“What are you doing here?” he said to Fiona as he entered his office.
“You said I could use your computer.”
“Did I?”
“Are you all right?”
“No,” he answered. “I have to call my father. He has to be told.”
“I’ve got something for you.” She motioned for him to sit by her, but he remained standing while viewing the screen.
“Ears,” she said.
“Ears,” he repeated.
“As individual as fingerprints.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You wanted proof it was Cantell.”
Walt moved closer. “Yes…”
“Behold the magic of digital photography.”
From a mug shot of Cantell taken from a scanned image of his OneDOJ sheet, she cropped the right ear, then enlarged it, made it transparent, and laid it over a video still from Sun Valley Aviation’s security camera. It matched Cantell’s ear exactly.
“I can do the same thing with Roger McGuiness,” she said, “although the angle is not as absolutely perfect as this.”
“So we’ve got them dead to rights,” Walt said.
“You don’t have to sound so excited,” she snapped sarcastically.
Walt snatched up the phone and barked out an order to arrest Arthur Remy “on suspicion of fraud.” He added, “Three-quarters of my deputies and every cop in the valley are up there. Find Remy and hold him for questioning.”
Hanging up, he explained himself to Fiona. “We know the bottles are fakes. We can tie Cantell to the attempted theft of the bottles and Remy, by association, to the theft of the jet and the kidnapping of two teenagers. It gives us someone to question, an actual suspect. You gave us that someone. Maybe we can catch a break.”
“Then I’ll save my work?” she said.
“By all means.” He glanced at the phone.
“Just take the punches, if he throws them,” she said.
“Oh, he’ll throw them all right.”
“It’s all in how you respond.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Jeez,” Fiona said, coming out of the chair-his chair, “you’re welcome.”
“I’m sorry,” he called out after her. Too late.
Walt sat down, let out a long breath, and reached for the phone. He started punching in the numbers he knew by heart. But he did it more slowly than usual, his index finger hovering over the final button, refusing to punch.
He then sat up straight, elbows on his desk, and pressed the button.
“Well, look what the dog drug in,” Jerry Fleming said.
“Been a while.”
“Has it? Hadn’t noticed.”
“I’ve got a situation here. Kevin may be involved, may be in way over his head. I need your contacts at Air Force.”
“Kev? What kind of situation?”
Walt talked him through the attempted theft of the wine, the explosion at the auction, the blocking of the bridge. Chuck Webb’s seeing Kevin’s car behind the lodge and the theft of the jet he saved for last. When he brought up the engine fire, his father cut him off.
“Kevin’s on board?”
“We haven’t verified that, but that’s what I believe, yes.”
“Jesus H. Christ, what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit are you running over there?”
“I’m told the Air Force may have radar that reaches up here. The FAA believes they do. Since you have friends over there, I thought-”
“You’d get me to bail you out.”
“Not exactly how I saw it.”
“I’ll make the call.”
Walt outlined the window of opportunity as he understood it, impressing upon him that they needed to make every effort to locate the Learjet.
“You’re in over your head.”
“Thankfully, your opinion doesn’t matter. By now, they’re likely well beyond my county, well out of my reach.”
“Not if that second engine was burning out. Any pilot with a beating heart would put that jet down in a matter of minutes if one engine had been lost and they were losing the second. It couldn’t have flown very far.”
“We’re on it. We’re contacting every airfield.”
“Takes a good deal of runway to land a jet.”
“We’re on it,” Walt repeated.
“The right kind of satellite might pick up a flare out. I can check on that as well.”
“Anything you can do… The sooner we can track that jet-”
“I’m coming over there.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Did I ask? I said I’m coming over there. If you find Kevin, then call me. Otherwise, plan to pick me up in… ninety minutes. I’ll call you from the plane.”
“The company jet?”
“You could have had this, Walt. This was your choice, not mine. I’ll call from the jet and give you a number where you can reach me. See you shortly.”
Cringing, Walt hung up the phone. He had ninety minutes to save himself from certain hell.
53
The forest floor was interrupted by chokecherry and brambles, slash and deadfall. Often impassable, the changing terrain required Kevin to traverse the hill instead of climbing vertically. Summer not only stayed with him but occasionally took the lead. While the forest’s darkness made for slow going, using the flashlight would have been suicide, revealing their position in the same way the glow of a light below them told them where the chase was coming from.
Still a good distance away, there was no question that at least one of the three men had followed them into the woods.
“I don’t get it,” he whispered, huffing a bit. “Why bother with us?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“They obviously stole the plane, right?”
“Okay…”
“We were never part of that, so why follow us?”
“Because we saw them?” she suggested.
“No,” he said. “We can’t be the only ones who saw them. That doesn’t make sense. I think it’s you.”
“What about me?”
“I think they want you. The jet’s wrecked. You’re the prize. And me? I’m nothing but… an inconvenience. I’m disposable.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“I hope I’m wrong,” he said, now picking up the pace.
