A Breck Death (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 3)

by Peche, Alec

  “Thanks Marie and Jo,” said Jill. “It's about time we break for dinner. Would you guys like directions to a particular restaurant or would you rather just have directions to downtown and pick whatever restaurant catches your eye?"

  "Are you sure you don't want to join us for dinner?" asked Jo.

  "I'm very sure that I want to stay within this room for dinner. I really think I would be risking your lives if I accompany you into town. I also think that Nick is as big a liability as I am.”

  "Well I'd much rather dine with you two, but I guess I have to agree," noted Marie.

  “If you point us in the right direction we will just stroll into town and choose a restaurant," said Jo.

  “Listen for any snowmobiles. You shouldn’t be hearing them in town or really at this time of year,” advised Jill.

  “Will do.” Then looking over at Nick, Marie asked, “Any advice on how to stay safe from you?”

  “Actually, take this,” Nick handed Marie a small cylinder. “It’s pepper spray. Since I was coming to America, I armed myself,” said Nick with a grin.

  Jo and Marie rolled their eyes, as Jill said, “So why didn’t you use it last night?”

  Looking chagrined, Nick replied “umm because I forgot I was carrying it.”

  “We won’t tell Angela about your pepper spray either,” remarked Jo. “You know we like you since we’re so willing to harass you, right? You get American humor? We really appreciate you being here and giving Jill the advice she needed to survive the Hummer up on the mountain.”

  “Yes, ladies, I do get American humor and I like you too. Jill saved both our lives today as I would have gone over the cliff with her. Have a great dinner.”

  The two women left and Jill reviewed a room service menu. She selected her choice and added a glass of wine. She wanted to celebrate being alive tonight. She passed the menu over to Nick for him to make his choices before calling in their order. She needed to talk to David and then Nathan.

  She dialed David to give him an update on their research as well as a report on the Hummer incident.

  "David, it’s Jill. How are you doing?"

  "Tomorrow is Joseph's funeral and I'm not looking forward to the day."

  "If you don't mind, I would like to attend. I'd like to pay my respects to both you and Joseph, and I'd like to watch the people at the service to see if anything arouses my curiosity."

  “Okay,” said David giving Jill the details.

  "Were you able to increase your security?"

  "Yes as I mentioned I called over a friend who stayed in our house last night. It was quiet with no intruders. This morning, I've had the security company that manages this property in to increase the protection on this house. Why, what's up?"

  Jill proceeded to explain the incident on Boreas Pass road. He was amazed to hear that Nick and Jill survived the Hummer with no injuries. After discussing the event a while longer, Jill moved on to update David on the resort’s data. Then she ended with her team looking at the company that partnered with Joseph's company to develop the new cancer drug.

  "I thought about who I had told that I had hired your company to investigate Joseph's death. I’ll e-mail you that list along with an explanation of who each of the people are. Unless it is someone that you told, then I have to assume that one of the people on my list is connected to Joseph's murderer.”

  "David, before you e-mail me that list, would you add one more column? I would like you to add who on your list could have skied the slope that Joseph was killed on if you have knowledge of their skiing ability. Granted, it could have been a contract hit."

  "Yeah I could do that Jill. I'm not sure I will know the ski ability for each person on my list, but I'll give it some thought and send you that list when I'm done."

  “Thanks David. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Nick had overheard Jill’s conversation and asked, “Jill, how are you going to get to the funeral tomorrow?”

  “I thought I would drive,” she responded looking at him puzzled.

  “In what vehicle?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I forgot about our exciting afternoon and that my vehicle was towed away three hours ago. Let me see when the replacement is scheduled to arrive,” said Jill as she looked up the rental car agency’s number.

  After speaking to the car rental agency, she doubted she would make the funeral. It was due to snow for the next couple of days and depending on the roads, there would be delays going through the Eisenhower Tunnel. Angela was due to arrive late morning and Jill was glad she was coming by shuttle as those drivers and vehicles were better in a snowstorm than Jill. She sent David a note about her likely difficulties in reaching the funeral in the morning. She would still make an attempt, but between the timing of the arrival of a new rental car and the weather, it seemed like the odds were against her.

  They answered a knock on the door to find room service with their dinner. The waiter looked a little wide eyed at Jill’s makeshift murder board. Fortunately, there were no gruesome pictures on the board, just the word ‘murder’ at the top. Maybe she would take it down before room service or housekeeping got a look at it. She'd have to remember to do that each morning. Since the room service attendant looked startled over her murder board, she decided to make light of it.

  "Nick and I are game designers. We are working on a murder mystery app and need to keep the names straight."

  That explanation seemed to reduce the alarm for the attendant as he replied ‘cool,’ just before he exited the room.

  "That was a great explanation that you created on the fly," pronounced Nick.

  "Yeah I thought it was pretty ingenuous to think up that explanation for my murder board. Remind me to take it down each morning so that I don't scare off housekeeping."

