by Dave Stanton
“Bullshit,” I muttered. Ask anyone who’s had booze problems if they’re fully recovered and it’s easy to spot the liars—or those still in denial. My problem drinking was maybe five years past, but I still sometimes suddenly longed to take happy hour into extra innings. Or maybe pull a double header, close a bar, stagger out and weave home at 2:00 A.M., and drink an ice-cold six-pack for breakfast. Then out to a bar again, with a bindle of Colombian flake tucked in the foil of a pack of hacks, and really work on those demons. Kill some brain cells and stop giving a shit. Drink until the angst is gone and replaced with dry heaves and the shakes.
Those were my old days, the memories not so distant, but I was nowhere near the class of some I’d known over the years. Like my old party buddy Gardner, who loved booze so much that whenever he got a break from his wife and kids, he’d rush to the liquor store and pack his pickup truck with booze and start pounding double-fisted. To him a case of beer and a fifth of hard liquor in a day was nothing. It made him happy as a pig in shit to be drunk, but when the family was around he sobered up in a hurry. His wife had grown up around violent alcoholics, and she did not tolerate drinking. I could never figure out why she’d married him.
Of course, for many, turning the habit on and off is not an option. I once knew a man named Joe Lane who was a wonderful talent on the guitar. Wrote some of the saddest and most haunting love songs I’d ever heard. The songs were about the one woman he loved, who left him because he was a drunk. After she left, he turned his drinking up a notch, and his friends staged interventions, he went to rehab centers, he did stints in the county jail. He always returned to drink as soon as he possibly could. He drank every day before his liver gave out and he died penniless and wracked in pain. Never drank the hard stuff, just beer. But he drank lots of it. Said he liked the way it tasted.
No doubt I didn’t have it as bad as some, and I seemed to drink less as I got older. For the most part, my thirst was no longer prone to run amuck. But my confusion and frustration over the case was eating at my resolve to stay sober.
“Bullshit,” I said again. Instead of fogging my brain with alcohol, I needed to organize my head, check my thought process, stick to the fundamentals, get creative. I wanted to think about the case in a linear way, like moving in a straight line from point A to point B. But the lack of clues kept forcing me to restart, to pursue different lines of inquiry. As a result, I felt I was in a maze, one that might lead nowhere. In the meantime, the murderer of two women was running free, and I was being paid good money by a grieving parent for not doing much more than floundering about like a fish out of water.
I blew out my breath and wished I had a cigarette. There was nothing on the radio but static and commercials, and by the time I passed the little communities on the west side of the lake, it was full dark. The fundamentals. One, the killer had to know Galanis. Likely, Galanis knew him, too. Why the hell else would the victims be the two women Galanis had just slept with?
It was time to stop fucking around and go talk to Galanis. If he weren’t a high-ranking cop, I would have grilled his balls first thing in the investigation. And if the right answers weren’t forthcoming, turn the screws until he talked. But since he was a cop, hard-assing him would probably do nothing but land me in jail. I’d have to play it different.
As for the angle on the backwoods expert, it seemed half the population of the Lake Tahoe area might be capable of taking a body into the woods at night. But capable was one thing, and actually choosing to do so was another. I still thought the killer had to be a proficient backcountry man, but I needed to narrow the field. Chasing down extreme winter athletes was one approach. But celebrity daredevils who may or may not be in the country? A better bet might be focusing on ski patrollers. As a group, they were all trained on gurneys and snowmobiles. Given that Valerie’s body was found not far outside a ski resort, the idea made sense. I’d start at Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley, and then hit the South Lake resort. How many certified ski patrollers worked in Tahoe’s dozen ski resorts? A hundred? Two hundred?
When I got home, Candi had stoked the stove and a smorgasbord of food from Zeke’s was on the table. I had one small drink and we ate, and then I took her into the bedroom and undressed her. I went at her body like a man starved, and we had raucous sex, switching positions, panting, her climaxes loud and long. When we finally slowed, she hovered above me, her dark hair lying just above her pink nipples, her hips still gyrating slowly.
“What got into you, cowboy?”
“I don’t know.” Then, before I could consider my words, I said, “I think I love you.”
“Of course you do, silly.”
12
At six thirty, the morning was pitch black and ten degrees above zero. I huddled in my jacket and drove out of my neighborhood and through the silent town. There was no wind, but the weight of the air made me certain a storm was coming.
I stopped at the traffic light at the Y and turned right, banging over a pothole. Then it was miles of darkness through the tall trees, broken only by the white pierce of my high beams. I sipped from a steaming cup and there was no sound except for my tires humming on the road. It wasn’t until I’d driven all the way around the lake and into Tahoe City that the first pale hint of dawn appeared. The dark gave way reluctantly, but when I parked at Alpine Meadows it was light enough to see the clouds coming in from the west, thick and roiling and battleship gray.