Summer suddenly passed him and leaped onto one of the huge boulders they’d been avoiding.
“Come on,” she urged.
She led the way up and over the rock.
“Don’t scuff the ground,” she hissed. “Don’t give them anything to follow.”
She led them nearly straight up the hill.
Light played in the overhead branches, then dimmed and moved left. Summer and Kevin headed higher, though considerably slower, in total silence. The next time Kevin checked, the beam had moved well away.
“Awesome,” he said.
Summer shushed him.
The ground leveled off. The trees thinned. The moonlight shone brighter.
“Check it out!” she said.
They faced a rambling lodge cut into the rocky hill, making it look as if its log walls grew right out of the cliff. Bluish light glowed from the windows nearest them. Less light came from the far end of the lodge, where Kevin now spotted a tall, white-haired man on a path leading toward some stairs emerging from the forest, stairs that led down to the airfield. A pair of floodlights shone from the corner eaves of the lodge, casting a halogen glare across a field of wild grass.
The lodge was landscaped on three sides by a clearing. Summer stepped forward obviously wanting to call out to the man, but Kevin pulled her back.
“We have two choices here,” Kevin said, his lips to her ear, “the forest or the house.”
He pointed to the treetops. The flashlight beam had turned yet again and was once again coming up the hill from behind them.
The tall man-he looked like an old cowboy-wore blue jeans, boots, and a light-colored
long-sleeved shirt. He stopped at the top of the stairs.
“Over here!” he called out loudly in the direction of the flashlight beam.
The beam froze, illuminating the tops of trees. Then it began to advance again up the hill, directly toward Kevin and Summer.
Kevin tugged on Summer’s arm, making sure he had her attention. He pointed to a pair of doors cut into the rock at the base of the lodge, either a garage or storage area, by the look of it.
He drew her close and whispered. “Follow me, fast and low, straight for those doors.”
“He’ll help us!” She meant the cowboy.
The crunching of undergrowth grew ever louder. Whoever was following them was close now.
“Over here!” the cowboy called out. He headed down the stairs.
The lawn was now empty.
“Trust me,” Kevin said to Summer.
He pulled her, and she followed. Together, they ran toward the lodge, reaching the shadows sheltering the two doors.
“Okay?” he asked, panting.
She nodded.
He felt for the door latch. It engaged, and the heavy door sagged open.
“There are stairs over here!” the cowboy called out. The flashlight beam paused briefly.
“It’s going to be dark in there,” Kevin warned.
Summer nodded.
“No noise,” he added.
“So, shut up!” she said.
“Whatever…”
Kevin slipped inside, Summer followed. He took one look around, then eased the door shut, blocking out the light, and gently lowered the latch in place.
The space smelled of cedar and grass, oil and dust. He slipped the flashlight under his shirt to mute its beam, then quickly flashed it on and off to get his bearings. They saw a pair of sawhorses, a workbench, trash bins, tarps, a small tractor, a skimobile or ATV-maybe both-and extension cords, ropes, and tools hanging from a pegboard on the right wall. There was a stack of firewood against the back wall. Steps at the far left of the room led to a door. He determined a route for them to follow.
“We should have stayed in the woods,” she said in a hot whisper. “Or said something to that guy.”
“We’ve got to get word to someone,” he said.
He pulled out his cell phone, turned it on, silenced its ringer.
“No bars,” he said, angrily jamming the phone back in his pocket.
“I’ve got to pee,” she said.
“You’ve got to hold it,” he said.
“There is no way I’m going to hold it.”
“So, pee.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’ll turn my back.”
“I am not peeing in the dirt.”
“I am not dealing with this.”
“There’s got to be a toilet in the house.”
“Why don’t you go ask if you can use it?”
She huffed at him.
“We’re somewhere near the Middle Fork,” he said. “There’re a half dozen of these places, max, in a couple thousand square miles of wilderness. There could be a neighbor a half mile away. But it might be forty miles or more.”
“That’s impossible. We were in the air, what, like ten minutes? Fifteen? How far could we have gone?”
“At three hundred miles an hour, you do the math. The point is, all these places have radios. Maybe that cowboy dude lives here all alone. We need that radio. So, come on.”
Kevin reached out for Summer in the dark and found her arm. She didn’t resist him as he led her along his newly memorized route. He moved slowly, inching his feet out ahead and avoiding knocking over any of the objects he encountered. As the toe of his running shoe connected with the first step of the stairs at the back of the room, he pocketed the flashlight, trading it for the steak knife. He tested the step. It accepted his weight without creaking. They then climbed slowly, eventually reaching the door at the top.
He tried the handle. It wasn’t locked.
He couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel Summer trembling. She squeezed his arm, wanting him to reconsider.
He found her ear and whispered, “Better odds if they don’t catch both of us. There’s a tarp in the corner. Hide under it.” He tried leading her back down the stairs.
“No way,” she hissed, resisting.
“Way,” he said. “I may need you to save me.”