  They were soon digging into their dinners. Jill and Nick toasted with their wineglasses to celebrate surviving the encounter with the Hummer. Once the plates were cleared and placed outside the room, they both returned to their research. Jill knew she needed to call Nathan, but she hadn't thought of a way to explain the encounter with the Hummer that wouldn't have him immediately heading to the airport and flying to Denver. He had wanted to come spend some time with her circle of friends, but she didn't want him getting into the habit of coming to her rescue with each weird case. So she would put off the conversation for a while and avoid an argument. She decided she'd move on to more pleasant topics.

  "So are you looking forward to Angela joining us tomorrow?" inquired Jill.

  "Yes, very much so! Do you think the snow will delay her arrival?"

  "It's early in the snow season and therefore this is likely not such a severe storm as to be a blizzard. She is coming aboard the same shuttle you took and they're very capable of driving in bad weather. If anyone can get through the pass, it’s them."

  "Good to know. I am pleased to see her in person, but we haven't come close to resolving the distance between our two homes at the present. I never asked her, but does she ski?"

  "She has had bad luck with skiing in that someone in her party usually breaks a bone. I'm not sure that she has even been on a ski slope or if she is sitting safely inside a ski chalet, and the broken bone happens.”

  "Wow, that sounds like some serious bad karma between her and ski resorts. That is amazing considering she has so much good karma everywhere else."

  “Yeah, makes me scared to go skiing when she is in the same city. Back to reality, have you found any new information by reviewing the cameras?”

  “Yes they have cameras on all ticket booths because so much revenue is going through the windows. I was able to view one of the two people that purchased lift tickets. Unfortunately that was not very helpful. The purchaser had so much winter clothing on, frankly, I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, as they were wearing gloves, a helmet, goggles and a ski mask. So I don't have enough of a face to use Henrik’s facial recognition software. Instead I'm going to try to match the jacket and pants color to see if
there are any interior shots in any ski lodges that show the person without the helmet, goggles, and scarf. Again the resort has cameras inside the lodges wherever they employ cashiers to take money from skiers for food and drink. So there are about an additional one hundred locations where I might see this person in the background."

  "Will you manually have to look for this person of interest’s clothing or do you have a computer program that can search for the clothing colors?”

  “Fortunately, I have a software program that will do that for me. Despite all the cameras and all the locations, it shouldn't take more than about five minutes for the computer to give me the data. I'll still have a large number of video clips to look at but I'm planning to go back and look at the ticket window cashiers’ footage to determine if there's anything original on this person's clothing."

  "That's great. It sounds like with a lot of computer manipulation and a little luck we might have the names of the people that were following Joseph within the hour.”

  They heard their suite door mechanism unlocking and assumed that indicated the return of Jo and Marie. When Jill got a look at them she asked, "What happened to you guys?"

  They had mud on their jeans, faces, and hair. Jo was walking with a limp.

  "We think we met your Hummer driver in town after dinner. We took your advice and kept an ear out for snowmobile sounds. We must have heard the same thing you heard the previous day. We were about a block out from the restaurant when we heard a snowmobile engine start up and then saw it turn the corner and head our way.”

  Marie continued telling the story from Jo, “The sound of the snowmobile made us mad, and Nick's pepper spray made us bold. We decided we were going to get our hands on the snowmobile driver to find out who it was. So Jo had this huge purse as her weapon, and I was armed with pepper spray. But the driver coming at us was wearing goggles so we knew we needed to get close enough to knock the goggles off his or her face."

  Since Jo and Marie were taking this event as an adventure, Jill decided to follow suit and asked, “Let me guess, Jo - you swung your purse at the driver and Marie you aimed the pepper spray."

  "Actually," said Marie. "We did something much dumber. We took a look at our surroundings and saw a snow bank we could dive over. So with that thought we turned around and faced the snowmobile. We split apart hoping we could entice the driver to drive between the two of us. As it got close, Jo took a swing with her purse that would have done Nolan Ryan proud. The driver saw the purse coming at him or her at the last moment and took both hands off the handlebars which stopped the snowmobile. I figured I'd help the driver continue to fall to the ground so I grabbed their arm and yanked. Unfortunately the idiot landed on top of me with helmet and goggles still in place, and so we rolled around on the street. Then some other people started walking down our street and the snowmobile driver decided to give up on Jo and me. Both of us had moved away from the snowmobile and sadly that enabled the driver to jump back on and take off.”

  “Are you both okay, did you sustain any injuries?” asked Nick.

  “No we’re fine,” replied Marie. “But dammit the driver got away. I think it was a woman though. All that rolling around on the ground suggested it was a lightweight person. I never saw the face and never got to use the pepper spray. So that was our adventure for the night and now I am cold in my wet and muddy clothes.”

  “Me too! The hotel reception staff wondered if we had slipped on the ice somewhere and I responded that we had rolled around with a snowmobile driver. They probably thought we were drunk. Oh well.”

  They both left and went to their rooms to change. Jill was happy to see them taking it all in stride. She said to Nick, “How do you think someone knew they were connected to us?”

  “I have been asking myself that same question. I think they either saw us at lunch all together or there is a leak at this hotel.”

