“Maybe. But the only reason he killed him was to get the ski patrol uniform. And that took him back to the mountain.”
Jesse nodded impatiently. “Exactly. And that’s where he’s headed now. Bet on it, Lee.”
He started forward again and she put one hand on his shoulder, gently restraining him. “Just a minute, Jess, think this through. There’s no reason why he should take Abby there now. In fact, if he’s smart, it’ll be the last place he’ll go.”
“Oh he’s smart, Lee. But he’s working off his own twisted sort of logic. If this revenge theory is right—and it sure looks that way now—then the thing he hates most is the mountain. It’s the center of the town. The whole reason for being.
“So his final act is going to be there as well. It just doesn’t make any sense if it isn’t.”
“You’re guessing, Jess. You’re only guessing,” she told him, and he met her gaze frankly and agreed.
“That’s right. And that’s what ninety percent of police work comes down to. I’m heading up there now, Lee. He’s somewhere on that mountain and I’m going to find him.”
She stood aside then to let him go. Then she asked the question none of them really wanted to face.
“And Abby?” she said quietly.
He hesitated. He knew the odds against Abby’s survival grew steeper with every minute that passed. But he had to stay positive.
“With any luck, I’ll find her too.”
Lee nodded, then held up a hand for him to wait. She went to the drawer of her desk and took out a handheld comm unit, tossing it to him. He caught it deftly.
“We’ll stay here and monitor things,” she said. “You keep in touch with that. If you find him, call in and I’ll haul ass up there after you.”
He looked down at the compact little radio, then up to her steady gray eyes. He nodded once, acknowledging her promise of support.
“I appreciate it,” he said. Then, pulling on his battered leather jacket, he half ran down the hallway to the stairs.
In the parking lot, he hesitated. His Subaru was wedged in its usual spot. But the worn out little engine and the suspect clutch didn’t fit with his mood of urgency somehow. Closer to hand was a Harley belonging to the town police. He walked quickly to it, noting that the keys were in the ignition. He gave a grim little smile. Cops were notoriously the worst people in the world when it came to vehicle security. He threw a leg over the big bike, turned the ignition on and thumbed the starter. There was brief electric whine, then the 1.2-liter engine caught and thumped to life, setting the whole bike vibrating gently beneath him. He racked the twist throttle once or twice to give it a perfunctory warm-up, slotted her into gear and dropped the clutch.
The Harley’s engine note rose in a deep-throated surge and he peeled out of the parking lot, heading for the mountain.
SIXTY-ONE
T
he garage door was on a counterweight. Abby watched from her position beside the snowmobile as Mikkelitz heaved the big double door up, getting it moving so the counterweight could take over the effort. Daylight streamed in, drowning the cold glare of the fluorescent lights in the garage.
He went a few steps outside, checking left and right to see if there was anyone watching. Apparently satisfied, he walked quickly back in, moving to the snowmobile.
“Get on,” he ordered briefly.
She hesitated. All her instincts were telling her that if she went with him, she was going to die. She couldn’t see any way out of the predicament. All she could do was delay things as much as possible. He looked closely at her, reading the beginnings of rebellion in her eyes.
“Get on,” he repeated, calmly. Still she hesitated, unwilling to make the first move toward obeying him. Her eyes dropped from his and she never saw the blow coming.
He hit her with a closed fist, flush under the cheekbone on the left side of her face. And he hit her hard.
She screamed briefly with the shock and the instant flash of pain from her face, staggered with the force of the blow and fell across the snowmobile.
Now she looked up at him. There was no emotion in his eyes. He watched her impassively. It was that, coupled with the unnecessary force of the blow, and the fact that he’d hit her as he would have hit a man, with a closed fist, that finally cowed her.
Her eyes streamed with tears—brought on by fear as much as the pain. She raised her free hand to the spot where he’d hit her, felt the soft skin of her face swelling immediately into a bruise.
He took a deep breath, an expression of rapidly dwindling patience, and jerked his head toward the snowmobile again.
Her nose had started to drip and she wiped it with the back of her hand. He made a little movement toward her and she cried out in fear, shrinking back from him.
“Scream all you like,” he said. “There’s no one to hear you. The place is deserted. Seems everyone left town on account of this Mountain Murderer.”
She moved to the snowmobile and threw her leg over the saddle. He nodded approval.
“Relax,” he told her. “I’m not going to hurt you unless you disobey me. Or try to hold things up like you were just doing.”
He seized the tab of her parka zipper and tugged it up, closing the parka. “Cold out there on the mountain,” he said.
He bent down, jerked on the starter cord for the snowmobile and the big two-stroke racketed into noisy life. Donning a pair of Ray-Bans with leather windshields clipped to the sides, he swung aboard the little vehicle and clunked it into gear.
The hard rubber track made an ugly tearing sound on the concrete floor of the garage, and the front skids squealed on the hard surface as they slithered out of the garage. Then they were across the tarmac parking area and into the snow that the little bike was designed for and the noise fell away.
He gunned the snowmobile up the narrow trail that Abby had noticed before. Crouched behind his broad back, crying silently to herself, she tried to take note of their surroundings, hoping that maybe someone would notice them, someone would see her plight and somehow tell Jesse.
She tried to think of Jesse now—tall, quietly spoken and capable. She realized suddenly that it had only been his presence in the gondola that had saved her the previous night. Her skin crawled with the thought of what could have happened. Then, with a rush of terror, she realized that it was probably going to happen anyway, and soon.
