Killer View

by Ridley Pearson

  Tango’s time between her returns warned of a long hike. She would head directly to the target, then return to her handler, before repeating the circuit as often as necessary. She would not stop until her arrival back at the target; then, missing her handler, she would return the full distance, give the hard indicator again, and take off once more. The process, known as yo-yoing, would continue until she led her handler directly to the hard target. Walt calculated that the missing skier was somewhere between twenty and thirty minutes away for her. For a man hiking in snowshoes, it could be double or triple that-an hour or more. He paced himself. Endurance was everything now. Walt was already conserving energy in order to get the missing skier back out of the wilderness.

  He came by his wilderness skills honestly, not through textbooks or seminars. He’d grown up in these mountains. With a dad who worked for the FBI and moved the family every two to four years, the Wood River Valley had been his real home. He’d seen it change from a sleepy little destination ski resort into the fashionable, celebrity enclave it had become. And he’d grown with it, finding backcountry skills and survival tactics that had served him well for the past twenty years.

  He ate a PowerBar and gulped down some icy water, foregoing the small thermos of coffee-the caffeine was welcome but not its dehydratingeffects. He reviewed the work ahead: medical treatment, if they were lucky; sledding him out; recalling the team; getting back down the snow-covered highway to the hospital. It was anything but over.

  When he next checked behind him, he’d lost Mark to the storm, so he waited, as the snowflakes changed from nickels to quarters, suggesting warming. It was the one thing he didn’t need right now. If the snow went to slush, the mountain went to concrete and would be more prone to slides. He switched off his headlamp and peered into the dark, finally spotting a pinprick of flickering bluish white light in the distance: Mark. Moving considerably slower. He was weighed down by more than just the backpack and physical exhaustion; Walt knew something was troubling him. It took him back to Mark’s mention of politics-a conversation that had been interrupted.

  Tango streaked past Walt, bounding down the hill for Aker. Wet, and breathing hard, she passed Walt a few minutes later, charging back up the hill. She was still on the target. Walt checked his watch, bumped the GPS, and estimated the missing boy was now less than ten minutes away.

  The moment Aker reached him, Walt headed off, following the dog’s zigzag route as it traversed the steep snowfield. He now took a more vertical path, connecting the dog tracks, but climbing more steeply, the steady climb driving his heart painfully.

  He pulled a heavy, six-cell flashlight from his pack. Its halogen bulb produced a sterile, high-powered light, which, catching the edges of forest to their right and left, revealed that the snowfield narrowed, ending in a rock outcropping, now a hundred yards straight up.

  The Drop.

  “Doesn’t… make… sense,” Aker said, huffing as he caught up. “We should have seen Randy by now.”

  In the excitement of the find, Walt had forgotten about Randy. “It’s possible he found fresh ski tracks, leading into the trees or something,” Walt said. “We wouldn’t necessarily see him in the trees.”

  But he was thinking back to that earlier, unexplained sound, and knew Mark was too.

  Now, as they ascended together, Walt’s flashlight suddenly caught the eerie glow of animal eyes at the base of the towering rocks. Tango. Her position there suggested a fall.

  “Damn,” Mark said.

  “Yeah.”

  Despite the drag of the sled, Walt pulled ahead of Aker. People survived falls into snow, he reminded himself, wondering if maybe Randy had fired that shot they’d heard earlier.

  Tango bounded from a hole she’d dug deeply in the snow. She raced past Walt to the trailing Mark Aker; then she streaked past Walt on her return.

  Walt arrived to her flurry of digging and trained the beam into the hole.

  He glanced back at Mark and raised his hand. “Stop there!” he shouted.

  Aker ignored him and arrived at Walt’s side just as Walt switched off the flashlight.

  But Aker’s headlamp found the twisted human form in the snow. Randy’s head was raked fully around, pointed horribly unnaturally over his back like an owl’s, his open, still eyes crusted with ice crystals.

  Walt was the first out of his snowshoes. He jumped down into the pit dug by the dog and quickly searched the body for a gunshot wound. But there was no blood, no wound visible. Yet they’d heard a gunshot; he felt certain of it.

