by Kathy Reichs
A waitress in a black Eat At Mattie’s tee, leather shorts, and Doc Martens plunked three mugs of coffee onto the Formica. Waited expectantly. I wondered what she’d do if I asked for tea.
“Hey, Carla,” Gass greeted her.
“Usual?” Carla shifted her weight. A fairly impressive maneuver. Gass nodded.
Carla turned heavily mascaraed eyes on me.
“Nothing, thanks.”
Slidell also stuck with coffee. Added Sweet’n Low. When Carla retreated, he went in hot.
“Someone took Brighton Hallis off the board on Everest. You know who?”
All color drained from below the dark stubble. “What? You mean, like, killed her?”
Slidell said nothing. Gass looked to me. Back to Slidell.
“You’re joking, right?”
“You think it’s funny?”
“No. Of course not.” Bobbing Adam’s apple. Eyes jittery behind the thick lenses. “Why? I mean, how?”
“Chop to the neck. You know anything about that?”
Gass gulped his coffee. Winced, as though scalded. “I thought she died of hypothermia.” Faintly.
“Apparently not.”
“But who would do that? She was by herself.”
“Was she?”
Gass shook his head. “I don’t know. I never made it above Kangshung Face. I was afraid of exhaustion and turned around.” Fingers to his lips, testing for a blister. “Most climbing deaths come from human error. Fatigue, ascending too slowly, ignoring the signs of altitude sickness, refusing to turn around. I freaked, I guess. Wasn’t going to let that happen to me.”
“Easy to turn around on someone else’s tab.” Slidell was hitting hard.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Little Miss Trust Fund footed your bill.”
“I didn’t ask her to do that.” Voice rising. “She insisted. Said she owed me for getting her through college.”
“How much?”
Gass looked up, as though receipts might be affixed to the ceiling. Back to Slidell. “An Everest pass runs $25,000 per, but we got a group rate. $70,000 for seven–five hikers, two Sherpas. A fully guided expedition runs upwards of $65,000 per person. A trip like ours, with support but no guides, tops out around $30,000.”
“So you owed Hallis thirty K?” Slidell was verifying what James had said.
“A little more. Everything costs, man. Your gear, your flight, your yak. Oxygen is five hundred dollars a bottle and you need six to summit. Each group chips in for base camp. Brighton was a champ at fundraising but everyone had to pony up.”
“Except you.”
“I could’ve paid!” Shooting forward in his seat. “I secured sponsorship before we left. When she changed her mind at the last minute and switched from a guided to an assisted trip, everyone thought it was because of me. But it wasn’t. The sponsorship would’ve paid. Going the cheap route was Brighton’s call.”
“What kind of sponsorship?” I was curious, suspected competition was stiff. Gass didn’t strike me as a mountaineering poster child.
“The Sure Foot Society. They’ve been incredibly supportive of my Yeti research.”
Slidell’s mug paused in midair. “Your what?”
“The abominable snowman. Bigfoot,” I translated.
“I prefer Sasquatch.” Prim. “Or Yeti. The creature is indigenous to the Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet. For me, the trip was less about scaling Everest, more about gathering proof.”
“Proof.”
“Of the creature’s existence. I’m a cryptozoologist.” Gass referred to a pseudoscience centered on the search for animals whose reality is questionable: Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Chupacabra. “I specialize in megafauna cryptids.”
“And you thought you’d run into Bigf— Sasquatch on Everest?” Was the guy for real?
“A sighting would have been incredible, but I was mostly compiling evidence. Interviewing locals, examining fur samples, scat, possibly finding a snowprint. Most print discoveries occur between six and seven thousand meters. So you can see why summiting wasn’t my priority.”
“Naturally,” I said. Slidell was taking in our exchange, mouth hanging open.
“Many have found physical evidence over the years. In 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary retrieved what he claimed was a scalp. Reinhold Meissner diaried that he killed a Yeti in 1986. A Japanese trekking guide reported a sighting as recently as 2003. They’re out there.” Vehement. “You can believe it. They are out there.”
