A t a few minutes before 1 A.M., as the bars were closing, the quiet streets briefly came alive again. Vehicles filled Main Street. The sidewalks were crowded with late night revelers. A young woman bent over and emptied her stomach into the gutter.
This was also the hour that city police and deputy sheriffs set speed traps and watched for erratic driving. Trevalian had a thirty-minute window. By 1:30 A.M. the town would be dead and the cops would respond more quickly to a break-in.
It took him seven minutes to pick the lock on the back door of Suds Tub. He entered to the alarm system’s steady beeping-a thirty-second grace period to enter a pass code. He had options open to him if he failed to disarm it in time, but he kept a running count as he located the alarm box. Five seconds. Flipped open the panel and keyed in the last four digits of the laundry’s phone number. Ten seconds…the warning beep continued.
He crossed the room to the cash register. Fifteen seconds…Ran his gloved hand around the shelving and came up with a small key that opened the cash register.
Twenty seconds…
Opened the cash register. Removed the empty tray. Cleared away some receipts. There! On the bottom of the drawer was a handwritten number on a small piece of paper covered in layers of Scotch tape: 4376.
Twenty-five…twenty-six…
He raced back to the alarm box on the back wall.
Twenty-eight…twenty-nine…
He quickly keyed in 4376.
The beeping stopped. The red flashing LED on the device disappeared. He locked the door from the inside. He carried a Maglite with red tape over the lens, cutting back its brightness. He ran a quick inspection: no motion sensors. He rearmed the alarm, working under the assumption that leaving a commercial building without its alarm engaged might raise suspicions. The box beeped for another thirty seconds and then went silent-the system active.
He had fifty or sixty identical blue bags to search. One of them was Shaler’s. He checked the tags and rolled bags out of his way.
Vehicles sped past, out on the street. A group of noisy kids left their shadows on the front window. Trevalian had pulled a balaclava over his head, but he lifted it to get better vision. He worked methodically through the piled sacks.
Ten minutes into it, he located Shaler’s. He opened it and, with the Maglite clenched between his teeth, searched the contents. He took out a bra, two pairs of panties, and finally touched the Holy Grail: a Capilene, pull-on, sports top. He sniffed just to make sure: sour. He tucked these items into a pouch on the back of his shirt, pulled the drawstring on the sack, and was in the midst of tying it shut when the back door was kicked in. Simultaneously, the alarm box began its countdown.
Trevalian pulled the balaclava over his face. Police? Two people came through the door. But with them backlit by a streetlamp, he saw they were too small to be adults. They were just kids. He decided to intimidate.
“Who’s there?” he shouted, stepping forward.
The kids panicked. One turned, stumbled over a drum of chemicals, rose to his feet, and sprinted to the nearest window, which he promptly dove through. Or tried to. A crash of glass, but he didn’t make it all the way. Thrashing and bleeding, he fell back inside the building.
“Eric!” the other kid cried.
Trevalian hurried over to the fallen boy. The kid was in shock, but still tried to move away from Trevalian. He smeared his own blood on the floor with his movement.
Trevalian took the boy’s right hand, uncurled his unwilling fingers, and pressed the fingers against the gash on his neck. “Push here as hard as you can.”
The alarm sounded. A robotic voice announced, “INTRUDER! INTRUDER! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE NOW!” at a numbing volume.
The second kid screamed, “ERIC!” and took off out the back door. Trevalian went after him. His buddy needed to keep that pressure up. If the boy should pass out…But the kid panicked and ran hard toward the street. His attention remained on Trevalian a beat too long. He ran headlong into an eight-foot-tall wooden grizzly bear. He might as well have been hit by a truck. He went down hard and lay still on the sidewalk.
The boy was out cold, bleeding from his ear and nose. It looked as if he’d shattered the bone around his right eye socket. He was breathing.
A siren grew louder.
Trevalian blended into shadow and disappeared. He was well on his way back to the rental before the first cruiser arrived.
M ost people, when under the harsh tube lighting of the Sheriff’s Office, looked somewhat green and sickly. But not Fiona. She had an intriguing look about her, fan lines at the edges of her eyes, giving her wisdom and her small but pouty mouth something of a distraction.
Walt studied her as she arranged the contents of the lost-and-found carry-on discovered at the airport. She spread them out and began photographing them while maintaining a conversation with him.
“It must strike you as odd,” she said, “some guy carrying around all this stuff.”
“Atypical is how I’d classify it,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s exactly how I’d put it as well.”
He’d shut the door to the room and locked it because he didn’t want anyone from his office seeing the bag or its contents. For now, the bag was all his.
“Tell me about your father. He’s here for the conference, right?” She ran off a series of shots.
“The usual sordid history,” he said.
“Sordid’s a strong word.”
“And accurate in this case.”
“Fathers and sons. Mothers and daughters. As old as the Bible,” she said.
“There was…an event,” he said. “A long time ago.” He felt on the verge of sharing something he had shared with no one.
She remained focused on the photography. “An event. That does sound ominous.” She took a few more shots. “Are you going to tell me about it?”
“No.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
“He put me through something. He went from god to demon in an afternoon.”
“That doesn’t sound pretty.”
“It wasn’t pretty.” He added, “And the funny thing is: I’ll bet he doesn’t even remember it. Strange how that happens-a kid’s world crumbles and the adult doesn’t even take notice.”
“Change is good. Look at what a strong leader you’ve become as an adult.”
“Me?” Walt didn’t think of himself as a strong leader. He felt like a failed husband and father. “If it had been adolescence, it might have made more sense. I was nine at the time. I still worshipped at his feet at that point.”
“And you’re not going to tell me?”
“It’s not you…I’ve never told anyone,” he said. “I don’t know if-”
His cell phone rang, and he answered it. He caught himself holding his breath as a nurse explained the situation to him. He hung up.
“It’s my nephew,” he muttered. “He’s in the emergency room. I gotta go.”
“Is he all right?”
Walt couldn’t get a word out. He’d lost his brother, his marriage. He couldn’t lose Kevin, too.
He climbed into the Cherokee and sped off, his light rack flashing. She’d started him thinking about the past, and he found himself stuck there.
His father had been drinking; Walt had no trouble remembering that day. The furtive promise had been father to son, filling Walt with great expectancy. He’d labeled it “a secret mission,” which further played to Walt’s imagination, causing his pulse to race. He would not, for any reason, allow his mother to find out.
He was given the task of retrieving the neighbor’s cat, a noisy vandal whose crimes included digging up his mother’s rosebushes and crying loudly at all hours of the night. Chippers, as the cat was known, had become the stuff of legend in their house, the subject of many dinner conversations.
“Chippers?” Walt had said-an attempt to clarify his mission.
“He’s critical to the assignment,” his father said. “Get Chippers into the cage in the back of the car and wait for me.”
The lure of the adventure had been intensified for Walt by his father’s brandishing a handgun: a six-shot revolver, with a barrel as long as a ruler. They’d been down in the basement together at the time. It was a gray gun wrapped in a damp cloth with the sweet smell of gun oil. His father had loaded and unloaded it, inspecting it with a careful eye.
“What’s that for?” Walt asked excitedly.
“Target practice.”
“Do I get to shoot?”
“If you’re a good boy. If you get Chippers into that car like I said.”
“But why Chippers?” Walt asked.
“He’s a hunter, isn’t he?”
It was true. Chippers delivered a dead mouse or mole to their back door every so often.
With a beer pinched between his father’s legs, they were off. The Ford Pinto rattled a lot and smelled of exhaust. They drove with the windows down. Chippers moaned in the back.
“What’s the mission?” Walt asked, now that they were alone and driving into the mountains.
“A good soldier learns to never question his senior officer. And he learns to keep his mouth shut even after the mission is over. Are we clear, soldier?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s good, because this mission is top secret, and I’d hate to see you lose rank and be prevented from taking future missions.”
“No, sir. Won’t happen.”
“What’s a soldier’s first duty?”
“To God and Country,” the boy answered.
“Damn straight. You’re a good kid, you know that?”
“To follow orders and never question authority.” Walt repeated anything he could remember his father saying about army service.
“Now you’re talking!”
“To boldly go where no man has gone before,” Walt said.
His father laughed, sipped the beer, and returned the can to his crotch. “I borrowed that one, son, but that’s the spirit. You bet it is.” He looked at Walt with a smile: His father never smiled. He put his eyes back on the road. “You remember a lot of the shi-things…I tell you.”
“I try to remember them all,” Walt said proudly.
“You’re a good kid. Have I told you that?”
“Yes, sir, you have. About one minute ago, actually.”
His father chuckled some more. “Just so long as we got it straight between us that this mission is top secret. Even your brother’s not to hear of it. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” The idea of Walt knowing something Bobby did not was nearly too much for him to contain. He jittered and jumped around in the front seat-having graduated backseat to front on his ninth birthday. Asked to fetch a second beer from the cooler, he did so, a task that required unfastening his seat belt while the car was moving. He’d never done that before either. This was a day of firsts. It was only while fetching the beer that he noticed an oil-stained towel lying along the backseat. He thought about asking but decided not to.
They drove up the narrow, curving, dangerously steep and precipitous one-lane track to the top of Trail Creek summit. The road was a composition of packed dirt and scree, with no guardrails and drops of a thousand feet or more. Rock walls on the hillside leached water that streamed across the track, cutting muddy ruts into the road bed. His father handled the car poorly. It jumped and skidded as the tires caught in the ruts. More than once, Walt felt they were going over the edge. He rode white-knuckled, his eyes straight ahead, never questioning his superior officer, not even when his father lost control of the car while juggling the beer.
“Fucking thing is a nuisance,” his father muttered under his beer breath.
Walt wondered if this was a comment on road conditions or something else. He nearly spoke up, but his father’s mood was sliding, as it often did. He was muttering and talking to himself, and looking up the mountain instead of at the road. For the rest of the ride, Walt kept one hand on the door handle, ready to jump.
Shortly after they crested the summit, the dirt road widened out, crossing an open, flat expanse of gray green prairie, wax weed, sage, and tumblebush. To the east loomed the jagged peaks of the Pioneers, and the barren faces of the White Clouds. They turned right onto a dirt track following signs to Devil’s Bedstead. The name stuck in Walt’s mind. He would be haunted by it for the rest of his life.
A third beer was gone as they arrived at the trailhead Unnamed Lake. Devil’s Bedstead, an oppressive gray granite monster wearing a skirt of boulders, rose from the lake, blotting out the sky. Even in late July it wore a cap of ice and snow.
The car rolled to a noisy stop on the gravel, and his father lumbered out from behind the wheel, grabbing for the door to retain his balance. It was cooler here despite a powerful sun. Walt tugged on a sweatshirt he’d thrown into the backseat.
“Get the cage,” his father ordered while pissing only feet from the car. His father zipped up his pants and came around the car, shielding his eyes to survey up the mountain. Then he looked back down the road from where they’d come. He wore the revolver on his belt in a leather holster that carried an insignia. From the backseat he withdrew the stained towel that he now unwrapped to reveal a twelve-gauge, over-under, double-barreled shotgun. Sunlight flickered dimly off its polished barrels, as his old man tucked the gun beneath his left armpit.
Now Walt understood what his father had in mind, why he’d been sworn to secrecy. He knew, too, not to question or go up against his father when he’d been drinking. So he drew the cage from the Pinto, his hands shaking, his knees weak.
“Dad…,” He pleaded, breaking his own rules.
“Shut up!” his father snapped. “This is what’s called the laws of nature. This, son, is real justice. You ask a person any fucking number of times to get the fucking cat off your property…and then you take matters into your own hands. You remember that.”
He would, as it turned out.
But it had been Walt’s hands, not his father’s, that had captured Chippers. Walt’s hands that had trapped Chippers in the cage. Walt who had been giddy about joining his father. For this…
“Release the prisoner,” his father said.
