Killer View

by Ridley Pearson

  “What’s wrong with the sheep?” the visitor asked. “What does your boss think is wrong with the sheep?”

  “What sheep?” the narrator inside his head answered. She had said nothing, apparently having lost consciousness, her head now sagging.

  “What happened to the partying, anyway? ” the big man wondered.

  The visitor lifted her head by the hair, and the whites of her eyes showed. He held the syringe where she could see it. No one liked a needle. The girl’s eyes popped, and she shied away.

  “Kira, if you don’t tell me about the sheep I’m going to inject you with this. You will not like what it does. Everything’s going to be a lot more real, more clear, for you, once you’ve had this shot. A lot less fun, I promise. He and I are still going to party with you, Kira, but something tells me you’re not going to like it. You see how big a man he is?” The visitor pointed at him. “He gets sloppy seconds. Think about that a minute.” He waited for some sign from her. Got nothing. “I need to know what your boss is thinking about the sheep,” the visitor said. “I need to know that right now. You can help yourself a lot by telling me.”

  Did he really think she heard him? Maybe she could see his lips move. Maybe, even, she recognized every other word. But she was too far down, too far back, to fully understand him at normal speed.

  “You know… you are really hung up on these sheep.”

  The visitor spun around and looked at him. Only then did he realize he’d spoken it aloud into the room.

  “What the fuck did you just say?” the visitor asked.

  She came to life again, baaing like a sheep. It saved him having to answer. She laughed gutturally as she surfaced. “You aren’t, like, one of those kind of guys?” She pursed her lips, trying to contain her laughter, but it spilled out of her, along with a good deal of spittle, which the visitor then wiped off his hand and onto his pressed pants. “Can I tell you a little secret?” She egged him closer.

  The visitor leaned in to her. The syringe hovered in his right hand, like a preacher’s cross at last rites.

  She said, “If a guy wants to visit my kitchen door now and then, that’s okay with me. I even kind of like it. But if he comes around to my front door, he’d better wipe his feet.” She guffawed, rocking up the front legs of the big chair.

  “One last try, Kira.” He wielded the syringe impossibly close to her face.

  She appeared to lock onto it. Perhaps, for just a fraction of a second, she grasped her situation, understood what was to come.

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  “The sheep, Kira. What’s wrong with the sheep?” The needle pointed south, aimed directly at her forearm.

  “I want to go home.”

  MONDAY

  *

  8

  “KEEP TRYING,” WALT TOLD NANCY, HIS SECRETARY, THE phone clutched under his chin as he kneeled on the kitchen floor, wrestling a small foot into a tight boot.

  “It’s too tight,” his daughter complained.

  “Push harder,” he said.

  “Me?” Nancy asked over the phone.

  “No. That’s for Emily. You keep trying to reach Mark. I want to hear the minute you find him.”

  “Got it.”

  He hung up and set the phone down on the kitchen table and went back to the battle of the boots. He’d been caught by the fluke fall storm, hadn’t had any of the girls’ winter clothes ready. Now he was racing to get them dressed and into the car in time to avoid a tardy. He’d managed four hours’ sleep.

  “What if I put soap all over it?” he said, holding her foot. “You think that’ll help it get into that boot?” He tickled the bottom of her foot and Emily screeched. It was strange that she should be so ticklish when Nikki was not. In every other way, they were identical. Until Nikki had developed a tiny mole by her right eyebrow, even their parents had had trouble telling them apart.

  “Nooo!” She giggled.

  “Olive oil?” he asked.

  “Nooo!”

  “Snot?”

  Emily burst out laughing-a barking cackle from her gut that was infectious to anyone within earshot. In seconds, the two of them were rolling around on the floor, while Nikki stood away, trying to force the grin from her face. Nikki had suffered the most from her mother’s abrupt departure. It was she whom Walt worried about on his sleepless nights.

  The morning report from Nancy was pretty typical for the day after a storm: five highway collisions throughout the early-morning hours, none fatal; three DUIs issued; a ski shop had found a back window broken and was conducting an inventory; a nineteen-year-old girl had been reported missing by her parents.