  Mark was on his knees, sobbing. The snow fell around him like a curtain.

  Walt climbed out of the hole and dropped to his knees to block Mark’s view of the body. He opened his arms and pulled his friend to him. The sobbing came uncontrollably then.

  Tango circled them, whining, with her nose to the hole, her innate empathy steering her nearer and nearer to her master until pressing up against him tentatively and then nuzzling in, as if to keep Mark warm.

  4

  WALT WATCHED THE PICKUP PULL AWAY, SADNESS RATTLING around in his chest. Mark Aker had barely said a word since the discovery of his brother’s broken body. Walt hadn’t been as close to Randy but loved Mark like a brother; now that Randy was gone, Mark’s loss echoed inside of Walt as well.

  Walt’s brother, Bobby, had died only a few years before. The tragedy had torn his family apart. Walt and his father, never on great terms, were finally talking again, but it was a relationship often on eggshells. Now, he and Mark shared something unspeakable. Randy, the womanizer, the wiseguy, the irreverant jokester. The brooding, secretive brother, whose name had crossed Walt’s desk recently-a memo that had been subsequently buried into a stack. Did that memo-those accusations-have something to do with Mark’s political reference made only an hour ago? Grief and empathy overcame Walt; he looked away and dragged a glove across his eyes. He still ached over Bobby’s loss. Mark was in for a hellish few years.

  He caught Mark’s eye during the loading, his face bathed in the red splash from the taillights; the vet, so used to death, was visibly shaken by rigor’s unnatural positioning of Randy’s arms, angled up over his head. They finally fit the corpse into the bed of a pickup truck, but only after a great deal of wrangling. They covered him with a blue tarp and tied it down with bungee cords. It was the addition of the cords that got Mark crying-the finality of fastening them and the anchoring of the tarp, as if holding down firewood. Death was in the details, and those details racked Mark Aker with heartbreak, anger, and frustration.

  “Sheriff?” It was his deputy, Tommy Brandon.

  Walt felt as if he’d chugged a soda too fast.

  The fact that sheriff’s deputy Tommy Brandon was shacked up with Walt’s soon-to-be-ex wife kept the men at arm’s length.

  As far as Walt was concerned, the proper thing for Deputy Sheriff Tommy Brandon to do was transfer to one of the local police or sheriff’s departments. Walt certainly wasn’t going to resign his office simply because his deputy was doing his wife. But, for Brandon, what was the difference? Walt couldn’t fire him without fearing a lawsuit. It was almost as if Brandon was hanging around to torture him. What made things even more complicated and tricky was that Brandon was his best deputy-goddamn him. Losing Brandon would hurt the office. But with every small confrontation, every brush of the elbows, every look that passed between them, it seemed increasingly inevitable and necessary. Even the smell of the man’s aftershave bothered Walt. Hadn’t Gail carried that same smell to bed a few times when they’d still been a family?

  Midnight had come and gone: another two inches of fresh powder lay on the roofs of all the roadside vehicles. None of the dogs had picked up any scents. The searchers were warming themselves in the cabs of their trucks behind fogged windshields, awaiting orders.

  “Let’s call the search off for tonight, Tommy. We’ll start over in the morning. We’re going to want the original call confirmed. If possible I want to know who made that call, an
d I want to talk to him personally.”

  “Got it.”

  “We traded a life for a life tonight and that’s just plain wrong.” For all they knew, the missing skier had found his way home safely.

  Brandon moved between the vehicles, speaking with the various drivers. A few minutes later, the pickup trucks began to pull out.

  Walt was sitting on the back bumper of the office’s Hummer, a vehiclehe used for search and rescue. He was strapping snowshoes onto his boots as the last of the trucks departed, leaving only Brandon ’s big red Dodge SUV. Everything about Tommy Brandon was big, tempting Walt’s imagination and begging him to hate the guy.

  “Sheriff?”

  “I’m going back out there, Tommy.”

  “Not alone you’re not.”

  “I’m not looking for the missing kid, Tommy. I want some photos before everything’s covered.”