The snowmobile lurched as it hit a small ridge in the trail, canted downhill and, for a sickening moment, she thought it was going to roll and go sliding down into the trees. Her heart lurched, then settled again as he powered up and steered up into the slope. The cat track beneath her gripped the soft snow, compacted it underneath the hard rubber tread and gained good traction. They fishtailed slightly and he steered out of it.
The trail wasn’t so steep here and he opened the throttle. The bare aspen trunks flashed by on either side and she was deafened by the sound of the two-stroke’s engine, slightly sickened by the oily smell of the exhaust. They slid and slithered in the soft snow, bouncing from one irregularity to the next. He was obviously a good rider, but she could sense that he was riding on the edge of control—testing himself, almost daring the mountain to beat him.
From time to time, she thought she heard him say something as the bike lurched and skidded. She couldn’t make out the words, finally realized that there were no words—just grunts of triumph as he took on the mountain and won.
Finally, they flashed out of the dim cover of the trees onto the open spaces of the lower reaches of the mountain. Below and behind her, there were rows of condos—on-mountain accommodations, the brochures called them. From several, wisps of smoke from the chimneys betrayed the fact that the residents weren’t skiing today, but taking it easy in front of the open fires and slow combustion stoves.
There was a tang of woodsmoke in the cold air. Tears welled in her eyes as she thought how she’d always loved that smell as a girl. It was the smell of winter and holidays in the ski fields of Colorado. Now it would be one of the last smells she’d ever know.
She thought of Jesse again and the tears flowed faster, then froze and hardened on her cheeks. She wiped them roughly with the back of her free hand, almost lost her grip as Mikkelitz suddenly gunned the motor again and skidded the snowmobile out onto the groomed snow of the Heavenly Daze run.
There were only a few skiers coming down the run. This was the lower half of the mountain and, at this time of day, most skiers headed to the upper reaches. Mikkelitz ignored them, racing the snowmobile across the run, heading uphill at an oblique angle. One skier had to bail out in a hurry as he realized the careering snowmobile wasn’t going to give way. She saw him go down in a welter of thrown snow, heard him shouting abuse behind them.
She looked around desperately, hoping for some sign of a ski patroller, someone who might notice Mikkelitz flouting the rules of the road and stop them. Dully, she recognized that if that were to happen, the patroller would be dead within moments of their stopping.
The slope was steepening now and she felt the motor straining as Mikkelitz fed it more power. But with two on board, the snowmobile couldn’t cope with a straight uphill run. He swung the head slightly downslope, looking for an access trail through the trees. They were going to have to zigzag up the mountain, she realized, using the maintained trails to get to wherever they were going.
He cut left now, following one such trail across the top of Vertigo and Concentration runs. The steep, mogulled ski trails dropped away below them, then they were in among more aspens between Thunderhead and Arrowhead chairs. She could hear the clank and rattle of the old, slow chairlifts above her. Then the snowmobile nosed unexpectedly into a steep drift and slammed to a halt. She crashed forward, her face driving into the back of Mikkelitz’s parka. Able to brace himself against the wide spread of the handlebars, he’d absorbed the impact a lot easier. Now as she hit him, he drove forward as well.
“Fuck!” he said, his voice cracking with rage. Roughly, he shrugged her back off him, swung off the bike and promptly went thigh deep in the snow.
“Fuck!” he said again.
The snowmobile had missed a turn and had buried its nose into the built up snow at the uphill side of the trail. The engine had stalled and she heard the loud ticking sounds of the overheated metal as it began to cool in the frigid air.
Mikkelitz grabbed the handlebars and heaved sideways.
The little vehicle was heavy, but he had gravity on his side. He heaved twice, then the snowmobile slid sideways, clear of the snow that had buried its nose cone. As it moved, he floundered in the deep snow, sprawling full length.
He was breathing heavily from the exertion as he regained his feet. She didn’t dare meet his eyes. She knew he was on the point of snapping. He grabbed the handlebars and climbed back aboard, reaching down for the starter cord.
He tugged. The engine coughed and refused to fire. Another attempt and a cloud of rich blue smoke shot from the exhaust.
“Fucking thing’s flooded,” he grunted to himself. He opened the throttle wide and tugged again. This time, the motor stuttered, died, picked up again, stuttered twice, then suddenly roared as the excess fuel burnt off and a new rush of power went through to the combustion chamber. A haze of two-stroke exhaust stained the air behind them. Among the aspens like this, there was virtually no breeze and the smoke seemed to hang over them like a pall, gradually moving in one undissipated mass down the mountain.
He clunked into drive and gunned the engine, tail-sliding the snowmobile around the bend that he’d just missed, using the power to let the tail arc like a pendulum through the turn, then meeting it and countering the slide with opposite steering and another burst of power.
Unprepared for the violent maneuver, Abby lost her grip on the grab handle this time. She was restrained only by the handcuff clipped to the handle and she felt the chrome steel bite painfully into the soft skin of her wrist. She hung there for a few seconds, then gradually regained her grip. Blood ran briefly on her wrist, then froze in the cold air.
As before, Mikkelitz continued to ignore her.
She could sense the general direction he was taking now and realized that he must be heading for the top of Storm Peak. She wondered vaguely what was there that was so important to him. There was nothing there but the weather station building by the boundary to the ski area—a single-story timber building that was, for the most part, unoccupied, and was used for storing weather study equipment.
Then she remembered what he’d said earlier. He had a few things to collect up on the mountain, he’d said. There was nowhere else that he might have left things. They must be heading to the weather station.
The question was, what had he stored there. And why?
And what did he mean to do with her once they got there?
She tried not to think about that. She tried to think about Jesse again. She wished to God that Jesse knew what was happening, then realized dully that there was no possible way he could.
SIXTY-TWO