“Be my guest,” she said. “Can’t do any harm.”
He nodded and headed for the stairs. She’d parked her Renegade on Lincoln and she headed for it now. At the corner, she stopped and looked back. Jesse was just entering the door at the top of the stairs. She watched him sadly. She wondered what had gone wrong between them.
FORTY-NINE
D
oc Jorgensen phoned around five o’clock, confirming that he’d extracted a .38 Special from the skull of Jerry Marrowes.
“That’s a beer you owe me, Lee,” he said. She could hear the grin in his voice. The ME was inordinately pleased when one of his hunches was proved right. They most often were too, she thought morosely.
“I’ll get around to giving it to you, Doc,” she replied.
“I’ll make sure of it,” said the doctor.
“You usually do.”
There was a pause, then Jorgensen’s voice lost its joking tone. “One other thing. I found traces of fabric in the wound.”
“Fabric?” Lee asked. “What kind of fabric?”
“A wool-rayon blend. There were a few strands there—badly scorched, but recognizable. Couple that with the fact that there were no powder burns on the victim, even though I’d say he was shot at fairly close range.”
He paused while she digested those facts.
“You think he had something wrapped around the gun. Is that it?”
“I’d say so, Lee. That way, he’d keep the noise down a little. Not as good as a silencer, but it’d still quieten things down a piece.”
She felt a quick surge of hope. “So … is there anything special about this fabric? Is it traceable at all, Doc?”
She sensed the slight hesitation, felt the quickly born hope stifled. She knew what he was going to tell her.
“Shouldn’t think so, Lee. Every second sweater or pair of socks or scarf is made from that sort of blend.” He paused, then knowing she would be let down, added, “Sorry, Lee.”
“Yeah,” she said heavily. “Well, it isn’t your fault, Doc. Thanks for the information.”
“Only thing is, if the killer still has the sweater or whatever with him, it’ll have scorch marks and powder residue from the shot. That could be handy,” he suggested.
“If he still has it,” she replied. “Odds are he’s already gotten rid of it.”
Doc said nothing for a few seconds. They both knew she was right.
“Nothing much else turned up in the examination, Lee,” he told her apologetically. “I’d place the time of death as between nine thirty and ten thirty this morning. That’s about all I can give you.”
She sighed. This was just what she needed right now, she thought. Another murder case with little prospect of a successful conclusion.
“Let me know if anything else occurs to you, Doc,” she said.
“You know it,” the elderly man replied and he broke the connection.
Lee stood up and walked to the window overlooking the river and looked across to the ski-jump hill behind the town. As she watched, a jumper came hurtling down the run, took off and soared high above the snow, seeming to hang in the air for an impossibly long time, before making smooth contact once more with the hard-packed surface. He ran another fifty yards or so, then skidded the big, wide jumping skis sideways to halt in a flurry of snow.
Something was bugging her about this case. There was something in the back of her mind, nagging away in the half-light, refusing to come out and be seen and recognized.
She swore softly to herself, then turned as there was a tap at the door.
“Come in,” she said briefly.
The door opened and Packer Thule entered.
“Afternoon, Sheriff,” said Packer. “Opie Dulles asked could I drop this off to you on my way home.”
Packer was wearing the deep blue uniform of the ski patrol, with a large yellow cross emblazoned on the back. It was a high quality, expensive outfit. It had to be, Lee thought, as the ski patrol stayed out long hours in all weather, making sure the mountain was safe. Consequently, their uniform was comprised of a wind-and waterproof long-line GORE-TEX parka and ski pants-the sort of thing that would cost maybe six or seven hundred bucks if you bought it privately.
In some cases, Lee knew, it was actually quite an incentive to join the ski patrol. In addition, the uniform gave patrollers automatic priority at lift lines, a fact that had caused one hell of a dogfight the previous season, when patrollers were found wearing their uniforms and jumping lines on their off-duty days.
The practice still continued, she knew, but not quite as blatantly as before. She knew Packer well. He was a longtime member of the patrol and they’d worked together several times in the past when skiers had gone missing. He was holding out a manila folder to her now. She looked at it with idle curiosity.
“Marrowes’s personnel file,” Packer told her, interpreting the look. She understood suddenly, nodded her thanks and took the file.
“Yeah, thanks, Packer,” she said. “My mind was a long way away there for a moment. Opie said he’d send over the file. Maybe there’s something in it.”
Packer shook his head sadly. “Sure is a shame about Jerry,” he said. “He was a nice feller.”
Lee glanced up at him. “Got on all right with everyone on patrol, did he?” she asked and Packer nodded affirmative.
“Wasn’t anyone didn’t get on with him,” he said. “He was a popular guy.”
It never failed to amuse Lee that, once a person was dead—particularly as a murder victim-he or she automatically seemed to cease having any enemies in the world. Understandably, people knew that if they mentioned any long-term enmities, they were inevitably casting a shadow of accusation.
Still, she thought to herself, maybe in this case it was true. Packer seemed to be pretty genuine, and they’d known each other for quite some time.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” she said finally. “He was unpopular with whoever killed him.”
Packer rubbed his jaw between his forefinger and thumb. “It’s a bad time, Sheriff,” he said. “First poor Walt Davies, now Jerry. People in the patrol are mighty upset, I tell you.”
Lee met his gaze evenly. “I’m none too pleased about it myself, Packer,” she told him. “But at least we know it’s not the same guy.”
“How’s that?” Packer asked quickly. She realized that an undercurrent of tension must have been developing among the ski patrollers. Maybe, she thought, they’d begun to believe that someone had a vendetta against them.