  A few months earlier, he’d not needed phoned-in reports from Nancy; he would have already been at his desk by now. He resented Gail for every intrusion in his routine. There was no seam in their family life her indiscretion had not penetrated and infected. It was as if the waning gifts of a young face and tight body had compelled her to prove herself still attractive, with no regard to the three she had left behind.

  With Nancy ’s help, he’d dispatched a team of twelve Search and Rescue to continue looking for the missing skier. He felt he owed his energy to Mark Aker and the investigation into Randy’s death. He was the only trained investigator for a hundred miles in any direction. As such, he also asked for more on the missing girl. Nancy told him that Kira Tulivich attended a wedding, had gone out drinking with friends, and had not come home. Walt assumed she would stagger home sometime later in the day, with apologies, but he knew to consider it a crime first and to be happy if it turned out differently.

  “My coat won’t zip,” Nikki complained, all trace of humor gone from her face.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, Emily’s foot finally sliding down into the boot. A small victory. He tried Nikki’s zipper, but she was right: the coat wouldn’t close around her.

  “Damn.”

  “Daddy said a bad word!” Nikki announced loudly. This time both girls giggled.

  “Daddy’s tired. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Lisa, the sitter, would pick them up from school, get them home, and start dinner. She worked for a flat daily fee, not hourly, and she gave him all sorts of breaks, doing everything from picking up dry cleaning to running to the supermarket-and never charged him. She’d made his transition to single parenting doable, though he had miles to go. He felt like a failure most of the time, as if, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he cared, he moved backward. He held himself to higher standards than what he was capable of. He was digging in sand, and, worst of all, he thought the girls knew it.

  There was nothing much to do about the jacket. New winter outfits were needed. He tried the snaps; got the middle two to hold. “That’s going to have to do.”

  “But it won’t zip.”

  “It’s the best we can do for now.” Talk of the zipper reminded him of Randy Aker’s body bag. He thought he should probably hurt more for Randy’s loss. In truth, he felt bad for Mark, but it was difficult to take the victim’s death personally. That emotion had been trained out of him, clipped from his DNA. Even Bobby’s untimely death had hit him much the same way. He grieved not for the dead but for the living.

  “I don’t want to wear it if it doesn’t zip,” Nikki said.

  “Don’t. Please, don’t. Not this morning. Okay? We’ve got to get to school. We’ll fix it later. Maybe you can go shopping with Lisa.” He was thinking how expensive kids’ winter clothing was. Maybe he’d get lucky and find a secondhand jacket at the Barkin’ Basement.

  Despite the best intentions, he went from fuming mad to blind anger as he made the short drive to Hailey Elementary. Gail had cited a dozen reasons for leaving him-his time on the job, the nature of his work and the fear it forced her to live with, her unfounded jealousy of other women-but they both knew the real reason: the two girls in the backseat. Motherhood had not only not come naturally; it had barely ever come at all. He had watched her descend from the initial gl
ow of motherhood to the reality of being overwhelmed. Year by year, she had grown more resentful of losing her own freedom. She might have survived a single child, but the needs of two proved too much. When early frustrations had evolved into resentment, manifested as screaming rants and threats that shaded dangerously close to child abuse, she’d done the only thing available: removed herself from the home. She’d used the affair with Tommy Brandon to keep friends and neighbors in the dark, as well as to renew her own sense of self-worth; but he suspected her failure as a mother was rotting away what little chance at happiness she dreamed of. For him, whatever feelings he’d had for her had dissolved with her inability to cope. In the end, he’d realized he’d never really known her. Never mind that the added burden of single parenting drained him. Never mind that her departure and absence influenced every moment, his every decision, even something as simple as a drive to school. They had reached a disconnect. With divorce now inevitable, he reminded himself to keep it from getting bloody: the girls had to be protected at all costs.

  BY THE TIME he reached the sheriff’s office, an unremarkable one-story brick building with the jail’s coiled-razor-wire exercise area slung off the back side, he pushed Gail aside, expecting that Nancy would have found Mark Aker while hoping she might have word on the missing teenage girl as well.

