“You’re supposed to look. It bumps up my tips.”
The inspector dropped his gaze for a moment to her low-cut top. If she bent over the bar, he’d have a glimpse all the way down to her navel.
“Your tips don’t need bumping up,” he said, deadpan.
Karen laughed.
Zinc placed his regimental badge and Nick’s driver’s license down on the counter, side by side, and indicated the photo. “Did you serve this fellow yesterday?”
“He’s the Mountie who was killed upstairs, right?”
Zinc nodded.
“Yeah, I served him. Scotch on the rocks,” she said. “We kibitzed about whiskies, with and without the ‘e.’ He told me he was investigating the murder of the guy who got his head cut off on the slopes. Sorry—the first guy who got his head cut off on the slopes. This was Boomer’s watering hole. I told Nick he must’ve moved in on the wrong chick.”
“Like maybe Mandy, Jessica, or Corrina?” asked Zinc.
“Yeah,” said Karen. “All three were here, sitting at the same table. Nick took their drinks over and sat down. He left his Scotch behind, though, so I followed.”
“Did you overhear their conversation?”
“Just a snippet. Jessica was asking Nick about his strangest case. I knew they were playing with him.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what those three do. Whistler attracts gold diggers by the hundreds. Rich guys plow the slopes, then hit the bars to get laid. Mandy, Jessica, and Corrina have the claws it takes.”
“Think one of them picked off Nick?”
“Not to kill him. But I wouldn’t be surprised if one was used as a lure. He told me he was mixing business and pleasure. Dabbling in the case because he could ski Boomer’s Run. From the amount of time he spent with those three vamps, he seemed more interested in pleasure than business.”
To the badge and license, Zinc added the Post-it Note.
“Recognize the writing?”
“No,” said Karen. “Do you carry a gun?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You look like you can take care of yourself in a fight. How’d you get the scar on your jaw?”
“In a fight.”
“What happened to the other guy?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Actually, I do.”
“Let’s just say it took more than stitches.”
“Ever kill anyone?”
“Where’s this going?” asked Zinc.
“Look, two skiers have lost their heads. A cop got killed in this very hotel. And now I’m hearing rumors that a woman’s throat was cut at Alpha Lake.” She shuddered. “Those vamps may want a man with money, but I want a man with a gun.” She scribbled a note and passed it to Zinc. “Here’s my cell number. Think it over.”
Zinc Chandler had lost the love of his life to violence and was scarred both inside and out. Since then, he’d sought nothing from women—and had offered nothing in return—but brief physical flings. Emotional commitment was for other men. He was open to free spirits who played by their own rules.
“Mandy, Jessica, and Corrina. Where do I find them?”
“Looking for a better offer?”
“Unlike Nick, I am on the job. Business, not pleasure.”
“Turn around and look for blonde, red, and black hair together,” she said. “And if you change your mind about the other thing, I’ll make it worth your while.”
* * *
At first, Zinc hadn’t spied them through the pack of beefcake besieging their table. Now, he tried to bypass a hulk reeking of rum to reach the Venusian trio.
“Back off, buddy,” snarled Mars. “If you know what’s good for you.”
Zinc flashed his badge. “Talk to the hand, pal.” He held the badge to his ear. “The hand says you should get lost. If you know what’s good for you.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” said Mandy. “Get lost.”
“You heard the lady,” Zinc said. “Don’t play the fool. I’m looking for an aggressive drunk to yard in. Know someone who fits that bill?”
From how they quickly abandoned the table, Zinc figured these lunkheads weren’t really planets. Theirs was more the elliptical orbit of a comet, zipping off into space to return in seventy-odd years.
“Okay if I join you?” he asked, grabbing a seat before there was any reply.
Corrina, the raven-haired beauty, sized him up, as if trying to decide whether he was worth her time. “How’d your hair go gray?” she finally asked. “You look too young for Viagra.”
“I had an English granny. She used to read the Brothers Grimm to me. Cackling witches, grumbling trolls—she did all the voices. She scared me so silly I went completely gray.”
