Zipper Fall (39 page)

I pushed my way through and knelt next to him. “How does it feel?”

He gave me a baleful eye. “Ligh m’nohze ’es broke.”

“Can I get you anything?”

He just hissed, looking entirely miserable, and turned to get a sip of water Craggs had provided earlier.

I turned my attention to Risby. He looked a bit dazed, sitting up against the wall further down, and he wasn’t attended by my friends; no, he enjoyed the attention of the police.

Well, sort of. Jubal Lupine sat next to him, holding his cup of water and talking to him in a low voice.

“It’s his fuckin’ fault,” Reyna said, nodding at Haus. “Had he not hit you, Azurri here wouldn’t have gone ballistic.”

“No, it’s Wyatt’s fault.” Tim’s voice was calm and analytical. “Had he not free-climbed like an idiot, Haus wouldn’t have freaked out at him.”

I looked at Jack and he gave me that pissed-off look again, not saying anything. “I got some useful data, though.”

The dismissive looks didn’t encourage me to share my findings, but the data I received was both intriguing and disturbing. Interesting, because Risby acted as though he really didn’t want anyone else to die on his watch again. Disturbing, because maybe he really was innocent—until proven guilty. Yet if it had not been him, then who?

I needed more information, and I knew just how to obtain it. My fingers developed that particular, annoying itch, and despite the adrenaline high I’d gotten off the free-climb, I had to suppress the delicate quiver of anticipation that had always preceded a satisfying breaking-and-entering.

This time, I knew it would be easy.

Risby Haus had cheap locks on his door.

T
HE
bright, fluorescent tubes of the hallway fixtures shed cold light on the locks before me. I worked the middle one first, as I always had; many people used only the lock attached to their door handle and kept the rest of them as a psychological deterrent—unless they really needed them, the extra locks were just for show. My thin pick slid into the key slit; my sensitive fingers detected the correct lever to press down. I inserted a rigid wire to keep it down and moved to the next internal doohickey, lining it up with the first one. When all three were lined up, I extracted the pick and inserted a hook-like device, grabbing all three lined-up tumblers. Then I pushed them down.

The lock opened with a click, and I felt that old, warm satisfaction flood my veins. I knew Jack would disapprove—more than disapprove, he might even dump me, and for cause—but if we were to find out who killed his sister, we had to find the missing pieces of the puzzle.

I pushed Jack out of my mind as I tried the doorknob—it was unlocked all right, but the door was still being held shut.

“Let me try the top one.” I exhaled, straightening up and stretching my shoulders.

“No, let me do it.” Reyna was right next to me with Auguste’s picks in her hand.

I turned to her; long hair spilled down her shoulders, held back by a white-and-purple sweatband. A white-and-purple top with a prominent V-neck molded to her body. Her size-L sports bra gave her the engineering support she needed; the hem of a bicolor, pleated cheerleader skirt reached only a hand-span under her butt. Knee socks didn’t quite cover Reyna’s strong, sculpted calves. This wasn’t the time to examine my best friend, certainly, but I couldn’t help but notice her legs were, for the first time in my memory, entirely hairless. “Did you actually bother to shave?”

Her face reddened. “No. Auguste took me in for a body wax.”

Ouch.

The rest of us were all guys, and we had depilated all exposed parts in a manner commensurate with our bravery and pain tolerance, aiming to lend our cheerleader outfits an air of verisimilitude. Chico was unbearably smug, rocking his gaudy little outfit even though he was a guy. Tim was resigned to his fate, having covered up his shoulder tattoo with copious amounts of makeup he bought together with the fake eyelashes. As for myself, I was way past the point of embarrassment. After all, it had been me who explained to everyone that people don’t remember faces as much as they remember uniforms… and it would have been unconvincing to meet a team of four plumbers entering the apartment. As the leader of this expedition, I felt responsible for my team members’ safety and, biting the bullet, I had been the first one to put on a long, black wig that disguised my hair, along with a bra overstuffed with socks and a ridiculously short cheerleader’s miniskirt.

“I wanna pick this lock, Wyatt.”

I gave Reyna a stern glare. “You have two minutes. Our disguises won’t hold forever.”

“They would, had you not been so damn cheap. We should have gotten those soccer uniforms,” Tim hissed at me from his lookout down the hallway. A mesh bag full of white and purple pompoms bounced against his bare thighs, and his toned, equestrian legs looked powerful and somewhat hairier than might have been expected from a college cheerleader.

Reyna pushed two tumblers down, but as she was going for the third, her wire slipped and she had to start all over again.

“Reyna, let me do it.” Nervous sweat was escaping my cheap wig and pouring down my face. This was no time to experiment.

“Just one more try….” She drew her plucked eyebrows together in concentration, and I heard her draw a deep breath. Seconds ticked by. It felt like half an hour before the tumblers aligned and we all heard the rough click of the mechanism turning as the lock yielded to her efforts. I saw Reyna’s grin, giddy and victorious.

While I picked the last lock, my mind pondered the incongruous reality of the four of us in these ridiculous outfits. The used sporting supply store did have soccer uniforms, many of them, but we weren’t willing to pay their full price. Soccer gear was in high demand and the store had no reason to put it on sale. The gaudy, awful purple uniform we finally purchased used to belong to the cheerleading squad of a defunct college rugby team and, since it was too atrocious for anyone to wear ever again, we got it for a song. The stretch fabric, together with its sleeveless design, even accommodated the guys’ broad shoulders.

The door swung in and we poured into Haus’s empty apartment. I closed the door and clicked the main lock shut, then looked at my eager helpers. “When you break into a place, you look in all the rooms to make sure there are no unexpected guests. This place is really small though, and Haus is pulling a double shift tonight, so we should be alright on that account.”

