The shocked, rapidly glazing eyes had told him there was no need for a second strike. Casually, he’d pressed the trigger again, allowing the bloodstained spike to slam out from inside the handle. He’d leaned across and wiped the blood on the sleeve of Powell’s parka, then, making sure the firing spring was in the detached setting, he’d brought back the cocking lever again, withdrawing the spike into the handle of the jigger.
He’d checked that there was no blood on the outside of the jigger. Powell’s outer clothing had effectively protected it from any sudden discharge. Then he’d tucked the weapon away inside his own parka once more, and closed the zipper.
The chair shook as it clattered past a pylon and Powell sank a little deeper into the corner. Murphy winked at him, then pulled the turtleneck up again.
“Cheer up,” he said, “you’ll be famous tomorrow. ”
C
live Wallace was warm and comfortable inside the hut at the top of the Storm Peak chair. He’d glanced out at the unloading ramp a few minutes ago. There was a little soft snow building up there. He guessed that in another five minutes or so, he’d have to go out and shovel some of it clear, packing down the rest with blows from the flat of the shovel. For now, however, he was content to huddle over the electric radiant heater, peering through the large windows in front of him at the nonstop sequence of chairs passing him by and heading round the bullwheel and back down the mountain again.
“Oh, shit!”
He said it aloud. There was no one in the hut to hear him but he said it aloud anyway. Just when his feet were finally warming up, some dumb bunny tourist had missed the unload point. He had a vague impression of one skier in a gray jacket skiing off the chair while the other passenger remained firmly and determinedly unmoving.
As the chair started around the bullwheel, Clive’s hand shot to the big red kill button beside him. He hit it, sounding the alarm bell briefly and bringing the chairlift sighing to a halt.
The figure in the chair was now eight feet or so from the ground. There was no way he could unload from there, Clive realized. He’d have to back the chair up, bringing the delinquent rider back to the unload ramp.
“Shit!” he said again, reaching for the door handle. As he cracked the door open, the wind shrilled in around him and the telephone linking him to the down mountain loading station rang once. He scooped the receiver up. Before Louis at the base station could ask the obvious question, Clive let him know what was going on.
“Got a skier tried to ride the chair around,” he said, raising his voice against the intrusive wind. “We’ll have to back her up a few yards.”
Louis answered him. “Let me know when you’re doing it.”
Clive nodded, even though the other man couldn’t see him. “Be as quick as I can,” he answered, then hung the phone on its hook and stepped out into the wind and the snow.
He glanced around idly to see if the skier’s companion was waiting for him. There were a couple of skiers nearby, their attention drawn by the alarm bell. But on a day like this people didn’t stand around at the top of the chair. They skied or they went into one of the bars. He checked but none of them was wearing a gray parka. Dumb choice of color anyway, thought Clive. In this weather, a gray parka would blend into the background and the whiteout conditions to make its owner all but invisible.
In Clive’s mind, the more visible you were on the mountain, the less chance you had of some hotshot running into you.
He slipped and slid through the snow to stand directly under the chair.
“Hey, buddy,” he called. “You cannot ride the chair down!”
He spoke precisely, sounding every syllable. The guy was rugged up and the wind was blowing. It didn’t make for perfect conversational conditions.
“You hear me?” he tried again. But there was no movement from the man in the chair. Clive peered more closely at him. He was slumped over in one corner. His head lolled to one side.
“Hey, buddy. You okay?” he yelled, but there was no response and suddenly Clive knew that no, he definitely wasn’t okay. He turned and started to run back to the cabin, slipping and falling to his knees in the snow.
He scrambled into the cabin, grabbed the phone and punched zero. Immediately, a woman’s voice answered. “Ski patrol.”
“This is the top of Storm Peak Express!” Clive babbled urgently. “Get a paramedic team over here right away. We’ve got a guy who has had a heart attack on the chair.”
The woman’s voice, by contrast to Clive’s, was calm and matter-of-fact.
“Heart attack, top of Storm Peak,” she repeated, punching the details into the computer in front of her. “You want we should alert the Medevac chopper as well?”
There was a slight pause as Clive peered out through the windows at the unmoving figure on the chair. “I think you better,” he said. “This guy doesn’t look good.”
SIXTEEN
I
’d say we’ve got a dyed-in-the-wool serial killer on our hands,” said Jesse quietly.
Lee was back in Ned Puckett’s office for the second time in as many days. This time Jesse was with her. He was standing, leaning against a filing cabinet while Lee, Ned himself and Felix Obermeyer, Chief of the Town Police, were seated around Ned’s desk.
“Now then, Jesse,” said Ned. “Let’s not go jumping to conclusions here. Those aren’t the sort of words we want bandied around where the press can hear them.”
“The press have already said them,” replied Felix gloomily. He was a thin, short man. What remained of his dark hair was slicked back over the crown of his head and hung long over his collar. The uniform issue gunbelt and handcuff pouch seemed overlarge on his small frame. He reminded Lee of a cross between a dyspeptic squirrel and Josef Goebbels. She wasn’t overfond of him but admitted that he was a good administrator.
And he was right. The press was already using those two words to describe events in Steamboat Springs.
Jesse pushed himself upright from his leaning position at the rear of the room, against one of Ned’s filing cabinets. He ran a hand through the curly brown hair that always made him seem five or ten years younger than he was.
“Not saying it won’t make it go away, Ned,” he said simply.
Puckett raised his hands helplessly to indicate that he appreciated the point. Yet he was reluctant to admit it. “I know that, Jess,” he said. “It’s just that stuff like that coming from us is liable to panic people.”
“How do you suggest we describe it then, Ned?” Lee asked.
