John was a kindly soul. He’d lived in Routt County all his life, had raised a family here and seen them all go on to other towns, other cities to marry and bring up their own children. He had eleven grand-children who loved to see their grandpop whenever they came to visit. His wife, Evie, had passed away three summers back and John, although well past retirement age, had taken the job at the gondola to help ease the loneliness. He was a friendly, cheerful man. A man people instinctively liked. He was the sort of man who would never willingly do harm to anyone.
A man like that shouldn’t be subjected to the shock of finding a dead body hunched in the corner of a gondola cabin, eyes staring, hands instinctively clasped to the puncture wound under the chin.
He was still visibly shaken when Jesse arrived at the gondola station.
“I thought he was just drunk,” he was saying for the tenth time. “I just thought he was drunk when the doors opened and he didn’t move to get out. So I reached in to shake him just a little …”
Lee reached out and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. There were tears forming in the old man’s gentle, blue eyes.
“We know that, John. You didn’t do anything wrong here. We know,” she said in a soothing voice.
Tom, feeling for the old guy, patted his back awkwardly as well.
“Just tell us what happened, John,” he urged. Hostetler turned his gaze to the deputy.
“I just thought he was drunk, Tom. People do that up there on Thunderhead when they go to the restaurants. They drink too much and we have to call the Tipsy Taxi for them. You know that.”
The Tipsy Taxi was a community service, subscribed to by most of the bars and restaurants in town and on the mountain. When a patron got too far over the odds with his drinking, you could call Alpine Taxis and give them a chit to charge the ride against. A central fund reimbursed the taxi driver for his lost fare.
“I know that, John,” said Tom. “Just tell us what happened here and I’ll get you home.”
The old man shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of the picture that had imprinted itself onto his brain.
“He looked drunk,” he muttered. “The doors opened—they do that automatically—and nobody got out. So I just reached in to see was he all right and when I touched him … he just fell.”
He shook his head again. “Why would someone do that? Why would someone do a thing like that?”
Lee heard the door to the office open, felt a brief swirl of cold air from outside. She turned to see Jesse looking inquiringly at her. She gestured for him to wait a moment, then spoke softly to Tom.
“Get him back to his place, Tom,” she said and the deputy nodded, his concerned gaze on the emotional older man.
“Maybe I should stay with him a piece?” he suggested. “Make sure he settles down all right?”
Lee nodded. “Good idea.” Then, as a further thought struck her, “Give Doc Jorgensen a call. We’re going to need him to examine the body anyway. He might as well stop at John’s place on the way and make sure he’s okay.”
Tom nodded and put his arm under Hostetler’s elbow to help him from his chair. The elderly man went along with him.
“Come on, John. I’ll get you home and get you settled into bed.”
Hostetler hesitated a moment, looking at Lee. “You sure you don’t need me here, Sheriff?” he asked. Lee touched his arm gently.
“We’ll manage fine for tonight, John,” she said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow but for tonight, you get a good night’s sleep.”
Still Hostetler was reluctant to leave. “But the gondola,” he protested, “someone’s got to be in charge …”
“We’ll look after that,” Lee promised him. “I’ve got one of the town cops here to do that. And besides, nothing much can happen till we’ve disconnected that cabin from the cable.”
Hostetler looked around the office, confused by the rapid turn of events. “Well, I’d better call maintenance for that—” he began.
Lee made a small movement with her head toward the door. Tom Legros saw it and began ushering the gondola attendant out, reassuring him as he did so.
“We’ve done all that, John,” he said. “It’s all taken care of. Now you come with me.”
Finally Hostetler allowed the deputy to lead him from the office. Lee watched him go with a sad look on her face.
“Poor old guy,” she muttered as the door closed behind him.
Jesse was about to speak when the phone on the desk shrilled suddenly. It wasn’t the outside line, but a direct line to the gondola station at the top of Thunderhead. Lee motioned for Jesse to wait and picked up the receiver.
“This is Sheriff Torrens,” she said. Then, after a pause, “No, we’ve just sent John home. He’s not feeling too good.” Another pause, then, “That’s right. We’ve had a little problem down here and we’ve had to shut the gondola down for a while. We’re waiting on your maintenance staff now.” She listened for a few seconds as the voice in her ear complained. “Well, we’ll get it back online as soon as we can. For the meantime, I suggest you take your customers back into the restaurants up there, out of the cold, and buy them a drink.”
She waited, then finally, losing it, she snapped, “Then sell them a goddamn drink! Just don’t hassle me with it!”
She slammed the receiver back into its cradle and glared at the phone for a few seconds.
Jesse grinned. “I take it they’re getting restless up on Thunderhead?” he asked mildly.
Lee shook her head in exasperation. “They’ve got a backlog of people waiting to come down—plus God knows how many who are stuck halfway down already.”
“Another body in the trash?” Jesse ventured. She shook her head.
“Sitting up in one of the cars itself this time,” she said. Jesse looked up quickly.
“He put a body in one of the cars? How did he manage that?”
Lee shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t put it there. Maybe he killed him in there. Either way, we’ve got to get that car disconnected before we can start the gondola running again.”
The door flew open. More wind blew in and two men entered with it.
“Where’s John?” asked the first one through the door. “Heard you need maintenance here?”
“At last,” Lee said with some feeling. “We need a car taken off the cable. Can you take care of that?”
The man who’d spoken pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Can,” he agreed, at length. “But ain’t gonna without authorization from the lift manager and that’s John Hostetler.”