The lodge doors were locked so I hiked around to the back, where the chairlift to the top of the mountain was already running. A pair of large snow tractors were grooming a run midway up the face, the lights atop their cabs burning into the cold. I checked my watch and it had just turned seven thirty, but the back doors were locked. I was ready to return to the front of the building when the door opened and the head of Alpine’s Ski Patrol, the man named Ken Sato, stuck his head out.
“Good morning. Come in and get some coffee if you like.”
“All right.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Me neither, when my alarm went off at five thirty.”
Five patrollers were milling about inside. Two held drills with three-foot auger bits attached. Between them, a bundle of metal poles and orange plastic fencing rested against a wall. Another man lugged a toboggan across the floor. The other two studied a computer screen on the ski rental counter.
“Listen up, guys,” Sato said. “This is Dan Reno, private eye from South Lake. He’s investigating the girl who was found dead over there. He wants to ask a few questions. So stop what you’re doing for ten minutes.”
The men laid down their gear and assembled near the computer. They were all guys in their twenties. Ten minutes. Have to make it a group interview.
“What happened, guys,” I said, “is someone strangled a girl and dumped her body overnight about eight thousand feet up in the backwoods outside the ski resort in South Lake. Over on the Nevada side. This happened very early the day before Christmas.”
“Near Got Balls?” one said.
“Yeah. You’re familiar with the area?”
“Sure, I’ve skied it.”
“Has anybody else?” I said, looking from face to face. Two said yes, two said no.
“You’re all trained on snowmobiles and know how to maneuver a gurney in the snow, right? How hard would it be to transport a body out there at night?”
“A bitch.”
“And dangerous.”
“Stupid,” a third said. “No one would do it unless they were desperate.”
“My theory is a ski patroller did it,” I said. I tried to catch each of their reactions. A smirk, a shrug, some blank stares.
“Have you heard of anybody into backwoods snowmobiling, or skiing, at night?”
“Nope,” one said, and the rest shook their heads.”
“Okay,” I said, and tried to smile. “I don’t want to be a headache, but could you all write your names and phone numbers, and where you were on the evening o
f December 23rd, and the early morning of December 24th?”
They could have said no. Or write fake names and numbers. But Ken Sato said, “Let’s help him out, men,” and one found a piece of paper and began writing.
• • •
I spent the remainder of the morning bouncing between Alpine and Squaw Valley, where at 8:00 A.M. I found the ski patrol manager. He was a helpful sort, and though I only spoke to three patrollers, the manager provided a list of the names and numbers of all twelve of his team. Then I returned to Alpine and spoke with another four patrollers when the late shift started at ten, and then caught three more at Squaw a little before noon. I also drove through the employee parking lots at each resort, looking futilely for a Ford Ranger.
Still, not bad for a half-day’s work, though none of the patrollers or the other employees I’d spoken to recognized any of the men who’d been at Pistol Pete’s. I looked over the list of the twenty-one patrollers I’d compiled, and drove fifteen minutes north to Truckee and found a bar and grill on the main drag, one popular with tourists, but not on a wintery Tuesday; I was the lone customer at the bar. I ordered a turkey burger and watched a football program and just as the food arrived my cell rang.
“Yeah, this is Brent Corrigan, returning your call.” The ski patrol manager from South Lake.
“Right, thanks. I’m Dan Reno, looking into the Valerie Horvachek murder. Could we schedule a time to talk?”
“Be happy to. You want to come by the resort about four?”
“That works.”
I tapped my fingers on the bar. My plan to put together a list of every ski patroller in the region was making good progress. And if any of them owned a Ford Ranger, I’d have a real suspect. Next on my list would be Mount Rose ski resort, up on the top of Route 431 outside of Reno. About an hour-and-a-half drive from here. I ate fast, and while I waited for the check, a man came to the bar and joined a couple that had sat shortly after I did.
The couple struck me as locals. The woman had rosy cheeks and a little ski-jump nose, and her hair was tossed and wild in a way that made me think she’d just got out of bed and hadn’t necessarily been sleeping. Her companion was a short fellow with a crooked smile and a round chin. Their voices had been a murmur, but the volume picked up when a second man arrived. He was six feet, his blue eyes framed with a sunglass tan. He smiled while he spoke, and the woman laughed and stared up at him, while the other fellow fidgeted and tried to inject himself into the conversation.
The bill came, and I left cash on the bar and walked outside, listening as the woman’s laughter trailed me out of the building. I stopped at my truck. A man’s laugh, deep and carefree, had replaced the woman’s. The snowbank surrounding the parking lot was shoulder high and streaked with dirt inside the spiral patterns left by the blades of a snow removal machine. I stared over the bank at a boulevard lined with old bars, hotels, and shops selling T-shirts and retail artwork. The sky was heavy with rolls of gray and the sounds from the street seemed muted. I started to get in my truck. Then I stopped and punched a number into my cell phone.
“Good afternoon, Dan,” answered my friend at University of Reno, ex-biker Albert Bigelow.
“Hello, Albert. Is that European professor still at the college, the psychologist?”
