Walt Fleming

KILLER VIEW

SUNDAY

1

He saw himself as a camera would, and often thought of himself in the third person, as if an omniscient eye were looking down on him and his activities. It was no different that Halloween night, as he prepared the syringes. He talked to himself—out loud—narrating every carefully conceived action, as if reading from a script. He could picture himself as one of those guys on the Discovery Channel or A&E.

"He moves with the utmost care as he makes his preparations, as skilled a technician as he is a hunter..."

The snow was falling to beat hell, which brought a twisted grin to his scrappy face. Virgin snow—the irony not lost on him, although his education had stopped in the ninth grade and irony, per se, was unknown to him. Fresh-fallen snow erased tracks. No one knew this better than a tracker, and, according to the voice-over, he was among the most accomplished trackers in all of Idaho, all of the West, if you excluded Montana, because there were guys up there who could follow wolves for three hundred miles on foot without a dog. Not him. He used his dogs and their radio collars whenever called for.

"The final preparations almost complete, he anticipates the events in the hours to come with near-military precision..."

On that night, he was scheduled for a twofer, a tricky bit of timing and complicated logistics, especially given the storm. He intended to get an early start for just this reason, the narrator in his head reminding him of the importance of meticulous preparation and execution.

He arranged the five darts and two syringes, methodically checking dosages, storing them in two metal lunch boxes, the kind he'd once carried to school, the kind his daddy before him had carried into the mine. This one was lined with a gray foam rubber, not a white napkin or sheet of paper towel. He double-checked the charge on the Taser, was half tempted to test the thing on one of the dogs, as he sometimes did. But with Pepper's staying behind, plump with a litter, he couldn't afford to have another one out of commission for the night.

Next came the firearms: the 22-gauge dart rifle; the MAC-10, with its three-speed taped magazines; the double-barreled sawed-off, for under the seat of the pickup. He was careful to separate the Bore Thunder/Flash Bang cartridges from the 12-gauge shot. The flash bangs performed like stun grenades but could be fired from the sawed-off. He kept the right barrel loaded with one of these in case of a run-in with law enforcement; he'd stun the bastard and then shoot him up with some ketamine and leave him by the side of the road, knowing he wouldn't remember what day it was, much less the make or registration of the truck he'd pulled over.

He attached the magnetic license plates over the pickup truck's existing ones—a move as routine to him as brushing his teeth—a necessary precaution when working with his private clients. The plates were registered to a similar truck in Bannock County.

He stuffed some fresh chew behind his molars, hawking a gob of spit onto the garage's dirt floor. Even after being off of crystal meth for six months, at moments like this he found the allure of it tough to resist.

He checked the straps on the wire cages for the dogs. The snow wouldn't hurt them any, and he was in too big a hurry to trade them out for the vinyl carriers that were better in bad weather. He put only one of the weatherproof carriers in the back, the biggest he had. He double- and triple-checked its electric mat, a black sheet of heavy rubber, a wire from which ran to a 12-volt outlet installed in the side paneling of the truck bed; it was warm to the touch—a good sign.

The specially outfitted carrier was large enough to hold a mastiff or Bernese mountain dog, or a mature sheep.

Beneath his stubble, he carried a hard scar on his chin, looking like a strip of stretched pink leather, the result of a meat hook slipping when transferring a she-cat from the pickup to the dressing shed. He scratched at it, a nervous habit, the result of too many hours with nothing to do. He spent far too much of his life waiting for others, a disappointing aspect of being a work-for-hire.

But now he had purpose, a higher calling.

It was time to put things straight. There were enough assholes in Washington to fill a latrine. It was about time they remembered him and others who believed in their country.

2

The male caucasian, twenty-four, a skier, was said to have been missing for over three hours. A man's panicked voice had made the call to 911: "A friend of mine...He never showed up...We thought we'd accounted for everyone. I have no fricking idea how we missed him but...I think he's still up there."

"Calm down, sir." The county's ERC operator.

"Calm down? WE LEFT HIM UP THERE. We were skiing the Drop on Galena Pass. He never came off that mountain. He's out there somewhere. You got to do something."

Click.

"Sir?"

Blaine County sheriff Walt Fleming had listened to the Emergency Response Center tape several times, trying to judge if it was a prank or not. It wouldn't be the first time some yahoo had called in a false alarm to Search and Rescue. This one sounded authentic. And hanging up on such calls was, sadly, not that unusual. Guilt could be a powerful motivator. Didn't need to tell a sheriff that.

A life in the balance.

A snowstorm. A miserable night.

Walt had set Search and Rescue's phone tree into operation.

