Killer View

by Ridley Pearson

  “But what’s out there?” Walt inquired.

  “Not much. Not for a long ways, anyway,” said the sheriff.

  “Sunbeam or Clayton, I suppose,” the deputy said with a bit of a twang. His face barely showed out of the tightened hood and ski goggles. “Nothing else between here and there but a shitload of snow.”

  “And your odd summer ranch on grandfathered parcels,” the sheriff added. “Would be a hell of a lot faster to head back to town and drive down to Clayton than punching through on Yankee Fork Road.”

  “But the only sure way to know where he’s going is to follow the snowmobile track,” Walt said.

  “Can’t argue with that,” the sheriff said. “I’m just saying there ain’t many places a fella can meet up with Highway Seventy-five, and Clayton’s the most likely of ’em.”

  “But not the only one,” Walt said.

  “I think we established that,” the sheriff said indignantly.

  “You mind if I borrow one of your machines?” Walt asked. “I’ll follow on the trail while you get your guys down to Clayton. It wouldn’t hurt to roadblock Seventy-five at the turn to May.”

  “Radios won’t do shit in there. You’ve got maybe a mile of coverage. Nothing more.”

  Walt tapped his pack. “Satellite phone,” he said, raising a snarl in his counterpart. The Challis sheriff’s office wasn’t at the forefront of technology. “My deputy has the number.”

  “You sure you want to do Yankee Fork Road?” the deputy asked one final time. “There ain’t nothing out there for thirty miles, Sheriff.”

  Walt saw red. He didn’t like his decisions being questioned. He’d had that a lot over the past six months. People had expected him to fire Tommy Brandon. Myra had expected him to dump Gail’s clothes out the front door.

  Minutes later, he found himself riding the snowmobile at forty miles an hour, following in the tread impressions that played out before him. It wasn’t until he caught a glimpse of himself in the snowmobile’s vibrating rearview mirror that he understood the reluctance he’d seen on their faces: mucus from his nose had frozen in twin lines on his upper lip; his eyebrows were white with frost, as were his eyelashes and some hairs on his neck and lower ears; his cheeks were an unnatural red, and some drool was frozen to his chin. He looked like a wild mountain man.

  He rubbed his face clean with his glove. You couldn’t tow a sled at the speed he was going, which meant he was making up time. But he was riding fast, and often blind, into the path of a sniper who wasn’t shy about shooting cops.

  He began slowing down at every curve and wishing the snowmobile didn’t whine like a chain saw, announcing his approach.

  17

  INSPIRED BY THE PANORAMIC VIEW OF PRISTINE WILDERNESS, the soundtrack from The Sound of Music played in his head-no narration, just the gentle strains of Julie Andrews’s bell-like voice.

  He took something of a risk in leaving the vet down there in the sled, as he climbed a mountain ridge overlooking a long bend in Yankee Fork Road. Strong winds had blown away the snow, leaving scrabble rock and patches of ice, which he negotiated with care.

  The ascent is carried out with precision, the timing critical, as he leaves his captive bound and unconscious far below. To make even the slightest mistake now can cost him everything, and so he goes about his mission with great care.

  He loved grenades. It was well worth the climb to achieve the godlike sense of power associated with kicking an avalanche. He carried the CheyTac, as a measure of precaution: he could shoot the eye out of an eagle at half a mile with the thing. But it was the two grenades that really warmed his nut sack.

  He stopped several times to catch his breath in the thin air. Looked down at the snowmobile and sled, a quarter mile beyond the turn. No one was going to come down this road, unless they were after him, but, if anyone did, he’d covered the unconscious vet with a blanket to hide the sled’s contents.

  People had seriously misjudged the man. They took him for a hick and an incompetent. But in doing so they had allowed him to overhear the girl’s interrogation. They had given him a way out of this mess. The doctor was the witnesshe’d longed for. A simple double cross and his mission-his message-was saved.