As are you, I thought. Way, way out there.
Slidell rolled his eyes but, to my surprise, remained relatively reserved. “So where’s this sponsorship money now?”
“I used it to pay for my trip to Russia. Yeti sightings are emerging from a remote region of the southwestern Adygea Republic. Video and plaster casts of footprints. Amazing stuff. I had to investigate.”
“Brighton disappears, so does your debt.” Slidell leaned back, pooched out his lips, and folded his arms. “Maybe worth greasing a few climbers’ palms for the sake of an alibi.”
“What?” Aghast. “No! I told you. I tried to pay Bright back before we left the U.S. She refused.”
“Got proof?”
Carla returned and placed eggs, bacon, and grits in front of Gass. Filled our mugs. Headed toward the kitchen.
“There’s an email.” Gass stared at his food as though he had no idea what to do with it. “Honestly, I wish she’d taken the money. Bright wasn’t as liquid as people thought. Her trust was locked up tight. I don’t know how she managed her champagne and caviar lifestyle off the small distribution she got each year.”
“Wasn’t she pulling a salary from her nonprofit?” I asked.
Gass gave a short cough of a laugh. “Bright Ascents? What a joke. Bright needed me to carry her through sophomore econ for a very good reason. Bright Ascents sounded sexy, funding medical care for Sherpas and cleaning up the mountain. But the operation was a disaster. A shell game.”
“It pulled in over a million dollars its first year,” I said.
“Maybe in promises. But the cupboard was bare. Damon was a saint.”
“James wasn’t getting paid, either?”
“Only in handshakes.”
“What about The Heights?” Slidell jumped in. “TV can be a cash cow.”
“You bet your sweet ass!” Behind the stubble, red flamed his cheeks. “Sorry. Language. I’m in the final eight. The producers are really interested in my Yeti angle.”
Figured. Katy once forced me to watch an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Crazy makes for good reality TV.
“Word on the street says Hallis had the gig wrapped up.” Slidell.
“Maybe according to her.” Diffident sniff.
“Maybe that’s why someone wanted her gone. Maybe you.”
Gass tipped his head, slashing a dotted line of overheads across his lenses. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, man. I wasn’t being considered because of my climbing skills. I was in the running for my Yeti slant. I’m the guy who never made it near Hillary Step. And I’ve made no bribe payments to co-conspirators. Talk to people who know me. Climbers at Camp Four. Search my bank accounts. I’m an open book.”
“You can take that to the bank. Anyone else on the mountain maybe wanted the Heights gig? Or had a beef with Hallis?”
“Part one is easy. Everyone wanted the Heights gig. But I doubt anyone was plotting murder to get it. Up there, all your energy goes into surviving. You stick with your group. You huddle in your tent. There’s no swapping email addresses.” Gass considered. “As to hostility, no. No opportunity. The only person I saw Bright talk to, other than us, was a solo climber from somewhere in South America.”
“The woman she helped up Hillary Step?” I asked.
“Hell-o? I never made it that far. I only noticed her once, at Camp Three, didn’t pay much attention because I was worried I was getting HACE.”
“Did you catch the other woman’s name?” I asked.
/> “Sorry. I think Damon joined them. I never talked to her.” Gass abandoned his eggs. Laid down his fork. Seemed to go deep into thought. Deep into another time.
Slidell and I exchanged glances. Waited.
“On the mountain, you’re one-dimensional. You exist as a jacket color. A shape. A stereotype. The Japanese in the red cap. The dude with the Canadian flag. The Australian with the lavender boots. Bright was the American blonde in the lime-green jacket. To me, that woman was just the girl talking to Bright.”
Gass’s eyes reddened. He whipped off his glasses and swiped them angrily with the heels of his hands. The first sign of grief I’d seen.
“Sorry.” Repositioning the specs. “I never got to say goodbye. Bright was just…gone. Killed by the Nepalese government.”
“S’cuse me?” Slidell’s tone was razor sharp. “You talking a serious suspect?”