  “Randy skied off the Drop, Sheriff. End of story.”

  As far back as Walt could remember, Tommy had never called him by anything other than his rank. It made the guy even harder to dislike.

  Walt told him about hearing the branch snapping, how his first reaction had been gunshot.

  The Hummer was idling for warmth, the slap-slap of its wipers rising above the grind of the engine.

  “But Randy wasn’t shot.”

  “We don’t know anything about what drove him off those rocks. Mark and I had to get the body out. There was no time to look around.”

  He dug into the back of the Hummer and withdrew a broken piece of ski and tangled metal edging. It was a piece from the middle of a ski and contained the sophisticated mountaineering binding that allowed the heel to be locked down or the toe to be used as a three-pin binding. The equipment was different than that found on recreational downhill skis. A hybrid system, this gear allowed a cross-country skier to convert his equipment to downhill on a single pair of skis. He passed it to Brandon, who shook the water off-the snow having melted-and studied it.

  “So what?” Brandon said.

  “The sticker,” Walt said, taking the broken piece of ski from him. He pointed out the ® just below the three pins that secured the toe of the boot.

  “It’s a patent, or whatever. So what?”

  “It’s not a registered trademark, Tommy. It’s an R, for right-as in right ski for the right boot. They’re paired, same as downhill skis. And this ski was on his left foot.”

  Brandon took it out of Walt’s hand and studied it in the light from the car’s interior. “So he got ’em mixed up. It was dark and snowing. Big deal.”

  “You’ve never cross-country skied, I see. He’d have known in the first few seconds he had them reversed. The skis don’t track well. They pull to the outside. Drives you crazy and costs you energy. A guy like Randy wouldn’t have reversed them in the first place, but, if he had, he’d have stopped and made it right within the first few minutes. Storm or no storm.”

  “Yeah, but maybe it just didn’t bother him, Sheriff.” He looked on as Walt fastened the second of his two snowshoes to his boots. “Or maybe he took them off for some reason. Had to take a dump or something. Put them back on reversed. Jumped off the cliff. Who the hell knows?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  “Then I’m going with you.”

  “No need, Tommy. I’ll be fine. It’s late. Get back and get the paperwork started on Randy. I’ll call you in an hour, if that’ll make you feel better.”

  Tommy crossed to his truck and returned with his own snowshoes.

  Nothing more was said between the two men for over twenty minutes. Walt navigated a more direct route to the Drop, following the GPS. Both men arrived at the top of the rock outcropping winded and sweating. The storm had covered an area of snow greatly disturbed by dozens of prior skiers.

  Walt had been right about the snowfall covering any chance to backtrack Randy’s movements. It was nearly too late already.

  Working on his theory that Randy had taken a bathroom break, Brandon followed a set of ski tracks that deviated from the main route into the woods.

  Walt was leaning over the rocks, aiming his six-cell down at the hole, some forty feet below, when Brandon called out over the radio.

  “Sheriff? Got something interesting here.”

  Walt followed Brandon ’s fresh tracks into the quiet stillness of the forest. They curved to the right, slightly downhill, and aimed southwest-toward State Highway 75. Brandon had traveled a long distance. Walt found him at the base of a tree. With the evergreens acting as giant umbrellas, the snow cover here was only a few inches deep.

  The area was heavily disturbed.

  “You do this?”

  “No, sir. Wolves maybe. I think they may have treed him.”

  Walt got down on hands and knees. “We didn’t see any wolves, didn’t hear any, and neither did Tango. Could be dog prints just as easily. They’re small for wolves.”

  “All the dogs were accounted for.”

  “All of our dogs,” Walt said.

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t know, Tommy. I’m thinking out loud. Okay?” He snapped at him, realizing too late that either his fatigue or his resentment of the man was working its influence.

  Brandon studied the area. “Well, we’re never gonna find a shell casing until spring, if that’s what you’re thinking. I suppose we’d better mark the tree, though.” He took out a knife and carved away a section of bark.

  “I’m not connecting the two at all right now,” Walt said.