  He sat down on a rock to quiet himself. It wouldn’t do to handle grenades in this state. He smoked a cigarette and took in the scenery. His plan was a simple one: as a precaution, he would kick an avalanche and cover the Y in Yankee Fork Road, making it impassable. Snowmobiles would be blocked by a giant wall of ice and rock and, to the right, a precipitous drop-off. No one would get through here except on foot.

  He heard a buzzing in his ears as he removed the concussion grenade from his satchel, pulled the pin, and heaved it well out into the snowfield. Moments later, he heard its soft cough. Watched as the center of the slope calved and caved simultaneously, an enormous shelf of snow sinking and breaking free from the uniformity above. Snow rippled as the newly created shelf pushed against the snow below, looking like age lines on an elderly face.

  The sounds came next: a deep groaning, like the awakening of some great beast. This was interrupted once again by the buzzing whine of an insect, the contained anger pulsing past his ears.

  The crack in the slowly shifting shelf of snow widened.

  Then he saw what appeared to be a little black bug shooting along the road, and the insect sound took on an entirely new meaning: a snowmobile.

  It was barreling down Yankee Fork Road, coming from the direction of Challis. Alone. It all but ruled out the cops; they always traveled in pairs or groups. No, this was some poor shit out on a nature ride who’d chosen the wrong day and the wrong route.

  All at once, the snow slid in a massive, beautiful display of the raw power of nature. It was like a dam bursting.

  He gloried in the moment, feeling the earth shuddering at his feet, hearing that sound, now more like a jet taking off.

  It buried the buzz of the snowmobile, wiped out the soundtrack, silenced the narrator.

  It moved first as a unit, as if the whole side of the mountain were falling. But then inertia and momentum collided, and a central chute rose, in a massive upheaval, a wide river of flowing snow, rock, and ice, gorging out the center of the slide and sucking more and more snow and debris down with it. Two huge trees at the edge of the far hill snapped like matchsticks and were carried down, swallowed whole.

  And there, still unaware, came the black bug of the snowmobile, curving slowly around the long bend, headed directly into its unforgiving path.

  18

  IT BEGAN AS A SHUDDER, AS IF HE’D PUSHED THE SNOWMOBILE too hard, had thrown a belt or burned up some bearings. Walt felt it first in his legs, then his waist, and finally some spinal signal reached his brain that told him to look to his left.

  His greatest fear was death by fire, with asphyxiation a close second. This included drowning. But more than drowning, being buried in an avalanche. He’d led enough Search and Rescue teams, both successful and not, to know the horror stories, and to see the results firsthand. If you were lucky enough to survive the churn-and few were-then you found yourself in a sea of blackness, disoriented and buried alive. Death came slowly: as your body chilled into hypothermia, your own breath contaminated what little air existed in your icy tomb and you suffocated, thrown first into hallucination, and, finally, a lung-bursting death.

  His first thoughts, as he saw the mountain collapsing toward him, were not thoughts at all but images. He’d pulled out bodies, the faces frozen in looks of madness-terror-ridden masks of inescapable panic.

  Then, for just a fraction of a second, above the fluid hillside cascading toward him, he made out the silhouetted shape of a man standing on the distant ridgeline. It might have been his imagination or wishful thinking: wanting to attribute this devil’s work to a man instead of synchronicity, his being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  It was too big a slide, traveling too fast down the hill, to try to cross its path. The one bit of luck working f
or Walt was that he’d slowed considerably as he’d headed into the curve, cautious of the range of the sniper’s rifle. He was not quite midslide, an area that looked to cover about two hundred yards. The first boulders of snow tumbled onto and across the cut of the roadbed, itself already buried in four feet of fresh snow. He jacked the handlebars, threw his left leg out, and gassed the accelerator, fishhooking the snowmobile into an about-face and cutting a deep rut that threatened to swallow the machine. Ironically, a snowmobile only worked well in deep snow if moving; if stopped or slowed significantly, it bogged down and was stranded.

  The time consumed in turning it around cost him. More chunks of snow-two and three feet across-bounded on the road; the tremendous grinding sound of the slide overwhelmed him and literally shook the mechanized sled beneath him.