  Instead, he saw Tommy Brandon and two other deputies across the street from the office, the lights of one of their cars flashing.

  Walt parked and joined them, his heart sinking. Crazy Dean Falco was chained to a tree.

  “The sheep are all dying!” Falco shouted for Walt’s sake. “The environment is a killer. All corporate profiteers should be hanged!”

  Falco himself had been arrested and tried no fewer than six times for similar stunts. He usually found a small group to join him, but, typically, in the summer months, not in twenty-degree winter weather. The chain was big and thick, and was padlocked with a hardened steel lock that would be hell to cut. Using an oxyacetylene torch might scar the tree, giving Falco added ammunition to his cause.

  He began shouting his message again, though louder-animals in peril, the poisoning of the environment-causing Walt to check behind him, wondering at his audience.

  He saw Fiona, with her camera gear, and a reporter, Sue Bailey. They crossed the street, suppressing grins. Everyone knew Dean.

  Falco strained the chains, working himself up to a lather.

  Brandon was on his cell phone, working with Elbie’s Tire and Auto to bring a cutting torch up there; no bolt cutter was going to handle that heavy-gauge steel.

  Walt’s father, Jerry, enjoyed ridiculing his son about the small-time nature of his sheriff’s job. Though Sun Valley had grown into an internationally recognized playground for the rich and famous, big-city crime had, for the most part, not found its way here yet. The Wood River Journal still carried stories on its front page about bands of sheep stopping traffic and the Senior Center ’s vending machine being robbed. Jerry Fleming made fodder from all of it. For this reason, Walt hoped to avoid being in any of the photographs. Jerry subscribed to both local newspapers, the Mountain Express and the Wood River Journal.

  He shuffled over to Fiona. “I know you’re wearing another hat at the moment,” he said, “but I’d sure appreciate it if I didn’t end up in any of the pictures.”

  “Keeps your name in front of voters,” she suggested.

  “Makes me look like all I’ve got time for is babysitting tree huggers,” said Walt. “If I arrest him, I’m antienvironment; if I don’t, I’m a flaming liberal.”

  “What if you just set him on fire?” she asked.

  He barked a laugh and then hid his smile behind his hand. “A reasonable reaction, I think.”

  “Or, better yet, just leave him. Do nothing.”

  “You think like a cop,” he said.

  “He’ll freeze his butt off out here with no one to preach to.”

  “I think I’ll take your advice,” he said, squeezing her arm-a nice, firm arm. He headed for his office.

  Nancy offered him a grim look. “Nothing on Mark,” she said.

  “Cell phone?”

  “Not answering.”

  “Work?”

  “They don’t open until ten. I tried the emergency number, but the woman who answered hadn’t heard from him. She reminded me- unnecessarily-how close he was to Randy. She said he may have just shuttered himself in for the morning.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Despite the mountain of paperwork, Walt had to admit that he loved his office. It gave him an excuse to shut the door and lock the world out. Yet these days, thanks to Gail, he would catch himself behind his desk, staring into space, ten minutes lost to the black hole.

  “What about the Runaway Bride?”

  “Bridesmaid,” Nancy corrected. Her sense of humor stopped when she occupied that chair. “Her name is Kira Tulivich. No, still no word.”

  He’d made up his mind. “I’m going over to Mark’s,” he said.

  “I’ve called,” she reminded. “We could send a cruiser by, if you’d rather.”

  “No, I’m doing it myself.” Before he left, he gave Nancy his wish list: he wanted more on Kira Tulivich, all her friends, boyfriends, and fellow bridesmaids; he wanted to know why the ERC had not yet provided the caller ID for the Search and Rescue call that had sent them up Galena in the first place; and he wanted photos from Fiona of the tire tracks.

  “Got those,” Nancy said. “She just dropped them by.” She handed Walt a manila envelope, and he double-checked the contents.

  “If you get a minute, call the Barkin’ Basement and see if they have a kid’s winter coat, Nikki’s size. Zipper, not snaps.”