He shook his head, fighting back the tears.
“Do it, son.”
“Can’t we just let him go?”
“That’s all you’re doing.”
“But…the shotgun.”
“Release the prisoner,” he repeated.
Walt hesitated, the first tears escaping.
“OPEN THE FUCKING CAGE!” His father hollered so loudly that his voice echoed off the mountain.
Walt opened the cage, and a bewildered Chippers jumped out. The cat landed on the rocky ground behind the car and walked a tight circle, its nose working furiously. Walt sniffled. The cat sprang away from him and scampered up the scree toward a stand of Douglas fir.
Walt’s father trotted after the cat, across to the copse of trees. Walt turned toward the lake, its surface peaceful and still. He covered both ears, pressing hard, and sank to his knees, his nose running.
His whole body jumped with the reports-a cramp from head to foot. Wind riffled the surface of the lake.
They rode back in a sickening silence, his father glancing over at him from time to time but never speaking. His father occasionally broke into a grin and chuckled morbidly to himself. Walt hated him-a hate beyond anything he’d ever experienced, so dark and awful that he even considered turning the shotgun on his father and killing him right there. Killing them both, if it came to that-jerking on the wheel and sending the car over the unguarded edge of Trail Creek pass.
For the next two years his mother tried to negotiate a truce between them, having no idea of the cause of their break. She mentioned Chippers’s absence one night at dinner; Walt and his father exchanged glances, but that was all. His father came and went, rarely staying more than a long weekend, the time between those weekends increasing, which didn’t bother Walt one bit. He and his brother, Bobby, took over putting out the garbage, fixing the heat tape on the roof ahead of the first snow, shoveling the path and driveway. His father returned like an unnamed planet, and then left as quickly as he’d come. Back to his darkness.
Walt finally broke the silence after waiting for his old man to get in his car, about to leave for another several months. Walt tapped on the window. Jerry rolled down the glass and sat there waiting.
“I’ll never forgive you,” Walt said.
He turned and walked away, at twelve years old, an orphan.
W alt could enter a dark garage knowing there was an armed man inside, but something about a hospital gave him the creeps.
The semiprivate room had one empty bed. Walt passed under a flickering TV and stopped abruptly. Glowing monitors connected to his nephew with wires and tubes. The boy’s head was shaved and bandaged. Purple bruising surrounded his right eye socket. A line of stitches at the edge of his lips extended his mouth into a lopsided snarl.
Myra sat in a chair close to the bed. She directed a sullen, resentful expression at Walt. “You could have prevented this.”
“ Myra -”
“Mom,” Kevin muttered. “Not his fault.”
She turned and took his hand gently in hers. “Back to sleep. It’s only Walt.”
“Hey, Kev.”
The boy’s eyes, bloodshot and swollen, found Walt.
“Eric?” The boy spoke with difficulty.
“No talking, Kev,” Myra said. “Back to sleep.”
“Eric’s okay,” Walt said. He saw relief in the boy’s only eye.
“Thank God,” Kevin said.
“I’m here as your uncle. First and foremost my concern is with your health and your speedy recovery. But we talked about this before, Kevin: I’m the sheriff, and I’ve got to talk to you about this.”
“But we can do this later,” Myra said.
“Ketchum police are going to want to talk to him, Myra. They’re going to charge him. I need to hear it first if we’re going to help him.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. It’s okay, Mom.”
“The boy is doped up.”
“It’s up to Kevin.”
“I’m okay, Mom. Please.”
Myra huffed, but sat back in the chair.
The bloody eye blinked. “We wanted clothes,” he said, “some nice clothes.”
“Go on.”
“Me and Eric thought we could lift some clothes from the Suds. So we…like…scoped the place. Checked it out. You know. Parked around the corner.” He paused, worked his mouth side to side and started again. “Eric said he could pick a lock, but he ended up kicking it in.”
“Eric kicked the door in,” Walt clarified.
“We got inside and the alarm went off. We freaked. Eric went for the window-don’t ask me why. I took off and hit a pole, I guess.”
“Why the window, if the door’s kicked in?”
“I dunno.”
“Why Suds Tub over something like the Goldmine?”
Kevin grimaced and then winced with pain. “I don’t know.”
“Walt?” Myra whined “What’s going on?”
“Ketchum police will think this had to do with the dry cleaning chemicals. Chemicals to huff, to cook meth-whatever.”
“No way,” Kevin said.
“If one of your friends coerced you and Eric into doing this, that’s a whole different thing. Legally, I mean.”
“No.”
“Kevin?” the boy’s mother questioned.
“You start making things up, Kev, that’s a quagmire. You know what a quagmire is?” Walt saw hesitation on his face.
“My head hurts. I gotta stop now.”
“Kevin,” his mother said sharply.
“Not now, Mom.”
Walt stepped closer to the bed and looked down at the boy. “I’m giving you a chance that the Ketchum officers won’t.”
“The alarm went off. We panicked,” the boy said. “I’m going to sleep now.” He closed his eye tightly.
Walt’s radio squawked. He listened as the dispatcher called out a series of codes followed by “…dba: Aker’s Veterinarian Services.” He checked his watch: 2 A.M. Two break-ins in one night. He called in. The vet’s clinic was outside city limits and less than half a mile south of the hospital. Walt was the closest officer.
“I gotta go,” he told her. “But I’ll be back.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “And neither is he.”
A Ketchum Police Department squad car, its rack flashing red, white, and blue, was parked at a hurried angle in front of the clinic’s log cabin entrance. The front door had been left open and the lights were on. He saw the uniformed officer inside, using the phone.
Walt parked the Cherokee and took over responsibility from the Ketchum cop. Brandon was the next to arrive, his trailer only a quarter mile down the road. The two men couldn’t look at each other. Mark Aker’s pickup truck pulled in and, much to Walt’s surprise, so did Fiona’s Subaru.
Aker hurried into the building. Brandon followed. Fiona collected her camera gear. She wore what could have been pajama bottoms and a faded pink T-shirt under a down vest and a pair of blue Keens.
“I’m right up the hill in the Engls’ guesthouse. I heard the siren,” she explained.
“If you’re here as part of my office,” he said, “you’re welcome inside. If you’re here for the newspaper, I’d ask you to hang back.”
“Understood. I’m here for you,” she said.
They caught up to Aker in an exam room. Walt spotted the broken cabinet and the busted padlock clasp on a refrigerator.
“Meds?” he said.
“Knew what they were looking for.” Aker donned a pair of latex gloves and looked through the cabinet.
Fiona stepped away from them and began photographing.
Aker glanced out the window, shouted, “Oh, shit!” and hurried outside.
Walt followed as he crossed the courtyard. Aker entered the back barn and threw on some exterior lights. Animal eyes-dozens of them-peered from the dark.
“They let them all out!” Aker shouted. Walt followed at a run into the back barn. Empty, the cage doors hanging open.
Aker cursed a blue streak, pacing back and forth. “Most of these are sick animals.”
“How many?” Walt asked.
The vet shook his head and shot him a hot look. “They’re under my care,” he mumbled. He threw open another door, looking across a second small courtyard. “Oh, God…My training dogs…I can’t believe this! Who would do such a thing?”
Walt thought he knew the answer to that. “ Brandon!” he shouted. His deputy came running, arriving out of breath. Walt said, “When you followed Bartholomew, did you happen to find out where he was staying?”
W alt rolled down the window to fight off the internal heat that arose from him sitting two feet from Tommy Brandon. The Cherokee passed into Ketchum city limits. “Is she there? Did you leave her there when the on-call came through?”
“I think maybe this is between you and her,” Brandon said.
“This is me asking you if my wife was in your trailer when you got the call.” Walt waited for Brandon to say something. “If you’re going to sleep with my wife, you could at least own up to it.”
“She’s there,” he said, turning to face the passenger window.
Walt gripped the wheel more tightly. “How long?”
“Sheriff…”
“A month? Six months? What?”
“Turn right,” Brandon instructed. He navigated Walt through back streets to a Trail Creek condominium that he and Fiona had identified while following Bartholomew.
“I didn’t even know these condos were here.”
“Brand-new,” Brandon told him.
Walt shot him a look. Did he mean the condos or his relationship with Gail? He let it go, realizing he’d already gone too far. But the guy was fucking his wife, so he expected a little slack.
To him condos all looked the same.
On his fourth ringing of the doorbell, he heard footsteps. He and Brandon displayed the creds for the benefit of the door’s fish-eye lens. Bartholomew opened the door, barely awake.
“A few questions,” Walt said.
“My attorney,” Bartholomew grumbled. He scratched the crotch of his boxer shorts. “I’ll write down the number.” Before Walt could object he’d shut the door. When he opened it again he had a phone to his ear and his hair had been finger combed into place. “Not answering,” he said. He set the phone on the side table. “Why don’t we try this again tomorrow morning.”
“We can do this in Hailey, if you like,” Walt said. “Hailey, as in taking a ride.”
“Because?”
“The local vet’s was broken into and all the animals liberated. Sound familiar?”
Walt considered himself to be a good judge of character. If that was the case, Bartholomew knew nothing about the break-in.
“It’s three in the morning. I’m hungover. And you’ve got us wrong: First Rights is focused on child labor and every human’s right to free speech. I do not condone or support militant animal rights groups. Not now, not ever.” He rubbed his head. “It’s too late for this.”
If not politics, had the animals been released as a ruse to cover the theft of medical supplies?
He thanked Bartholomew and said good night. The bewildered man stood watching as he and Brandon returned to the Cherokee.
“What just happened?” Brandon asked from the passenger seat.
Walt kept his eye on the road as he asked, “What does she see in you? Or is it all about the sex right now?”
They drove in silence, not a word spoken, for the return to the vet’s. As he parked the car Walt said, “We have two kids, you know,” and left Brandon in the car thinking about that.
T revalian heard a woman’s voice say, “Isn’t that him?” It came from the hotel’s registration desk. His instinct was to flee.
He turned and headed up the stairwell, pretending he’d not heard her comment.
At 3 A.M. the hotel lobby was empty. The woman at registration had to have been speaking to someone. The hotel detective?
He cautioned himself to stay calm. They couldn’t possibly connect him to the recent events. He’d changed shirts. Donned a jacket. Shaler’s clothes were in the knapsack slung over his right shoulder.
“Sir? Mr. Meisner?” A male voice a few feet behind him.
He knows my name.
Trevalian stopped and turned on the stairs. He was looking at a man in his mid-forties, fit and darkly tanned. A full head of hair. He’d sprung up the stairs like a ballerina.
“Yes?” Trevalian said.
“I wonder if you might have a minute?”
“You are?”
“Neil Parker.” He offered a business card. Sun Valley Company. Guest services.
“It’s three in the morning.”
“There’s been an…incident,” Parker said.
Two things occurred to Trevalian: They’d found the compound he’d cooked, or they had him for the break-ins.
“It’s a situation that requires discretion on all our parts,” Parker said.
“I’m afraid it’s very late, and I’m very tired and I don’t understand.” Trevalian evaluated his chances of breaking the guy’s neck without any noise. Not great.
Parker climbed another step.
Trevalian extended his hand to stop the man. “I don’t like tight spaces,” he explained. He could knee the man in the face from this position.
Parker lowered his voice. “There’s been an incident with one of our staff. A Ms. Cunningham.” He answered Trevalian’s blank expression. “Lilly Cunningham. Our lounge singer in the Duchin Lounge. I believe you met Lilly.”
He said nothing, wondering if he’d been set up. She’d managed to get into his room; she’d drunk his booze. An extortion racket?
“There’s been an assault. All I need is five minutes. Really. I’d rather not do this in a stairwell.”
“Do what?”
“Lilly remembered your room number. That’s how I got your name.”
Trevalian said nothing.
