Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. It didn’t seem like much of a reason for him to be murdered on the Storm Peak Express.
The first two victims had come from Minnesota and Arizona, respectively. Powell’s hometown was in North Carolina. There seemed no connection there. Jesse had checked on the three men’s college backgrounds. Again, the three were widely scattered. Powell had remained in North Carolina during his college years. Barret had completed three years in a California college before flunking out. Howell had been educated in Michigan.
Nothing about the three men seemed to match. Howell was a dentist. Barret a car salesman. Powell’s occupation was listed as “marketing consultant,” which could mean he was an advertising whiz or that he sold Amway door-to-door. Their ages were spread as well. The dentist was in his mid-forties. The car salesman was thirty-three and the consultant thirty-eight.
About the only thing they seemed to have in common was the fact that they were all male.
“Maybe he’s a man hater,” Jesse murmured to himself.
The conference door swung open and Lee stepped in.
“Working late?” she asked. Jesse glanced down at his wristwatch. He was surprised to see that it was after nine.
“I guess time flies when you’re having fun, just the way they say,” he replied with a wry grin. The conference room was set in the middle of the building with no exterior walls and, consequently, no windows. Jesse gestured at the whiteboard-covered walls around him.
“Hard to keep track of the time when you can’t see the light outside,” he said. Lee nodded, hooked a chair toward her and straddled it backward, gazing at his scribblings on the whiteboard. “Is that how they handle an investigation like this in Denver?” she asked.
“It’s how I do it,” Jesse replied. “Lets me look at all the facts of a case at once, see if there’s any relationship, any connection between the victims. Sometimes even the simplest fact can be a link,” he explained.
“And?” Lee asked.
Jesse shrugged. “So far, the only thing I can see is that they’re all male. That could be too simple a link.” He let go a long breath. “Maybe our killer is an anti-divorce activist who also hates gays,” he said. “But I get the feeling that our facts to back that up are a little thin. Other than those few facts, there seems to be nothing that these men have in common.”
“Except that they were all murdered here,” Lee observed.
She felt Jesse’s gaze switch quickly to her. She looked at him defensively.
“What?” she asked.
He was tapping his teeth with the marker pen again. “I was just thinking,” he said, “I missed that rather obvious link.”
He swung his long legs down from the table, allowing his chair to thud back into an upright position, and moved to the whiteboard. In large script, he wrote:
died Stmboat,
circled the note and drew green link lines to the three names.
“That’s pretty obvious,” Lee said mildly. “After all, it’s why we’re here.”
“True,” Jesse admitted, staring thoughtfully at his recent addition to the board. “Just occurs to me I’ve been looking so hard at where and how they lived to find some connection, I’ve been neglecting to think about where and how they died. That could be all the connection we need.”
Lee shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t get it.”
Jesse turned and grinned at her suddenly, the thoughtful frown disappearing from his face like morning mist when the sun breaks through. “Neither do I, yet,” he said. “That’s the fun of it all.”
Lee gestured one thumb at the door behind her. “Well, no matter, it’s time to pack it in for now.”
Jesse yawned, stretched and carefully put the marker pen in the narrow tray under the whiteboard. “Man, am I hungry!”
Lee smiled, glanced around the room. There was plenty of evidence that a whole bunch of coffee drinking had gone on in here. None at all of any eating. She knew that Jesse hadn’t set foot outside the room since they’d returned from the meeting in Ned’s office that morning.
“You remember to have lunch?” she asked dryly.
Jesse thought about it for a few seconds, then, with that slow smile breaking out over his face again, he replied, “No. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe I did. Could be that explains these strange gnawing pains in my inner self.”
Lee shook her head in mock sorrow. “Planning on having any supper?” she asked.
“Guess I’ll catch something at the Old Town,” Jesse said. “Then head out back to my place.”
The Old Town was the Old Town Saloon on Lincoln Avenue. Lee had a pretty good idea what sort of meal Jesse was planning on catching.
“Jess,” she said gently, “you can’t spend your life eating nothing but burgers and fries, you know.”
Her deputy smiled faintly at her concern. “Well now, that’s not all I eat, Lee,” he said. “Just the other night I had myself a chili dog and a whole plate of nachos.”
“Why don’t you come back to my place while I fix you a proper meal? We could talk over old times a little as well. Haven’t done that in a long time.” Lee saw the hesitation. It had been like this since Jesse had come back. He was friendly but somehow distant. He never allowed situations where someone might get too close anymore. She could see the polite refusal forming on his lips.
Then, unexpectedly, he said, “Why thanks, Lee. I think I’d like that.”
He grinned at her again and, this time, she laughed out loud. “Well, damn me if you don’t keep a woman guessing, Jess Parker,” she said. “I I was sure as hell you were going to say no.”
His grin faded to a quizzical shadow of its former self. He nodded. “Funny thing, right up until I said yes, I thought so too.”
They left the conference room with its scribbled-on whiteboards. A note pinned to the door warned the cleaning staff not to touch anything inside. Lee snapped off the lights as they exited, the door locking automatically behind them.
Outside it was snowing heavily. The big, fat flakes tumbled down through the area lighting of the parking lot. There was a good six inches of fresh snow underfoot on the tarmac surface. Jesse stopped, leaned back and let the flakes drop on his upturned face.
“Looks like we’re in for a big one,” he said quietly.
Lee, looking at the sky as well, nodded her head in agreement.
“Forecast says so,” she said. “That should put a smile on Tad Kaminski’s face.”
