Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (4 page)

The avalanche was still spilling trees, rocks, and snow down into the river behind them. Pap walked around the Explorer and stood alongside Tully, watching the tail end of the avalanche. He got out his makings and started pouring tobacco into a cigarette paper. His hands shook so badly he spilled most of it on the ground.

“It looks like we may be spending more time up at the lodge than we figured,” Tully said.

“We’re trapped all right. It’ll be a spell before the highway department gets the road cleared. Like next spring!” He licked the cigarette paper and sealed it with quivering fingers.

Tully walked over to the edge of the road and looked down into the canyon. “Oh no!” he said.

“Don’t tell me,” Pap said. “I don’t want to hear.”

“The water seems to be backing up. I think the avalanche has dammed up the river!”

“I hope the lodge ain’t close to the river.”

“No, it’s back up on the side of the mountain. But if I remember right, there’s a cabin down close to the river not far from here.”

“I don’t care if there is a cabin,” Pap said. “I’ve had enough heroics for one day.”

“I didn’t notice you do any heroics.”

“It’s what I ain’t done that’s heroic.”

THE FULL MOON STILL ILLUMINATED
the canyon. Tully cleaned the snow off the windshield of the Explorer and its hood. Then they drove up the road, neither man talking. Tully thought it unusual for Pap to be so quiet. He guessed he was still shaken by the close call. He glanced over at him. Pap seemed deep in thought. Tully turned and looked down at the river, a black streak etched against the snow. Then he saw the cabin. It was down close to the river, with a car parked in front of it. He hit the brakes and slid to a stop.

“What now?” Pap said, irritably.

“There’s a cabin with people in it down there! It’s got a car parked out front. The river has backed up almost to it! We must have passed the entrance to the access road without seeing it. The water is already over the road.”

He grabbed his flashlight, jumped out of the Explorer, and went down the hill in long, stiff-legged jumps, digging in the heels of his boots at each landing. When he reached the access road, the water already swirled over the bottoms of his boots. He hit the cabin door with his shoulder and knocked it open. A boy and girl blinked in the beam of his flashlight, holding up a blanket as a screen in front of them. They both looked terrified.

“Get up!” Tully shouted. “Get up and get out of here! Now! The river is backing up and about to take out the cabin!”

The boy leaped up and ran out the door stark naked.

“Forget the car!” Tully yelled after him. “It’s done for! Climb straight up!”

He turned to the girl. She was still seated in bed. The water was coming in the door now and rising on his boots.

“Come on!” he shouted at her. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

She threw back the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She too was naked. It was then Tully saw that one of her feet was in a cast. She started to cry.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll carry you.” He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. The water was now halfway to his knees. He scooped her up in his arms and rushed out through the door, the water splashing up and soaking his pants. Desperate as he was, he still thought of his boots. They’re alligator, after all. Water shouldn’t hurt alligator. The girl was small and thin but surprisingly heavy. She still whimpered but now also trembled from the cold. He started up the steep slope, his flashlight tumbling away behind him. Climbing blindly, he stumbled and almost went down. The girl reached up and locked both her arms around his neck, taking some of the strain off of him. The bank was almost solid rock and steep, only inches in front of his face. He could feel the sharp edges of rocks tearing at the knees of his pants. “I’m sorry,” he gasped to the girl. “I can’t carry you in my arms any longer.”

“Don’t leave me!” she cried.

“I won’t leave you but I have to throw you over my shoulder.”

“Nooo!” she cried.

She made an oofing sound when her belly hit his shoulder.

The spotlight hit him in the eyes, blinding him. Pap had pulled the Explorer over to the edge of the road, so he could shine the light down the slope.

By the time Tully reached the road he was mostly climbing with his knees. Pap reached down, grabbed the girl around the waist, and stood her up on the edge of the road. Tully tried to tell him about the cast on the girl’s foot but couldn’t get the words out. She was shaking and crying. Pap reached into the backseat and whipped a blanket off the boy.

“Hey, I’m freezing here!” the kid yelped.

“Shut up!” Pap said. He wrapped the girl in the blanket, picked her up, and set her in the backseat. Tully turned and looked back, just as the cabin disappeared into the surging river.

After his breathing slowed down, he told Pap, “I thought I was going to drop dead.”

Tully got into the Explorer and rested his head on the steering wheel.

“I’m freezing back here!” the boy said, his teeth chattering.

Tully told Pap there were two sleeping bags in the back section of the Explorer. “Open them up and spread them over our two victims, okay?”