“You must be talking about the Count Unger von Zenz.”
“Count?”
“Yeah. A descendent of Austrian nobility. Lives in a mansion in North Reno. I drove by it once. Looks kind of creepy from the outside, but they say he has Rembrandts hanging on the walls.”
“I’d like to ask a shrink some things about the case I’m working on. You think he’d be a good guy to talk to?”
“Could be. His specialty is dark stuff. Darker the better. He spent years working at a state hospital for the criminally insane in Colorado. You want to talk the psychology of a murderer, he’s your man.”
“How can I reach him?”
“Hold on, I’ll check his class schedule.” A pause, then, “Looks like he’s lecturing right now. Class ends in an hour.”
“What room?”
“A-100. Our big auditorium. If you’re facing my building, go two buildings to your left.”
I thanked Albert and roasted the tires out of the parking lot and onto Interstate 80. The road was clear, but the wind had kicked up and the clouds overhead were ominous. I drove east at eighty-five, my speedometer bouncing off a hundred on the long, straight down-hills. The same down-hills where I got pulled over when I was a teenager for going one-ten. If I recall, I’d ripped up the ticket and tossed it out the window to impress the girl I was with.
Just as I crossed the border into Nevada, the first snowflakes danced silently across my windshield. My foot stayed heavy on the gas until I reached Reno and turned off on 395 and ran into snowplows and traffic. Swearing, I weaved through the slow-moving cars until I came to the exit for the college.
The count’s lecture was scheduled to end as I jerked to a stop in the university parking lot. I jogged through the campus and found the lecture hall. The door was open and a swarm of students filed out. I went in and saw a middle-aged man standing at a podium facing the hundreds of now empty seats rising to where I stood. Even from the back of the hall, I could see the man’s posture had an aristocratic bearing. A group of students surrounded him, and he seemed to be answering questions, but when I got closer, I saw he was referring most of the questions to a younger man next to him, perhaps a teacher’s aide.
The count wore slacks, a brown sports coat, and a white button-down shirt. He was of average height and neither fat nor thin. The skin on his face was tanned, but so uniformly it appeared unnatural. His cheek bones and jaw line were all right angles, and his blond eyebrows slanted downward over his greenish eyes, creating a tragic effect, as if years of dealing with sordid circumstances had left him in permanent despair.
“Excuse me, Professor Unger von Zenz?” I said, after the last student left. He had not acknowledged my presence while I had been waiting, and he had his briefcase in his hand and was eyeing the exit.
“Yes.” Brusque, impatient. An important man. Used to dealing with underlings and naive questions.
“Dan Reno, private investigations. I’d like your help in profiling a murderer, one who committed a double homicide I’m investigating.”
He stopped and his eyes panned me, his expression sharp. “Thank you, Robert,” he said to his aide, who quickly gathered his things and climbed the stairs to the doorway.
“A local case?” the count asked.
“Yeah. Two women murdered. One on Christmas Eve, the other on New Year’s Eve. Both hit over the head, then strangled.”
“Raped?”
“No.”
“Mutilated?”
“No.”
He rested his briefcase on one of the foldout desktops attached to all the chairs in the auditorium.
“Tell me more details, please.” He had an accent, but not one I could clearly identify. A cross between German and Russian, perhaps.
“Both of the woman had just been seduced—or rather, had consensual sex—with a police captain who has a reputation as a prolific ladies man. They seem to have been abducted upon leaving his residence.”
“Did the women know each other?”
“No.” He stood with his hands at his side and his lips were bloodless against his skin.
“Have you eliminated the police captain as suspect?”
“Not entirely. But let’s say so, for the sake of argument.”
“As you like.” He paused for a brief moment. “Have you considered the killer may be a woman?”
“A woman? Why?”
“A jealous lover, spurred by the policeman.”
“The bodies were transported post-murder. I think it would take a strong individual to do that. Unless it was an unusually strong woman, I don’t think so.”
“A gay lover, then. Outraged at not being chosen over the opposite sex.”
I repress
ed a smile. “There’s no indication the police captain has any gay tendencies. He seems entirely focused on women. Blondes, in particular.”
The count regarded me silently. He did not blink or take a breath.
“Does the policeman have a son?” he asked.
“I…I don’t know.”
“Has he been married?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and felt a rush of blood crawling up my neck. These were simple questions, obvious questions. They were questions I should have been able to answer.
“He may have a son who resents that his father invests all his time in womanizing,” he said, his voice dispassionate. “Or, one who’s jealous his father enjoys many women, while he does not.”
“That’s an interesting angle.”
“Sexual desire is a vast component of deviant psychology. The need for sex, especially among the younger, is second only to the need for food and shelter. When sexual gratification is unavailable, for whatever reason, serious emotional turmoil may ensue.”
“As in, if I don’t get laid, I’m gonna go crazy?” I said, but immediately regretted my flippant tone.
The count’s expression didn’t change. “That’s a simplification,” he said, and if his intention was to make me feel like a simpleton, it worked.