Deep sigh. “Everest isn’t being regulated rationally. There are no prerequisites for climbing experience, no rules covering who can be an outfitter. Any fool can hang out a shingle. One guide from Connecticut Photoshopped a fake summit for creds and has since abandoned three clients at the top. He claimed they were beyond help, but he didn’t report the situation for two days!” Gass was winding up for a topic that was clearly upsetting for him. “And no one does anything! It’s like open season for high-altitude death.”
“You think some con did in Hallis?”
“No. Crap, I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine mustering the energy to kill anyone up there. Just wait and the mountain will do it for you. A blizzard, a rockslide, a crevasse, an avalanche. That bastard’s the perfect crime scene. Sorry.”
“Maybe the abominable snowman did it.” Slidell snapped his notebook, pocket-jammed it, and got to his feet. I stood.
“The Yeti is a peaceful creature.” Gass, craning up at us.
“Yeah, well, leave him to the Russians for now.” Slidell’s parting words. “Stick around town.”
Gass, voice solemn, eyes unreadable behind the tilted lenses. “Bright was my friend. She could be tough, but I loved her. The others, not so much. I want to help if I can.”
Slidell flipped some bills onto the table and I followed him outside. We rode without talking until he dropped me at my car. I knew the reason for his silence. Though squirrelly, Gass seemed believable. So we hadn’t a single viable suspect. If not Sasquatch, then who?
At the annex, I got straight behind the wheel. Eager to examine the bones, I gunned the engine and fired toward the lab.
Where the body would deliver its second bombshell.
Chapter 9
As it turned out, I got back to the lab much later than I’d planned. Mama phoned. Which required a series of calls back and forth with my sister, Harry. Which meant I had to go inside. Then I discovered that I was out of cat food. A trip to Petco. Back home. By then I was hungry and decided to stop for a quick taco.
When I finally arrived at the lab, Hawkins had left. But he’d followed my instructions with his usual precision.
In autopsy room five, Brighton Hallis’s face and scalp floated in a large glass jar, flattened, lidless eyes staring through the murky fluid in which they were submerged. A hunk of white silicone rubber sat on a tray on one counter. A collection of bones and cranial fragments lay on another, drying on towels. Beside the bones was a stack of three-by-five color prints. Beside the prints, a fingerprint card.
In the cooler, ME215-15 was chilling on her gurney, prone, covered in blue plastic sheeting, which I flipped open. The skull was angled up, forehead tight to a rubber headrest, stripped of flesh to the level of the neck. The bone looked pale yellow, the suture lines squiggly dark in the artificial light. On the neck, a deep gouge and tiny white flecks marked the spot where Hawkins had painted his casting material.
I wheeled Brighton Hallis out of refrigeration. Then I turned on the fans. All of them.
After gloving, I examined the area of damage in the neck region. A shallow track angled downward from the skull base toward the gash overlying the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. I considered its form and depth. Studied the photos Hawkins had taken. Then I walked over and picked up the cast.
The thing looked like the beak of a petrel seabird. I closed my eyes, willing an idea to form in my mind. An image. A link.
Nothing.
I laid the thing down and returned to the body.
The second area of trauma was on the skull, with impact blows to both the front and back. This one was easier. Or maybe it was because this injury involved bone. My turf.
I started with the back. On the ectocranial surface of the right parietal, three inches superior to the lambdoid suture, was a classic example of a depressed fracture. Concave center, radiating cracks, the full Monty. But something was off.
Puzzled, I found a hand lens and brought my eyes close. With the damage magnified, I could see what was actually going on. What I’d mistaken for a single depressed fracture actually showed two points of impact. Fractures radiating from the second impact ran up to, but didn’t cross, fractures radiating from the first. That meant two separate blows to the back of the head.
I thought about that. About the size and shape of the concavity. A brick? A paddle of some sort?
I circled the gurney and, using two hands, rotated the skull so that I could see the face. What was left of the face. The damage to the nasal-maxillary region was extensive. The bones were shattered in the region below the nose, the teeth virtually obliterated.