Pap got the sleeping bags and spread them out over the couple. Then he settled himself in the front seat and sat there in silence, not even bothering to roll himself a cigarette.

“What’s wrong, Pap?” Tully said. “You’re not talking.” He started the Explorer and began driving.

“I’m just trying to fix an image in my mind.”

“You’re a dirty old man!” the girl said from the backseat. She had stopped crying.

Tully laughed. “You’ve just met and already she’s got you figured out, Pap.”

Tully glanced at his passengers in his rearview mirror. The boy was skinny, with a mop of dark hair that concealed his ears. He was only a few inches taller than the girl. In Tully’s opinion, he didn’t amount to much. The girl was pretty but, even better, cute, with short, curly, dark red hair, large eyes, and full pouty lips. Neither of them could have been older than eighteen.

“I guess you two probably aren’t married,” he said.

The boy caught his eye in the mirror and shook his head. The girl snapped, “No way!”

“Good,” Tully said. “So what brings you up here, other than the obvious?”

“We came up Friday,” the girl said. “We have a little break before the next semester starts.”

The boy went on. “We were cross-country skiing at the lodge and Lindsay took a spill and hurt her foot. I took her into the emergency room at Blight City Hospital and they put a cast on it. Then we came back up to stay at the cabin.”

“That was your idea,” Lindsay snapped. “Taking a girl camping in the middle of winter! I’m a math major. You’d think I’d be smart enough not to get involved with this idiot. I should have gone back to the dorm.”

“Idiots are a dime a dozen these days,” Tully said. “And what dorm is that?”

“At Washington State.”

“You’re both students there I take it.”

“Yeah,” the boy said. “I’m Marcus Tripp and she’s Lindsay Blair. We’re both freshmen. I’m in pre-law.”

Tully glanced at them in the rearview mirror. They both had finally stopped shaking. He could feel something warm leaking down both of his legs. He hoped it was blood.

“Figures,” Tully said.

“You really think my car is ruined?”

“It’s history, Marcus. I saw it disappear.”

“My old man will kill me,” Marcus said.

“My old man will kill you!” Lindsay said.

Tully looked at the boy in the mirror. “You’ll get to live a few days longer, Marcus. We’re all trapped up here by the avalanche. It blocked the road behind us, as well as the river.”

“Oh, that is just great!” Lindsay said. “So I’m stuck up here!”

“Afraid so,” Tully said. “I suspect the avalanche also took out the power poles and probably the telephones lines, too. We’ll find out when we get to the lodge.”

THE LODGE SUDDENLY APPEARED, DARK
and massive above them. It was four stories high, with sections of logs holding up the roof of a vast covered veranda that swept around the main building. Several windows had dim yellowish lights illuminating them. There were similar lights in the portion of the building Tully knew to be the dining room.

The parking lot was crammed with vehicles, most of them SUVs. As they pulled into the lot, they drove over a packed section of the new snow. The headlights picked up a red spray. He stopped and backed up. Both he and Pap leaned forward to study the trampled snow.

Tully said, “Looks like blood to me.”

Pap said, “From my vast experience with blood, I’d say this comes from a fistfight.”

“I think you may be right.” Tully backed into an opening between a Yukon and a Lexus sport utility vehicle. “I’ll go in and see if I can round up some clothes for these two. And a pair of crutches.”

Lindsay said, “I still have a room here. All my stuff is still in my room, number 222. They can get me some clothes from there.”

“I have a room too,” Marcus said. “Room 318.”

“You each have a room?” Tully asked. “So what were you doing in the cabin?”

“I thought it would be romantic,” Marcus said.

Tully shook his head. “I hope you realize now, Marcus, that romance is not what it’s cracked up to be.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then,” Tully said. “So all we need is crutches for you, Lindsay, and some bathrobes or something so you can get to your rooms.”

“You actually think they’ll have crutches?” Lindsay said.

“They ski here, don’t they? Of course they’ll have crutches.”

He got out and walked up to the lodge. Even in the dark, it was impressive.

Built in the Twenties, the outer walls had been constructed of stones and logs. He vaguely recalled that a couple of movies had been filmed there. One of the massive doors swung open at scarcely more than the touch of his hand on the handle. A forest of candles illuminated the foyer but nobody was at what he took to be a registration desk. He walked toward the sound of voices and into a lounge area. He stopped a young woman. She was wearing a green jacket with a West Branch Lodge emblem on it. “Ah, you work here,” he said.

“If anyone is watching,” she said. “I’m Wendy Curtis. What can I do for you?”

Tully explained about the crutches and bathrobes or other covering for Lindsay and Marcus to get to their rooms. He gave her the room numbers.