  The avalanche came down the hill not as an arrow but as a snake’s tongue, its forks faster and more charged than its center. Beyond the road’s man-made, twenty-foot-wide patch of level track, the hill dropped away again precipitously, covered with trees and rock outcroppings.

  He wasn’t going to make it: the snowmobile had slowed as a result of the turn and the rush of snow now coming down pushed across the road as a unit, shoving Walt and the snowmobile sideways out in front of its headlong force. He had to make it at least another sixty yards to clear the turn and it wasn’t going to happen.

  Walt tugged on the handlebars and jumped the sled off the road. The snowmobile plowed into a drift, and Walt came fully off the seat, attached only by his bloodless grip. Behind him, the roar was unlike anything he’d ever heard: the open throat of a monster. The vehicle pulled up and out of the drift; Walt slammed back down onto the seat and twisted the accelerator, the full force of the avalanche now only yards behind him-a rising wall of debris shoved ahead of its unchecked force. Above the din, he heard the explosions of trees succumbing. The speed with which it now traveled dwarfed his own; one glance back told him as much.

  There was no outrunning it.

  At an incredible speed increased by the pull of gravity, he slalomed the sled down the hillside, narrowly missing tree trunks and dodging rocks. He tried to back off the accelerator, but it was no use: the whole hillside was moving out in front of that force, like he was riding a carpet being tugged out from under him. With the snow that carried him now itself in motion, the steering became unresponsive; he was no longer in control of the vehicle-the movement of the snow dictated his direction.

  He faced a huge snow-covered rock to his right and a stand of massive trees straight ahead. He goosed the accelerator, yanked on the steering yoke-and nothing happened. The snowmobile carried him, as if on tracks, right for the tree trunks.

  He leaped free and rolled, scrambling for the lee behind the rock outcropping. It was like swimming in sand. The crush of the avalanche lifted the snow beneath him and he rose like riding a wave. It firmed as it rose, the packed mass out in front, shelving up from under the fresh powder. He came to his knees like a surfer, measured his speed against the fixed position of the intractable rock outcropping, and dove.

  Never the most athletic person, Walt nonetheless managed the perfect jump. Now behind the enormous rock that towered some twenty feet overhead, he scrambled on hands and knees to hide in its lee.

  The snowmobile crashed into the trees. Walt reached the shelter of the rock face, hugging himself to the stone and gripping it with both gloves. It divided the avalanche, the ice and snow flying past in a deafening roar that terrified him more than the snow itself. Some rocks and chunks of ice flew overhead but landed beyond him, the outcropping fully screening him from the downthrust of the slide. It seemed to last an hour; in all, it was just over four minutes.

  Walls of snow now rose fifteen feet on either side of him as the avalanche advanced down the hill. He thought he would be buried. And then, without warning, it stopped. As still as concrete.

  All sound seemed to stop along with it, replaced by the quiet calm of a winter forest. Some wood creaked. He heard the chittering of a squirrel followed by the irritated call of a western magpie.

  He slid down to a sitting position on a slight cushion of snow in the protection of the rock and gave a prayer of thanks.

  Then, suddenly, he heard the distinctive buzz of a snowmobile.

  It was running hard, traveling away from him, fading slowly behind the frantic pulse of blood in his ears.

  19

  WALT CALLED OUT ON THE SATELLITE PHONE AND A CHALLIS deputy picked him up on Yankee Fork Road an hour later. Once in town, the Challis sheriff vented his frustration over Walt’s destruction of their property and the dispatching of his men on what turned out to be a wild-goose chase: no one towing snowmobiles or matching Aker’s description had been turned up at the now-defunct roadblocks. Walt’s promise to replace the destroyed snowmobile failed to gain him much ground. The wolf incident a year earlier lay between them.

  Brandon had been driven to a hospital in Salmon, Idaho, which, as far as Walt was concerned, was the kiss of death, given the community’s isolation. The polio vaccine was considered advanced medicine in Salmon. Brandon ’s only hope was that Salmon probably saw plenty of gunshot wounds.

