01 Storm Peak (6 page)

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Authors: John Flanagan

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BOOK: 01 Storm Peak
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“Divorced,” said Chief Morrison. “Six years ago come February.” He added quickly, before Lee could ask, “But there’s nothing there either. All the neighbors have said he and the ex-wife were good friends. They agreed on a settlement and he never welshed on paying. Not in six years.”
“Maybe he’d started to,” Lee essayed but Chief Morrison contradicted her firmly.
“Already checked that. Thought you’d ask. As of the first of this month, he hadn’t missed one support payment.”
Lee thought for a long moment, then sighed heavily. “Well, thanks for your cooperation, Chief Morrison. I really appreciate it.”
“Sorry I can’t give you any help with it,” he replied, “but my boys haven’t turned up any reason why anyone would have wanted to kill him.” He paused. “You got forensics on the case?”
“They’re coming in from Denver today. I don’t hold out too much hope that they’ll come up with anything.”
“They rarely do,” Chief Morrison agreed comfortably. After all, it wasn’t his problem. “Well, Sheriff, let me know if there’s anything further my boys can do.”
“Thanks, Chief,” said Lee, and broke the connection.
She swung her boots up onto the desktop and fiddled for a few moments with a pencil, tapping it idly on her teeth, thinking through the conversation she’d just had. She was beginning to harbor the fear that she would never get to the bottom of this crime. Whoever it was who had murdered Howell, and why ever he’d done it, the perpetrator was probably hundreds of miles away by now, back in his hometown in Florida or the Carolinas or somewhere else to hell and gone out of Lee’s jurisdiction.
There was a tap at her door. “Come,” she called and the door slid open a crack to admit Tom Legros’s face.
“Those scientific fellers from Denver ought to be arriving soon, Sheriff,” he reminded her. “You want I should go out and pick them up from the airport?”
Lee swung her feet down from the desk and reached for her gunbelt where she’d hooked it over the back of one of her two wooden visitors’ chairs. She swung it around her hips with the simple ease of long practice.
“No. I’ll go get ’em, Tom,” she replied. She finished buckling the belt and reached for a typed form that had been in her in tray when she’d arrived that morning. “You go take a look at this, if you will.”
Legros glanced quickly at the sheet she’d given him. There’d been a breakin at a small convenience store located fifteen miles out of town. Cigarettes and liquor stolen and a small amount of cash.
“Sounds like much the same thing as happened out at the Springs City Diner last week,” he mused.
Lee nodded. Someone had broken into the diner in the small hours of the morning. The MO looked similar and the burglars had taken the same mix of product and available cash.
They both exited her office and headed for the parking lot. “Take a look at it and let me know what you think.”
He touched the brim of his Stetson in salute. They came out into the parking lot and Lee stopped as the icy wind hit her.
“Damn, but it’s cold!” she said, pausing to zip up her windproof uniform bomber jacket. Tom looked critically at the driving mass of gray clouds that rode overhead.
“Could be in for more snow if that wind drops a little,” he ventured. Lee pulled on her gloves and headed for her Renegade.
“Just what we need,” she said grumpily, and yawned. Damn Jesse for waking her in the middle of the night. Things were bad enough without being short on sleep.
SEVEN
S
he collected the forensic team, then returned to her office. They didn’t need her kibitzing while they went about their tasks and she had work of her own to do.
As ever, the paperwork on her desk seemed to have mysteriously multiplied itself tenfold since she’d been gone. It seemed to double if she simply stepped down the hall for a cup of coffee.
On top of the pile was Tom’s report on the breakin at the convenience store. She rose and moved to the filing cabinet by the wall and rummaged through it until she found the file on the breakin at the diner. She compared the two. There seemed little difference between them. Probably the same perp. The MOs were identical. Door locks had been jimmied and the intruders had smashed open the cash registers in both cases, taking the cash that was in there after the day’s takings. Then, in both instances, they’d helped themselves to cigarettes and a few cases of beer—the only kind of liquor that both establishments had on hand.
She shrugged. They both looked the same. But then, break and enter wasn’t such a sophisticated crime that you’d find a great variation in method. A door’s locked so you break it. The logical tool is a crowbar. You go in, you steal cash and any booze that’s available. She guessed that one break and enter would look pretty much like another. Most of the ones she’d seen in the past had. Still, having two happen within a week was a definite pointer to one person or group being at work. Sooner or later, she guessed, they’d make a mistake and she’d nail them.
She put both files in the filing cabinet and returned to her desk. There was a memorandum from the mayor, querying her about overtime payments incurred by members of the sheriff’s department during the previous month. She sighed. If only she could get criminals to operate on a reasonable timetable—say, nine to five—she’d have that problem licked. She reached for a writing pad and a pencil to draft a reply to the mayor.
The pile of paperwork had diminished by more than half when there was a tap at her door. The leader of the forensic team put his head around the doorframe.
“All finished?” she asked and he nodded, holding up his collection of sample cases.
“I’ve taken scrapings from under his nails, hair samples, samples from his clothing and all the rest,” he replied. “You can inform the police in Minnesota that the family can have the body for burial anytime now.” Lee nodded her thanks.
“I’ll drive you back to the airport,” she said, starting to rise. He waved her back into the chair.
“Cab’s good enough, Sheriff. You’ve got plenty on your plate.”
She smiled gratefully. “So, when can we expect your report?”
He screwed up his face thoughtfully. “Give me a couple of days, Sheriff,” he said. “It’s a pretty simple case, I know, but we’re snowed under down in Denver at the moment.”
“It’s a simple case for you,” Lee said, with some feeling. “I wish it was the same for us.”
He nodded. “You don’t have a lot to go on, do you?” he asked.
“We sure as hell don’t.”
“Well, look on the bright side. Three out of five violent crimes in this state go unsolved anyway.”
Lee raised an eyebrow at him. “Go ahead,” she said. “Make my day.”
EIGHT
H
e’d been keeping track of the media coverage of what had become known as The Silver Bullet Murder. He smiled now, shaking his head at the fanciful term. How journalists loved to dramatize events.
But this time, the notoriety suited his purpose. In the past, he’d taken revenge on the people who had crossed him and then quietly faded away. But that no longer gave him the same feeling of satisfaction. It wasn’t quite enough. He wanted something bigger, something more noticeable. Sure he had a specific target in mind, but this time, that killing was going to be the culmination of a whole series of events. He wanted more than revenge on just one person and he wanted the world to know about it. He was tired of remaining anonymous. It was time to move on to a new phase. So this time, he was going to punish the entire organization. He wanted something big. Something newsworthy. Something that attracted attention from a much wider base than just the town he happened to be in. And for that to happen, he needed the media attention that a whole series of seemingly unrelated killings would generate.
So in that sense, a phrase like “The Silver Bullet Murder” was just what he needed. It was a handle for other journalists and news services to latch on to and, in the days immediately following the discovery of the body, the Murder—he always thought of it capitalized like that
—
had made it onto the Channel 6 local news in Denver, and then been picked up by the CBS Network coverage as well.
He smiled cynically as he made his way into Mrs. McLaren’s cozy breakfast room. Coffee was standing ready on a warming plate and the baskets of fresh rolls and doughnuts were laid out ready, as ever. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took one of the doughnuts, putting it onto a plate with a paper napkin, then moved to the two-seater, overstuffed sofa, where a copy of the Denver Post was waiting.
As he’d expected, the media reveled in a major crime being committed in a travel resort. There was something doubly pleasing to people who were slaving away at their jobs in the dead of winter to read about bad luck happening to someone who was off having a good time.
He’d been mildly interested to see that his victim had been a dentist. He’d never liked dentists. Never understood how anyone could willingly take on such a job. Serves him right, he thought, smiling again.
He quickly scanned the front page of the Post, a small frown forming. US troops in the Middle East were still fighting a losing battle. NASA was bleating for funds to mount a manned expedition to Mars and in Washington, the president had met with a delegation from a group of African countries asking for foreign aid.
Nothing about The Silver Bullet Murder. Apparently, the media was about to drop the entire matter now that the first sensation was over and no new developments had occurred.
It was time to give them something more to work on.
“Morning, Mr. Murphy. ”
It was Mrs. McLaren, the friendly, motherly widow who ran the small boardinghouse on Laurel Street. She bustled over to the sideboard to make sure the coffee was still full and there were plenty of rolls and doughnuts left for her other guests.
“Morning Mrs. Mac,” he said cheerfully, letting her have the full benefit of his beaming smile. He knew she liked him. He knew he could make just about any woman, any age, like him when he turned on the charm.
“My land but you’re up early,” she said. “Those others won’t be stirring for half an hour yet.”
“Can’t get things done lying in bed, Mrs. Mac. ” He grinned easily, and she nodded her agreement, setting another pot of water on the warming plate and changing the filter draw in the coffeemaker. It was a sentiment she approved of.
She nodded at the Post, lying open in his lap.
“What’s in the news today?” she asked. He looked down at the paper, as if seeing it for the first time, then smiled back at her.
“Oh, hardly anything. Hardly anything at all,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose no news is good news, as they say.
”
She turned to head back to her kitchen. He nodded once or twice, then, after she’d gone, he said to himself, “Not for someone, it isn’t. ”
He wondered who he’d be killing next. Then he shrugged. Not that it really mattered.