“You look as if you could use some new clothes yourself, Sheriff.”

“Not as badly as I need a stiff drink, Wendy.”

“The bar is just around the corner. I’ll take care of the robes and crutches.”

Tully thanked her and walked into the lounge. A bar ran along the wall to his left. At the far end, a tall, stocky bartender leaned over it in intense conversation with a young woman. Whatever he was selling, the woman wasn’t buying it. She actually stomped her foot at one point. She wore a leather jacket and jeans and even in the dim light Tully rated her somewhere between very cute and gorgeous.

Tully called down to the bartender. “Excuse me, but could I get a drink here?”

The bartender glared at him. “Can’t you see I’m busy!” he snapped. He went back to arguing with the woman.

Tully grabbed the bartender by the hair and smashed his face up and down on the bar. But only in his mind. The man had a neck thick as a rhino’s. Nothing is more embarrassing than grabbing a handful of hair and then not being able to move a man’s head. This had never happened to Tully and he didn’t intend for it to.

At last the woman pushed back from the bar, still shaking her head, and stormed off. He thought he detected cheeks glistening with tears when she went by him. Another good reason to whomp the bartender’s face up and down on the bar. Perhaps they were having a lovers’ quarrel. The bartender couldn’t have been out of his twenties. A lock of dark hair curled down onto his forehead. Youth. Muscle. Looks. It was hard to imagine a more disgusting combination. The man came down the bar toward him, his demeanor suggesting menace.

“So?” he said.

Tully undid the badge from his belt and laid it on the bar. “What will that buy me?”

“Oh-oh,” the bartender said. “You must be Sheriff Tully. You have to admit you’re kind of a mess.”

“Mess or not, I’m young Sheriff Tully. If I were old Sheriff Tully, you’d be dead by now. Or wishing you were.”

“I’m sorry. I mistook you for one of the locals.”

“The locals?”

“Yeah, they’re kind of a rough lot—no offense. The mountains back here are full of them. We had one in a few nights ago, got drunk, did a striptease right in front of everybody. I chased him all over the ballroom, him giggling like a fool and jumping from table to table. I dragged him stark naked out the door and threw him down the front steps. He probably froze to death. I hope he did, anyway. Is that a crime, Sheriff?”

“Hey, you’re talking about my life.”

The bartender held a thick hand out over the bar. “DeWayne Scragg,” he said.

Tully shook the hand. “Bo Tully,” he said. “You by any chance related to Batim Scragg?” Batim owned a run-down ranch up north of the little town of Famine. At the moment, Tully had his two sons in jail on a drug charge connected with the Last Hope murders.

“He’s some relation but I won’t admit what,” DeWayne said.

“Oh, Batim isn’t such a bad sort,” Tully said. “I put him in prison once and my old man put him in once. You get to know him, he’s a pretty decent fellow.”

“You like Scotch, Sheriff?”

“Single malt, if you have it.”

DeWayne took a glass off a shelf and filled it with Glenfiddich. He set the glass in front of Tully. “On the house, Sheriff.”

“I appreciate it, DeWayne. But run a tab for me and my men. They’ll let you know who they are.”

“One of them already has. An Indian fellow. Said you’d be running a tab.”

An Indian fellow. Tully took a sip of Scotch and smiled. “You mixed it just right, DeWayne. Tell me, you got any idea where Mike Wilson could have gone?”

The bartender frowned. “Mike runs off like this fairly often. Stays gone for a week or so and then comes back.”

“So why is Mrs. Wilson so upset this time. He’s been gone only a couple of days.”

“Because he didn’t take a car. She figured he had skied up to the Pout House. That’s a—”

“I know,” Tully said. “I take it Mike Wilson isn’t so good to the help?”

“He treats me all right, but he has a mean streak. He gives the women a pretty rough time. Bawls out the waitresses in front of everybody. If you don’t do everything exactly as he wants it done, he goes bananas. Except you never know how he wants it done until you’ve done it. What’s the word for that? Compulsive something.”

“Obsessive. Compulsive obsessive. It’s one of the most irritating of mental disorders. Not to the victim but to everybody else. He ever hit anybody?”

The bartender was silent for a moment, obviously thinking over his response. “Not the help, not that I know of anyway.”

“Not the help. How about somebody who isn’t help?”

DeWayne looked around, then leaned across the bar toward Tully. “Mrs. Wilson didn’t come out of her apartment for a couple of days. I asked Wendy, one of the housekeeping persons, to check on her. She told me Mrs. Wilson had been beaten up. Had two black eyes and a puffy lip.”