They both grinned. The mountain manager went through three kinds of hell every season dealing with the vagaries of winter weather. A ski resort needs snow. And a resort like Steamboat Springs needs lots of it. Lots of fresh snow. Lots of fresh powder. It goes with the reputation.
“Let’s hope it keeps our killer indoors for a few days.” Jesse shivered briefly as a few flakes penetrated his collar, melting instantly into freezing water, and turned away to his battered Subaru wagon, parked behind Lee’s Renegade.
SEVENTEEN
Y
ou hear much from Abby these days?” Lee said.
They’d finished eating and were still working on the bottle of red wine Jesse had picked up on the way to Lee’s small house.
“Not a whole lot,” he said. His own tone was measured, unemotional. He wasn’t giving anything away, she thought. “Occasionally she’ll drop me a line—you know, birthdays and such. But no, I can’t say we’re regular correspondents.”
Lee glanced up at him. “You ever write to her?” she asked.
Jesse took a sip of his wine before he answered.
“Can’t say I do.” Jesse noticed that Lee’s glass was empty and leaned over to refill it.
“Thanks,” she said. Then, deciding she might as well go for broke now she’d brought the subject up, added, “You miss her at all?”
Jesse raised an eyebrow. “What’s this, Lee? Do you check up on the personal life of all your deputies? Is that part of a sheriff’s job?”
She flushed slightly. “No, goddamit!” she snapped at him. “I’m asking the question as a friend. That’s what we are, Jesse. Friends. Remember?”
There was an awkward silence as Jesse realized he’d overreacted. In a much milder tone, he said, “Sorry, Lee. I guess I’m just not used to talking about my personal life a whole lot.”
“You’re telling me,” she said, with a wan smile. “Jess, since you came back here, you’ve been so damn closemouthed about yourself you make a rock look talkative. You can’t keep things bottled up like that.”
Jesse shrugged moodily. “Don’t see how talking about things is going to make them much better.”
She laid a hand gently on one of his. “That’s not how you used to feel,” she said. “Time was, we used to talk all the time about our troubles.”
“Our troubles?” he corrected her with the faintest hint of a smile. “Seems to me all we ever talked about were my troubles.”
Lee shrugged, trying to lighten the moment a little. “Well hell, I knew if I’d had any troubles, you would have been just happy as a clam to talk about them too.” His smile widened a little. Just a little. Encouraged, she persisted. “Come on, Jess. You know it can help to talk things through.”
“Talking doesn’t change anything,” he said evenly. She considered this for a moment, then nodded agreement.
“True. But it can make things more bearable. Least of all, that’s what I thought when we used to talk. I thought I was maybe helping you a little.”
His steady brown eyes locked on hers for a long moment.
“You helped, Lee,” he said quietly. “You helped a whole lot.”
“Well, then?” she said. He was silent, watching her but she sensed he was on the brink of talking, and didn’t know whether to prompt him further or let him decide for himself.
Finally, the pause was just too long for her.
“Jesse, we’ve known each other all our lives, and I’m here to tell you that the Jesse Parker who’s been skulking around this town for the past two years is not the Jesse Parker I’d got used to.”
Again, the faint hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. She thought how much it gave him a lost little boy look.
“That what I’ve been doing?” he asked. “Skulking?”
She shrugged, smiling in her turn. “Something pretty close to it,” she replied. He let go a long pent-up breath.
“Could be you’re right at that,” he said thoughtfully.
“So?” she prompted and he shifted in his seat, crossing his long legs to make himself more comfortable. For a moment, he hesitated, not sure where to start. Then he shrugged.
“Hell, Lee, you know most of it. I was a cop. Abby was a reporter with Channel 10 down in Denver. We met through the job—on the Park Hill case.”
“That was a high profile case,” Lee put in, and he nodded.
“Lots of media attention, and Abby was part of it. I was the lead investigator and I guess it gave her the wrong perspective on a cop’s lifestyle. She realized her mistake when that case was over and I was back to working gang murders and pulling unidentified bodies out of alleys and spending late nights chasing down leads that usually went nowhere.”
He shook his head sadly.
“That’s how a cop’s life goes,” Lee said softly.
“Maybe. It’s not how a TV celebrity’s life goes. Abby had moved from the news to the morning show by then. She had a social life that she claimed was part of her job. Unfortunately my job didn’t fit into it. We should have realized from the start that our jobs just weren’t compatible.”
He paused, swirling the dark red merlot around in his glass, looking down into it. “Neither were we,” he added softly.
They sat in silence for several minutes. Lee remembered the period well-the agonized phone calls when Jesse would pour out his soul to her, wondering what had gone wrong with his marriage. She’d known then, as she knew now, that nothing had ever been too right with his marriage. But then, like now, all she could do was listen.
Jesse looked around the kitchen where they’d eaten. Strangely, he felt a little better for having talked about his marriage. The room felt warm and friendly. Kind of easy to be in, he thought.
“Were you planning on making coffee?” he asked, smiling.
Lee pushed her chair back from the table and stretched her long legs in front of her. She met his gaze and smiled, shook her head.
“Nope. I made the dinner,” she said. “Pot’s right there on the cook-top. Coffee’s in the pantry. I take mine black with three sugars.”
EIGHTEEN
T
hey moved into the parlor for coffee. Then Jesse went outside and brought in more logs for the fire while Lee dug up another bottle of red.
They sat in silence, staring into the flames. It was a companionable, thoughtful silence. Not unpleasant. Lee was glad they’d finally talked about Abby. She considered whether or not to bring up the case that had led to Jesse’s resignation from the Denver PD. Her instincts warned her not to.
When they did talk, it was about the obvious case: the one that had them both working full-time.