Now, standing in blowing snow, in the freezing cold, with only his pale face protruding from the parka, Walt caught his reflection in the glass of a nearby pickup. Where others saw a capable outdoorsman, Walt saw a softness settling in, his desk job taking over. Where others saw a face that could be elected, Walt saw fatigue. No one had ever called him handsome; the closest he'd gotten was "good-looking," and that from a woman who no longer shared his bed. He blamed his sleepless nights on her: the mental images of her riding his own deputy, Tommy Brandon, flickering through his mind. The two of them laughing. At him. After twelve years of marriage, she'd left him alone with their young twins. And as much as he wouldn't have it any other way, it wasn't working. He was failing as a single dad. Barely keeping his head above water as the county sheriff. With the help of only eight full-time deputies, he oversaw law enforcement in a piece of Idaho roughly the size of Rhode Island. Now he faced Galena Summit in a snowstorm when all he wanted was a night playing Uno with his kids, and a decent night's sleep.

He awaited the dogs. Looking through the heavy snowfall, past the bluish glare of halogen headlights thrown from several pickups and SUVs parked in the turnout, he searched for some sign of the Aker brothers. A freak October storm, the forecast calling for eighteen inches above nine thousand feet. They were now above ten thousand, occupying a wide spot in the road along a series of switchbacks that constituted a part of State Highway 75.

Thirteen inches of fresh powder and no signs of a letup.

The conditions were horrible for an organized search, but, statistically, the probability of the missing young man surviving exposure went from bad to worse after the first four hours. They were now well into hour six, so awaiting first light wasn't an option.

Walt saw a flicker of headlights and turned to watch a pickup truck make the hairpin turn in a wheel-spinning ascent and pull into the turnout, parking with the other vehicles. Dogs barked from crates lashed to the bed of the arriving truck, which prompted the other canines to compete. Walt couldn't hear himself think. After another minute, and a lot of peeing, the dogs settled down. Local vet Mark Aker, and his younger brother, Randy, came out of the truck, arguing.

"This coat stinks!" Randy complained, zipping up a winter jacket. "I mean it smells bad, bro—amoxicillin mixed with stale beer."

"It takes a moron to forget a coat on a night like this," Mark said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. By now, the others had climbed out of their vehicles.

"No, it takes a moron to be out on a night like this!" Randy replied.

Walt and the Aker brothers went back years. Walt had first met Mark as a teenager, when his family had spent summers and Christmas breaks with his grandparents in Sun Valley. They'd been in a summer camp together, had raised some hell as teenagers on the Sun Valley ski slopes. Now with three dogs at home, Walt basically lived at the vet's. It felt as if he might as well sign his paychecks over to the Aker brothers. Randy's specialty was large animals, horses and cattle; Mark's, primarily cats and dogs. In the glitzy, celebrity-studded Sun Valley community, it was Mark's practice that had soared. With working ranches giving way to showy estates and ranchettes, Randy's large animal practice had nearly vanished in the last ten years, causing some envy and friction between the brothers. Things had gotten more cozy between Walt and Mark when Mark had volunteered his services to Search and Rescue, developing an effective K9 unit. Walt felt more like the third brother than a good friend. Hearing that Randy—the wilder of the two—had forgotten his coat came as no big surprise. He'd probably done it on purpose just to frustrate his more responsible brother. If anything, Randy was a professional thorn in his brother's side. Like most brothers.

Walt and Mark divided up the K9 teams into four pairs. Randy, the odd man out and the most experienced backcountry skier, would work solo, head higher up the road and find his way out to the Drop, from where he would ski the face of the mountain in search of the missing skier. The plan was for him to rendezvous with his brother and Walt midmountain.

The teams headed off without a pep talk or sermon—just a check of avalanche peeps, the radios, and GPSs. Radio checks would be made every fifteen minutes. If the radios failed—and they often did in the mountains—then communicate by flares if the young man was discovered; orange, if you got yourself lost.

Six hours twenty-five minutes.

The ache in the pit of Walt's stomach had nothing to do with the rope tied around his waist, pulling the evac sled.

Now it was all up to the dogs. Mark released Tango, his bitch German shepherd and the best scent dog he'd ever trained. She would go ahead of them searching for anything human, dead or alive.

Fifteen minutes rolled into twenty. A walkie-talkie check produced reports from everyone but Randy Aker, already out of range.

The terrain proved slow and difficult. Walt was in a full sweat, his parka hanging open. It was twenty-eight degrees out. Snow fell in flakes the size of nickels. Steam rose from his neck and swirled around his headlamp like a halo.

"I wanted to talk to you about something," Mark Aker said breathlessly. The falling snow deadened all sound.

