Storm Peak

  The woman’s voice, by contrast to Clive’s, was calm and matter-of-fact.

  “Heart attack, top of Storm Peak,” she repeated, punching the details into the computer in front of her. “You want we should alert the Medevac chopper as well?”

  There was a slight pause as Clive peered out through the windows at the unmoving figure on the chair. “I think you better,” he said. “This guy doesn’t look good.”

  SIXTEEN

  I’d say we’ve got a dyed-in-the-wool serial killer on our hands,” said Jesse quietly.

  Lee was back in Ned Puckett’s office for the second time in as many days. This time Jesse was with her. He was standing, leaning against a filing cabinet while Lee, Ned himself and Felix Obermeyer, Chief of the Town Police, were seated around Ned’s desk.

  “Now then, Jesse,” said Ned. “Let’s not go jumping to conclusions here. Those aren’t the sort of words we want bandied around where the press can hear them.”

  “The press have already said them,” replied Felix gloomily. He was a thin, short man. What remained of his dark hair was slicked back over the crown of his head and hung long over his collar. The uniform issue gunbelt and handcuff pouch seemed overlarge on his small frame. He reminded Lee of a cross between a dyspeptic squirrel and Josef Goebbels. She wasn’t overfond of him but admitted that he was a good administrator.

  And he was right. The press was already using those two words to describe events in Steamboat Springs.

  Jesse pushed himself upright from his leaning position at the rear of the room, against one of Ned’s filing cabinets. He ran a hand through the curly brown hair that always made him seem five or ten years younger than he was.

  “Not saying it won’t make it go away, Ned,” he said simply.

  Puckett raised his hands helplessly to indicate that he appreciated the point. Yet he was reluctant to admit it. “I know that, Jess,” he said. “It’s just that stuff like that coming from us is liable to panic people.”

  “How do you suggest we describe it then, Ned?” Lee asked.

  Before he could answer, Jesse had spoken again. “I mean, one killing is unfortunate. Two can look downright careless. But once you get to three, there’s nothing for it but to suppose we’ve got a serial killer.”

  Ned nodded, his eyes on the unmarked blotter in front of him, accepting the inevitable. He took a couple of deep breaths.

  “Lee, are you sure you guys can handle this? Maybe we should be looking for some outside help,” he said.

  Lee shrugged. “We’ve already requested it.”

  Ned looked at her sharply as she said it, a question in his look. Jesse stepped in and answered it for her.

  “FBI,” he said succinctly. Ned switched his gaze to the tall deputy.

  “Is there a federal angle in this?” he asked.

  Jesse pursed his lips and shook his head in the negative. “Not so far,” he replied. “But the FBI are always available for cases like this.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Ned. “I thought you couldn’t call in the Feebies until someone had crossed a state line, something like that.”

  “They’ll advise,” Jesse reiterated. “They keep files on serial killers and they’ve got a lot more computer power than we have. We’ll send them details and they’ll trawl through their records to see if anything matches. We’ll keep doing the groundwork here.”

  Felix frowned. “So they’re not actually sending anyone down?”

  Lee shook her head. “Not at this stage. It’s not their jurisdiction, after all. As Jesse says, for now, they’ll keep a watching brief and see if they can give us any leads from former cases. Of course, if we find a link, they’ll send in a task force if we want it.”

  Ned scowled. “Won’t have any trouble finding somewhere to put them up.” Just about every hotel in town is having cancellations—and in the busiest part of the season too. Managers are screaming. This is the worst season we’ve had since the gas main blew, back in ’94.”

  The gas main in Yampa Street had exploded in 1994. The explosion hadn’t harmed anyone directly, but it knocked out heating to more than half the town. Skiers canceled in large numbers while hotels and guesthouses desperately tried to find alternative accommodations. There was a flow-on effect to restaurants, bars, ski rental outlets and the mountain itself. Businesses in Steamboat went broke right and left.

  “Tell them we’re doing our damnedest to get this thing wrapped up,” Lee replied.

