Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (9 page)

THE NEXT MORNING TULLY FOUND
Grady in the lodge kitchen. He was eating breakfast. Lois Getty, the woman from the lodge office, sat across from him smoking a cigarette. Tully guessed her age at about fifty. In some ways he thought of her as an older Daisy, everything about her suggesting efficiency, her trim dark skirt and white blouse, a short, businesslike bob to her dark hair, her perfect makeup that didn’t quite conceal the crinkly wrinkles around her eyes.

“Sorry to intrude,” Tully said.

“Not a problem,” Lois said. “Grady and I were just taking a break from the guests. If they don’t get that road open soon, I’m afraid we’ll have a riot on our hands. Nerves are getting a little frazzled.”

“They’re rich,” Tully said. “They can’t stand being at the mercy of anything, let alone an avalanche.”

“Yes sir, you’re right about that,” Grady said.

Tully pulled up a chair and sat down next to Grady. At the other end of the kitchen, two middle-aged women were washing dishes. Lois called out to one of them. “Ethel, bring Sheriff Tully some coffee and a plate of that strudel.”

Tully wondered how she knew he was in serious need of strudel.

She turned to Tully. “Any sign of Mike?”

Tully shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Not like Mike to stay gone this long without taking a car,” Grady said. “Something has happened to him. I’ve known him about five years but I can’t say I know much about him, except he was a major athlete at one time. I guess he had a good chance at making an Olympic biathlon team years ago but hurt his leg or something in the tryouts.”

“The one where they ski around in the woods and shoot at targets?”

“Yes sir, that’s what I understand. He always kept himself in good shape. I have a lot of trouble believing Mike could have died because of some accident out in the woods.”

One of the cooks brought Tully a cup of coffee and a plate of strudel. He thanked her and ate a piece of the strudel. It was the best thing to happen to him in days. Life is getting rough when strudel rates that high, he thought. “Well, I don’t have a clue what could have happened to Wilson. But I’m not leaving until I find out.”

“Good,” Lois said.

“So, Grady,” Tully said, “what I need right now is a boat. Can you loan me the lodge’s?”

“Sure. It’s a twenty-foot inflatable with outboard jet motors. Use it to take fishermen down river in the summer. Usually, we put it in storage in the winter, but Mike wanted it left in the river this year. Maybe he thought some of the guests might want to try fishing the West Branch. Got some mighty big browns in there. The big ones tend to bite only in winter.”

“I know. Wish I was fishing for them right now. So you don’t mind if I use the boat?”

“Nope. Guess the county will pay if you wreck it.”

“Sure, the commissioners are delighted to cover all my costs. I’ve fished from shore up here a few times, and I know there is some pretty wicked whitewater in places.”

“Yes sir, there is. I’ve run the boat quite a bit but I’d never go upriver. A fish isn’t worth it, no matter how big.”

“At least you should be able to give me a boating tip.”

“Yes sir.”

“And that is?”

“Don’t do it!”

FROM THE DOCK, LURCH NOTICED
the suspension footbridge that arched across the West Branch. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Why don’t we just go across the footbridge and walk upstream on the other side of the river.”

“Naw,” Tully said. “Not dangerous enough. Besides, the snow might be pretty deep over there.”

“We could wear snowshoes.”

“Shut up, Lurch, and put on your life jacket!”

Tully untied the tarp covering the boat, folded it, and laid it on the dock. He set an anchor on top to keep it from blowing away. Lurch finally got his life vest fastened.

“Tell me the truth, boss. The handyman said the river is nice and smooth all the way up to the Pout House, right?”

“Something like that, Lurch. I don’t remember his exact words. Now get in the boat.”

“I really hate boats!”

The performance of the jet motors amazed Tully. He could control the boat with surprising precision, barely touching the joystick on the steering counsel. Pushing the stick forward increased power, pulling it back decreased power. A slight tip of the stick to right or left turned the boat in whatever direction he chose.

“It takes a lot of experience to run one of these boats up through whitewater!” he yelled at Lurch.

The CSI unit looked back at him from the bow. “Whitewater! I’ve never heard whitewater described as ‘nice and smooth.’ How many years you been doing this, boss?”

“This is my first time. Pretty darn good for a beginner, don’t you think, Lurch?”

Tully burst into laughter at the look on Lurch’s face.