Lee took a deep breath, and said in a very reasonable tone, “Well, as you can see Hostetler isn’t here. But I am. And as sheriff of this county, I am requesting that you remove one of those cars from the cable. How’s that?”
“Like I said, we need authorization. And the way I—” the maintenance man stopped mid-thought. He’d noticed the steely look in Lee’s eyes and the way she had turned to face him full on. “Which I guess you can give us,” he completed hurriedly. His partner saw the look too. Around Steamboat, Lee had a reputation for not suffering fools gladly.
“Just tell us which car you want taken off, Sheriff,” he said.
Lee smiled at him. It was a smile that never quite reached those gray, uptilted eyes.
“You might start with the one that’s got the dead body sitting in it.”
TEN
T
he body wasn’t sitting in the cabin. It had fallen off the bench seat when John Hostetler had gone to shake it by the shoulder. It sprawled now on the floor of the cabin, head and shoulders out of the open doors.
The maintenance men looked at it nervously as they worked to detach the cabin from the drive cable. This done, Jesse and Lee helped them manhandle it to one side. Then, and only then, were they able to hit the restart button and let the gondola begin to run again.
With Tom Legros taking care of old Hostetler, Lee had requested the town police send a cop to look after crowd control. It was as well she had. Frozen, angry passengers began to disembark from the cabins as they slid in out of the cold night. Lee couldn’t blame them for their anger. There was no way of communicating with the cabins. Once the gondolas stopped moving, there was no way for the passengers already on board to know if it was a short delay or an extended one. In some cases, nervous passengers had begun to fear that the gondola had shut down for the night and that they might be trapped until morning.
Once those passengers had dispersed, there was a new wave of rubberneckers. This time it was the group who’d been left at the top of Thunderhead. They knew something was going on. They didn’t know what, exactly, but they planned to find out.
The patrolman had his hands full. Lee and Jesse decided to delay their examination of the detached cabin and the body until the crowd had dispersed. They draped an old tarpaulin over the cabin, concealing the corpse from view. One after another the gondola cabins whooshed in from the darkness, rocking back and forth as they hit the slower circular cable that allowed passengers to disembark easily. The doors would thud open automatically in a constant rhythm.
Eventually the doors opened on more and more empty cabins as the backlog of people thinned out. When they’d counted a dozen without any passengers, Lee decided they could safely go to work. First of all, she lifted the direct line phone to the upper station and pressed the call button.
There was a slight delay, then the lift attendant at the top platform answered the call.
“This is the sheriff,” said Lee. “You got any more customers up there waiting to come down?”
“No more customers, Sheriff Torrens. Just the staff up here. They’ll be through cleaning up in half an hour or so and then they’ll be downloading.”
“How long you been on duty up there?” Lee wanted to know. The answer came promptly.
“Came on duty at eight. We’ll be going off when the last of the people up here ride down.” It was standard practice to have two attendants on duty at the top end of the gondola, to help customers board.
“Is there anyone up there can fill in for you two for a while?” Lee asked. “I need you to take a look at something down here.”
There was a pause as the two attendants discussed her request. Lee knew they couldn’t leave the loading bay unattended. She just hoped someone else might be qualified to keep an eye on things while the two attendants came down. Finally, the voice at the other end agreed to her request.
“Grover, the restaurant manager, can keep an eye on things for a few minutes. You need us any longer than that, Sheriff?” he said.
“Shouldn’t think so,” Lee replied. Then the attendant asked, with some concern in his voice, “Sheriff? Nothing’s happened to John Hostetler, has it? Is he okay down there?”
“He’s had a bit of a shake-up but he’ll be fine. Now you boys get aboard the next cabin and get yourselves down here if you will.”
“Right, Sheriff. We’re on our way. What’s going on? We haven’t got us another dead body down there, have we?” The last was added as a morbid joke. Lee took a deep breath, decided it would be better to tell them face-to-face and avoided the question.
“Just get on down here, fellers. Bye.” She hung up, looked at Jesse. “Right. Let’s take a look at the scene of the crime.”
Their footsteps rang in the metal and concrete interior of the building as they crossed to the cabin. Jesse pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and gently moved the dead man’s head to one side and inspected the wound under the chin. There wasn’t a lot of external bleeding. Once death stopped the heart pumping, the flow of blood slowed.
“Well,” he said softly. “We’ve got us another jigger killing.”
Lee knelt on her haunches beside him to look at the dead man’s face. “Why aren’t I surprised to hear that?” she said. As carefully as she could, she zipped open the waist-length leather jacket the dead man was wearing and felt around the inside pockets for a wallet. Finally, she found it in his shirt breast pocket. She took it out and examined the contents.
“What have we got?” Jesse asked, running his fingers up the inside edge of the double doors to the cabin and peering closely at the metal.
“Once again, we don’t have a robbery. There’s a hundred and thirty … thirty-eight dollars in here, and three credit cards.”
“Any of them got a name on them?” Jesse asked. He dropped onto his back and hauled himself under the raised edge of the cabin. It was supported by a middle rail that accepted a wheeled carriage when it was taken out of service, as it was now. “Got a flashlight?” he asked, before she could answer.
Lee handed him her Maglite, then found a driver’s license among the cards. She turned it to catch the light.
“Arizona driving license,” she told him.
Jesse grunted. “Long way from home.”
“Name of Andrew Barret,” she said, reading the license. “From Flagstaff, Arizona.”
“Nice town,” said Jesse. He reached under the cabin to retrieve something that had shown up in the beam of the flashlight. Lee saw the movement and dropped to her knees again to watch.
“Got something?” she asked.