Killer Summer

by Ridley Pearson

  61

  I’m not going back in the garage, Summer told herself repeatedly. But a little voice at the back of her brain told her otherwise. The woodpile would need fuel of some kind to light it, and she remembered seeing a beat-up cooking grill and a lighter wand on her way out. A row of jerrycans next to the ATVs suggested gasoline or diesel fuel. So while she had no problem connecting the dots, she just couldn’t muster the courage to go back in there and get the wand and fuel.

  And, if she could, then what? What if all three men responded to the fire? Did she head for the jet and try to phone out or did she head for the lodge and look for Kevin? What if only two men responded? Or only one? What if they just let it burn?

  She stood there, shivering. More than anything, she just wanted all this to go away. She’d dragged Kevin into this, taking his keys and forcing him to follow. What a jerk she’d been. And now she’d gotten him kidnapped, or worse. A big part of her just wanted to take off, to convince herself that it was in everyone’s best interest for her to save herself and somehow get word to her father.

  Her father! How she had betrayed him, abused his trust. Having argued her own case so many times that she actually had come to believe it, now she saw the absurdity of her logic, the product of her mistakes. She now could see it all through her father’s eyes, could feel his anger. He wouldn’t know where she was, probably didn’t even know the jet had been stolen, and by the time he figured it out any concern he had would fester into rage. He didn’t lose his temper often-she should have been more grateful for that-but when he did she’d be on the receiving end. Dread now joined the cold, and she felt like all the life had drained out of her.

  62

  Balanced atop the file boxes, the knife wedged between the boards and prying, Kevin at first thought his efforts looked promising as the boards began pulling loose. But then an unwilling nail cried out, sending a chill through him that was like biting down on an ice cube. He moved the tip of the knife closer to the nail and tried again and again it squealed. If he kept this up, the sound would bring them running.

  Discouraged, he pounded his fist on the closet door.

  “Let me out of here!” he shouted.

  It was a futile, childish outburst, but the longer he remained inside the dark closet, the greater his growing sense of panic. He was no lover of confined spaces, and the closet felt ever smaller by the minute.

  His father-or had it been his Uncle Walt?-once told him that “everything happens for a reason.” He dismissed the platitude at the time the same way he dismissed anything an adult said. But now things were different. With the words reverberating in his head, he tried to clear his thought. He had a spark of realization. Now he understood.

  Everything happens for a reason… even childish outbursts.

  He stuck the knife between the boards again and kicked the closet door.

  “LET ME OUT OF HERE!” he hollered even louder, yanking the knife down, the nail crying out and the board coming free, the sound covered by his petulant plea.

  “PLEASE!” he screamed, grabbing the board and pulling down, his cry timed perfectly.

  The board came loose in his hands.

  63

  Painfully aware that the Avicorps jet carrying his father was scheduled to touch down in fifteen minutes, Walt leaned over the Incident Command Center’s first row of tables and found Steven Garman’s cologne a little too much.

  The pilot was stocky, with an Irishman’s florid cheeks and the kind of handsome that found its way onto the labels of soup cans. He had spent the last several minutes proposing to fly the portable transmitter on the same vector as Sumner’s jet. The plan included some sophisticated flying that would allow the wireless carrier to locate the phone, if Walt could win their cooperation. That seemed unlikely to Walt, but he wasn’t going to squash Garman’s optimism.

  Walt moved another foot or two away. The cologne had to have a name like Brute Force or Demon’s Mist.

  “I can tell you where I’d have aimed for,” Garman said.

  “Please.”

  “Some big guns have been buying up ranches along the Middle Fork. There are, what, maybe half a dozen grandfathered deeded properties up there, right in the middle of national forest? Those money guys love to have what no one else can have. They also love to break the rules. Any one of them could have made improvements to their strips-I mean, they’re not supposed to mess with the landscape but no one’s going to know whether they have or haven’t, right? And let me tell you something: if you’ve got one engine flamed out and another not producing power, you’re not going to be real picky about where you put it down.” He stood, moved over to Walt’s electronic map, and drew on a pad with a special pen, circling a shaded-out area. “Given the route you’ve predicted, that’s my bet: Mitchum’s Ranch.”

  “That’s at least a mile or two past where the math puts them,” Walt said. A yellow circle had been drawn around a sizable area on the map. “The trajectory would put them here.” He indicated the center of the circle.

  “And if they crashed, that’s probably right,” Garman said. “Listen, we’re always hearing about pilot error. What no one talks about is pilot terror. No one wants to crash. You’d be surprised what you can get out of a plane when it gets hairy up there. Given their rate of descent and the fact that Mountain Home’s radar lost track of them somewhere in here… If they had a bead on a private strip out here, they could have been skipping right along the treetops,” he said, his voice excited: he was enjoying this! “They bank it into the canyon”-his big hand, thumb and pinky extended, became the plane-“and now they’re off radar, keeping maybe a hundred feet off the water. Full power, because that engine’s down to thirty percent or less. All they have to do is squeak out another mile or mile and a half.” His finger now followed the river’s twists and turns. “They’re down inside the canyon, having executed this final turn and put it down hard. Hope for the best. Whether it’s in one piece, I don’t know. But I’d start my search somewhere here.”