"Good a time as any," Walt said. He knew what Mark was up to: he was trying to keep Walt's worry at a manageable level.

"We never talk...politics," Aker said, testing Walt in a way that made him pay closer attention.

"I run for office every four years. That's enough politics for me."

"Not those kinds of politics."

"I don't pay too much attention to Washington or Boise, if that's what you mean," Walt said. "You ever hear that story—true story, by the way—about some budget committee hearing where the congressman from back east had found a line item listing thirty-five hundred cattle guards and made the recommendation to take them off the federal payroll? Someone had to explain to the idiot that a cattle guard is a couple pipes welded together to prevent cows from crossing a fence line on a road, not a person on a payroll."

"That's the point, I guess."

"What's the point?" Walt asked. "That congressmen are ignorant?"

Mark didn't answer.

At this temperature, over this amount of time, the batteries in the missing man's peep—an electronic device used to help searchers locate someone in the backcountry trapped by snow—would fail sometime soon.

It was a human life, and his survival weighed on Walt's every step in the cumbersome snowshoes.

"We're going to lose his peep soon," Walt said, "if we haven't al-

ready."

"Hypothermia's the enemy, not the Energizer Bunny."

"Point taken." They continued for a few more difficult yards. "Are you going to explain what you mean by 'politics'?"

But before Aker could answer, both men stopped at the exact same moment.

"Did you hear that?" Mark asked.

"A branch snapping under the weight of the snow." Walt moved his headlamp around. A badly bent and sagging pine bough shed some snow and sprang up. Others seemed to bend lower with each flake of fallen snow.

The two men moved on, Mark Aker with less grace than Walt. He'd spent too much time in the clinic. He rocked forward and back on the snowshoes, wasting energy. But Walt knew better than to try to tell him anything. Mark was a doctor, after all.

"You're thinking it was a gunshot," Walt said. "A rifle. Light gauge: twenty-two-power load or an AR-15."

"It didn't sound like a tree branch to me. Too far away," Aker said breathlessly, winded by the climb. "But you're the expert."

A few nearby branches snapped, surrendering to the snow load.

Hearing this, both men turned their attention uphill. Then Aker trained his headlight directly on Walt, blinding him.

"You're right," Walt said, raising his glove to shield his eyes. "That was a gunshot."

Walt reached for his radio.

Copyright 2008 Page One, Inc. and Putnam and Sons

KILLER WEEKEND
PROLOGUE

As she stood in her small closet undressing for bed, Elizabeth Shaler was annoyed to find some mud left behind by a running shoe that she now put away. About the size of a dollar bill, the mud covered the carpet and spanned the crack of the trapdoor that led down into the three-foot-high crawl space beneath the house. Liz pulled on a cool cotton nightgown. At her feet, cracks appeared in the mud, then widened and spread. These cracks had nothing to do with where she stood, but were instead the result of upward pressure from beneath the trapdoor.

Liz, just shy of six feet tall and athletically fit, placed her dirty laundry into the wicker hamper and tidied up. Her hanging clothes were organized by color and type, her shoes neatly ordered on the shelves. Had she glanced down she might have noticed the widening cracks in the mud, might have noticed the hatch coming open.

She looked around the bedroom for the biography she was currently reading, only to realize she'd left it in the kitchen.

As she headed down a narrow hallway lined with her family's photographic history, behind her the crawl space hatch popped open an inch. From within the darkness there appeared the top of a knitted ski mask, followed by a pair of skittish eyes.

The kitchen and the adjoining living room afforded Liz a spectacular view of the horizon dominated by Sun Valley's rugged mountain skyline, still aglow at 10:10 p.m. She loved this place, her second home, so far from New York and the political life she'd chosen.

She poured herself a glass of water, grabbed the book from the counter, and headed back down the hallway, both hands occupied.

***

Patrolman Walt Fleming groaned.

Earlier in the summer the town had adopted a free bike campaign. Thirty bright yellow bikes had been spread around town as community property, with the understanding no one would steal them. They were used by anyone wanting to pedal from one place to the next. But the instructions on the bikes clearly stated they were to be well cared for and left in any of the many bike stands around town, a policy prone to abuse. Walt—on a bike himself, one of four officers assigned to "pedal patrol"—spotted one of the bikes dumped into some bushes a half block up the hill from the community library.

He inspected it for flats or damage and, finding none, decided to walk it down the hill to a bike stand in front of the library. He was on his way downhill—walking awkwardly between the two bikes—when he spotted a crawl space screen vent ajar on a house foundation. He might not have noticed, but the framed wooden screen was bent and splintered on one corner—suggesting it had been pried open. Worse, he knew this house: It was on the KPD watch list, the residence of Elizabeth Shaler, New York's young attorney general, a woman whose politics and guts he admired. The Shaler family had been coming to Sun Valley for fifty years. Her parents were featured in photographs with Ernest Hemingway on the walls of the Sun Valley Lodge.