We spread out, peeking into the bathroom and behind the shower curtain, inside the closet and under the sofa. The place was so small, there wasn’t anywhere to hide.

“Next, we do our tasks. Tim, you have the desk with all those papers. Chico, you and I will go over his climbing stuff. Reyna, you go through the whole place systematically, and if you find anything interesting or unusual—anything at all—let us know.”

Reyna’s face lit up. “You want me to toss the place.”

“No. Not ‘toss.’ You need to be organized about it…. Here, start by the door and go clockwise from top to bottom. You may find secret hiding places, documents, whatever. Anything that catches your eye. And Tim can take pictures of it all.”

“Thank heavens for digital cameras,” Tim grumbled, extricating his precious Nikon from its nest of cheerleading pompoms. “I’m here as a journalist. Just in case anybody asks.”

C
HICO
was our climbing expert. We all recognized that, and were happy to let him pore over the neatly coiled ropes and harnesses suspended off hooks on the wall. Some moments passed.

“This is all surprisingly simple,” he commented, handling the basic friction plate. Not a single self-belay device polluted the purist ideals of the climber known as the Demon of Santa Teresa. He owned two pairs of climbing shoes, two pairs of Vibram FiveFingers shoes, and a pair of sneakers. There was one old, worn harness, two elastic climbing lines, and one nonelastic rappel line. All of Risby’s equipment was made of a green, gray, and brown-speckled weave cordage. Natural camo colors blended such as hunters would have used. None of his ropes bore the color-coding so common to major brands. And his ropes seemed almost new. He hadn’t used them much.

“Risby is mostly a free-climber,” I reminded our expert. “I guess he doesn’t use ropes as much as the rest of us.” My tone must have sounded somewhat wistful, for Chico gave me a curious look, his finely sculpted eyebrows arched.

“That’s not something to aspire to, Wyatt. Lots of climbers have died doing that sort of a thing.”

I shrugged. “Gotta admire his guts, though.”

T
IM
treated every single document in every single file box to at least a cursory glance. “It looks like he was really interested in the exposé of his former employer, the Provoid Brothers,” he said, rifling through yet another stack of papers. “He has some of the depositions, even. He took the trouble to obtain a copy of those from the court using a FOIA request.”

“FOIA?” I asked.

“Freedom of Information Act. I get a lot of background information that way, but it can be a real pain…. And look—here! This looks like Celia’s sworn statement.”

We all perked up and crowded around the desk, helping Tim organize the complex paper trail.

“There
was
a whistle-blower. There’s also that guy, Kevin Toussey, who directly opposes just about every statement Celia made. Or her boss, Mila Rose.”

“Who’s Kevin Toussey?” Chico asked.

“He was one of their vice-presidents,” Tim said. “He ran Operations—Risby Haus ran the collection department and reported to Kevin Toussey directly. Toussey showed up earlier on in the investigation process, but somehow he managed to escape serving his sentence on medical grounds…. Operations was his job description, but that doesn’t say what he really did for the company.” Tim’s voice was dour. A true emissary for the Pittsburgh Morning Gazette, he didn’t like incomplete answers and proceeded to dig for more.

I’
D
TAKEN
it upon myself to examine Risby’s personal items. It appeared the sofa in the middle of his room folded out, and that’s where he slept. The lamp table right next to it was rife with drawers and shelves, and I opened every single one of them. Removing the small, assorted objects and replacing them with delicate precision was difficult—I didn’t want to make it obvious the place had been searched. Many of these objects were of practical use, such as a box of tissues along with condoms and lube. There was a manicure kit and a drawer full of winter gloves. The function of the spare change drawer was rather obvious. There was a stack of magazines, some loose buttons and paper clips, postage stamps, and several pieces of personal correspondence.

An envelope mailed from Alaska caught my eye. There was no return address, but the handwriting was cursive and elegant, harkening to bygone days. It was addressed to Risby Haus at a different address—a home in a much better part of town than his current digs. The date on the stamp was well over one year old. I pulled the piece of hotel stationary out of its envelope.

Dearest Risby,

How I wish you could be here with me! Alaska simply defies description, and I feel humbled by her majesty and strength. I opted to skip Denali and attempted an ascent of the capricious Mt. Saint Elias instead. To refresh your memory, it’s the second-highest peak in Alaska, separating Alaska and Yukon. I figured it would be more accessible, being close to the water, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The weather coming off the gulf has been simply horrid. The locals thought me daft for even attempting the climb, and especially for going solo. A local game guide ended up accompanying me—a Tlingit woman named Lucy, who speaks English, as well as Tlingit and some Aleut. She is small and round, but possesses amazing strength and resilience, and knows the land and the weather better than anyone I’ve met to date. We decided to follow in the footsteps of the original explorer, Prince Luigi Amadeo di Savoia. If he was able to summit in 1897, with his old technology, we should have been able to do just as well—or so I thought.

Lucy insisted that we carry all this extra gear. We hiked up to the position of their 5th camp (out of 11!) and it wasn’t even proper climbing yet when the weather hit. We got snowed in good and proper, huddling in our little pop-up tent on the side of the mountain, wearing every shred of fabric available. Once we got snowed in, the tent got a lot warmer. We had to wait two days for the storm to abate before we could strap on the snowshoes Lucy insisted we bring (in May!) and navigate our way down. We did good, considering my total lack of preparation. Climbing under these climatic conditions….

Celia rambled on and on about various observations, both related to climbing and to Alaska, where you had more grizzly bears per square mile than people, where everyone carried a gun in case they ran into a grizzly, and where the airplane-delivered mail was often the only means of communication between far-flung villages. The tone of her letter reminded me that she spent some time in England.