“Pull the other one.”
“It’s true! Remember ‘The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids’? In that tale, a mother goat warns her kids to be careful while she’s out shopping. When she comes home, she finds her house torn apart and a wolf sleeping outside. He has something struggling in his stomach, so she cuts him open and out come her kids. After replacing them with stones, she sews the wolf shut again. He wakes up and goes to the well for a drink. When he stoops over, the stones drag him down and he drowns. If you’d heard Granny acting out the screams of the kids being eaten alive and the howls of the wolf drowning in the well, your hair would be gray, too.”
“Now tell me a story, Daddy,” Mandy the Blonde implored, batting her baby blues like Little Bo Peep.
Was this what it was like to live in the Playboy Mansion?
Probably.
“My favorite was the one about the chopped finger.”
“What was that one called?” asked Mandy.
“‘The Robber Bridegroom.’”
Zinc chose a mini pretzel stick from a bowl on the table and balanced it on his thumb like a coin about to be tossed.
“A miller betroths his daughter to a secret robber. To find out who she’s marrying, the bride-to-be sneaks into his house and hides behind a barrel. The robber returns with his drunken gang, dragging a young girl with them. They force the captive to drink wine until her heart bursts. Then they tear off her garments, stretch her out on the table, chop her body into pieces, and sprinkle the morsels with salt. As they prepare to eat her—”
“This is a children’s story?” the Redhead exclaimed.
“Sure. Look it up.”
“Is your warped childhood the reason you became a cop?”
“It was either that or a horror writer,” said Zinc.
“Finish the story,” cooed Mandy.
“The bride trembles behind the barrel. She knows this is what will happen to her. One of the gang spots a gold ring on the girl’s little finger. When it won’t come off, he takes an ax and whacks it like a butcher.” Zinc judo-chopped the table, causing the vamps to jump, and flicked the pretzel stick off his thumb … and right down Mandy’s plunging neckline.
“Nice shot,” the Redhead said, clapping her hands.
The Blonde leaned forward and tipped her head back like Marilyn Monroe would do. “Want to fish for it?” she asked.
Zinc was no fool. Cops had lost their careers over less. And anyway, it was time to get serious, now that he knew each woman’s dominant hand.
“Actually, I’m tying up some loose ends on Boomer’s death,” he said. “A corporal talked to you yesterday afternoon.” He set Nick Craven’s driver’s license down on the center of the table. “I’m sure you’ve heard that corporal is now dead. Just to be thorough, I must eliminate your ex-boyfriends. I’d like each of you to write down the name and address of your most recent beau, and tell me why you think he isn’t—or is—a suspect in Boomer’s death.”
Zinc watched them scribble, two using the same hands with which they’d raised their drinks.
“You write and drink with opposite hands, Mandy.”
“I’m ambidextrous.”
“Show me,” said
the inspector.
The Blonde switched hands and finished scribbling.
“That must come in handy.”
“Ask my ex-boyfriend,” she said, winking.
Actually, Zinc had all he required, for he’d seen that the handwriting on one of the sheets matched that on the Post-it Note found in Nick’s pocket. At the bar, Karen had inspired him to set a trap with her comment about wanting a man with a gun. Removing three business cards from his wallet, the inspector had jotted on the back of one: “Want a bodyguard to see you through the night? Room 412. After 5 p.m.” He’d carried the cards to the table, where he distributed them now.
“If you remember anything, give me a call.”
The vamp whose handwriting matched the Post-it Note got the card baiting the trap.
Two could play at that game.
* * *
“Another fool’s got the hook through his cheek,” said Scarlett.
“Who?” asked Mephisto.
“Zinc Chandler.”
“I want him, too. If it’s safe.”
“It can’t hurt to feel him out. If he’s looking to get fucked, he won’t tell anyone. If it’s a trap, I’ll have an out. He’ll be the wolf who set up the assignation, and I’ll be the innocent lamb who fell for his charms.”