  “That’s miles off of where we’re planning,” Walt said.

  “All I’m saying is, a pilot doesn’t follow math, he tries to stay alive. I’d have tried for Mitchum’s. Anything short of that, with a full load of fuel, you’re in a thousand pieces and burning. No thanks.” He added, “And that’s another thing: the national forest is full of people this time of year. If that Lear crashed, it would have produced a massive fireball. You’d have heard about it by now.”

  “I’d like to take that to the bank.”

  “Send up a chopper.”

  “I’m trying to avoid that,” Walt said. “If this is a hostage situation, God forbid, the last thing we want is to broadcast that we know their location. We want this done as quietly as possible until we know what we’re dealing with. Keep that in mind when you’re up there.”

  “Okay, but let me tell you something: we have to face facts that the odds of hitting a strip are not good. First and foremost, we need to search for the wreck and for survivors. Thinking we’ve got a hostage situation here, I’m afraid, is nothing short of optimistic.”

  Walt anxiously checked the clock, dreading his father’s arrival.

  “So if you were conducting a ground search ahead of first light…” Walt said.

  Garman nodded thoughtfully. “Mitchum’s Creek was their best shot.”

  “The wireless repeater will tell you if there’s a phone logged on?”

  “It will. But I’ll need to be well past Stanley to eliminate any touristos who’ve left their phones on.”

  “You can contact me on either of these numbers,” Walt said, scribbling them down and handing them over.

  The room phone beeped, and a woman’s voice filled its speaker.

  “Sheriff? I have Special Agent Barlow for you, line one.”

  The news of a call from the FBI won the attention of everyone in the room. Walt’s office was to be gently pushed aside in the name of national security. All eyes turned to him.
He hesitated before answering.

  “Tell him I stepped out for a minute.”

  64

  Summer stuck her nose to the jerrycan’s cap and sniffed. She couldn’t tell the difference between gasoline and diesel, but the can clearly contained some kind of fuel, so she dragged it out of the garage, having spent less than a minute inside. A moment later, she faced the large pile of split firewood. She circled the pile, dousing the wood, then drizzled a fuse of fuel some twenty feet away.

  She wasn’t sure how big the fire would be, but big enough, she hoped, to bring them running. And, if all else failed, she at least would have created a signal that might be spotted by planes, although she hadn’t seen or heard any.

  She stood there, with the empty jerrycan in one hand, the lighter wand in the other, thinking she wanted the can well away from her before she lit the soaked ground.

  She screwed the can’s metal lid down tight and ran it back to the woodpile, launching it up on top.

  She hurried back into the grass and found the lighter where she’d left it. The grass stank of fuel.

  A trapezoid of light played across the lawn in the distance. Voices!

  She fumbled with the wand, its safety feature requiring both thumb and index finger working in concert to light.

  She pulled the trigger: click, click.

  A silhouette stretched across the light-painted lawn as a man filled the doorway.

  The wand sparked, a tiny blue flame dancing at the end of its chrome barrel.

  She lowered the wand to the grass, expecting the flame to creep along. But what happened was nothing like that.

  Whoosh!

  In a fraction of a second, the woodpile ignited, black smoke spiraling up from it. She fell back, off balance, and then scrambled to her feet and made for the woods.

  “FIRE!” she heard someone shout.

  She raced down the mountain, dodging tree trunks and tearing through bramble and shrub.

  Behind her, the men were shouting frantically now as the woods glowed yellow from the fire.

  Then there was an explosion, as the jerrycan blew up, sounding like a bomb going off. She stopped and turned around in time to see a ball of orange flame rising forty feet into the smoke-black sky. Sparks rained down like fireworks.

  She continued her way down the mountain, made easier by the light from the fire. She reached the level airstrip, the sound of the river not far off. Turning to admire her handiwork, she saw the orange glow now lighting the rocky face of Shady Mountain.

  Keeping to the trees, Summer hurried toward the jet at the far end of the strip, its wings and tail covered with pine boughs.

  Feeling in her pocket, she took the Learjet’s key firmly in hand.

  65

  Jerry Fleming, all business from the moment his son had picked him up at the airport, looked straight ahead out the Cherokee’s windshield as he spoke, as if it were twenty years earlier and he was teaching his son to drive.

  “How certain are we?” Jerry asked.

  “At this point, I’m convinced. Until something comes up to suggest otherwise…”

  “Is Sumner prepared to play along?”

  “With a ransom call?” Walt asked. “No. He’s in denial. Says kidnapping is out of the question.”

  “Nothing strange about that.”

  “No. He seems able to reconcile someone stealing the jet but not kidnapping his daughter.”

  “What happened to your mentoring the boy?”

  “Well, that didn’t take long,” Walt said, adding sarcastically, “This is all my fault, you know.”

  “Myra has no control over the boy. We’ve discussed it.”

  “We’ve discussed nothing, Dad. Not since Robert.”