Before he could answer, Jesse had spoken again. “I mean, one killing is unfortunate. Two can look downright careless. But once you get to three, there’s nothing for it but to suppose we’ve got a serial killer.”
Ned nodded, his eyes on the unmarked blotter in front of him, accepting the inevitable. He took a couple of deep breaths.
“Lee, are you sure you guys can handle this? Maybe we should be looking for some outside help,” he said.
Lee shrugged. “We’ve already requested it.”
Ned looked at her sharply as she said it, a question in his look. Jesse stepped in and answered it for her.
“FBI,” he said succinctly. Ned switched his gaze to the tall deputy.
“Is there a federal angle in this?” he asked.
Jesse pursed his lips and shook his head in the negative. “Not so far,” he replied. “But the FBI are always available for cases like this.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Ned. “I thought you couldn’t call in the Feebies until someone had crossed a state line, something like that.”
“They’ll advise,” Jesse reiterated. “They keep files on serial killers and they’ve got a lot more computer power than we have. We’ll send them details and they’ll trawl through their records to see if anything matches. We’ll keep doing the groundwork here.”
Felix frowned. “So they’re not actually sending anyone down?”
Lee shook her head. “Not at this stage. It’s not their jurisdiction, after all. As Jesse says, for now, they’ll keep a watching brief and see if they can give us any leads from former cases. Of course, if we find a link, they’ll send in a task force if we want it.”
Ned scowled. “Won’t have any trouble finding somewhere to put them up.” Just about every hotel in town is having cancellations—and in the busiest part of the season too. Managers are screaming. This is the worst season we’ve had since the gas main blew, back in ’94.”
The gas main in Yampa Street had exploded in 1994. The explosion hadn’t harmed anyone directly, but it knocked out heating to more than half the town. Skiers canceled in large numbers while hotels and guesthouses desperately tried to find alternative accommodations. There was a flow-on effect to restaurants, bars, ski rental outlets and the mountain itself. Businesses in Steamboat went broke right and left.
“Tell them we’re doing our damnedest to get this thing wrapped up,” Lee replied.
“Have you got anything new? Any ideas at all?” Ned asked them. He was almost pleading, Lee thought. She tried to make a negative answer sound better than it was. “Jesse’s going through the background of all three victims, looking for some common link,” she began. “Don’t know if something’s going to show up or not yet, Ned.”
The mayor looked from one to the other. He’d hoped for more concrete news, Jesse knew. City officials always did.
“Meantime, we’re putting in some new rules on the mountain, Ned,” he told him. “Should make folks feel more secure.” He looked at Felix. “Though we might ask for some manpower from you to help out, Felix.”
Lee hid a smile. There was no way Felix could object to the request now that it had been made in front of the mayor. It occurred to her that Jesse could be an astute operator when it came to small town politics.
“Sure thing, Jesse,” Felix said.
If he was a trifle thin lipped about it, Jesse didn’t seem to notice.
“What have you got in mind?” Ned asked.
“We’re going to put a ski patroller at the top of each lift to keep an eye on things,” he said.
“Thought that was the lift attendants’ job,” Ned said.
Jesse shook his head. “Lift attendant is there to keep an eye on the lift. That’s what went wrong with the last killing. The attendant was so busy watching the guy he thought was a go-round, he missed the killer skiing off.”
“So,” Felix said slowly. “The patrolmen will watch the passengers—who gets off, where they’re headed and such?”
“That’s right,” Jesse said and he saw the police chief purse his lips.
“Can’t say I like the idea, Jesse,” he said. “The patrollers are civilians. Last thing we want is one of them trying to tackle a killer.”
Jesse nodded. “I agree,” he said. “That’s where your men come in, Felix. We want to station half a dozen of them on the mountain at the main choke points. Give them Ski-Doos and put them on the ski patrol radio net. That way if our guys see someone, they can trail him and call in your cops to make the collar.”
The police chief nodded. The idea made sense.
“It might also make people feel a little more secure on the lifts,” Jesse added. Ned Puckett looked up quickly.
“You’re going publicize this?” he said. “That might scare the killer off, mightn’t it?”
“If we scare him off,” Lee put in, “he might stop killing people.”
Ned nodded hastily. “You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t think of that.”
“And in the meantime, we’ll keep plugging away, waiting for something to break,” Jesse said.
“Jesus,” said Ned Puckett heavily, his shoulders slumped. “Can’t we be a little more… proactive than that?” Proactive was a favorite expression of his.
“We’re working it all we can, Ned,” Lee said, trying to sound optimistic. Ned looked up at her, his blue eyes, red-rimmed from too much worry and not enough sleep, met her steady gray ones.
“Work it harder, Lee,” he said wearily. “Work it harder.”
J
esse had appropriated a small conference room in the Public Safety Building to use as an office. His main reason wasn’t the extra space provided, but the two walls covered in whiteboards on either side of the conference table.
His scrawled writing covered one of the two boards now. He leaned back in a chair, tipped back on its hind legs, his worn old boots planted firmly on the tabletop. Idly, he tapped the end of a black marker pen on his front teeth as he reviewed what he had so far.
He’d listed all the known facts about the three murder victims on the board, circling each individual fact and, where there seemed to be some possible correlation, linking them with a different colored line.
Names, credit cards and hometowns were all listed. Marital status was next. Alexander Howell and Andrew Barret were both divorced. Powell broke the pattern, however. He had never been married.
According to the local police in his hometown, he was a loner. Didn’t seem to have any regular girlfriends. Didn’t seem to have any girlfriends at all, as a matter of fact. Jesse had scribbled “gay?” on the board, and looped a long, green connecting line to Harry Powell’s name.