“Different MO for a start,” she replied. “The guy obviously followed him home and then killed him. Plus there were no previous robberies. And Marrowes’s killer used a .38. Walt was killed with a .32.”
Packer nodded several times as he took this in. “So,” he said finally. “You don’t think this is someone aiming specifically at the patrol?”
She realized her earlier assessment had been accurate. She shook her head.
“Doubt it, Packer. Looks more like coincidence here.”
Some of the tension seemed to have gone out of the man.
“Well, if you say so, Sheriff. Makes me feel a little easier about being out on the mountain late in the afternoon. This uniform was starting to make me feel like a target, you know?”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. He’d tripped something in her mind there. That thought that was hovering just out of reach seemed to move a little closer, then recede once again, mockingly. She knew the best way to have it surface was to try to forget it entirely. The harder she tried now to isolate it, the more elusive it would become. She shook her head irritably.
“Like some coffee, Packer?” she asked. “There’s some fresh made.”
He shook his head. “Best be going, Sheriff,” he said. “Mandy’s got supper waiting for me.”
She glanced at her watch. It was barely five o’clock. Still, Packer would have put in a hard day’s work and she guessed he’d get to bed early. She knew that ski patrollers certainly rose early enough. They had to sweep the mountain before the lifts began running.
She walked with him to the door, opened it for him.
“Thanks for dropping in the file, Packer,” she said. The patroller shrugged.
“Just hope it might be helpful, Sheriff. Still and all, I can’t see why anyone would want to kill poor Jerry.”
“Looks like two hundred bucks is the reason,” she replied. He shook his head sadly at the thought of it.
“Damn,” he said. “We’re getting more like New York every minute, aren’t we?”
She smiled sadly. “I don’t think we’re quite in that league yet, Packer,” she said. “Let’s do our best to keep it that way.”
He went out, heading for the stairs. She was about to close the door again when she caught sight of Tom Legros in the hallway. She beckoned to him.
“Tom? Got a moment?”
The burly deputy was carrying a coffee mug in his left hand. He hitched his gunbelt a little higher on his belly with his other hand and headed toward her. The belt promptly slid back down the reverse slope to its original position. Lee guessed that Tom spent a lot of time hitching his belt up. She guessed that his belt spent a lot of time riding right back down again too.
He stepped into her office, taking a sip of coffee as he did so. He sighed with pleasure. There was nothing like the first sip of a fresh cup of coffee.
“You want me, Sheriff?” he asked.
Lee waved a hand to a yellow message slip on her desk.
“You know a Mrs. McLaren at all, Tom?” she asked. The deputy frowned a moment, then answered.
“Alice McLaren?” he said. “From up Laurel Street way?”
Lee checked the message slip again. “Yeah, that sounds like the one. You know her?”
Tom planted himself on the seat in front of her desk, tipping it back on its hind legs. The hind legs creaked a gentle warning. Lee raised one eyebrow in Tom’s direction. She’d mentioned this to him before—several times. With a slightly guilty look, he let the front legs of the chair drop back to the floor.
“She’s a nice enough lady,” he said, after considering the question. “Runs a boardinghouse on Laurel. Takes in maybe eight people each season—room and board type of thing. Is there some problem?”
Lee flipped the message slip across the desk to him.
“Seems like she’s complaining about those damn kids on their snowmobiles. They’ve been out that way the past few nights, waking people up. Some of her customers were disturbed and she’s none too happy about it.”
Tom shook his head in annoyance.
“Damned old busybody!” he said. “She’s always minding other folks’s business for them.”
In spite of the day’s events, Lee couldn’t stop herself from grinning.
“She sure went from ‘a nice enough lady’ to a ‘damned old busybody’ in no time,” she said.
Tom shrugged and looked a little embarrassed at his sudden change of heart. “Yeah, well I’m sorry, Sheriff. It’s just these kids are really starting to get to me, you know? I guess I’m a little raw on the subject.”
“I can understand that, Tom. Try not to take it personally.”
Legros nodded moodily. “I’m trying, Sheriff, believe me. I’m trying.”
“Well, call her up anyway and tell her we’re doing all we can and we expect to make arrests in the near future—you know the sort of thing.”
Tom took another sip of his coffee. A great deal of the former pleasure from it seemed to have evaporated now.
“Okay, Sheriff,” he said. He took the yellow message slip from the desk and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He was about to say something else when a tap at the door interrupted them.
“Come,” Lee called.
The door opened and Jesse entered. He saw Tom, hesitated, then came on in.
“Any further word on that killing this morning?” he asked.
Tom Legros looked at him curiously. There was a stiffness in his manner—almost as if he seemed awkward in Lee’s presence. Then, as the sheriff replied, he sensed that she felt the same.
“Doc rang a few minutes ago. Doesn’t seem to be our man. It was definitely a .38.”
Jesse pursed his lips, unwilling to give up so easily. “Guy could have two guns,” he said.
Lee inclined her head, conceding the possibility. “I guess so. But we’ve got a different motive on this one, Jess. The victim was robbed. Different weapon. Different MO. I’d say it was a different person.”
Jesse thought about it for a few seconds. He rocked on his heels.
“We’re sure of that, are we?” he asked.
Lee showed a flash of anger. “No! We’re not sure of anything, Jess. You know that. I’m just saying that all the evidence points to this being a different perp.” She paused, meeting his gaze for a few long seconds, before his eyes slid away from hers. “Okay?” she finished, moderating her tone a little.
“Yeah. Okay,” he mumbled. “I guess I’m grasping at straws here. Keep seeing this guy behind everything.” He tried a grin, a shadow of its normal self, and said to Legros, “I guess next I’ll start trying to tie him in with those kids on snowmobiles.”