He continued walking a few more yards—the click, click, click of the bike gears the only sound on the street. But the appearance of that screen nagged at him. A rookie cop, he was always looking for trouble. Right or wrong, he connected the jimmied screen to the ditched bike, and he decided that together they gave him reason enough to investigate. He laid the bikes down on the curb and worked his way back—quietly—to take a closer look.

***

Her hands occupied, Liz bumped the bedroom door shut with a throw of her hip. She headed straight for the end table with the glass of water and the book.

The overhead light went off.

She smelled something—someone—sour. And she turned around defensively.

But as she did, a hand clapped over her mouth. Before she had a chance to react, her arm was twisted up behind her back and she was driven down to her knees.

It happened fast: One second the glass of water was tumbling to the carpet, where it shattered against the end table; the next, her hands were clamped behind her and her wrists and mouth were bound with duct tape. The intruder dragged her painfully by the hair to a chair in front of the vanity and sat her down. More duct tape secured her to the padded chair. Tears streamed down her face.

The only light in the room was street light seeping in through the blinds, and a rose-colored hue from the digital clock by the bed. He wore a ski mask and a black T-shirt, but the blue hiking shorts seemed out of place. This was no Ted Bundy. He had a small scar on his left knee. He smelled sharply of sweat. She faced the mirror. He moved nervously behind her.

"You stand for all the wrong things," he said, his voice taut. "And you'll pay for that." He sounded like he was trying to talk himself into this.

Nonetheless, he owned her, and this bothered her more than anything—this sense of control he enjoyed.

"You take companies apart with no thought for the people who actually work there. Come out here—you and all the obscenely rich—and leave the rest of us behind to scrap and fight for a job that's long gone. What do you care? There's always a few weeks in Sun Valley to look forward to. I saw the article in Vanity Fair: I know all about you."

He'd tagged himself: She'd only broken up a few monolith white-collar companies; he was a reader of Vanity Fair. He was in over his head. Her attorney instincts kicked in: If only she could get the tape off her mouth and reason with him.

A knife blade glinted. "Riddle me this: How far does a woman politician make it without a face?" He cut her then, a hot, thin line of blood running across the back of her neck. She felt it sting. Suddenly he was for real, and this changed everything.

"At the end of this you will look like the monster you are," he said.

She turned away from the reflection in the mirror, determined he not see her fear.

As she did, a movement to her right won her attention: The doorknob turned.

The intruder was fully focused on the mirror, moving from side to side behind her, brandishing the knife, prattling on: "Now where should we start? Huh?" He cut a strap off the nightgown, exposing her left breast.

"What's a woman without her tits?" he asked her reflection. He amused himself with his own answer: "Richard Simmons." He cackled loudly, sounding like an old crow.

Shaking now from terror, she knew better than to look at the door, but couldn't help herself. Someone else was in the house. An accomplice?

Shifting in the mirror from her left to right, he caught her looking. He raised the knife in that direction, his face contorting behind curiosity.

She saw the door coming open. Judging by his expression, this was no one he expected. She threw her weight back in the low chair and went over, colliding with him. Tying him up.

She screamed behind the duct tape. The bedroom door flew open. A figure—a uniform—closed the short distance and threw himself into the intruder. The two stumbled across the room in lockstep and smacked into the wall. She heard a whoosh of expelled air; the crack of bone. The swish of the knife blade. A wet, visceral grunt.

She struggled against the tape to get free. The men separated, the knife handle protruding from the belly of the one in the uniform. He staggered backward and a flash of light appeared from his side. The loud clap of the gun's report deafened her.

The intruder, thrown back by the bullet's impact, wailed and spun and fell to the floor, writhing in pain. A bitter smell filled the room. "You shot me. You fucking shot me!" the intruder whined, squirming in pain. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

The cop staggered toward him, the gun extended. The intruder froze. The cop viciously stomped on the gut wound, and the intruder passed out.

The cop bent over him and she heard the metallic click of handcuffs.

"Are you all right?" he asked her, his voice guttural and wet.

She groaned through the tape, tried to nod.

"Officer wounded," he said, speaking into a radio clipped to his shirt. He recited her street address and a series of codes. He then took two steps toward her and fell first to his knees before collapsing forward, his head on her bare chest, their faces only inches apart.

"Your Honor . . . ," he said. And then he passed out.

© Ridley Pearson