“She said you got a look at the man,” Parker explained. “A possible suspect. These can be tricky cases to prove. He-said, she-said.”
“A matter for the authorities,” Trevalian said. “Please leave me out of it.”
“She’s not pressing charges. The police are not involved. But if we can confirm the man’s identity, he will never set foot on company property again.”
Trevalian doubted the explanation. “I saw her with a man. But I’m afraid I didn’t get a good look at him.”
Parker’s face fell. “Anything about him would help. We’d like to get rid of this guy.”
Trevalian spoke, bringing the man into his confidence. “Let me put it this way: If you saw Lilly and some guy in the hallway, who would you be looking at?”
“Yeah…I hear you.”
“I’m sorry,” Trevalian said, “but that’s how it was.”
The man appeared crushed. “Listen, you remember anything, give me a call. The front desk can find me.”
“My apologies to Ms. Cunningham.”
“The difference is,” Parker said, more determined than ever, “you can choose not to be involved. But Lilly’s going to climb back up on that stage with that creep out there looking at her.”
“I’ll sleep on it,” Trevalian said. He rounded the landing and hurried up the stairs, thinking there was precious little time for sleep.
His mind had briefly been elsewhere-a mistake he rarely made. He had a switch to make, and, if possible, he wanted to do it now, while it was still dark out.
C ivil twilight was listed as 5:41 A.M., a naval term referring to the first glimpse of a defined horizon. Trevalian didn’t want the horizon or himself defined or glimpsed as he made the switch, and so two hours after being stopped by the hotel security man, and an hour before civil twilight, he made his way out of a ground-floor exit as Rafe Nagler. Toey, the German shepherd service dog, pulled at the harness at his side.
The first of these switches was changing Nagler to Meisner, for a blind man could not be seen climbing behind the wheel of a car. At 5 A.M. the Sun Valley grounds stood deserted, nothing but faux gas lamps and vacant sidewalks. He followed sidewalks from the lodge to the indoor ice rink and a dark open-ended shed that contained a backup Zamboni. He used the shed as a changing room, stripping off and pocketing Nagler’s facial hair, wig, and glasses. He dumped the sport coat there-the only evidence he would leave behind for the next hour-revealing the black fleece vest that had been hiding beneath it. He quickly clipped a leash to Toey’s collar and unfastened the harness, concealing it up his back, inside the fleece vest. He let the string leash play out, to where Toey had a twenty-foot lead, and the two made their way out into the giant parking lot that serviced the resort.
He appreciated the black-hole quality of both sky and air as he drove north from the resort into national forest. He kept a close eye on the odometer as well as the rearview mirror. He turned east onto a dirt track marked for Pioneer Cabin, and put a half mile between him and the asphalt he left behind, having never seen the twinkle of another set of headlights.
The darkest hour really was just before the dawn. He double-checked the car’s ceiling light making sure it wouldn’t turn on as he opened the door. He stepped outside. The cold mountain air stung his lungs and he coughed, immediately trying to stifle the sound.
He leaned back into the car facing two dogs-both shepherds. Toey remained in the front seat, where he’d put her, the leash still attached to her collar. Callie lay down on the backseat, nothing but a long black shape.
He shut his door, came around the car, and opened the passenger door. Callie jumped to all fours and stuck her nose from behind the front seat. Toey bent around to meet noses. Trevalian yanked on the leash and pulled Toey from the car. He double-checked that the small flashlight worked, and then, returning it to his pocket, he led Toey off into the dense forest of Douglas fir and lodgepole pine. A hundred and fifty yards later he knelt and fed her some cheese-flavored chowder crackers from the minibar. He lavished her with praise and softly thanked her for being a good dog. Then he unclasped the leash, commanded her to stay, and walked away.
Twice he turned back and used the flashlight to ensure she was holding the command, her eyes a hollow luminescence in the dark. But in the short time they’d been together he’d learned that Toey was a particularly kind and obedient dog. She wasn’t going anywhere.
His original plan had been to cut her throat and bury her out here, miles from any possibility of being found. But now he walked away, then ran, knowing she would obey his command and “stay” for probably ten or fifteen minutes or more.
He reached the car, fastened the guide harness to Callie, and moved her into the front seat.
The switch was made. And with it, he’d cleared the last of his obstacles.
W alt awakened in his daughter Emily’s bed to the ringing of the phone in his own bedroom. For the second night he’d avoided that mattress.
He dragged himself out of the stupor of two hours’ sleep, managing to answer the kitchen phone before voice mail picked up.
“It’s Kathy. I’m sorry to call you at home, Walt.” Dispatch. Walt pulled himself into focus. “I tried both your cell and pager first.”
“Go ahead.” He rubbed his face to clear his thought. It didn’t work.
“Stuart Holms called at five fifty-six A.M.”
Walt checked the kitchen clock: seven minutes had passed. “Go on.” Maybe he wouldn’t need the coffee. Just mention of that name had jolted him awake.
“He was a little abusive, sir. Bossy. I told him nine-one-one took the emergency calls. He told me to go to hell.”
Walt knew Stuart Holms by reputation. This didn’t surprise him. “What emergency?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. That’s what I’m saying. Demanded to speak with you personally.”
An alarm sounded in Walt’s head: He didn’t know Stuart Holms personally.
“He sounded upset,” she went on.
Fifteen minutes later, Walt was refueling the Cherokee, wearing a fresh, starched blue uniform shirt and sipping hot coffee from a travel mug. He called the number Stuart Holms had left with dispatch, but had only reached an assistant who said Holms needed to speak with Walt “as soon as was humanly possible.”
Yet it was Holms himself who met Walt at the front door to the colossal modern home out the Lake Creek drainage. Nestled at the base of the mountains, it felt to Walt like a museum of contemporary art. Holms led him to a café table with a view of an enclosed garden through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. They were waited on by a slim woman in her thirties who had a French accent. Stuart Holms ordered Walt a sausage omelet, toasted bagel with cream cheese, coffee, and orange juice. He took smoked salmon, capers, and guava juice for himself.
Dressed in blue pajamas, Holms wore a terrycloth bathrobe and sheepskin moccasins. He looked younger than Walt had imagined him. His name had been in the business pages for decades.
He focused intently on Walt and spoke in a croaking voice that needed more coffee.
“I apologize for the secrecy, Sheriff, but there’s no such thing as privacy, and I need to keep this private. I called you because this home is in the county, not the city, and I’ve had it on good authority that you’re a hell of a lot more trustworthy than the Ketchum police chief.”
“I don’t know about that. What’s the nature of your complaint?”
“Not exactly a complaint. More like a report. It’s Allie-Ailia-my wife. She failed to come home last night.” He looked to Walt for some kind of reaction. “This is entirely out of character, and I’m worried. If I raise the alarm it’ll be over the wire services before I’ve had my morning swim. With Patrick’s conference and all…No need to spoil his party.”
“A guy like you? You’ve got your own people,” Walt said.
“You want my people to handle it, they can, I suppose,” Holms said.
“Does she carry a cell phone?” Walt asked.
“Last I saw her, she’d gone for a run. This was a little after five, yesterday evening. She missed the luau.”
“You’ve tried her cell phone?”
“I called it, only to hear it ring down the hall. It’s on her dresser. Damn awful feeling, that is.”
“Five P.M. yesterday,” Walt stated. “How ’bout the staff?”
“Did she sleep somewhere else? That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it? With someone else? You think she’s going to slip back into her room and come out yawning as if she overslept? I don’t think so.”
The food arrived.
Walt took down the particulars as he ate. Stuart had expected to see her at the C3 luau. He’d left word with the staff that she was to call him the moment she returned home. Upset with her, he’d headed home, had taken a sleeping pill, and awakened at 5 A.M. to find her room still empty.
Walt polished off the omelet. He thought of his own wife-nearly mentioned it.
“Fabulous omelet,” Walt said.
“That’s Raphael, my chef.”
“An artist.”
“I’ll tell him. He’ll be pleased.”
“We usually give it some time before investigating reports of missing persons, but we can act on this if you like. My question is: What kind of press can you tolerate? If we take this, it’ll mean some phone calls, questions being asked. It’s going to be pretty clear, pretty quickly, what’s going on. I wish I could change that, but it’s going to get out.”
“I want her found.” He didn’t touch his own plate-an artful display of smoked salmon and a bagel.
Walt ran through what his deputies referred to as her 411. “She drives a pale green Volvo SC- 90,” Holms told him. Then he reached into his robe’s pocket and passed a five-by-four card across the table. It included the vehicle’s registration number, her age, weight, and the clothes she’d last been seen in-a gray, zippered shell, a white jogging top, and blue shorts. A recent photo had been digitally printed in the lower corner.
“I have very competent staff.”
“What about your own detail?” Walt asked again.
“We use a company for overseas travel. Yes. New York. Washington. L.A. But not up here. Raphael goes with us everywhere. A few assistants. That’s all.”
Walt studied the photo, remembering where he’d last seen this same woman: on the balcony with Danny Cutter at his brother’s cocktail party.
“Yes, there’s an age gap, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Holms said. “But I’m only sixty. And a young sixty at that. She’s beautiful, and outgoing, and a wonderful conversationalist who likes to talk. Find her, Sheriff.”
“Her favorite places to run?”
“The bike path. Adam’s Gulch. Hulen Meadows. Lake Creek. Over the saddle and into Elkhorn. She varies it.”
Walt wrote these down on the back of the same card.
“It’s a lot of ground,” Walt said.
“That’s why you’re involved.”
“We’ll get started,” Walt said. “And we’ll keep it under the radar as much as possible.”
“If you start asking around, Danny Cutter’s name is going to come up. That’s not news to me, and it’s behind us. Just so you know.”
“Okay,” Walt said, though his voice belied him.
“Ailia and Danny are to be partners in a company I’m helping him finance. Those fences are mended.”
Walt faintly nodded, wondering why, if they were mended, Holms felt obligated to mention them.
A n hour past a sunrise lost to an overcast sky, the rain began. The dirt road out Adam’s Gulch, where the pavement ended, had turned to pale brown slop. Low, swirling clouds concealed the tops of trees up on the crests of the surrounding mountains. The sky fluctuated between a light mist and a steady drizzle. Mountain weather.
Walt donned a tan, oilskin greatcoat bundled in the back of the Cherokee along with climbing gear, snowshoes, and two backpacks capable of keeping him in the woods overnight-one for summer, one for winter. He offered Brandon a poncho, but his deputy refused the offer, content to play the he-man, macho outdoorsy thing to the limit, even if it meant a head cold. The parking lot bustled with law enforcement and Search and Rescue personnel. Nothing like a missing rich woman to get the adrenaline running. A ribbon of Day-Glo tape was lifted, admitting two pickup trucks, both carrying dog kennels in their beds.
Alone, to the right of the Porta Potti and the trailhead sign, a pale green Volvo, its engine cold, was parked over dry dirt. It could have been there an hour or overnight. But it belonged to Ailia Holms and was empty.
Walt addressed the Search and Rescue team. “Listen up! She may be just injured. Could be out for a morning run and the husband has things confused. So let’s not scare her to death. It’s possible she’s been exposed to the elements overnight. Make sure you’re covered for that: space blankets, protein bars, and water. You’ve got your assignments. We’re using channel fifteen. Keep off the radios unless it means something. Okay. Go!”
The group dispersed. Walt turned to Brandon. “You and I will take the Hill Trail. I’ll take the first entrance; you’ll take the second.”
“I’m on it,” the man replied.
By the time Walt reached the Hill Trail, muddy clay was sticking to his boots like wet concrete, heavier with each step. Twice he stopped to scrape globs off the treads. He followed the narrow path up into the trees over rocky, rutted ground roped with exposed tree roots. With the low clouds and thick forest, an unsettling darkness overcame him.