  “Don’t bring that up.” Jerry stared out the side window, Hailey’s amber streetlights flashing across his face. “I knew you would. Why aren’t we going to your shop, this new shop I’ve heard so much about?”

  Walt had not told him about the new headquarters. Either Myra was playing both sides or he’d read about it in the paper.

  “Since when do you keep up with anything I’m doing?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Jerry.

  “Believe me, I am.”

  “I thought you’d want to show off.”

  “Yeah, that’s me all right.”

  “No need to get defensive.”

  “We’re not going back to the office,” Walt said.

  He’d stopped at his house and was loading in some extra camping gear for his father while his father remained in the passenger’s seat, never offering to help.

  “So, you’re in charge, are you?” Jerry said. “Is that right?”

  “I can’t go back to the office without dealing with the Bureau. At this point, if we’re going to avoid their intervention, then we’ve got to outrun them. You and I are going to connect with Brandon, and the three of us are going on horseback into the Middle Fork.”

  “Are we, now?” Jerry said.

  “We’ve got a plane aloft with some cell gear that may help us pinpoint Kevin. It’s up there sweeping now. We’re fairly certain the jet got down in one piece. It was fully fueled, so if it had gone down hard there would have been a fireball, and nothing like that has been reported. There are some private strips, some grass strips, maybe a few better than grass. All I’m saying is, it’s possible-probable, even-that they got down, that they walked away. If we get a hit, we can narrow this down… maybe even talk to Kev.”

  “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

  “You’re supposed to listen,” Walt said. “Your former employers would love nothing more than to take over this case. For the time being, my phone is off. And, if you noticed, the radio’s off too.”

  “Of course I noticed. I notice everything. Don’t test me, son.”

  “This whole thing is going to test you, Dad, because it’s my way or the highway this time. You can follow or you can stay behind, but you can’t lead. There’s a system in place, a system I put in place. The arrangements have been made. You can badger me all you want, guilt-trip me… Have at it. But I won’t budge. We’re going into the backcountry. All your criticism about me being a hick sheriff, well, welcome to Hicksville, Dad. You get to see it up close and personal now. I’m going in and I’m getting Kevin back. We’re getting him before the Bureau even hits the ground, because, once they do-”

  “I know. I know,” Jerry said. “I was the one warned you about the SAC, remember?” He looked tempted to say more, to challenge Walt, but he didn’t.

  Then the silence set in, a wall rising between them. And where once Walt would have done anything to tear that wall down, including acquiesce, this time he did not. Instead, hands gripping the wheel, he bit his tongue.

  They stopped by a buddy of Walt’s and loaded a raft onto the roof. They bypassed a mile and a half’s worth of traffic backed up from the bridge by going off-road, arriving at the bike-path bridge that still remained under Brandon’s control.

  “How long?” Walt asked his deputy out his window.

  “Another fifteen or twenty. Almost there.”

  “Good. You’re coming with me,” Walt said. “Turn it over to someone.”

  They stopped for five minutes at Brandon’s trailer.

  “She inside?” Jerry asked.

  “Probably,” Walt answered. “But please don’t…”

  Jerry climbed out of the Cherokee and went inside the trailer to speak with Gail. Walt felt like driving off and leaving his father in the company of the woman he thought of as his ex-wife and the deputy she now was sleeping with.

  Instead, he waited it out.

  Brandon threw some stuff in the back of the Cherokee, and, when Jerry returned, offered his hand over the backseat. But Jerry wouldn’t accept it. Brandon caught Walt’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Walt aimed the mirror at the ceiling.

  “Did you call Willie?” Walt asked Brandon.

  “He’ll have three of his best saddled and waiting for us,
a fourth with a pack saddle. We can borrow his Dodge, a dually that can haul an eight-horse, no problem.”

  Walt passed a topographical map back to Brandon. “I’ve circled Mitchum’s Creek Ranch. You will figure a route while I speak to Remy. I left Sumner at the office. He’s not going to like my bedside manner of leaving him in the lurch. But it is what it is.”

  “And Remy?”

  “Is worth a half hour. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

  Jerry glanced in his son’s direction. If he had something to say, he kept it to himself. Walt hoped some of his father’s toxic anger might transfer over to Brandon for breaking up his marriage, although that was asking a lot.

  “So, Brandon…” Jerry finally said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What if she’d been your wife?”

  Walt wished he hadn’t moved the mirror. Sometimes he loved his father.

  66

  Walt took a seat opposite Remy on the brown velour, horseshoe-shaped bench at the far back of the Mobile Command RV. A collapsible table separated the two, but to Walt it felt as if they were sitting too close. On the table were a digital voice recorder, a legal pad, a stack of Post-its, and two paper cups of Tully’s coffee. There was a black-and-white sticker on the cups advertising KB’S BURRITOS.

  Walt spoke into the recorder, providing time, location, and both their names. The formality won Remy’s full attention. He seemed ready to say something but didn’t.

  “Do you understand why we’re here, Mr. Remy?” Walt asked.

  Remy adjusted his left leg, bound in a straight position by the cast, sticking it out to the point where it rubbed against Walt.