 

J
esse had pulled a ten-hour shift on ski patrol after two volunteer members had failed to show up for duty. He was relaxing in the Tugboat, working his way through a burger, when Lee’s call came through.
The phone behind the bar shrilled, just managing to cut through the blare of conversation and laughter that filled the place. Todd, serving up a brimming glass of chardonnay with one hand, scooped the phone out of its cradle.
“Tugboat Saloon,” he said, then, “Sorry, didn’t catch that.”
His serving hand now free, he covered his right ear with the palm so he could hear the voice on the other end of the phone more clearly.
“Yeah, Sheriff, he’s here somewhere, I’m sure,” he said. “Just hang tight for a moment.” He set the phone down and leaned forward on the bar, searching through the crowd for Jesse, spotting him finally at a table by the coatrack. Fortuitously, Jesse chose that moment to look toward the bar and saw Todd making unmistakable gestures toward the phone. Leaving the remains of his burger, he made his way through the crush and took the phone from Todd’s outstretched hand.
“It’s Lee,” the barman told him.
Like Todd, Jesse clapped his free hand over his other ear to hear more clearly.
“This is Jess,” he said. “Something happening?”
“I’d appreciate it if you could get down to Gondola Square.” There was something about her voice, a deliberate lack of emotion, that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Well, don’t go making a lot of noise about it up in the Tugboat, Jess,” Lee said, “but we’ve got us another dead body on the Silver Bullet.”
NINE
O
nce again, it was John Hostetler who had found the body. It shook him up pretty bad and Lee had Tom Legros take him to the gondola office and pour coffee into the elderly man.

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