Fiona’s arrival was announced over the radio. She was photographing the Volvo. In his mind’s eye Walt saw Search and Rescue spreading out over the trail and covering ground. He checked in with Brandon. The two were approaching each other from opposite directions.
Discovering a snapped branch-the ripped bark green-Walt knelt and studied the disturbance in the trail’s soil. Normally dry and powdery, the ocher-colored dust was skimmed with a layer of rain. If prodded, the crust of darkened soil gave way to the fine dirt beneath. He followed some impressions that told him two things: First, the leg that had snapped the branch had done so prior to the rain falling; second, it was a man’s flat-soled shoe, size nine or ten, walking slowly and deliberately, not the long strides associated with exercise, not an athletic shoe.
He kept off the path as best as possible and followed the shoe prints, calling ahead to Brandon to switch frequencies. When he met him again on the radio, Walt instructed his deputy to keep an eye out for the tracks, and not to disturb them.
But Brandon professed to know nothing of any shoe prints. It was then that Walt picked up two other such impressions, both heading back toward the parking lot.
The rain fell heavier now, the shoe prints washing away before his eyes. Walt peeled his coat off and lay it across the trail, attempting to protect the matching shoe prints-both heading in different directions. He didn’t dare lift the coat to see if he’d managed to cover them, the rain falling steadily now.
He raced ahead, staying off the trail, dodging trees and stumps and massive rocks. “Tommy,” he called ahead on the radio, “how many times have you seen a guy in office shoes out on one of these trails?”
“Sneakers,” Brandon called back.
“No. These things have a heel and smooth soles. Keep your eyes peeled. Something’s not right.”
The cold rain soaked through the shoulders and back of Walt’s uniform. He wiped his face on his sleeve in order to see.
“Fucking cats and dogs,” Brandon said over the radio. The rain had greatly intensified.
Walt was running now, looking left and right, up the hill and down, the narrow trail meandering just below him.
“I got a million running shoes and hiking boots, Sheriff,” Brandon reported. “But I got nothing like what you’re talking about. No office shoes.”
“Keep your eyes peeled off-trail,” Walt ordered.
“Roger, that.”
Walt felt a tension in his chest-a knowing fear. He relived watching the shoe impressions melt behind the destructive power of the rain. Though but a few miles from downtown, a half mile from the highway, these woods were national forest and subject to the laws of nature, not man. Bears were commonly spotted. Cougar. Elk. Any number of which could scare a runner off a trail, pursue the intruder for dinner or out of defense of a calf or cub. The combination of the discovery of the unexpected shoe prints and the now torrential, cold rain drove home an anxiety that peaked with Brandon ’s next radio transmission.
“Sheriff? What’s your twenty? I think I’ve got something.”
A moment later Walt flinched with the sound of a dull gunshot just ahead on the trail: a flare.
Brandon had found her.
A woman’s body, bloody and splayed in a tangle of limbs. The top of her running suit was ripped, baring her chest. Her neck was canted inhumanly to one side.
Walt placed a space blanket over her to keep off the rain. Ailia Holms had been mauled. “Bear?” Brandon asked.
“I’m no expert, but I’m guessing cat. Bite marks on the neck, the narrowness of the claws.”
Walt ordered the Hill Trail cordoned off. He and Brandon established a perimeter around the body using dead sticks. With Brandon lifting and replacing the space blanket, Fiona, who had trudged up through the woods, shot dozens of photographs before anyone disturbed the scene. Others arrived through the forest: deputies, a pair of paramedics, and a local doctor, Royal McClure. At Walt’s request, he would serve as medical examiner, an assignment certain to piss off the county coroner, but Walt was intent on doing this the right way. Electing a mortician as coroner did not make him a medical examiner.
McClure, a wiry man in his mid-fifties, had tight, green eyes and a high raspy voice. “I’ll be able to tell you more later. Much more. But for now you’ve got a body dead twelve to eighteen hours. Trauma, blood loss. All the appearance of an animal attack.”
Walt asked, “What are the odds that two cougars attack humans within a day of each other?”
“Who said anything about two?” McClure asked. “These cats cover a lot of ground.”
“We darted one and locked it up yesterday. Down at the Humane Society, the pound,” Walt said. “She sure as hell didn’t do this. I’ve lived here, off and on, for most of my life, and I can only remember one other cat attack before this-and that one was provoked. Now we lose a yellow Lab. Danny Cutter gets run out of the Big Wood by a cat. We dart one, and that same night, another kills a woman out running. Are you kidding me?”
In the midst of removing the space blanket for Fiona, Brandon suddenly pulled the Mylar sheet aside and let it fall to the ground, like a magician who’d given up on his trick.
“Keep her covered, Tommy,” Walt said, turning from McClure.
“Check it out, Sheriff,” Brandon said, kneeling close to the body. “What the fuck is that?” The rain continued to fall in sheets as it had for the past half hour. Brandon dragged the space blanket back over her once again, covering her head and face, to below her waist, leaving only her lacerated legs exposed.
Walt stepped closer, seeing for the first time what Brandon now pointed to: a small circle of white.
“Paint?” Walt guessed.
“It’s dissolving, whatever it is,” Brandon said. “Dissolving fast. And look there, and there.” He pointed. Then he lifted the Mylar and studied her more closely. “It’s all over her.”
Fiona, of her own volition, scrolled through digital shots while carefully screening her camera from the rain. “I made pictures of those,” she said. “I count seven…no…eight on her chest and torso. Another four on her head and hair.”
“It’s feces,” McClure said, having touched it with his gloved finger and lifted it to his nose. “Bird feces.”
“Birdshit?” Brandon asked. “How’s that possible? Look around her. Nothing.”
None of the leaves, sticks, or plants surrounding the body showed any sign of the white splotches.
“Doc?” Walt asked.
“It’s not my place to comment on physical evidence.”
Walt looked up into the rain. No coverage here, the tree branches not touching. So where had the birds perched?
“You know that blood-splatter course?” Brandon said. “If birdshit’s anything like blood, then the size of these, and the tightness of the rings, means it didn’t fall very far. A bird takes a crap from up there, it’s going to hit like a bomb.”
“Expert testimony if I’ve ever heard it,” Walt cracked.
“Not to mention she rolled all the way down the hill,” Brandon said, ignoring Walt’s jab. “So it’s got to be fresh, right?”
“He’s right,” McClure interjected. “Or she was out running with dried bird feces all over her.”
Walt was still bothered by the smooth-soled shoe prints he’d followed earlier. In the excitement of the discovery, he’d neglected to send anyone to protect his oilskin and the tracks it covered. He did so now by radio, but feared a complete loss.
“And there’s a question of blood,” McClure pointed out.
Fiona, Brandon, and Walt all turned inquisitively toward him. Their faces ran with rainwater. “Blood?” Walt asked.
“I count a hundred and fifty-six lacerations, and we haven’t rolled her yet,” McClure said. “So where’s all the blood?”
O n his second visit in a matter of hours, something about the indulgence of the Holms estate left Walt with a sickening feeling in his gut. It was far too big for two people; how would it feel now with only one?
He was informed by a staff member that Stuart Holms had already left for the conference. This kind of thing needed to be done in person. Walt drove over to Sun Valley. It took him twenty minutes of moving between various talks and coffee clutches, meeting rooms and hospitality suites to find Holms on the porch of the Guest House in a private conversation with the head of Disney. Walt asked to speak to Holms in confidence and took the vacated chair.
“There’s never an easy way to say this. I’m sorry to have to tell you that we found your wife out Adam’s Gulch. She was pronounced dead at the scene, apparent victim of an animal attack.”
The other man’s clear blue eyes ticked back and forth, alternately searching the air above Walt’s head. His brow knotted, and he nodded slightly, and sighed. Then his eyes fell to the plastic tabletop, and he dragged his trembling hands into his lap. “I’ve known since last night. I knew in here.” He touched his chest. “She’s never not come home before. Oh, God. An animal attack?”
“A cougar possibly. Yes.”
“Was it her period?” Stuart Holms asked. “I don’t even know, I’m sorry to say. That’s when they attack women, right?”
“A thorough examination is being conducted,” Walt said.
Holms kept his head down. He mumbled, “A cat? She liked cats. Loved cats. Volunteered at the pound. Did you know that?”
“At some point I’m going to take a full statement from you, sir. No hurry, but the sooner we can get to that the better.”
Holms lifted his head, revealing teary, bloodshot eyes. “Of course,” he said.
Walt waited a moment uncomfortably. “When?” he said. “When might we get to that?”
Holms looked away at a piece of the sky. “When I feel up to it, Sheriff. And not a minute sooner.”
I t was difficult for Walt to think of a meeting as clandestine when the sun shone so brightly and a pair of yellow warblers darted branch to branch in play. The Warm Springs tributary to the Big Wood slipped past beneath the concrete bridge connecting to Sun Valley ’s River Run high-speed quad-chairlifts and the glorious River Run ski lodge. He watched the river’s swirling currents, looking for any kind of repeating pattern, but he saw none. A kingfisher hovered low over the silver brown water, staying there for quite some time before zooming up to a cottonwood branch and taking rest.
Dick O’Brien had no place here. He was dressed like a man heading to lunch at Yale: khakis, blue blazer, white button-down shirt. Thankfully he’d eschewed the tie. It was the man’s shoes that Walt paid the most attention to: office shoes, with heels. His mind filled briefly with an image of the dissolving, muddy impressions he’d followed up the Hill Trail at Adam’s Gulch. He swallowed dryly.
O’Brien leaned against the bridge’s wide, concrete rail. He placed a manila envelope between them.
“Sorry for making the meet out here,” he said. “Just a precaution is all.”
“This is?” Walt asked, indicating the envelope.
“A DVD. Cutter’s home security. I helped design it. We’ve got eyes on the gate, exterior doors, the garages. He put half a mil into security on that place. This camera is an interior look at the front door. From yesterday morning…Friday morning, in case you’ve lost track. I have one of my guys assigned to monitoring the cameras twenty-four/ seven. He pointed this…incident…out to me yesterday. We dump anything like this to DVD for safekeeping.”
“Anything like what?” Walt asked.
“The Escalade’s got a DVD player, if you want it sooner than later,” O’Brien said. “And air-conditioning. And an electric cooler in the back. Pop. Bottled water.”
“You can’t just tell me?”
“Worth a thousand words. Right?”
“If you say so.”
A few minutes later O’Brien and Walt occupied the Escalade’s two leather captain’s chairs that made up the car’s middle row of seats. The DVD panel was flipped down and glowing blue. Walt had a cold ginger ale in hand. “What? No popcorn?”
“We got Snickers in the cooler,” O’Brien said in all seriousness. “Peanuts. Potato chips.”
“I was kidding.”
The DVD played. Walt watched as a sweating Danny Cutter, a towel around his neck, opened his brother’s front door and welcomed in Ailia Holms. Walt dialed the rear air conditioner down a few degrees-he’d warmed suddenly. A time clock ran in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
O’Brien narrated. “Once we heard about her out Adam’s Gulch, I showed this to the boss. He took her death real hard, I might add. And we had a very short discussion about sharing this with you. Just for the record, the boss never suggested blocking it.”
On the screen the discussion grew heated between Danny Cutter and Ailia Holms, but there was no sound to confirm that. Then, all at once, Danny grabbed her by the forearms and shoved her against a couch. For a moment Walt feared he was about to see a rape. Then the two settled down. Ailia clearly complained about her treatment. Danny showed her to the door, and she left.
O’Brien stopped the playback. The screen went blue again.
“Those are the same clothes we found her in,” Walt told O’Brien.
“It’s yours to do with whatever.”
“It’s not that I’m complaining, but would you turn this over if it was your brother?”
“It’s complicated between them-the brothers. Very competitive.” He paused and said, “In all sorts of things.” Then he met eyes with Walt, clearly wanting to drive home this last statement.
“It’s a big help,” Walt said, “and I appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
“It may be for Danny. And I like Danny.”