  “Have you got anything new? Any ideas at all?” Ned asked them. He was almost pleading, Lee thought. She tried to make a negative answer sound better than it was. “Jesse’s going through the background of all three victims, looking for some common link,” she began. “Don’t know if something’s going to show up or not yet, Ned.”

  The mayor looked from one to the other. He’d hoped for more concrete news, Jesse knew. City officials always did.

  “Meantime, we’re putting in some new rules on the mountain, Ned,” he told him. “Should make folks feel more secure.” He looked at Felix. “Though we might ask for some manpower from you to help out, Felix.”

  Lee hid a smile. There was no way Felix could object to the request now that it had been made in front of the mayor. It occurred to her that Jesse could be an astute operator when it came to small town politics.

  “Sure thing, Jesse,” Felix said.

  If he was a trifle thin lipped about it, Jesse didn’t seem to notice.

  “What have you got in mind?” Ned asked.

  “We’re going to put a ski patroller at the top of each lift to keep an eye on things,” he said.

  “Thought that was the lift attendants’ job,” Ned said.

  Jesse shook his head. “Lift attendant is there to keep an eye on the lift. That’s what went wrong with the last killing. The attendant was so busy watching the guy he thought was a go-round, he missed the killer skiing off.”

  “So,” Felix said slowly. “The patrolmen will watch the passengers—who gets off, where they’re headed and such?”

  “That’s right,” Jesse said and he saw the police chief purse his lips.

  “Can’t say I like the idea, Jesse,” he said. “The patrollers are civilians. Last thing we want is one of them trying to tackle a killer.”

  Jesse nodded. “I agree,” he said. “That’s where your men come in, Felix. We want to station half a dozen of them on the mountain at the main choke points. Give them Ski-Doos and put them on the ski patrol radio net. That way if our guys see someone, they can trail him and call in your cops to make the collar.”

  The police chief nodded. The idea made sense.

  “It might also make people feel a little more secure on the lifts,” Jesse added. Ned Puckett looked up quickly.

  “You’re going publicize this?” he said. “That might scare the killer off, mightn’t it?”

  “If we scare him off,” Lee put in, “he might stop killing people.”

  Ned nodded hastily. “You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “And in the meantime, we’ll keep plugging away, waiting for something to break,” Jesse said.

  “Jesus,” said Ned Puckett heavily, his shoulders slumped. “Can’t we be a little more… proactive than that?” Proactive was a favorite expression of his.

  “We’re working it all we can, Ned,” Lee said, trying to sound optimistic. Ned looked up at her, his blue eyes, red-rimmed from too much worry and not enough sleep, met her steady gray ones.

  “Work it harder, Lee,” he said wearily. “Work it harder.”

  Jesse had appropriated a small conference room in the Public Safety Building to use as an office. His main reason wasn’t the extra space provided, but the two walls covered in whiteboards on either side of the conference table.

  His scrawled writing covered one of the two boards now. He leaned back in a chair, tipped back on its hind legs, his worn old boots planted firmly on the tabletop. Idly, he tapped the end of a black marker pen on
his front teeth as he reviewed what he had so far.

  He’d listed all the known facts about the three murder victims on the board, circling each individual fact and, where there seemed to be some possible correlation, linking them with a different colored line.

  Names, credit cards and hometowns were all listed. Marital status was next. Alexander Howell and Andrew Barret were both divorced. Powell broke the pattern, however. He had never been married.

  According to the local police in his hometown, he was a loner. Didn’t seem to have any regular girlfriends. Didn’t seem to have any girlfriends at all, as a matter of fact. Jesse had scribbled “gay?” on the board, and looped a long, green connecting line to Harry Powell’s name.

  Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. It didn’t seem like much of a reason for him to be murdered on the Storm Peak Express.

  The first two victims had come from Minnesota and Arizona, respectively. Powell’s hometown was in North Carolina. There seemed no connection there. Jesse had checked on the three men’s college backgrounds. Again, the three were widely scattered. Powell had remained in North Carolina during his college years. Barret had completed three years in a California college before flunking out. Howell had been educated in Michigan.