  Brandon shined his light on the animal tracks. They came up through the trees in a direct line, now covering Randy’s ski tracks, but it was clear the two sets of tracks were connected and had been made at the same time.

  “I don’t know… A pack of wolves makes sense, Sheriff. Randy would have known what he was up against. And it fits with the skis being reversed. They tree him. His skis are down here. Then they take off and hide. He knows what they’re about and they know where he is. It’s a race. Maybe he tries the radio and it’s no dice. So he has to go for it. Gets out of the tree as fast as he can, puts the skis on the wrong feet. Takes off for the Drop, knowing he can outski the wolves if he can get into some downhill terrain. In the confusion, he picks the wrong part of the Drop to jump from. A lot of kids jump off these rocks, but it’s the west end, not the middle.”

  Walt liked the explanation and said so. He ran off some photographs, none of which came out very well. He suggested they backtrack until they discovered where the animal tracks had caught up with Randy’s. “I’ll want some photographs of that as well.”

  “I’m going to cross here,” Brandon said, pointing to the course of disturbed snow, “and we’ll parallel the tracks.”

  The two separated, staying on each side of the wide path of disturbed snow. Once out of the woods, the tracks became humped with snow left by the storm. Tracking the pattern was not difficult, but it became less and less clear what they were following.

  Walt shuddered at the thought of being pursued by a pack of hungry wolves in a snowstorm. He’d searched Randy for a weapon and hadn’t found one, but he could have dropped it during the chase. This would help Walt explain the single report he and Mark had heard.

  “If it was wolves,” Walt finally said, “then why didn’t they scavenge on the body?”

  “Yeah,” Brandon said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t think of that.”

  Walt popped on the six-cell, flooding the area in a harsh light. The mass of tracks they’d been following separated here. There was no question that the animal tracks joined and followed the ski tracks.

  “This sucks,” said Brandon, looking down.

  Walt crossed the tracks to take a look. A single impression, partly protected by a fallen tree trunk. Its shape and pattern unmistakable.

  A snowshoe.

  “Motherfucker,” Brandon said. “Tell me that’s you or Mark Aker.”

  Walt remained silent as he took a series of photographs, the fla
shes like small explosions in the overwhelming white. Again, he checked the camera’s screen: none of the shots was any good.

  “That could have been left earlier today. With all the snowfall, we can’t say for sure it’s connected to the animal tracks,” Brandon said.

  He was right: there was no knowing when any of these tracks had been left. Snow blew and drifted; it fell out of trees; it slid down mountains. A print like this, tucked under a log, could be preserved for days.

  Walt snapped more photos, informing Brandon he believed the connection between the snowshoe and the animal prints significant.

  “Just so you know,” Brandon said, “even if it takes all night, I’m following these tracks.”

  “It won’t take all night, Tommy.” Walt pointed down a slope to where a stream of white light ran steadily along the tops of trees. A car or truck. The sound of the chains clapping against the pavement, a half mile away.

  “That’s Highway Seventy-five,” he said. “Ten bucks, that’s where they’re going to lead us.”

  5

  HIS SELECTION OF A STOOL NEAR THE END OF THE BAR WAS no accident, for it was at the end of the bar where the waitresses refueled their trays. It required patience to wait for the seat right next to the waitress station. Halloween brought out the crazies, and the place was packed. There were two kinds of people who sat at a bar: those waiting for a table or in a hurry; and those with their elbows shellacked to the surface. Thankfully, the two stools to his right were not the thrones of legitimate barflies but only rest stops. Fifteen minutes after he took his place on the third stool, he had migrated to his right and the seat adjacent to the brass bar that segregated the drunken masses from the waitresses.

  Reconnaissance had told him that the girl, underage as she most definitely was, was drinking a kir royale-champagne dyed red with crème de cassis. Easy to spot among the beer and vodka of her peers that filled out the tray as the empties returned. Easy to identify, as the bartender placed a fresh one on the bar before turning his skills to the vodka mixes. The decent-looking waitress busied herself with garnishes of lemon and lime; she stabbed a line of three olives onto a yellow plastic stick, dressing the vodka glasses as they surfaced.