“Right…”
“Remember, you’re the prize, not me. We can’t let you get caught.”
He eased her down the steps, found their way along the stack of firewood, and reached the tarp. It smelled pleasantly of oiled canvas, triggering memories of his father and camping trips.
He sat her down. “Stay here until I come back for you.”
“And what if you don’t?” She sounded angry.
“If we get separated,” he said, not answering her directly, “then we meet at the far end of the runway near the jet. You still have your key. There are radios on the jet as well.”
He pulled the tarp over her head before she could reply. He tucked it around her. He flicked the light once to make sure she was covered, then waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dark again.
“… ud… uck…” Her voice muffled by the tarp. She’d either said “Good luck” or “Get fucked.”
Kevin headed back to the door that led into the lodge.
54
Walt paced the Incident Command Center. His father had come through with the last-known whereabouts and vectors for the jet. The Mountain Home Air Force Base refused to admit they had radar capable of seeing into the mountains, so none of the information that Walt was given was official. And, since it wasn’t official, Walt wasn’t supposed to know that a pair of fighters had been scrambled to find the jet and shoot it down, if necessary, because it had been stolen. Walt reminded his father that he’d delayed reporting the jet as stolen in order to avoid what to him was a predictable response. His father had told him he couldn’t have it both ways, and to meet him in sixty minutes when he landed.
Evelyn Holmes, a civilian employee of Walt’s who typically ran numbers, approached Walt.
“Evelyn,” he greeted her. He had no time to discuss budget but didn’t want to seem dismissive. As a civilian, she had no business being in the Incident Command Center, but he wasn’t about to throw her out.
“Word is, you’re looking for someone to calculate a flight path.”
“As it’s been explained to me,” he said, not wanting to insult her, “it’s complicated stuff. Speed in the air, speed over ground, rate of descent, the fact that the engines are constantly losing thrust…”
“May I take a look at the data?”
“Sure. I don’t mean this the way it sounds, but, from what Steven Garman says, it is rocket science.”
“I was awarded my Phil-D in astrophysics from Imperial College, London.”
“You have a Ph.D.,” he said.
“And a master’s in material sciences.”
She was working for him for just a few dollars more than minimum wage.
“This valley…” he said.
“My son wanted to compete at the national level in snowboarding. His father and I made some sacrifices.”
“But you’ve been here-”
“Six years, yes. He broke his ankle and blew out his knee in his second season. His snowboarding career was over. But we all fell in love with this place. No way we were going back to southern California.”
He showed her what little information they had on the Learjet.
“I need to predict possible airports and landing strips,” he said.
Evelyn gave a cursory look at the data and grunted. “Okay, I’m on it,” she said.
A deputy knocked and entered the room. He hesitated at the threshold under the glare of everyone’s attention.
“Well?” Walt called out.
“EOC has a report of a UFO… That’s right, Sheriff, you heard me right… Seen south, southeast of Stanley. A yellow light, not ru
nning lights, that just hovered there in the sky for about a minute, then sank slowly over the horizon and vanished. EOC thought it might be your jet.”
“Give what you’ve got to Evelyn,” Walt said.
“The guy making the call is retired Navy. Made a big point of that. Didn’t want to be taken as a quack. He gave us his location in lat/long.”
“In order for it to appear not to be moving,” Evelyn said, accepting the note from the deputy, “he would have had to have been directly behind it, looking in its exact line of flight. I can work with that.”
Walt referenced a map that was projected on one of the overhead screens as Evelyn drew a line north, northwest across Stanley.
“There’s nothing out here,” he said. “No airports. There aren’t even roads.”
“Given the jet’s rate of descent, it went down somewhere here,” Evelyn said. She drew a line perpendicular to the first line, like crossing a T. She glanced at the wall clock. “Twenty to twenty-five minutes ago.”
“Went down?” Walt said.
55
Kevin opened the door that led from the garage/storage into the lodge, listened for signs of life, and, hearing none, sneaked inside. Adrenaline-charged and terrified, he hoped to find a phone or a radio. Since the death of his father, he’d manipulated his mother, banked on friends’ pity, bargained for better grades from his teachers, and underperformed for his employers. Only his uncle wouldn’t cut him any slack. And now, of all the people, it was his uncle that he found himself emulating.
Coats hung on pegs to the left, boots were lined up neatly next to a rough-planked bench. The coats were all big, the boots all the same size: large. Kevin worked his way down the hallway, past the kitchen, and into a living room. It was furnished with couches, overstuffed chairs, and a dining table and chairs. In the oversized fireplace, the remnants of a summer night’s fire glowed.
The room was unintentionally shabby chic. The furniture didn’t match; there were wrought-iron lamps with cowhide lampshades, a deer-antler chandelier over the table. There were no bright colors or flowers. The tone was more hunting lodge than family getaway.
While the cowboy appeared to live alone, this notion was contradicted by a better view of the kitchen, with its eight-burner range and twin refrigerators.
Killer Summer Page 17