“We all like Danny,” O’Brien said.
“Does that include Patrick?”
“Like I said: It’s complicated.”
“Yes, it is.” As they were climbing out of the car, Walt couldn’t resist. “Nice shoes,” he said.
T he hospital morgue was located down a subterranean hallway, wedged between a door marked DANGER-HIGH VOLTAGE and another unmarked room used for storage.
Ailia Holms lay faceup on a textured stainless steel morgue table with drain slits around its perimeter and hoses coming out the bottom.
McClure pulled off the blue rip-stop nylon dropcloth, exposing her chalk white skin torn by cougar’s claws. Lacerations and puncture wounds covered her torso like unfamiliar constellations. Her pubis was shaved into a short, vertical column of red tangled hair. Walt looked away and recomposed himself. McClure had already done some cutting on her.
“You asked about any bruising,” McClure said.
“I did.”
“You know about lividity: The blood settles into the lowest part of the body an hour or two after death. It fixes, in six to eight hours.” He directed Walt’s attention to some dark bruises. “You’ll recall that we found her partially rolled up on her left side.” He pointed. “This area is an example of fixed hypostasis-lividity. Certainly six to eight hours after she was killed she was in this position.” He nodded toward the sink. “Grab a set of gloves.”
Together, he and Walt lifted and rolled the cadaver just high enough to get a look at her buttocks.
“See that discoloring?” McClure asked. “The right gluteous?”
“Yes.”
“No proof. But it suggests early lividity.”
“So she rolled and landed partially down the hill, and what…a couple hours later a coyote pulled her over, and she rolled some more?”
“Could explain it.”
“What’s the timing?”
“Eight to twelve hours ahead of discovery. Perhaps coincidental with her death.”
“May I?” Walt asked, reaching for Ailia’s left arm.
“Of course.”
Walt lifted the arm. An obvious bruise, shaped like a mitten.
“This is antemortem?” Walt asked.
“Yes. Well ahead of the attack. Maybe as much as a day or more.”
“It was early yesterday morning,” Walt told him. “That’s consistent.”
McClure lifted the cadaver’s head. He pulled back a flap of skin, exposing tissue, pink muscle, and white vertebrae. “She has a fracture to cervical number seven, just above the facet for the first rib. Another to cervical three. The tissue at seven reveals edema consistent with an earlier trauma.”
“The cat broke her neck,” Walt said. “It’s what cats do.”
“Fractures her neck,” McClure said. “She’s alive but paralyzed. Toys with her for a while.”
“For how long?”
“This trauma to the neck occurred an hour or more before the cat mauled her.”
“Good God.”
“Most, if not all, of the lacerations inflicted by the cat were post- mortem.”
“Excuse me?”
McClure met eyes with Walt and just stared. “Cause of death is heart failure: She bled out. But the timing of all this is speculative.”
“My guys are out looking for the original crime scene-the location of the attack. All the blood.”
“You may not find it,” McClure said. He answered Walt’s puzzled expression by explaining, “We luminoled her.” He picked up a tube light from a workstation. “Get the lights,” he said.
Walt cut the lights. McClure waved a short black light over the body. Beneath the neck, the stainless steel showed a luminous green, indicating blood. The body itself showed very little green.
“You cleaned her?” Walt asked. “I hope you checked for prints first.”
“That’s just the thing,” McClure said. “I haven’t washed her. There’s very little blood and there’s a reason for that: The dead don’t bleed.”
Walt thought back to the shoe prints in the mud and Danny Cutter pinning Ailia to the couch.
“The cat still could have killed her and mauled her later.”
“I’ll measure her blood volume,” the doctor said. It meant nothing to Walt.
Walt paused. “She was moved.”
“One last point of interest,” McClure said, switching off the black light and returning the room to the overhead tube lighting. “She’s missing her left contact lens.”
“Missing?” Walt blurted out.
“Probably somewhere in the woods. She rolled a long way down that hill. You could try to find it, but we both know the odds of that. Still, it’s going into my report.”
“Would it show if we luminoled the area?” Walt asked.
“No, the luminol binds to the hemoglobin. If it’s out there, it’s going to take a hands-and-knees search.”
“Who goes running with only one contact?” Walt wondered, not realizing until it was too late that he’d spoken it aloud.
“It was a long fall,” McClure repeated.
But Walt barely heard him. He was stuck back on O’Brien’s shoes and the impressions that had vanished with the rain.
I t’s the fishing lady,” came the voice of the guard at Elizabeth Shaler’s front door. This was heard over Adam Dryer’s cell phone with its two-way walkie-talkie feature. Dryer looked over at Shaler, who was currently reading the Saturday edition of The New York Times and enjoying some morning sun in her backyard.
“Yes, of course,” Liz Shaler said, answering Dryer’s inquisitive expression.
He flipped through pages on a clipboard. “It’s not on today’s appointment list.”
“We were supposed to go fishing together, remember? That was all of a few hours ago.”
“But it wasn’t rescheduled.” To the walkie-talkie he said, “Give her the Mossad, and send her in.”
“Roger that.”
“The Mossad?” Shaler asked, tugging down her sunglasses for full effect. “Or don’t I want to know?”
“She’ll be thoroughly searched. That’s all.”
“He better not touch her improperly.”
“No, Your Honor.”
Several minutes passed before Fiona was led through by one of Shaler’s assistants. She handed a bouquet of stem flowers to Shaler, who drank in a whiff before passing them off to her assistant.
“You didn’t need to do that.”
Fiona took at seat at the patio table. “I was sorry to cancel.”
“Was it Ailia?” Liz Shaler asked. “Was it as awful as everyone’s saying?”
“I’m not permitted to say. Sorry about that.”
“No, don’t be. I respect you all the more for it.” She lowered her voice. “I wish some of the people around here were as discreet. I might actually have a life.” She grinned. There was a line of white sun cream showing beneath her nose where she’d missed it. Fiona was tempted to point it out, but didn’t.
Dryer stood away from them, but remained in the yard under the shade of a tree. He stared at them from there through his sunglasses.
“Is he just going to hang out there?” Fiona asked.
“Yes. Amazing, isn’t it? I would be so bored with a job like that. But what are you going to do?”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“I detest it. As AG, I don’t have protection in New York. The governor does. The mayor of the city. But not the attorney general. All this,” she said, indicating Dryer, “is thanks to Herb Millington, who made a big stink to the DNC when it was rumored I would run.”
“I shouldn’t stay long,” Fiona said anxiously, causing Liz Shaler to look over at her thoughtfully.
“What’s going on?”
“The flowers…Your Honor…were a pretext.”
“For?”
“To get me inside. Not that I’m not sorry about missing the session with you. I am. I absolutely am!”
Shaler pushed away the Times. “Okay,” she said, “you’ve got my attention.”
Fiona very carefully reached into her purse, slipped out an envelope, and passed it to Shaler surreptitiously. “I shouldn’t be doing this, I know. And I’ll probably get into a lot of trouble for it. I mean a lot. Depending on you, of course.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.” She squeezed the envelope. “Photos?”
Fiona nodded and smiled falsely because Dryer’s dark sunglasses remained fixed on her from the shade of the distant tree.
“Should I look at them now?”
“Your call,” Fiona said.
“Is he looking in this direction?” Liz asked.
“Yes. Wait…Okay: He’s checking around.”
Liz slipped the envelope open and gasped. “Oh, God…”
“ Salt Lake City,” Fiona said. “These are the shots Walt-the sheriff,” she corrected, “wanted you to see. Agent Dryer wouldn’t permit it.”
Liz flipped through the stack. Then she gathered them and returned them to the envelope. “God,” she repeated. “Did Walt-?”
“No, no!” Fiona said quickly. “Please don’t go there. This was entirely my initiative. There was nothing said, nothing implied. Please don’t think that of him.”
“You like him. Walt,” Liz said. “Or you wouldn’t have done this.” She pushed the envelope back across to Fiona. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“It isn’t like that,” Fiona said. “It’s just his work…it’s everything to him, you know?”
“I like him, too,” Liz said. “Very much. He saved my life, you know?”
Fiona leaned away, looking shocked.
“Years ago, but believe me, you don’t forget something like that. A person like Walt. Not ever.”
“He wanted these photos to scare you into calling off your talk. I know that much. Maybe he’s trying to save you a second time.”
Fiona couldn’t see her eyes through the dark glasses, but she imagined them as scared.
“And he’ll pay for it,” came the low voice of Adam Dryer.
Liz Shaler jumped and her glasses wiggled down her nose.
Dryer snatched the packet of photos with an arm like a frog’s tongue. Fiona hadn’t seen him coming. He leafed through the photos and then pocketed them. “The sheriff was on notice not to show you these, Your Honor.”
“It wasn’t Walt!” Fiona protested. “It was me.”
“And I can’t see through that?” Dryer said, stripping the glasses off his face and drilling a look into her. “You tell him he lost his Get Out of Jail card with me.”
“Leave the photos where they were,” Liz Shaler said vehemently, “and leave us alone. Fiona’s my guest, which is more than I can say about the rest of you.”
A s the conference adjourned for lunch, Walt caught Danny Cutter outside a break-out room. Showing no sign of being ill at ease, Danny agreed to speak with him and the two headed down into the subterranean reaches of the hotel.
The lodge’s private bowling alleys dated back to the hotel’s construction in the 1930s and Averell Harriman’s vision of grandeur. The two lanes stood empty at 12:30 P.M. on a Saturday. The alleys had been a playground for Gable, Stanwyck, Cooper, and Hemingway. Walt could almost smell the Cuban cigars and the bourbon on the rocks mingling with Chanel No. 5. Never renovated through the subsequent decades, the lanes had nonetheless been well maintained, while allowing the history to show. Danny and Walt sat across a linoleum-topped table rimmed with cigarette scars.
If this table could talk, Walt thought.
He asked the attendant to give them a few minutes, and the young Swede took off without comment.
“You mind if I run this thing? Record our conversation?” Walt held an iPod in his hand, a small white brick plugged into its top. He placed the device on the table and tried to get comfortable in the chair.
“You do what you have to do,” Danny said.
“Tell me about Ailia Holms.”
“Yeah. Unbelievable. I thought that’s what this was about.”
“Because?”
Danny gave Walt a transparent look. “You’re here, aren’t you? If you didn’t know Allie and I had a thing going-this is before I went…away-you’d be the only one in this town.”
Danny Cutter’s good looks got in his way at a time like this. Walt couldn’t think of him as normal. A guy that good-looking and that rich.
“Is that past or present tense?” Walt asked. “The thing.”
Cutter adjusted himself in the chair. “We had a history. She wanted to update the files, as it turned out. Keep them current. But I discouraged that. Didn’t avoid it completely, but discouraged it.”
“Physically?”
“Meaning?”
“You don’t understand physically discouraging someone?”
“She can be…difficult…to say no to. Was…I guess I should say. Can’t get used to that.” He moved in the chair once more. Then he lowered his voice, despite the room being empty. “I slept with her the night of Paddy’s party. The cocktail party at his place. During the party. It just kind of happened.”
Walt had seen the two up on the balcony hallway. He maintained his poker face, but inside he was reeling. He’d not anticipated Danny’s candor. “That sounds like encouragement to me. I’m talking about discouragement.”
Danny’s eyes went distant, then focused and found Walt. “You’re talking about her arms, aren’t you? I bruised her, didn’t I? She was pissed at me for that. Steaming mad. Said if Stu saw any bruises…She was afraid of Stu. I gather the resentful-old-man thing is not entirely an act.”
“What bruises?” This was what Walt asked, but mentally he made a note to check on Stuart Holms’s jealousies.