“How will you kill him?”
“The same way I killed Nick Craven.”
Ice Ax
Rick Scarlett literally rode shotgun from the El Dorado Resort to Gill Macbeth’s chalet. Gripped in his hands was a Remington shotgun loaded with four shells. Beside him, wedged against the door, was a Winchester bolt-action rifle with a four-cartridge clip. Both he and Rachel Kidd had nine-mills holstered on their hips.
“Near as I can tell, we’re there,” said Rick.
Rachel eased the Rover off the snowy road and let it claw them up Gill’s drive. From the El Dorado, at the base of the mountains to the north, they’d snaked south through the blacked-out village and across the deserted highway to this upscale housing estate. The flat light of winter was fading fast, as they slipped through a landscape that was assorted hues of blue.
“Park here,” Rick said, jerking his thumb at a shoveled clearing that bulged off the driveway, downhill from the chalet.
Rachel pulled in.
Thick snowflakes tumbled through the somber gloom and mottled the Mounties’ winter wear as they got out of the Rover. White speckled their muskrat hats, heavy storm coats, blue scarves, black gloves, and calf-high boots. Slinging the Winchester over his shoulder, Rick swept the shotgun down the drive.
“Climb out, kids,” Rachel said, “and follow me.”
They trudged up the hill through untouched drifts, their boots kicking up puffs of powder that whitened them from head to toe. The evergreens alongside the driveway resembled alpine huts, their sloping branches shucking snow before the weight could break them. Twilight cloaked the chalet with fear.
“I’m scared,” said Becky, clutching Katt’s hand.
“I’m not,” the teenager responded. “Let’s make snow angels.” She fell back, arms spread, and fanned her limbs, prompting the younger girl to follow suit.
Gill’s chalet was a sturdy log house, its upper story tented by a steep, dormered roof. A thaw between storms had lined the eaves with icicles. By now, the light was so dim that Rachel needed a flashlight to see where to insert the key.
Inside, the power failure had killed the lights and the electric heat. The beam of Rachel’s torch swept the interior, picking out details: the stone hearth, a wood-burning stove, leather furniture surrounding a low coffee table. A staircase ascended to the bedrooms upstairs. Gill’s chalet was bigger than most people’s homes.
The first thing Rachel did was ignite a kerosene lamp. It burnished the woodwork with a bronze glow. Then she set about preparing a fire in the glass-windowed stove.
“Do you have any toys?” Katt asked Becky.
“A coloring book.”
“Where?”
“In my backpack. With my skates.”
Outside, Rick stood with his back to the chalet, sweeping the area one more time. The cold and the darkness, the darkness and the cold. Ice-crusted trees and snow were all he could see. Whistler seemed to slumber in the depths of hibernation.
Satisfied they were safe, he stepped inside, then closed and locked the door.
* * *
The mercenaries huddled in the white Pathfinder were camouflaged by white gloves, white pants, white boots, and white masks in the hoods of white parkas. Like ghosts in a ghost car, the five killers crept through this crystalline landscape, the headlights of their vehicle sparking off the whirling, swirling, twirling white flakes.
Now you see them, now you don’t.
The Iceman in the passenger’s seat held the receiver for the GPS tracker on the bumper of Zinc’s Rover. Thanks to this technology, the soldiers of fortune had been able to shadow the Mounties and the girls from the El Dorado to the not-so-safe safe house without fear of being spotted. They were armed with Uzis, and each also packed a Glock pistol with a silencer.
Pfft. Pfft. You’re dead.
No fuss, no muss.
“They’ve stopped moving,” the Iceman said, pointing to the static blip onscreen.
In addition to the weapons they all carried, the Siberian had a mountain climber’s ice ax in a shoulder holster. The ax was a double-headed tomahawk with one head like a chisel. Climbers used it to chop steps into hard snow. The other head was a sharp-pointed pick used to hammer a hold into ice, and the tip of the handle was spiked with a deadly ferrule.