As the water grew increasingly violent, the boat began to twist and buck as if it were alive. As they rounded the first bend, the river seemed to rear up and curl back down toward them. Even above the roar of the water, Tully could hear Lurch’s screams. They climbed a wall of water with Lurch lying sprawled halfway back from the bow, his hands clutching two straps on the floor. The bow burst through an explosion of water and then toppled forward into a deep, dark trough. Water surged through the interior of the boat and drained out the stern. For a moment, all Tully could see of Lurch were the two hands holding on to the straps. Then they were climbing another wall of water. The boat slid steadily up out of the trough and stopped atop a massive boil of whitewater. Tully managed to hold himself upright by clutching with one hand the edge of the windshield. He pushed the joystick all the way forward. The boat burst out into thundering rapids that were actually a relief from what they had gone through. Beyond the rapids, Tully made out a stretch of smooth water. Pap and Dave were standing on the bank. Lurch looked back at Tully. The Crime Scene Investigations Unit’s mouth was open, as if frozen in midscream.

“Can you believe this, Lurch?” Tully shouted to his CSI unit. The roar of the rapids drowned out any reply from Lurch. Tully eased the joystick back and the boat slid into placid current next to the bank.

“How was it?” Pap called down.

“Piece a cake!”

“How come Byron’s mouth is hanging open like that?” Dave said.

“First time in a boat, I guess. He’ll get used to it. You fellas find anything?”

“I’m freezing!” Lurch yelled.

“Nothing,” Dave said. “But I’m more convinced than ever that Mike Wilson never made these tracks.”

Pap said, “I found an arrow sticking out of the snow over here. Maybe somebody killed Mike with a bow and arrow.”

“What kind of point?”

“Target.”

“If you’re going to kill somebody with an arrow, you would at least use a hunting point,” Tully said. “You probably didn’t notice that that whole field is an archery course. Targets are scattered all over the place. They’re half buried in the snow though.”

“I’m freezing!” Lurch yelled.

Tully leaned out of the boat so he could get a closer look at the rocks. He detected no sign of a head having hit them.

“I’ve got an idea,” Lurch said.

“What’s that?”

“Let me out here and I’ll go back with Dave and Pap.”

“Naw, I need you to hold down the bow of the boat, Lurch. We’re going farther upstream.”

“Nooooo! Let Dave or Pap do it!”

“I can’t do that. They’re much too valuable to me. Don’t you realize a person could get killed out here, Lurch?”

He shouted at Pap and Dave. “Got to go!”

He backed the boat into the current. The engine thundered and the boat slid easily around a bend and up through a lesser rapid. Ahead, Tully made out a cove where assorted logs and other driftwood had been pushed up on the shore. He headed for it.

He yelled to Lurch over the roar of the engine. “What’s in the middle of that mess of driftwood?” He pointed.

Lurch turned and squinted. “Looks like some clothes! Take her in closer, boss!”

Tully ran the bow of the boat up onto the driftwood and shifted the motors into neutral.

Lurch turned and looked at him. “We got ourselves a body.”

“Ten to one we’ve found Mike Wilson, Lurch.”

“It’s got rubber boots on.”

“Excellent!” Tully picked up a long pole with a hook on the end. “See if you can get that hook on its belt.”

After several misses, Lurch finally hooked the dead man’s belt and was able to drag the corpse over to the boat.

“What do you think, Lurch?”

“Could be Wilson, all right. It doesn’t look as if it’s been in the water that long.”

Tully got up and made his way to the bow.

“Let’s see if we can drag it into the boat. Get hold of that leg and I’ll grab this one.”

They both heaved back and the body slid into the boat facedown.

Tully reached in the man’s hip pocket and pulled out a billfold. He flipped it open. “The party we just dragged in is who we thought it might be—Mike Wilson.”

“Good. Maybe we can go back now. I need to change into some dry clothes. I’m freezing.”

“I myself am still fairly dry. Finding, Mike, though, pretty well screws up all my theories.”

“Good!”

“But you’re going back to the office, Lurch.”

“How?”

“By helicopter, how do you think?”

“At least it won’t be by boat!”

“Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of that possibility.”

Tully studied the trees on the bank above them. “You get the feeling we’re being watched, Lurch?”

“I didn’t want to mention it.”

Upon returning to the dock, Tully sent Lurch staggering up to the lodge to get some dry clothes on and to bring back a stretcher. The trip back down had been twice as bad as the trip up but at least much faster. Tully started wrapping the body in the boat tarp. Ten minutes later Pap and Dave came down carrying a stretcher. Ski lodges always have stretchers, Tully noted. Dave snapped the stretcher open and they rolled the body onto it.

Pap watched as Tully and Dave lifted the stretcher out of the boat and set it on the dock. “I never much minded making a dead body, but I never wanted to fool with it after I’d made one. What we going to do with it now?”