“She came by the house. This is yesterday morning. We had words. Allie liked getting her way, and our ways were a little divergent. I took it a little too far. What can I say? Shit happens. She liked to play the sex card, and sometimes, quite frankly, it got a little old. Scratch my itch and I’ll do you favors. But I didn’t want any favors.” He paused and rubbed the corner of his lips with his knuckle. “Rehab wasn’t totally lost on me.”
“Who doesn’t want the favors of a woman like Ailia Holms?” Walt asked.
“A man who’s had Ailia Holms,” Danny answered. “It wasn’t those kind of favors. It was money stuff. I didn’t want her help, that’s all.”
Walt said nothing.
“The really strange thing?” Danny asked rhetorically. “I was attacked by a cougar the day before yesterday. Did you hear about that?” He studied Walt. “I’m sure you did. Thing could have taken me down, taken me out, and instead it turns around and leaves me alone. Just like that. Gets you to thinking, I’ll tell you what. You kidding me? You know what I decided? I want to be useful. To make my life useful. To someone, something, other than me. And I want to get there on my own. Break out the frickin’ violins-I can see it in your face-but I’m serious, Sheriff.” He scratched his lips again. “And now Allie out Adam’s Gulch last night. A cougar. Right? Maybe the same cougar. How bizarre is that?”
“It’s plenty bizarre,” Walt said flatly. He noted that Danny Cutter had put Ailia’s attack as night. Not even Royal McClure had done so. He struggled with seeing Danny Cutter as guilty. He didn’t want to believe it.
“So, when was the last time you saw her?” Walt probed.
“And that’s another thing,” Danny said, not answering directly. “Who goes on a run twice in the same day? Are you buying that? That’s not Allie. That’s not right.”
“The last time you saw her?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I had a meeting with Stu-a business thing. Allie stopped by.” He paused. “I’ve got to tell you: I didn’t love it-her stopping by. And Stu was weird about it. They had it planned-frickin’ choreographed-and I was the odd man out. And I hate that.”
Walt searched the man’s face and decided he was telling the truth.
“I don’t know how much of this is relevant, Sheriff, but you’re probably going to hear it anyway… Stu agreed to invest some serious money in a thing I’ve got going. I’ve got to tell you: That surprised me in the first place. And then he drops this bomb on me that the deal comes with strings attached. The strings were Allie: I take her on as my partner or forget the investment.”
“And you didn’t like that because…?”
“Because of the strings. Whether you or anyone else believes it, I’m serious about changing my act. But the thing is: Stu must have known about us. What kind of husband sets up his wife like that? What kind of fool sense does that make?”
Walt made notes, wondering at the interconnections and the involvement of the husband. “Maybe later today, maybe Monday, I’ll get the preliminary autopsy report. We’ll know if it was an accident or not.”
“Since when is a cougar attack not an accident?”
“I’ve got to ask for your passport, Danny.”
“What?” The man looked shell-shocked.
“Everything we’ve discussed here is confidential. I hear it come from someplace else, I’m coming after you, and let me remind you, this conversation was recorded with your consent.”
“You’re flipping me out. What do you mean ‘not an accident’?”
“I need your passport on my desk by five P.M. I don’t get it by five, I’ll seek a warrant.”
“Where are you coming from? Me? I liked Allie. Not an accident? Leave me out of this. Please.”
“No way to do that. I’m sorry to say this, Danny, but you might want to call Doug.” Doug Aanestad had served as Danny’s attorney during the drug bust.
“I’m starting over here. I actually have something good going.” He was pleading now. He looked a little pitiful. Sounded childish as he mumbled, “I have a business plan. A good one. Ask Paddy. Come on, Walt. You know this town. I’m toast.”
“It’s messy,” Walt said. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”
“Me in a mess?” Danny asked, sarcastic anger boiling out of him. “Now there’s something new. Give me a break, Walt. Come on! Please.”
As Walt stood, he stopped the iPod from recording and pocketed the device. He placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder, tried to think of something to say, then turned for the door.
F iona was leaning against the Cherokee’s front bumper, impatiently tapping a newspaper against her thigh. She wore khaki capris and a lavender shirt with oversized white buttons. Valet parking had left the Cherokee under the lodge’s massive portico out of the noonday sun. Walt unlocked it with the remote, and Fiona climbed in without invitation.
As Walt took the wheel she said, “Drive me over to my car, please. It’s too hot to walk, and I’ve been waiting an eternity.” She rolled down the window. “I looked for you everywhere.”
“You could have called,” he pointed out.
“I tried. You weren’t picking up.”
“Ah…I was in the basement. The bowling alley.”
She looked at him askance.
“Business,” he said. “I’m a sucky bowler. Don’t go there.”
“It’s my fault,” she said, as Walt turned into the massive parking lot looking for her car. He hoped she might direct him, but her tone told him to keep his mouth shut. “You know when you’ve got a name or something right on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t for the life of you remember it? It was like that for me.” She looked at him, her eyes begging that he make the connection.
Walt stared back blankly.
“The bird droppings,” she said, holding the newspaper out in front of him now and blocking his vision.
He took her by the wrist, moved the paper out of his way, and pulled over. “What about them?”
“I made the photos.”
“I was there, Fiona. I know that.”
“Not those photos,” she said dismissively, as if it was the clearest thing in the world. “Read!”
Walt took the paper from her. It was folded open to page five. The article was titled “Bombs Away: County Pound Goes to the Birds.” Walt recalled his father teasing him about the article.
“And there’s something else-” she said.
Walt cut her off. “Let me read.”
“I blew it.”
“Hang on. Swallows at the pound,” he said, remembering.
“Hundreds of them leaving bird droppings on all the cats and dogs,” she said, caught up in his enthusiasm. “The health department threatened-”
“To close them down. Yes.”
“Bird droppings, Walt.” She stared at him, once again somewhat condescendingly. “The cougar that was darted was transferred to the Humane Society until Fish and Game figures out what to do with her. She was at the pound, Walt.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”
W alt entered the shed extension of the Humane Society a few minutes behind his deputy, Randy Anderson, and a few minutes ahead of Fiona, who’d headed home to pick up equipment. The garish green steel building sat atop a sagebrush knoll three miles out Croy Canyon, west of Hailey, where coyotes cried in the wee hours of the morning and area snowplows struggled to reach in the dead of winter. The volunteer worker, a middle-aged woman Walt recognized from the softball bleachers, threatened him with a cup of coffee. Walt politely declined. He and Anderson donned latex gloves and slipped their boots into paper covers. Anderson, a lanky guy with a narrow, boyish face and big teeth, was as close as Walt’s sheriff’s office got to a forensics technician. He’d taken a single course called Death Sciences at a technical school outside of Nampa, just after high school.
“You got everything?” Walt asked him, not sure he wanted the answer.
“Yeah. All set.” Anderson hoisted a black duffel bag. “Take me about five minutes to mix the chemicals.”
Walt approached the interior door that led to the kennel. From the other side came a chorus of loud barking. He opened it, revealing a central aisle that gave way to shelves of cages of varying sizes on either side. The occasional plywood partition segregated the cat cages from the dogs. Though every effort was made to keep the room smelling clean, it was a losing battle. To Walt’s left stood a much larger, heavily reinforced cage. As with others along the left wall, it offered a sliding door to an outside run, currently padlocked shut. Pacing silently wall to wall, the cougar kept a wary eye on him.
All down the center aisle he noticed ghostly white stains that had been vigorously scrubbed off the concrete. He looked up and saw the scars where hundreds of the swallows’ mud nests had been plucked off the ridgepole. Dozens more had yet to be removed. A few bold swallows peeked their heads from the remaining nests. Made of dried mud and grass, they looked like tiny caves.
“It’s a never-ending battle,” the volunteer said from behind him. “And a health issue. Most of the smell is the bird poo, I’m afraid. We’re still working on a more permanent solution.”
“Can we move the cat?” Walt asked.
“Oh, no, sir. Not us. Have to call Fish and Game to do that.”
He shouted, “ Anderson, will the luminol hurt the cat?”
“Shouldn’t. No, sir. It’s basically nothing more than hydrogen peroxide.”
“Then hurry it up.”
Twenty minutes later, Anderson had sprayed the concrete flooring inside most of the cage. The cougar wisely chose to stay as far away as possible during this, pacing the opposite wall from Anderson.
Fiona arrived. She had donned a hairnet, gloves, and shoe covers and made a point to set up her camera gear quickly.
“Was she alive when he did it?” Fiona asked.
“We don’t know anything yet. Let’s take it step by step.”
Anderson returned from mixing another batch. He backed them away from the cage and sprayed the outside perimeter as well.
“I’m all set,” Fiona announced.
“Okay, then.” Anderson plugged in a two-foot tube light-a black light like the kind McClure had used in the morgue. “Okay,” he said, somewhat nervously. “Anything blue-green is evidence of blood.”
Walt asked the volunteer to leave the room. He shut the door, and as he did the dogs barked viciously in a chorus that ran chills down his spine. He switched the long wire of overhead lights off. The room went dark. Mixed in with the dogs was the sound of Fiona gasping.
Then Anderson croaked out in raspy voice, “Mother of God.”
T he cage floor was stained in ungainly neon green smears and streaks and splatters. It looked like a monochromatic Jackson Pollock painting. Walt maintained his poise as he imagined a semiconscious, paralyzed Ailia Holms being mauled, bitten, clawed, and dragged around the cage.
As Fiona clicked off time exposures, Walt thought he heard her crying. Anderson pointed out the long green tail that tapered from the edge of the cage toward the room’s central drain.
“Someone tried to clean it up,” Anderson explained. “Hosed it down. Maybe mopped. Spent some time on it. I’ll luminol the brooms and mops.”
“We’ll want to check the drain for tissue, the brooms for prints.” Walt indicated an area in front of the cage. “Get pictures of this as well, please.”
Anderson illuminated the area in question. “Interesting,” he said, his teeth glowing white and standing out from his blue face.
The green smear indicating spilled blood was interrupted by two columns-representing clean concrete.
“These are blood shadows,” Anderson explained.
“I don’t want to ask.” Fiona sounded frightened.
“Blood splatter traveled out of the cage and was blocked.” Anderson hesitated. “Someone stood here and watched her die.”
B randon had rounded up Patrick Cutter’s seven-person staff, and two security personnel, and was detaining them on the patio until further notice, ensuring they didn’t attempt to manipulate the environment or damage possible evidence.
Doug Aanestad read through the hastily scrawled search warrant. “Must be nice to work in a place where judges can be bent to favor at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.”
“Small-town living,” Walt said. “This may take a while.”
“Ginny will make us both a latté, if you’ll release her for a minute. Best latté you’ve ever had. Patrick gets his beans flown in from Colombia.”
“Pass. Everyone stays where they are.”
“It’s a fishing expedition, Walt, and you know it. She got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad luck is all.”
“Don’t I wish.”
“You have evidence to the contrary?”
“Don’t you wish,” Walt said. “I don’t share intel with the enemy.”
“Five minutes, and you can put her back on the patio. I’m telling you: flown in from Colombia. You’ve never tasted anything like this.”
Walt answered with a glare. Aanestad slumped into a living room chair that swallowed him. He continued reading the warrant. Again he mumbled something about Walt’s good fortune.
By 3:30 P.M. Walt was following Anderson around the house, as Anderson chased electrical outlets to power his black light. When Anderson moved toward the master bedroom, Aanestad steered him clear, pointing out that the warrant contained Walt to a search for evidence linked to Danny, his client, and not the owner of the house. Phone calls were made, and Aanestad won.
Anderson was going through the guest suite when deputies Tilly and Kaiser showed up, beckoning Walt to the six-car garage. Aanestad followed, the vigilante watchdog.
Several of the garage bays stood empty. Four cars remained: a Hummer, a BMW sports coupe, a gleaming black pickup truck, and a Toyota Land Cruiser. All had their doors open, mats out on the poured concrete; some seats had been removed.