I returned the skull to its original position. Thought about two blows to the back of the head. About the anatomical location of the anterior and posterior injuries. The picture was not one that I’d expect from a fall. Unless Hallis lost her balance and cracked headfirst onto a rock. Then backward. Twice. Or a giant bird dropped two boulders onto her skull.
But she wore a helmet. Unless she removed it.
Or someone did.
Holy crap!
A bird!
Neuron-fired recollection. A quick fumble through a cardboard carton. Faded clothing. A headlamp. An ice axe. Bright blue rope.
I dropped the lens and shot back to the counter. Picked up and angled the cast this way and that.
Holy flying crap!
I raced to my office, grabbed the box I’d collected from Blythe Hallis, rummaged wildly, finally yanked out the object I sought. Pulse going double time, I pumped back to autopsy room five and positioned my prize side by side with Hawkins’s cast.
The resemblance hit me like a punch. The Grivel Quantum Tech ice axe was a perfect match for the beaklike shape of the silicone rubber. For the wound in Hallis’s neck. And the handle could easily have created the damage to the skull.
Could have been used to knock out the teeth?
Hot damn! Though I knew my informal comparison would never hold up in court, I was certain I’d found the weapon that had killed Brighton Hallis.
I dialed Slidell. Got voicemail. Left a message.
Two calming breaths, then on to the vertebrae. Gross observation showed greenstick fracturing, uniform staining, and no remodeling, indicating that the stab wound to the neck was definitely a perimortem injury.
Next step, reassembly. Not the whole skull, but the relevant sections. Using good old Elmer’s and toothpicks, I started in. Yeah. Low tech. And tedious. Especially when the head has not been removed from the body. But I had promised Blythe Hallis. No more mutilation than necessary.
By ten-thirty my back was screaming and my vision was blurring. I’d had it. But I’d reconstructed enough to get a pretty good picture. After snapping an autopsy diagram onto a clipboard, I began sketching in detail.
When finished, I knew what had happened to Brighton Hallis, if not the specific sequence. A stab wound to the neck. Repeated blows to the face and dentition. Two blows to the head. And the angling of the posterior damage suggested that the ice axe had penetrated at roughly a forty-five-degree angle. Given the size and shape of the weapon, and the victim’s
height, if standing at the time of the attack, I estimated the assailant’s height at somewhere between sixty-five and seventy inches. Fantastic. Slidell would have a field day with that. Only Sasquatch could be crossed off the list.
I paused, visualizing the one fuzzy photo taken during recovery of Hallis’s body. Not crystal clear, but the slope appeared to have been moderate, with very few rocks.
I stepped back, considering. An ice axe to the neck. Multiple blows to the face and back of the head. I was unsure which injury killed her, but certain of one thing: Brighton Hallis’s death was not accidental.
I stripped off my gloves and dialed Slidell. This time he answered.
“A little payback, Doc?”
I had no inkling what that meant.
“I call you at dawn, you call me at night when I’m catching some hoops.”
While I’m busting my ass in an autopsy room. Without apologizing, I explained what I’d found.
Slidell made a noncommittal sound in his throat. In the background I could hear the frantic sound of play-by-play coverage.
“Ever think maybe the kid offed herself? Dove from a ledge?”
“Where the hell did that come from?”
“Your vic was in trouble up to her tits. I started digging into Bright Ascents, found a trail that led to Bert Malle over in Financial Crimes. You know him? He’s that asshat wears—”
“Why financial crime?”
“Your golden girl was engaged in some good old-fashioned embezzling. Fraud guys were about to pop her when she split for Everest.”
“But she was wealthy.” This didn’t make sense.
“Eee-lon was right. Her trust had a leash tighter than a—”
“Meaning?” Not up to a raunchy Slidellism.
“The kid was spending way beyond her means. Mostly on Everest.”
“How much went missing?”
“About a mil.”
“Roughly the amount Bright Ascents took in.”
“It was a small charity with a lot of dumb donors.”
“No one caught that the money wasn’t going where it was intended?”
“It wasn’t like contributors were hopping over to China to check on progress.”