Again, the taxi driver shrugged. “This whole side of the mountain is a dead spot,” he said. “They’d know that at the office.”
She rummaged in her shoulder bag for the cell. When she found it, she saw he was right. The power was switched on but there was no corresponding row of bars showing network coverage.
“They sounded like it was urgent, you know?” the driver prompted, gesturing toward the building. Abby sighed with annoyance. Another damn delay was all she needed this morning, she thought. Abruptly, she swung down from the van and hurried across the parking lot to the building.
It was dim inside and her eyes took a few seconds to adjust. Even though the day was overcast now, they were close to the ski mountain and the snow-covered terrain seemed to create its own light source. She knew that wasn’t possible. Knew the snow simply reflected whatever ambient light was there. But somehow, it seemed like there was an inner light on the mountain.
The driver gestured her toward a flight of wooden stairs leading down.
“This way, Ms. Parker-Taft,” he said, standing aside to let her go first. She hesitated. She’d been expecting to go up to one of the condos.
“Down here?” she queried, and he nodded confirmation.
“They’ve got a basement apartment,” he offered by way of explanation. Impatiently, Abby shrugged and started down the stairs. There was a heavy wooden door at the bottom of the flight. She pushed against it, felt it give and went in.
She found herself in a ski room. Racks of skis stood around the walls. To one side there was a workbench with an old electric iron standing on its end. The smell of wax was strong in the room. At the far end, she could see ski boots resting on long pegs set into the wall.
Wherever they were, it wasn’t an apartment, she thought angrily. She started to turn to let the driver know, when she felt an arm go around her throat from behind, and the hard pressure of something cold pressing into the skin of her neck, just below the base of her skull.
She opened her mouth to scream and felt the arm tighten painfully on her throat. There was no need. The scream never came. It froze in the back of her throat, stillborn. Abby knew she was in trouble—and in a big way.
“That’s a gun you can feel,” the driver said softly, right next to her ear. “You scream or try to fight me and I’ll blow your fucking head off, okay?”
She said nothing. Her voice seemed to be paralyzed. He shook her roughly, then jabbed the gun harder into her neck.
“I said, okay?” he repeated, and she finally found her voice. Only a whisper, but enough to say, “Okay.”
The pressure around her throat relaxed a little and he shoved her across the room to a door set in one of the side walls. They paused before it.
“Open it,” he said, jabbing again with the gun. She reached down, turned the knob and pulled the door open. He shoved her through.
They were in a garage. That much she could see, even though there was very little light. The shapes of cars were unmistakable.
Close to them was another shape—a snowmobile. A two-seater, she saw now. He shoved her toward it, one arm around her throat and the gun still forced into her neck. She wished to God he’d move that gun. She knew enough about guns to know that they have an unfortunate tendency to go off by accident, and stumbling and shoving someone else in front of you seemed like one hell of a way to have yourself an accident, she thought.
She gasped in relief as the arm released its grip on her throat. Before she could turn-even if she’d had a mind to—her left hand was seized in a hard grip. The gun left her neck and she heard a click of metal. The something cold was on her left wrist and there was the rapid clicking of a ratchet and she realized he’d snapped a handcuff onto her wrist. And snapped it tight. The skin was pinched and painful underneath it. She cried out in pain.
“Shut up,” he said roughly, and dragged her forward and down by the handcuff. There was a metal handhold in front of the pillion seat on the snowmobile—a half circle of leather-covered chrome steel. He whipped the other handcuff around it and fastened her securely to the little vehicle.
He took a few quick steps to the wall and hit a switch. Cold fluorescent light flooded the parking bays around them. She could see him clearly now and she realized why she’d thought he was familiar. He was the ski patroller who’d traveled down with her and Jesse the night before.
And suddenly, she knew he wasn’t a ski patroller. She knew who he was and she knew what he wanted. The realization hit her like a physical blow. It turned her knees weak and for one awful moment she thought her bladder was going to let go.
“Now, here’s the deal,” he said softly, putting his face barely a foot from hers. “We’re going out of here on this snowmobile. You’ll be handcuffed to that handle there so there’s no way you can get away. Got it?”
He paused, looked at her angrily for some sign that she understood. She nodded dumbly. That seemed to satisfy him.
“Okay. Fine. Now, you try to call out to someone, you try to tell anyone what’s going on, and you are dead one second later. You with me still?”
He held up the gun—a flat-sided automatic, she could see now. It wasn’t as big as the one she’d seen Jesse carry but it still looked as if it could do the job required of it. She nodded again. He nodded in reply, apparently satisfied again that she understood the situation.
“And you make no mistake, Abby,” he said, injecting her first name with unmistakable venom. “I will use this gun.” He paused, looked deep into her eyes. “You know who I am, don’t you?”
She met the look, determined not to flinch away from it. Then she saw the depths of anger and madness that lay behind those eyes and she had to drop her own gaze.
“Yes.” Her voice was a barely audible whisper. “I know who you are.”
He smiled at that, pleased with the power that had dropped her eyes from his. He would make her pay. This was the woman who had tried to tell the world that the Routt County Sheriff’s Department and that dumb fuck of a deputy were doing such a bang-up job hunting him down.
“Yes,” he agreed with her, whispering as well. “You know who I am.”
There was a long-line parka draped over the handlebars of the snowmobile and he was shrugging himself into it now, fastening the zipper clasps at the bottom and pulling the zipper up.
“Where—” she began, but her voice betrayed her and the word was a cracked little sound. She swallowed and tried again. “Where are you taking me?”
“Up the mountain a ways,” he said, leaning down to find the fuel tap on the two-stroke engine. He turned it to open and thumbed the tap once or twice to prime the carburetor.