  HE DROVE the four miles north to the Starweather subdivision, marveling at the beauty of a fresh snowfall sparkling in the sunlight. A sky of perfect blue. Sugarcoated evergreens bowing to gravity.

  Highway 75 ran north-south, bisecting the twenty-mile-long valley. It was the only road that connected the three main towns: Bellevue, Hailey, and Ketchum/Sun Valley. For most of the drive, the south faces of the mountains were without trees. Covered in a fresh snowfall, they looked like giant marshmallows, forming a V with Sun Valley near the tip that pointed north. Dozens of smaller roads, all hosting million-dollar homes, led east or west off the spine of Highway 75.

  He drove his department-issue Cherokee down a small hill into a forest of aspen trees. Starweather formed a large oval through the woods.

  Aker’s driveway hadn’t been plowed. Snow slipped down into Walt’s boots and melted around his ankles, as he headed from the Cherokee. The multiple tire tracks he followed suggested vehicles coming and going at a very early hour. When Walt had arrived home just after two A.M., the snowfall had still been steady. The tracks he was following had been left somewhere before three A.M., when the storm had stopped completely.

  The driveway curved to reveal a modest one-and-a-half-story log home with a river-rock chimney. About an acre of trees had been cleared around the house, and Walt knew from many summer evenings spent on the back deck that it overlooked a small lawn, leading to the edge of the Big Wood River.

  A magpie floated overhead on fixed wings, landed between Walt and the house, and then took off again. No motion in any of the windows. A pair of spotlights, on the corner of the roof nearest the garage, left on. Another light glowed by the front door. Combined with the lack of any interior lights, Walt didn’t like the look of the place. It was possible, of course, that a grieving Mark Aker had turned off all the phones and was sleeping in. Possible, but unlikely.

  As a small-animal vet, Mark lived with death. No matter his emotions, he was not a person to hide himself away. And even if he had needed some time, Francine would be fielding calls.

  He rang the front bell to no success. Maybe they’d headed south to Mark’s parents and the family farm.

  He walked around back and tried to see into the kitchen. He knocked loudly on the living room’s French doors. But there
was no sign of life.

  He tried the back door. Locked. Tried it again. Stared at it.

  Mark never locked his doors. The fact that he’d done so now and had apparently left town-in the middle of an awful night-told him something was terribly wrong. Mark not answering his cell phone also needed explanation-he was on call 24/7.

  The more Walt looked at this, the more it stank. Mark had brought up politics the night before, had done so with difficulty. They never talked politics. Coincidental or related? Had it had something to do with Randy?

  Returning to his Cherokee, Walt took a minute, sitting on the back bumper with the tailgate up, to clean the snow out of his boots and brush off his socks.

  The rumors about Randy had to do with big-game poaching. Hunting violations belonged to Fish and Game, so Walt had steered clear.

  No doubt, Mark had heard the same rumors, might even know of Randy’s associates. Was he trying to protect the family name by running?

  Or, knowing Mark, was he determined to handle this himself?

  Politics?

  Back behind the wheel, Walt drove fast now, intent to keep his friend from exacting vengeance yet having no idea where to begin.

  9

  ELBIE, OF ELBIE’S TIRE AND AUTO, WAS A STOUT MAN WITH a potbelly whom Walt had known since back when the man had hair. Elbie greeted Walt with a calloused right hand that had the feel and texture of a gardening glove left outside for the winter.

  “Come on in,” he said. “Show me what you got.”

  An air gun rattled periodically from the garage, interrupting music playing on an oldies station. Since when had Talking Heads become oldies? Walt pondered this, as they reviewed Fiona’s photograph.

  “I need the make of the tire,” he explained, “and what kind of vehicle I might be looking at.”

  “I repair flats and do alignments. We’ve got a special right now on wiper blades.”

  “Please?”

  “It’s a Toyo tire.” Elbie had the nasty habit of making a whistling, wet, sucking sound between his teeth when he paused to think. He led Walt across the garage, past three kids in soiled jumpsuits who were busy with machinery, and he tugged a tire down from the rack. “They call it the Observe. See this center pattern? Easy to spot. It’s a good, solid tire. Expensive, though.”