Joseph Avacomovitch wasn’t the only one steeped in Russian history. The Siberian knew that Leon Trotsky had been killed by an assassin armed with an ice ax on August 20, 1940.
Inspired by that, he’d made the mountain climber’s tool his weapon of choice.
As long as he got the heads to torment DeClercq, Mephisto wasn’t averse to a little skull cracking.
Ice Ax’s mission was to kill the girls.
My Lai
Decades ago, a frantic call had come in to 911.
“He’s got a gun! He’s gone berserk! He’s going house to house to kill his neighbors! Oh God! Not me!” The sound of a door being kicked in was followed by gunshots and then silence.
The first cop on the scene was shot dead as he stepped out of his patrol car.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The dead cop, shot in the head, was sprawled half in and half out of his cruiser. Discarded leaves stuck to the spreading pool of blood. The wail of a siren shattered the autumn afternoon as the backup police car screeched to a halt. Before those officers could swing open their doors, the madman sprayed them with machine-gun fire, blowing windshield shards at their startled faces.
In his mind, the gunman was back in Vietnam, caught in the chaos of Pinkville on March 16, 1968. Pinkville. The codename for the hamlet of My Lai, where, according to military intelligence, the gooks were lurking in tunnels under the huts of their families. Charlie Company’s mission was to search and destroy. “Go in there aggressively, engage the enemy, and wipe them out for good,” they were told. Burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy the food, and pollute the wells.
Fucking A!
These draftees had been dropped in ’Nam just three months earlier. Already, they’d lost five to mines and booby traps. Here was a chance to pay the Viet Cong back with higher body counts and kill ratios.
At shortly after eight in the morning, they’d stormed Pinkville with firearms, grenades, and bayonets, shooting, blasting, or spiking anything that moved. Quickly, the massacre had spiraled out of control. Smoke billowed from thatched homes the GIs set ablaze, turning the rice paddies into hell on earth. Women were gang-raped, and entire families were lined up in ditches and mowed down by furious gunfire. A praying old man was shot by a crying soldier. The slaughter heaped carnage five feet high.
“It’s getting away!” a soldier yelled, pointing at a baby trying to crawl out of a ditch.
>
His buddy took a shot.
The shot missed.
Those watching laughed.
The GI moved closer and fired again.
The shot missed.
More laughs.
Finally, pissed off, the errant marksman strode over and plugged the baby at point-blank range, then tossed it back into the ditch.
Gooks that refused to come out of their huts were blown out with hand grenades. Body parts hung from the silkwood and papaya trees like Christmas ornaments. The sun cast macabre shadows on the dirt as trophy hunters roamed among the bodies, harvesting scalps, tongues, hands, or ears.
Whup, whup, whup …
A helicopter descended as the psychotic soldier watched a pair of GIs carve the words “C Company” into the chest of a mutilated Vietnamese. Even before he turned, he somehow knew it was them: the three traitors who’d landed their chopper at My Lai and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to stop them from saving the enemy.
“Turncoats,” he cursed, about to open fire on the bleeding hearts.
That’s when a sniper in the hovering police helicopter took a shot that hit the madman between the eyes, dropping him like a chestnut in the gutter of his terrified neighborhood.
The tale his neighbors later told homicide detectives was of a paranoid teenage draftee who’d come back from Vietnam to find himself a pariah to those on both sides of the political spectrum. Counterculture protesters had branded him a war criminal, while conservative patriots blamed those at My Lai for turning public opinion against the war.
In the end, the troubled vet had been unable to hold a job. He’d married his childhood sweetheart, and they’d had a son. But she’d eventually fled from his abusive drinking, and he’d turned into a nasty recluse hiding away in his dead mother’s rundown house. With all that pressure seething inside, was it any wonder he’d snapped and wreaked vengeance on his neighbors?
The cops who later searched the madman’s home found the pigsty they expected: piles of dirty dishes, cartons of crusty takeout food, and empty booze bottles. The door to the cellar was padlocked, so they used a crowbar to bust it open.
Red Snow Page 13