope. The cat track beneath her gripped the soft snow, compacted it underneath the hard rubber tread and gained good traction. They fishtailed slightly and he steered out of it.

  The trail wasn’t so steep here and he opened the throttle. The bare aspen trunks flashed by on either side and she was deafened by the sound of the two-stroke’s engine, slightly sickened by the oily smell of the exhaust. They slid and slithered in the soft snow, bouncing from one irregularity to the next. He was obviously a good rider, but she could sense that he was riding on the edge of control—testing himself, almost daring the mountain to beat him.

  From time to time, she thought she heard him say something as the bike lurched and skidded. She couldn’t make out the words, finally realized that there were no words—just grunts of triumph as he took on the mountain and won.

  Finally, they flashed out of the dim cover of the trees onto the open spaces of the lower reaches of the mountain. Below and behind her, there were rows of condos—on-mountain accommodations, the brochures called them. From several, wisps of smoke from the chimneys betrayed the fact that the residents weren’t skiing today, but taking it easy in front of the open fires and slow combustion stoves.

  There was a tang of woodsmoke in the cold air. Tears welled in her eyes as she thought how she’d always loved that smell as a girl. It was the smell of winter and holidays in the ski fields of Colorado. Now it would be one of the last smells she’d ever know.

  She thought of Jesse again and the tears flowed faster, then froze and hardened on her cheeks. She wiped them roughly with the back of her free hand, almost lost her grip as Mikkelitz suddenly gunned the motor again and skidded the snowmobile out onto the groomed snow of the Heavenly Daze run.

  There were only a few skiers coming down the run. This was the lower half of the mountain and, at this time of day, most skiers headed to the upper reaches. Mikkelitz ignored them, racing the snowmobile across the run, heading uphill at an oblique angle. One skier had to bail out in a hurry as he realized the careering snowmobile wasn’t going to give way. She saw him go down in a welter of thrown snow, heard him shouting abuse behind them.

  She looked around desperately, hoping for some sign of a ski patroller, someone who might notice Mikkelitz flouting the rules of the road and stop them. Dully, she recognized that
if that were to happen, the patroller would be dead within moments of their stopping.

  The slope was steepening now and she felt the motor straining as Mikkelitz fed it more power. But with two on board, the snowmobile couldn’t cope with a straight uphill run. He swung the head slightly downslope, looking for an access trail through the trees. They were going to have to zigzag up the mountain, she realized, using the maintained trails to get to wherever they were going.

  He cut left now, following one such trail across the top of Vertigo and Concentration runs. The steep, mogulled ski trails dropped away below them, then they were in among more aspens between Thunderhead and Arrowhead chairs. She could hear the clank and rattle of the old, slow chairlifts above her. Then the snowmobile nosed unexpectedly into a steep drift and slammed to a halt. She crashed forward, her face driving into the back of Mikkelitz’s parka. Able to brace himself against the wide spread of the handlebars, he’d absorbed the impact a lot easier. Now as she hit him, he drove forward as well.

  “Fuck!” he said, his voice cracking with rage. Roughly, he shrugged her back off him, swung off the bike and promptly went thigh deep in the snow.

  “Fuck!” he said again.

  The snowmobile had missed a turn and had buried its nose into the built up snow at the uphill side of the trail. The engine had stalled and she heard the loud ticking sounds of the overheated metal as it began to cool in the frigid air.

  Mikkelitz grabbed the handlebars and heaved sideways.

  The little vehicle was heavy, but he had gravity on his side. He heaved twice, then the snowmobile slid sideways, clear of the snow that had buried its nose cone. As it moved, he floundered in the deep snow, sprawling full length.

  He was breathing heavily from the exertion as he regained his feet. She didn’t dare meet his eyes. She knew he was on the point of snapping. He grabbed the handlebars and climbed back aboard, reaching down for the starter cord.

  He tugged. The engine coughed and refused to fire. Another attempt and a cloud of rich blue smoke shot from the exhaust.