Walt informed Aanestad, “Just FYI, we have two teams searching both Patrick’s and Danny’s cars over at Sun Valley. It’s all covered in the warrant.”
“I saw that. I still think it’s a stretch to include all the vehicles when my client claims to have driven only the Lexus. But there you have it.”
“If you aren’t careful, Doug, someone’s going to accuse you of being Patrick’s lawyer.”
“I am Patrick’s lawyer-locally,” he clarified, even though he thought Walt knew that. “I represent the family.”
“We found it over here,” Tilly said, eager to show his prize.
Walt approached the back of the Land Cruiser with a quickened pulse. Aanestad was getting on his nerves; and Anderson ’s failure to find a speck of blood evidence was beginning to make him look as foolish as Aanestad made him out to be.
Tilly pointed into the back of the vehicle, where a small white arrow made of removable tape had been fixed to the caramel-colored carpeting.
Walt’s eyes followed the white arrow, and at first he didn’t see anything. Then he moved slightly to his left in order to catch the light better.
Aanestad called out, “That’s Patrick’s car. This has nothing to do with Danny.”
At the tip of the white arrow lay a single, clear contact lens.
W alt stood to the side and down the hallway from the Picabo Street Room, out of the way of the conference guests departing a talk given by the secretary of the treasury. Having Doug Aanestad by his side won Patrick Cutter’s attention. The eye communication was between attorney and client, with only a passing glance at Walt.
Cutter dealt with a few enthusiastic guests, waited to make sure the secretary was properly escorted to the next function, and then lingered long enough to have the hallway to themselves for a moment.
“Is that room clear?” Walt asked as he shook hands with Cutter.
“Yes, certainly.” Patrick led them into the room and Walt shut the door. Capable of holding a hundred or more, the conference room smelled of warm bodies and coffee. Two food service personnel entered to refresh the ice water and clear glasses from the dais. Walt asked them to leave, and they did so without question.
“As you know,” the attorney told his client, “the sheriff and his men searched your residence this afternoon.” He focused intently on Cutter’s eyes, attempting to communicate the severity of the situation. “He would like to ask you some questions.”
“Of course,” Cutter blurted out, looking alarmed.
“I advise you, Patrick, to check with me before answering. Do we understand each other? Each and every question, you will check with me before answering. Given this condition, I’m allowing this conversation to take place. But I must have your understanding on this: The sheriff wanted to run a recording device-I have prohibited that; he wanted to see you alone, by himself, also forbidden; he claims to have reason to suspect you in a possible murder investigation, Patrick. That’s right: murder.”
“Danny?” Cutter blurted out. Despite the golf tan, he looked suddenly pale.
“He’ll get to that,” Aanestad said. “But there’s a good example: I don’t want you speaking until I’ve nodded my okay. And I want you to think clearly about your answers before giving them.”
Cutter nodded.
Walt began by asking some of the same general questions he had asked Danny Cutter earlier. Patrick could not recall with any clarity when he’d last seen Ailia Holms-he pointed out the large number of guests he was now dealing with on an hourly basis. He thought it might have been as far back as the cocktail party at his residence. Walt soon moved into more sensitive territory.
“You directed Dick O’Brien to pass along a DVD to me from your home security cameras-”
“Wait just a minute!” Aanestad conferred with Cutter in the corner by a table with a black skirt piled with copies of a book written by the treasury secretary. They returned and both men sat down facing Walt.
“I did,” said Cutter.
“Why would you do that? Implicate your brother like that?”
Cutter checked with Aanestad, who nodded faintly. “It seemed the right thing to do. It’s the cover-up that gets you hanged, Sheriff. We all know that.”
“You could have destroyed it. Who would have known?”
He checked with Aanestad each and every time. “Same answer.”
“You could have warned your brother.”
“He’s an adult.”
“Who has driven which of your cars this weekend, between you and Danny?”
“I drive the Cayenne. I gave Danny the Lexus. My wife either rides with me or uses the Volvo.”
“What about the Land Cruiser?” Walt asked.
Aanestad shook his head, and Patrick Cutter, looking confused, raised his eyebrows at Walt. “I’m advised not to answer that,” he said.
Walt thought him either a very good actor, or someone who knew nothing of the possibility of Ailia Holms’s contact lens being found in his car.
“The keys?” Walt asked.
“Kept on a rack in the kitchen. All but the Cayenne. I keep those with me. I’m passionate about the Cayenne.” He smiled.
It was all wrong. Walt had expected him to be nervous and agitated. Aanestad sat smugly observing Walt’s reactions-Walt’s, not his client’s. Had some coaching gone on in the corner? Walt wondered. Was Cutter seasoned enough from his business dealings to bluff his way through this? It seemed impossible to Walt that Cutter, if guilty, could maintain such a calm facade.
“You were sleeping with Ailia Holms?”
Cutter tried to hold back any reaction, but he slowly crumbled. Feigned astonishment moved into feigned insult. Walt never took his eyes off the man, as the accusation worked through him like an acid. His weapon was patience. He waited, and the waiting was the man’s undoing.
“Nonsense!” Aanestad complained, trying to give Cutter a breath of air. “Where’d you get that? It’s garbage, Walt, and you know it. You should be ashamed, trying such a stunt.”
Walt had gotten it from a single look Dick O’Brien had given him out on the bridge when mentioning the competition between the brothers, but he wasn’t about to reveal his source. “Let your client deny it, counselor.”
Patrick’s eyes shone wetly as he glowered at Walt. At least a minute had passed. Maybe two. The air-conditioning wheezed from the ceiling. Again, a food service worker tried to enter the room from the far end. Again, Walt sent him packing.
Patrick said softly, “I’m upset over her loss, Sheriff. We were…close.”
“Of course you were,” Aanestad said. “You and Stu-”
“Shut up, Doug,” Cutter said.
“How long?” Walt asked.
“This conversation is over!” Aanestad announced.
“Doug!” Cutter chided. “If you can’t keep quiet, I’m going to ask you to leave the room.”
Aanestad’s face went scarlet, his eyes flashed darkly, and he sat back in his chair.
Patrick continued. “I had Dick share the security footage because if Danny did something…if he hurt her in any way…then God damn it, for once he’s going to pay.”
“I’ll need you to account for your whereabouts last night, from nine P.M. to past midnight.”
Without pause, Cutter replied, “I was hosting a dinner at the lodge dining room followed immediately by a dessert function out at Trail Creek Cabin. The commissioner of the FCC. Believe me, Walt, every second of my time can be accounted for, by me, my people, and probably several dozen, if not a hundred or more, witnesses. Do the legwork.”
“The same for Danny?”
Patrick answered only with a saddened face.
“We’re done here,” Aanestad repeated. This time, he won Patrick’s support.
Walt had what he wanted: Patrick had admitted involvement with Ailia Holms, just as O’Brien had inferred. The man could have easily hired her murder.
All three men stood.
Walt asked for Cutter’s passport, winning another shocked expression. “Have one of your people run it down to my office before five.”
“That’s less than an hour.”
“That’s your problem.”
“You are way off, if you think I had anything do to with Ailia’s death.”
“Physical evidence was found in the back of your Land Cruiser possibly connected to the victim. Doug was prohibited from saying anything about that-the only condition of his attendance here.”
“What evidence? That’s ridiculous. Allie and I used that car all the time. We’ve even-” Cutter stopped himself.
Walt said nothing. He felt sordid and tired.
“We cared for each other,” Cutter repeated, as if issuing his defense.
“That’s enough, Patrick,” Aanestad said, taking Cutter by the arm and leading him from the room.
A few minutes before 5 P.M., Walt parked in his designated space in front of the Sheriff’s Office. The officer on duty told him Myra was waiting in his office. He found her reading the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association magazine.
“What’s up?” he asked, hurrying over to give her a kiss. “Is Kev all right?”
“Better,” she said. “They may release him tomorrow.”
He sat down behind his desk and checked his e-mail. Too many to deal with. A stack of phone messages. And yet it felt uncommonly good to be back in the office.
“You look like hell.”
“I’m okay,” he told her.
“Are you eating?” With Myra it was always food.
“I’m good.” He looked up, and she looked down, avoiding eye contact. “ Myra?”
“Kev lied to you.”
“I know.”
She seemed both relieved and surprised. Her face brightened.
“He’s in with a bad kid,” he said. “This isn’t like him… We both know that.”
“How much trouble is he in?”
“Enough,” he answered honestly.
“I gave him the what-for. Told him we can’t keep using his father’s death as an excuse for our screwups. I’ve done it as much as him, Walt.”
“We’re all guilty of that,” Walt said. “Why is it we’re so willing to lean back, instead of press forward?”
“Fear. Of the unknown. Of the known. Of tomorrow. Of failure.” She worked herself up toward a cry, broken by Walt’s tossing her a box of tissues, which brought a laugh.
“So that’s a good thing,” he said. “To get through that, I mean. I hope it’s contagious.”
“We had a good cry, the two of us. That hasn’t really happened since Bobby.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“He wants to talk to you.” The way she said it, her eyes unflinching, he knew this was the real reason she’d come. She closed the magazine and set it aside.
“Okay.”
“No, I mean now, Walt. You need to hear this.”
“It can wait. If he’s getting out tomorrow-”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Exasperated, he held himself back from saying something stupid, something he’d regret. But his face belied him.
“I probably should have called you,” she said. “Caught you on the way down valley. I know how busy you must be. But I wanted to look you in the eye. I want you to understand how important this is. Not for Kevin-I don’t mean that. For you. Your job. He wouldn’t tell me what it is, but a mother knows. Right? Something happened in that laundry-that’s all I got out of him. Something he won’t talk to me about.”
“I’ll be heading up valley later on. The conference is in full swing.”
“You’ve got to go now, Walt.”
“ Myra…” he pleaded.
“He won’t tell me, only you. Please. Please do this. He’s your nephew.”
He had some choice words on the tip of his tongue. He looked at her and nodded. He said, “But we’re stopping by your place on the way and you’re making me a banana and mayonnaise sandwich.”
“Deal,” she said brightly. And with that, tears rolled from her tired eyes.
K evin didn’t look as if he’d be going home the next day. If anything he looked worse than earlier in the day: the bruising around his shattered eye socket had spread beyond the bandages and was a horrid orange. His one supposedly “good” eye was pooled with blood beneath the cornea, the iris barely discernible.
“You look like shit,” Walt said, taking the seat by the side of the bed.
Kevin winced as he stretched the stitches at the edge of his lips into a grin. “Yeah,” he said.
“Your mom said-”
“Yeah,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry for what happened.”
“Me, too. I hear you want to change your story.”
“If I can.”
“Of course you can, Kev. The truth is always a good place to start. You might want to remember that.”
“There was a guy,” Kevin said.
“A guy,” Walt repeated after a protracted silence.
“In the laundry. When we got there. Up there by the register dressed like a ninja. Scared the hell out of us.”
“A ninja?”
“You know, a ski mask. Black clothes. Over in the bags of laundry.”
“A worker? A ski mask? Didn’t you say the alarm went off when you kicked in the door?”
“It beeped and went off. Yeah.”
There’d been no report of a manager or employee being inside the laundry at the time. “What was the guy doing?”
“Scaring the shit out of us.”
Walt suppressed a grin, then sobered to what he was hearing. “Eric went for the window because of this guy.”
“Yeah.” Kevin sounded regretful.
“You were, or were not, trying to steal clothes?” Walt pressed.
“Dry cleaners use a solvent…,” Kevin said softly.
“Meth,” Walt said, closing his eyes tightly. “For cooking meth.”
Kevin let out a slow, ragged breath. “Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Crab.”
“Taylor Crabtree. He put you up to this?”
“Yeah. Said if we were caught, on account we don’t have records, criminal records, we’d get off a lot easier than him.”
Walt fought valiantly to control his temper. “And this other guy-your age, or what?”