  “I’m going to call Angela and warn her. She may choose to stay in Wisconsin, rather than join the fun and games here. Sorry Nick.”

  “Hey, no problem. While I was really looking forward to seeing her, I would rather she stay safe.”

  Jill looked at the clock and guessed that Angela was still awake so she dialed her.

  ”Hey Angela it’s me.”

  Nick found himself listening to a one-sided conversation trying to guess what Angela was saying. He thought she decided to still come based on Jill’s comments. He was secretly happy and thought he could protect her. A moment later, Jill held her phone out to Nick and said, “Hey you want to say hi?”

  He took her phone and said “Hello, are you still coming tomorrow?”

  “Yes, you guys can’t have fun without me. I’ll be there as scheduled.”

  “Jill said you have bad karma near ski resorts, that someone always breaks a bone. Maybe the person that is after us will be the one with the broken bone.”

  “I’ll do what I can to help the team,” said Angela. “Though from what Jill said, this sounds a lot worse than our little events in Belgium and the Netherlands.”

  “I learned from you though. I used her phone to take a picture of the Hummer that was trying to push us off the mountain. It was real convincing to the local cops to see the Hummer kissing our rear bumper.”

  “Maybe that will be my primary role in Colorado - to document all the bad people trying to harm us.”

  “Regardless, I am looking forward to your arrival.”

  “Me too,” and shortly thereafter they ended the call.

  Next Jill went into her bedroom to call Nathan. After confessing to him about the two snowmobile events and the Hummer incident, they had the first bad argument of their relationship. Nathan wanted to leave immediately for Colorado to provide Jill with protection and Jill did not want him curtailing his professional and personal life to ride to her rescue with each case. She wanted him to trust her to keep herself safe. Having him there would undoubtedly increase her protection, but the guilt of her job disrupting his with each case was not a burden she wished to carry. He was as adamant about protecting her as she was about him staying home in California. The conversation ended in a stalemate with him agreeing to stay in California for the time being. Jill had come close to threatening him with an end to their relationship, but it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have over the phone. Nathan, perhaps sensing that her breaking point was so close, backed down.

  Jill returned to the suite’s living room and joined the others. Jo and Marie had settled in with their computers and a glass of wine with renewed vigor to solve the mystery of Joseph Morton's death. While they were gathering details on the board members of Joseph's company as well as that secondary company they collaborated with, Nick was going through the tedious work of the camera footage with the hope of identifying the two ticketholders that frequently skied near Joseph. Jill normally would have assisted the other three in their searches, but she felt a compelling need to figure out who was presently trying to harm them and what they should do about it.

  Jill had been seen in public with Jo and Marie when they had arrived at the hotel earlier that day and when they had walked to lunch. Jill was convinced that someone was stationed in the lobby watching them. It was likely not a hotel employee but rather another resident of the hotel. She decided she would go down to the lobby and observe for an hour or so. She wanted to watch the hotel employees and get a sense of whether there was anywhere that a stranger could hang out in the lobby and not be suspicious looking to the hotel's employees.

  "Hey guys I'm going to head down to the lobby and observe," announced Jill.

  "Why?" asked Marie.

  "I want to get to the bottom of the puzzle of who knows you are connected to Nick and me. I somehow think that someone is watching us in the lobby. They know our comings and goings and they know our connection. I don't think they're using electronic surveillance to figure this out; rather, I think they have someone placed in our lobby. So I'm going to put a little bit of a disguise on and see what I can
find in the lobby.”

  "Sounds like a plan. I was wondering myself how someone knew that we were connected to you. When we first heard the snowmobile start up Jo and I looked at each other and thought ‘not again’ and ‘really can’t they try something else?’ I think that gave us the determination to try and take the snowmobile driver down. Unfortunately while we saved ourselves from injury, in the end we were unable to identify the driver. What kind of disguise are you going to do?"

  "I thought I would hide all of my hair under a knit cap, then I was going to use duct tape to tape two of the decorative pillows from our sofa around my middle and cover that with a sweater from Nick. That ought to put forty pounds on my frame. I planned to wear my reading glasses and keep a scarf tied around my face. That's all I can think to do to change my appearance with the supplies that I have in this suite. You guys have any additional suggestions?"

  "How about if I do your face in heavy make-up as that is not your normal look," offered Jo.

  "I don't know if I have enough make-up with me to make it look heavy."

  "Why don't the three of us pool our make-up and I'll see what I can do. Since I'm not trying to make you beautiful, this should take maybe ten minutes max."

  "Thanks Jo; that's a great idea."

  Fifteen minutes later, Jill walked out of the suite unrecognizable to herself and her friends. They had done an excellent job with her disguise. She took the elevator down to the lobby and disappeared into the restroom for a few minutes. When she seated herself in the lobby she wanted it to look as if she'd come from the restroom and not from a hotel room above the first floor. A few minutes later she was seated on the sofa close to the door as she was hot with the two pillows around her core and it was the coldest place that she could find in the lobby.