  Walt and the sheriff organized a team of four to revisit the Aker’s cabin and collect evidence. There was much to be done, from photographing tracks, the broken window, and the cabin’s interior to searching beneath the trees for shell casings. Walt called in Fiona’s services and waited the two hours for her arrival.

  It was agreed that Walt and Fiona could initially work the cabin.

  Instead of snowshoeing up, everyone teamed up on snowmobiles. Fiona climbed on behind Walt. Her gloves were too thick for the strap on the seat behind him, so she ended up wrapping her arms around his waist, and she and Walt bounced their way up the road.

  He leaned over his shoulder and shouted above the machine’s roar. “Everything we have points to a kidnapping.”

  She shouted back. “This thing just gets crazier and crazier.”

  Walt hadn’t told her about the avalanche, only the possible abduction and Brandon ’s shooting, which seemed enough information to process.

  A few minutes later, they entered the cabin, and Walt propped the broken door shut to try to contain some of the warmth from the propane heater.

  They circled the cabin’s main room, Walt pointing out areas he wanted photographed.

  They hadn’t been inside but a few minutes when she asked, “Do you know a guy named Roger Hillabrand?”

  “I know of him, sure. Extremely wealthy. Well-connected.”

  “I met him at a wedding I was shooting.”

  “And I need to know this because…?” Having worked the floor for one full turn, Walt directed his attention to the furniture and the walls.

  “No reason. Just wondered.”

  “I don’t believe that,” he said from the opposite side of the room.

  “No reason,” she repeated.

  “Women don’t mention other men for no reason.”

  “You’re the sheriff. That gives you an insider’s position when it comes to people like Roger Hillabrand.”

  “He’s not a serial killer,” Walt said. “That I’m aware of.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now you’re mad at me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “If you want me to be jealous, I’m considering it.”

  “Furthest thing from my mind, I promise you.” She hesitated. “Why would I want you to be jealous, anyway?”

  “My mistake,” he said.

  “It most certainly was.”

  “Government contracts. Like Halliburton. That kind of thing. Iraq. Afghanistan. Domestic work as well. Site clean-ups. Nuclear facilities. He attends the Cutter Conference-that’s how I know all this. Has a very… professional… security detail around him.”

  “Was that sarcasm or cynicism?”

  “Ex-military. All of them.”

  “Is that so unusual?”

  “Yes, as a
matter of fact it is. Ex-cops is more typical. Big-city cops: New York, Chicago, Miami. Those are the guys these guys hire. They’ve got the résumé, and they maintain good contacts. An effective security detail needs access to other law enforcement. Hiring military discharges gives you brawn but no brains, in terms of connections.”

  “Discounting the Pentagon.”

  “Knowing someone in the Pentagon doesn’t tell you who you can trust in the NYPD to get your guy across town safely.”

  “But nothing bad? Roger, I mean. Does he have a reputation?”

  “As a ladies’ man? A drinker? A gambler? Not that I’ve heard, no. But he’s in that upper echelon of power brokers, and, from what I’ve learned, they all dip their toes in that water, whether they’re known for it or not.”

  “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

  “Over here,” he said. She crossed the room and studied where he was pointing. Four pushpins framed an empty space on the wall. Three more pushpins were on the floor. They’d missed those pins the first time around, something neither mentioned but both were thinking.

  Fiona readied her camera, changing some settings.

  “Something was pinned up here. A photo maybe. Or a calendar. Or…” He reached out and gently moved a red pushpin, tilting it. A small triangle of torn paper swung down from where it was stabbed by the pin. There was a light green border on the white paper, along with a series of numbers.

  “Money?” she said.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say maybe a map. A topo map.”

  “Don’t you have to guess?” she asked.

  “As little as possible,” he answered. “Those numbers on it will help us identify it.”

  The cabin was constructed of three-sided logs, with the milled face on the interior. Walt pointed out three distinct pinholes at the center of the four others, which, to him, represented corners. He told her he wanted a lot of coverage on these, including a way to reconstruct it to scale.