“You think Mike Wilson did it?”

“I had a little talk with Mike about it. There’s been no evidence Mrs. Wilson has ever been hit again.”

“Odd that Mike didn’t fire you after your little talk,” Tully said.

“He probably would have if he could. I think Mrs. Wilson holds all the cards. Also, I’m sort of connected around these parts.”

“I take it you mean you’re part of the Scragg family.”

“Did I say that?”

Tully took a sip of his Scotch. “If Mike doesn’t hit the help, does he ever hit on them?”

“Yeah, there’s some of that. Maybe some more serious stuff, too, but I don’t know. Some of the girls are terrified of him. They would probably quit but jobs are scarce around here.”

Tully took another sip of his Scotch. “You think something has happened to Wilson?”

“We’ve checked all the cabins, and there’s no sign he’s been in any of them. Up here this time of year, a man can’t be outside for two days and live. I figure he’s dead. Fell and broke a leg and froze, something like that. Has to be, unless he’s holed up in a snow cave somewhere.”

“Well, I’d better be moseying along. Nice talking to you, DeWayne. By the way, when I walked up I noticed you seemed to be having some lady trouble. The young woman was pretty upset. What was that all about, if you don’t mind my asking?”

The bartender seemed startled by the question, but then said, “No, I don’t mind. Alice is my girlfriend. Was my girlfriend. It’s over now. I told her I’ve got some plans and it just wasn’t possible for her to be part of them. If you’ve ever been romantically involved, Sheriff, you’d understand.”

“Romance is much too complicated for me, DeWayne. I prefer to leave that sort of misery to you young fellows.”

He thanked the bartender for the information and wandered into the dining room. Lit only by candles, the room was dim and smoky. It was occupied with perhaps thirty people at white-clothed tables. The diners kept their talk to a low murmur, as if they were at the scene of an accident.

A soft voice behind him said, “You must be Sheriff Tully. I’m Mrs. Wilson.”

He turned. She was a small, elegant woman in a black dress, pearl necklace, matching pearl earrings, and a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses dangling from a thin gold chain. She wore her silvery hair in a chic cut. He guessed she might be fifty.

“I am he,” Tully said.

“You are something of a mess, I must say.”

“I’ve had a trying day.”

“We also,” she said. “As you can see, we lost our electricity a short while ago. I would suspect Mike, but I can hardly believe he is that upset with me. He does have a rather fierce temper, though.”

“I can assure you Mike is innocent of the electrical problem. An avalanche very nearly got us on our way in, and I’m quite sure it wiped out your power lines.”

“Good heavens!” she said. “That explains why our phones are dead, too.”

“I’m afraid so. One of your employees, a nice lady by the name of Wendy Curtis, has arranged to get a couple of my young passengers back to their rooms, as well as find the girl a pair of crutches.”

“A new set of clothes might be in order for you, Sheriff.”

“I guess,” he said. “Actually, I have some extra duds in the car. They’re in a large duffel bag in the back of my vehicle, a red, battered Ford Explorer with a sheriff’s insignia on the side. Maybe you could have someone haul the bag up to a room.”

“I’ll get that taken care of right away. But first, Sheriff, maybe you would like to step into my office for a few moments. You seem to be dripping blood on the floor.”

Tully glanced down. There were several bright red spots on the floorboards. He followed Mrs. Wilson into her office. She pulled a chair out and gave him a gentle push into it. “Now, if you will please drop your pants,” she said.

Tully was too exhausted to be shocked. He undid his belt and slid his pants down. His knees were a bloody mess. He could hardly stand to look at them. Mrs. Wilson ran some warm water in a pan and came back and knelt in from of him. She carefully dabbed away the blood and then took a dropper from a small, dark bottle of something and dribbled the liquid over the raw places. Tully let on as if he felt nothing, although his first impulse was to rise screeching from the chair.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt too much,” Mrs. Wilson said. “It should take care of any infection, though.”

“Mmm,” Tully said, shaking his head. He could feel his eyes tearing up.

She dabbed his knees with gauze and then taped squares of gauze over each. “Knees are so hard to bandage but there, that should hold them for a while.”

“Thanks,” Tully croaked. “That’s very kind of you.”

“You’re welcome. Usually I wait at least an hour after I meet a man before I ask him to drop his pants. Now you have to tell me how you ever managed to do that to your knees.”

“How about later?” he said. “Right now I’d like to change into my other clothes. And maybe have another large drink with some dinner.”

“It’ll be waiting for you.”