  Nothing about the three men seemed to match. Howell was a dentist. Barret a car salesman. Powell’s occupation was listed as “marketing consultant,” which could mean he was an advertising whiz or that he sold Amway door-to-door. Their ages were spread as well. The dentist was in his mid-forties. The car salesman was thirty-three and the consultant thirty-eight.

  About the only thing they seemed to have in common was the fact that they were all male.

  “Maybe he’s a man hater,” Jesse murmured to himself.

  The conference door swung open and Lee stepped in.

  “Working late?” she asked. Jesse glanced down at his wristwatch. He was surprised to see that it was after nine.

  “I guess time flies when you’re having fun, just the way they say,” he replied with a wry grin. The conference room was set in the middle of the building with no exterior walls and, consequently, no windows. Jesse gestured at the whiteboard-covered walls around him.

  “Hard to keep track of the time when you can’t see the light outside,” he said. Lee nodded, hooked a chair toward her and straddled it backward, gazing at his scribblings on the whiteboard. “Is that how they handle an investigation like this in Denver?” she asked.

  “It’s how I do it,” Jesse replied. “Lets me look at all the facts of a case at once, see if there’s any relationship, any connection between the victims. Sometimes even the simplest fact can be a link,” he explained.

  “And?” Lee asked.

  Jesse shrugged. “So far, the only thing I can see is that they’re all male. That could be too simple a link.” He let go a long breath. “Maybe our killer is an anti-divorce activist who also hates gays,” he said. “But I get the feeling that our facts to back that up are a little thin. Other than those few facts, there seems to be nothing that these men have in common.”

  “Except that they were all murdered here,” Lee observed.

  She felt Jesse’s gaze switch quickly to her. She looked at him defensively.

  “What?” she asked.

  He was tapping his teeth with the marker pen again. “I was just thinking,” he said, “I missed that rather obvious link.”

  He swung his long legs down from the table, allowing his chair to thud back into an upright position, and moved to the whiteboard. In large script, he wrote: died Stmboat, circled the note and drew green link lines to the three names.

  “That’s pretty obvious,” Lee said mildly. “After all, it’s why we’re here.”

  “True,” Jesse admitted, staring thoughtfully at his recent addition to the board. “Just occurs to me I’ve been looking so hard at where and how they lived to find some connection, I’ve been neglecting to think about where and how they died. That could be all the connection we need.”

  Lee shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t get it.”

  Jesse turned and grinned at her suddenly, the thoughtful frown disappearing from his face like morning mist when the sun breaks through. “Neither do I, yet,” he said. “That’s the fun of it all.”

  Lee gestured one thumb at the door behind her. “Well, no matter, it’s time to pack it in for now.”

  Jesse yawned, stretched and carefully put the marker pen in the narrow tray under the whiteboard. “Man, am I hungry!”

  Lee smiled, glanced around the room. There was plenty of evidence that a whole bunch of coffee drinking had gone on in here. None at all of any eating. She knew that Jesse hadn’t set foot outside the room since they’d returned from the meeting in Ned’s office that morning.

  “You remember to have lunch?” she asked dryly.

  Jesse thought about it for a few seconds, then, with that slow smile breaking out over his face again, he replied, “No. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe I did. Could be that explains these strange gnawing pains in my inner self.”

  Lee shook her head in mock sorrow. “Planning on having any supper?” she asked.

  “Guess I’ll catch something at the Old Town,” Jesse said. “Then head out back to my place.”

  The Old Town was the Old Town Saloon on Lincoln Avenue. Lee had a pretty good idea what sort of meal Jesse was planning on catching.

  “Jess,” she said gently, “you can’t spend your life eating nothing but burgers and fries, you know.”

  Her deputy smiled faintly at her concern. “Well now, that’s not all I eat, Lee,” he said. “Just the other night I had myself a chili dog and a whole plate of nachos.”