“First thing,” Tully said, “we’d better get Blanche Wilson down here to make a positive ID. The billfold says this is Mike Wilson. The driver’s license picture looks kind of like our man here, but we need to make sure.”

Flakes of snow began to drift down. “Pap, go get Mrs. Wilson, will you?”

“You got it, Bo.”

“What’s your plan?” Dave said.

“I’ll call the chopper and get it in here as soon as I can. We’ll send the body out on it, and Lurch, too, much as he hates it. Maybe I’ll threaten him with another boat ride. In any case, we’ll get the body back to Susan, and she’ll be able to tell us the cause of death pretty quick. Probably won’t get much info on time of death. Then I want to get Lurch working on his computer. He knows how to do some seriously illegal things. Maybe we can’t exactly use them in court, but we can get some leads.”

“I take it you don’t think Mike fell in the river and drowned.”

“Bodies don’t float upstream, Dave, and this body was upstream of the tracks.”

“Maybe the tracks aren’t his. Maybe he fell in upstream of where he was found. How about that?”

“Try not to be a nuisance, Dave.”

Mrs. Wilson came down to the dock. She had a green wool cape wrapped around her. The cape and her hair were speckled with snowflakes.

Tully pulled back the tarp so Mrs. Wilson could see the face of the body. She slumped as if about to faint. Dave caught her. She put her hand to her mouth.

“That’s Mike,” she whispered

Tully covered the body back up. “Death face-to-face is always a shock. Even if you don’t know the person.”

“You okay, Mrs. Wilson?” Dave said.

“Yes, thank you.” She stepped forward, looking at Tully. “Is there anything else, Bo?”

“Yes, there is. I don’t know if this is the time to tell you but I will anyway. I think your husband was murdered. I don’t know why or how, but maybe I will soon.”

“Murdered?” she said in a soft voice.

Tully nodded. “Yeah, I’m shipping the body out of here tonight by helicopter. Our medical examiner will be able to determine cause of death, I hope.”

“You don’t think he drowned?” she asked.

“That’s certainly a possibility. We’ll know soon enough.”

As soon as Dave had walked Mrs. Wilson back to the lodge, Tully and Pap wrapped the blue plastic tarp around the stretcher and fastened the package with bungee cords.

The two of them then carried the body up to the utility shed.

“That Mike?” Grady asked, wiping his hands with an oily cloth.

“Yep,” Tully said. “Mrs. Wilson identified him as such.”

“She’ll have her hands full running this place now,” Grady said. “Mike could be a real pain, but he did a lot of work around here, stuff Blanche can’t do.”

“I hate to tell you this, Grady, but I need you to run me up to the top of the ridge in Bessie, so I can make a phone call.”

“Yes sir, I figured as much. Guess the dog teams didn’t work out so good.”

“You got that right.”

Tully wouldn’t mention it to Janice, but the Sno-Cat was a lot more comfortable than the dogsled. Tully thought maybe the Sheriff’s Department had serious need of such a vehicle. Sure, several of the commissioners would drop dead when he presented the idea, but new technology always results in casualties. The commissioners were only politicians anyway and easily replaced.

He called the number on the National Guard pilot’s card. A female voice at the guard station told him that at that moment Stolz and his helicopter were out on a rescue mission. She would get Ron up to the lodge, she said, as soon as he returned. “Can I give you a heads-up call when he gets back?”

“Can we wait up here a bit?” Tully asked Grady.

“My time is your time,” the handyman said.

“We’ll await your call,” he told the woman. He gave her his cell phone number.

Tully stared out at the falling snow while they waited. After a bit he said, “Where are Cabins One and Two?”

“Farther up the mountain past Cabin Three. You want to run up there?”

“Might as well.”

The groomed trail wound up considerably higher on the north side of the mountain, with one ridge branching off to a higher ridge and that ridge branching off to yet another. They at last arrived at Cabin Two, which was almost buried in snow.

“Nobody stays at Cabins One and Two this time of year,” Grady said. “From here the trail levels out and runs north for about five miles. Cabin One is right at the end. I haul skiers up here with the Sno-Cat and they can ski out to the end and then ski downhill all the way back to the lodge. I checked out both One and Two earlier looking for Mike, and there were no tracks leading into either one.”

“It’s beautiful,” Tully said. “Makes me want to take up skiing.”

“I prefer the Sno-Cat,” Grady said.

“Well, sure,” Tully said.

His phone rang. The woman said Ron Stolz was on his way.