“I left some things up there the other day. We’ll go up and get them, you and me,” he said, and smiled easily at her.
And right then, when he smiled, so friendly and unthreatening, was the moment Abby knew she was going to die.
SIXTY
T
he roadblocks were in place. One by one, the confirmations came in over the radio to the sheriff’s office in the Public Safety Building. As the last exit from Yampa Valley was sealed off, Lee gave a small grunt of satisfaction.
“State Police are in position on 129 to Hahn’s Peak,” she said, setting the phone back in its cradle. Felix, standing by the large-scale wall map of the area, marked a final X on the acetate sheet that covered it.
“That should just about seal it off,” he said, looking critically at the circle they’d drawn around Steamboat Springs. “He wouldn’t have got halfway that distance by now, less that old Dodge Ram has sprouted wings.”
“Unless he’s switched cars,” Jesse put in, eyes fixed on the map, and the network of smaller roads they’d have no chance of covering. “Or unless he’s just holed up somewhere inside the circle here.”
“Best we can do, Jess,” Lee said simply, and he nodded, acknowledging the fact.
“I know it, Lee. It’s just that knowing it and feeling happy about it are two different things. I don’t believe our boy has ever planned to try to get out of the area.”
Obermeyer shrugged. “You saying you want us to call in those roadblocks, Jess?” he asked. Jesse glanced at him sharply. Felix could be one damn sarcastic sonofabitch when the mood took him. He could also be supremely obtuse at times and Jesse wasn’t sure which quality had prompted the remark.
“No. I’m not saying that, Felix. We’ve sure as hell got to go through the motions, just in case. But I reckon we’re going to find Mr. Mikkelitz somewhere close to Steamboat Springs.” He walked over to the map, stood in front of it, rocking slowly backward and forward on his heels.
“That’s where all his activity’s been concentrated so far,” he said, almost to himself. “That’s where he’ll keep it going.”
Lee joined him, looking at the map as if it could tell them something—almost as if she expected the scene of the next crime to light up somehow of its own accord.
“You don’t think he’ll make a run for it, Jess?” she asked. The deputy rubbed one hand across his jaw before he answered.
“He’ll make a run all right. But not the way we’re expecting.”
“I guess he could even have a light plane stashed out to Hayden somewhere,” Felix offered. “We’re covering the commercial flights but he could fly private.”
Lee shook her head. “Thought of that,” she said. “The tower isn’t giving any clearance to private flights out unless one of your guys out there gets to eyeball the pilot and any passengers.”
“You think he’ll try to take Abby with him then?” Felix asked. He was way out of his league with this one. The town police usually dealt with traffic offenses, drunken tourists and domestic arguments in town limits. He asked the question of Lee, but it was Jesse, still standing, apparently engrossed in the map, who answered.
“No. He’ll kill her first. Then he’ll get out,” he said simply. The other two cops looked at him. Both felt the same sense of horror at the matter-of-fact way he stated it. He met their gazes, looking away from the map for the first time in some minutes, and shrugged apologetically.
“Only makes sense,” he said. “He’s been building up to something bigger every time; first it was a body in the trash; then one in the gondola; then he killed in broad daylight on the Storm Peak Express. And then tried it again when he knew we were waiting for him and watching the chairs. He’s been thumbing his nose at me”—he stopped, and amended the words, although it was obvious he still meant them in their original form—“at us, I mean, for weeks now. Then the other night he tried for Abby. I guess he knew that she and I were … connected.”
Lee cut in then. “He’s not a local, Jess. And he could have been following her before he saw you.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But there’s maybe a dozen people in town could have told him. Or maybe he just saw us in Hazie’s and decided then and there to go after her. Anyway, the point is, he knows now.”
“That’s true enough,” Lee admitted.
“I said before, he’s messing with my mind.” He shook his head angrily. “Damn it. I should have known better than to let Abby plaster my face all over the TV And she should have known better than to do a whitewash on us,” he added.
Lee cocked her head at him curiously. “You’d rather she’d done the hatchet job we were all expecting?” she said, and Jesse spread his hands in a gesture that just reeked of futility.
“She might have been better off if she had,” he explained. “Don’t you see, Lee? These killings, they’re a gigantic ego trip for this guy. He’s flaunting them in our faces, saying, ‘Come and get me if you can.’ hen Abby made out that we had the whole thing pretty well under control and everyone had confidence in us, he simply had to do something about it.”
He paused while Lee and the town police chief digested what he’d said. Then he added quietly, and with a chilling note of certainty, “That’s why he’s taken Abby. She did the report, so she’s going to pay for it. And she’s connected to me, so I’m paying for it too.”
Nobody said anything. Jesse went back to staring at the map while Lee and Felix exchanged glances. They both believed him. Both knew he was right.
“Well,” Lee said at length, “I guess we could start out by trying to find that taxi.”
Felix’s entire force was already deployed on that task. In addition, of course, the state police and highway patrol had blocked all major roads surrounding Routt County.
“Odds are he’ll have gotten rid of it by now,” Jesse told her. “It’s too damn easy to spot and he’ll know that.”
“Maybe. But it’ll give us some idea what direction he’s taking,” she replied evenly. Jesse was like a wound spring, she knew, and with every passing minute, that spring was winding tighter and tighter.
“I know where he is,” he said abruptly. “He’s on the mountain.”
As he said it, he turned and headed for the door. Lee moved slightly to block him.
“Jess? What are you talking about?”
“Stands to reason, Lee. Everything he’s done has been centered on the mountain. Even killing poor Jerry Marrowes.”
“That happened in town,” Felix put in, not understanding. Lee had seen the connection already and she answered him.