  “Why don’t you come back to my place while I fix you a proper meal? We could talk over old times a little as well. Haven’t done that in a long time.” Lee saw the hesitation. It had been like this since Jesse had come back. He was friendly but somehow distant. He never allowed situations where someone might get too close anymore. She could see the polite refusal forming on his lips.

  Then, unexpectedly, he said, “Why thanks, Lee. I think I’d like that.”

  He grinned at her again and, this time, she laughed out loud. “Well, damn me if you don’t keep a woman guessing, Jess Parker,” she said. “I I was sure as hell you were going to say no.”

  His grin faded to a quizzical shadow of its former self. He nodded. “Funny thing, right up until I said yes, I thought so too.”

  They left the conference room with its scribbled-on whiteboards. A note pinned to the door warned the cleaning staff not to touch anything inside. Lee snapped off the lights as they exited, the door locking automatically behind them.

  Outside it was snowing heavily. The big, fat flakes tumbled down through the area lighting of the parking lot. There was a good six inches of fresh snow underfoot on the tarmac surface. Jesse stopped, leaned back and let the flakes drop on his upturned face.

  “Looks like we’re in for a big one,” he said quietly.

  Lee, looking at the sky as well, nodded her head in agreement.

  “Forecast says so,” she said. “That should put a smile on Tad Kaminski’s face.”

  They both grinned. The mountain manager went through three kinds of hell every season dealing with the vagaries of winter weather. A ski resort needs snow. And a resort like Steamboat Springs needs lots of it. Lots of fresh snow. Lots of fresh powder. It goes with the reputation.

  “Let’s hope it keeps our killer indoors for a few days.” Jesse shivered briefly as a few flakes penetrated his collar, melting instantly into freezing water, and turned away to his battered Subaru wagon, parked behind Lee’s Renegade.

  SEVENTEEN

  You hear much from Abby these days?” Lee said.

  They’d finished eating and were still working on the bottle of red wine Jesse had picked up on the way to Lee’s small house.

  “Not a whole lot,” he said. His own tone was measured, unemotional. He wasn’t giving anything away, she tho
ught. “Occasionally she’ll drop me a line—you know, birthdays and such. But no, I can’t say we’re regular correspondents.”

  Lee glanced up at him. “You ever write to her?” she asked.

  Jesse took a sip of his wine before he answered.

  “Can’t say I do.” Jesse noticed that Lee’s glass was empty and leaned over to refill it.

  “Thanks,” she said. Then, deciding she might as well go for broke now she’d brought the subject up, added, “You miss her at all?”

  Jesse raised an eyebrow. “What’s this, Lee? Do you check up on the personal life of all your deputies? Is that part of a sheriff’s job?”

  She flushed slightly. “No, goddamit!” she snapped at him. “I’m asking the question as a friend. That’s what we are, Jesse. Friends. Remember?”

  There was an awkward silence as Jesse realized he’d overreacted. In a much milder tone, he said, “Sorry, Lee. I guess I’m just not used to talking about my personal life a whole lot.”

  “You’re telling me,” she said, with a wan smile. “Jess, since you came back here, you’ve been so damn closemouthed about yourself you make a rock look talkative. You can’t keep things bottled up like that.”

  Jesse shrugged moodily. “Don’t see how talking about things is going to make them much better.”

  She laid a hand gently on one of his. “That’s not how you used to feel,” she said. “Time was, we used to talk all the time about our troubles.”

  “Our troubles?” he corrected her with the faintest hint of a smile. “Seems to me all we ever talked about were my troubles.”

  Lee shrugged, trying to lighten the moment a little. “Well hell, I knew if I’d had any troubles, you would have been just happy as a clam to talk about them too.” His smile widened a little. Just a little. Encouraged, she persisted. “Come on, Jess. You know it can help to talk things through.”

  “Talking doesn’t change anything,” he said evenly. She considered this for a moment, then nodded agreement.

  “True. But it can make things more bearable. Least of all, that’s what I thought when we used to talk. I thought I was maybe helping you a little.”