“Didn’t seem like it.”
Walt found himself hung up on the alarm having sounded with someone else already inside. “Give me a minute.”
He stepped into the hall to use his cell phone and called Trident Security, the valley’s only security firm. He identified himself and asked to pull up the entry log for the Suds Tub on the previous night, marveling at how quickly he was provided the information.
“There was a log-on at six-forty P.M.,” he was told. “Log-out at one-oh-seven A.M. Another log-on, one-oh-eight. We received an alarm at one-nineteen; called the establishment at one-nineteen, and passed it on to KPD at one-twenty-one A.M.”
Walt clarified that a log-on meant logging on to the security system, an act that would suggest someone leaving the laundry, and that a logoff implied a return.
“Yes, sir. Once we caught that alarm, we called the client in case it was a false. Owner’s supposed to pick up and give us a password. That didn’t happen. No one picked up, so we dispatched KPD.”
Walt asked for a hard copy to be faxed to him. He thanked the guy and hung up, and returned to Kevin. The obvious explanation was an owner or employee-someone who knew the access code. But part of Kevin’s story didn’t add up.
“A ski mask over his head? You’re sure about that? It was dark, right?” This was not the description of an employee hitting the cash register.
“I saw him. He helped Eric. Put Eric’s fingers on his neck to stop the bleeding.”
“The ninja helped Eric?” Walt felt confused.
“You said he saved his life.”
“The doctor said that,” Walt corrected. “He helped Eric?”
“And then, when he turned toward me…” Kevin’s face bunched and Walt could see it was painful. “And I…I just ran.”
Walt helped him to sit. The boy blew his nose and sipped some water through a straw.
“You did the right thing telling me, Kev. We’re going to work this out.”
“I fucked up. I’m so sorry.”
“Couple of things,” Walt said. “One, you’ve got to clean up your language. Two, you say nothing to Eric and, above all, nothing to Crabtree about any of this. I don’t want you talking to these guys. Not a word. Do we understand each other?”
“I got it.”
A nurse cleared her throat. She stood inside the door. Walt had no idea how long she’d been there.
“Need to change a dressing, Sheriff,” she said.
Walt nodded. Kevin reached out and grabbed Walt’s arm. “Can you stay while she does this? It kinda hurts.”
“Sure,” Walt said. He held Kevin’s clenched fist as the nurse removed the bloodied bandage and replaced it with a new one. That side of his face had taken a beating.
“The doctor’s going to come look at this,” the nurse informed the patient. “He may want to take one or two more stitches.” Among the bandages and disinfectant, Walt noticed the sealed needles and suture.
“That’s some small suture,” Walt said to the nurse.
“Five-zero. Very small. Used for face, eyes, ears, nose.”
“You mind?” Walt said, letting go of Kevin’s hand.
She passed him one of the sealed plastic bags. It contained a slightly curved needle and a coil of very fine suture. Walt thought back to the contents of the carry-on bag found at the airport. “This is point-zero-zero-five,” he said, just to clarify.
“We call it five-zero, yes,” she said, “five one-thousandths of an inch.”
“What about three? Plain old three? Just the number three?”
“As suture? Number three suture?” She sounded surprised. “Not in people. Vets, maybe-big-animal work. There’s a joke when you’re studying this stuff: Number five suture is used for towing cars. That’s the joke,” she said, when Walt failed to smile.
“I’ve got to make another call,” Walt said.
“I understand,” Kevin said.
“Remember what we talked about.”
“I’ve got it.”
He left at close to a run. His first call was to Fiona. He asked to see any crime-scene photos of Suds Tub.
“And I was wondering if you could get copies of the contents of that carry-on bag to Mark Aker. I realize it’s a Saturday. I could have a deputy-”
“It’s no problem, Walt. I’ll meet you there.”
W alt didn’t bother to call ahead to the vet’s to check if Mark was in. Given the break-in and the now countywide effort to retrieve the missing pets, Mark wasn’t going anywhere.
Walt entered Aker’s vet clinic with his cell phone glued to his ear. Both of the Cutter brothers’ passports had been delivered to his office. Dr. McClure was consulting an optometrist to verify the prescription of the contact lens found in Cutter’s Land Cruiser.
Fiona entered only minutes behind him. “Got them,” she declared, holding up an envelope.
The receptionist indicated a door below the sign marked DOGS.
Mark Aker needed sleep and his beard held cracker crumbs.
Walt spread the photos out on the counter, as he said, “Suture, needles, bandaging, hypodermic needles. What’s that add up to?”
Aker studied the photos. “Closing an incision.”
“Anesthesia, or some kind of painkiller-is any of that missing from your meds closet?”
“We won’t know for at least a couple days,” Aker answered. “We’re still missing nine dogs, seventeen cats, and a handful of house pets including a pair of Peruvian rabbits, confiscated by Fish and Game. Of those nine dogs, two are my own-Search and Rescue training. Ten, fifteen thousand each. One I’d sold already.”
Walt tapped the enlargement of the packaged suture in the photographs. “Number three suture,” he said. “Not three-zero. Just plain three.” He looked to Aker for some kind of reaction.
“Number three is strictly large animal,” Aker said. “Horse, or cow, or sheep. Rarely used, even around here.”
“Not people,” Walt said. “That’s what a nurse told me at the hospital.”
“No. Never.”
“When I first saw this bag and its contents I was thinking: an assassin’s first aid kit. But now, I don’t know what to think.”
“Maybe some vet lost it,” Fiona suggested. “Left it on the flight.”
Aker rearranged the photographs.
Walt could feel him trying to make sense of it.
“You still could be right,” Aker said. “It’s a stretch, but if you take all these collectively, they could be to close a human wound. The large suture simply means it’s not going to reopen.”
“Exactly.”
“And you’re right about the anesthesia and/or pain meds. With those this makes a fine kit.”
“A mobile emergency room,” Walt said.
“I wouldn’t go that far, Walt. It’s a field kit, not first aid.” Again, he studied the photographs. “There is one other possibility…” He took a moment to collect the same instruments and he laid them out on the stainless steel along with several packets of suture. They looked like a particularly horrific place setting. He nodded to himself and said, “Throw in a very sharp knife or scalpel…” Now he met eyes with Walt. “And you have everything you need for minor surgery.”
T revalian understood the endgame. These final hours of preparation-much of it mental-were for him like an athlete’s last night before the competition. Time slowed, but he didn’t fight it. He used what felt like extra hours to double-check the plan and prepare for his escape. Extra clothes, sleeping bag, water bottles, handheld GPS, hunting knife, dry foods. He was ready for the backcountry.
He anticipated the valley’s only road-Highway 75-would be roadblocked both south and north. The airport would be closed. For these reasons he had packed for the wilderness, his supplies already in the trunk of the rental.
From Meisner’s room he dialed an 800 number and a woman answered. “Steel Birds Excursions. This is Laura. How can I help you?”
“It’s Ralph Lewis,” Trevalian said, “Mr. Bloggett’s assistant.”
“Oh, yes. Hello.”
“I’m reconfirming Mr. Bloggett’s pickup. He’ll have been in the backcountry a week, and I know he’ll be looking forward to seeing you all.”
She recited the time and the coordinates: 8 P.M. Sunday evening. 43° 44' 27.04" N by 114° 10' 18.27" W. Trevalian had the location memorized and approved it.
“Eight A.M. Monday morning if weather prevents.”
“And every twelve hours thereafter,” he said.
“That’s correct.”
He thanked her and hung up the call.
Typically unruffled, Trevalian jolted with surprise at the sound of a knock-not from the door, but from behind him. He turned to see a woman’s shapely form out on the balcony. Although he’d pulled his privacy drapes, he had no doubt she could identify him as well as he could identify her: Lilly, the jazz singer.
He wanted to hide. He wanted to pull the blackout drapes, and he chastised himself for not having done so earlier. The back balcony was shared by a dozen rooms and overlooked the outdoor skating rink.
She knocked again. “Please?”
He didn’t need attention drawn to the room. Who knew how many of the people gathered for an early dinner three stories below might hear her? He could make this quick. He parted the gauze curtains, unlocked the sliding door.
“Hello,” she said.
She’d done well with the makeup. He saw no bruises or cuts, and though she looked tired, there was no self-pity in her face.
“I’m sorry, but I’m busy, Lilly.”
She did not take this well.
“Sorry to hear about your…ordeal.”
“Please? May I come in, just for a minute?”
“Tomorrow would be better,” he said.
“Checking out, are you?” Sarcastic. Nasty.
“No…”
“How could you be so spineless?” She pushed past him.
Sympathy was not in his emotional range. She’d come to the wrong place. He slid the door shut behind her.
“All I needed was a description,” she complained, now patrolling the room slowly, her back to him. “And don’t tell me you didn’t see him,” she added accusingly.
“I was looking at you,” he lied. “I would have helped if I could have. Now…at the moment I’m busy.”
“Oh, I can see that,” she snapped. “Did he buy you off?”
“What?” he fired back indignantly.
“Anything for the right price?” she asked.
“I helped you,” he protested. “I took a chance doing that. I had no idea what I was getting into at the time-other than I’d seen you on stage, and I liked your voice.” He hoped flattery would calm her long enough to get her out the door.
“I’m singing here again tonight.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
She shrugged, and caught his reflection in the desk mirror, making sure he was still watching her. “He hit me,” she said. “He touched me inappropriately.”
“I’m sorry.”
“All I wanted was to make sure he was never coming back. Too much to ask?”
“If we could deal with this tomorrow?”
“What’s so damn pressing, Mr. Meisner? That’s right: I know your name. So sue me. I want an explanation. You seemed so nice. All they needed was a physical description.”
“I think you should go now.”
“What? You’re going to call security or something?”
“Or something,” he said. He wanted to tell her to stop wandering around the room. This, above all else, worked devilishly against his nerves.
“I just don’t understand it,” she whined. “How difficult is it?” She stopped at the connecting door to Nagler’s room.
He focused on the dead bolt: unlocked. The door connecting was ever-so-slightly ajar. He watched as her fingers slipped into the opening and pulled. “You didn’t tell me you had a suite,” she said.
He moved to shut the door-to cut her off. But she was already in.
“A dog?” she asked. “Whose room is this?” She turned around, looking bewildered. When their eyes met, hers were filled with fright.
“What’s going on here? Who are you?”
“Lilly,” he said. “Oh, Lilly,” the weight of disappointment and betrayal impossible to miss.
N ear closing time, Walt caught up to his father at the Sawtooth Club, a Main Street restaurant and bar in Ketchum that serviced a more subdued clientele than the two rock clubs a few doors down. The ground-floor bar was open to a surround balcony for upstairs dining. A canoe hung where a chandelier belonged. The wait staff was women and men in shorts and T-shirts.
Jerry was at the bar making love to a glass of Scotch. Walt had been summoned here. He told himself to maintain his cool. Seeing his father drunk didn’t help matters. He persuaded Jerry onto a couch between two silk ficus trees, where he hoped there was less chance of being overheard.
“You shouldn’t have used the split tail, son.” His father sounded quite sober, despite his looks. “When you want something done right, always do it yourself.”
“Split tail?”
“This photographer of yours.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Such a detective. You coulda been, you know? A detective. More’s the pity.”
Walt stood. “I’m in the middle of a lot of things right now. If you’re looking for a whipping boy-”
“Sit down.”
Walt hesitated. The door was only a few feet away.
“Sit…down!”
Walt returned to the couch, regretting his cooperating.
“The trouble with the truth is that some people just don’t want to hear it.”
“You’re drunk and I’m tired. Maybe another time.”
“Your girlie girl took the Salt Lake photos to Shaler.”
Walt felt himself swallow dryly. “Who? Fiona?”
“Dryer caught her, and is, of course, convinced you were behind it.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Cutter’s told Dryer not to let you anywhere near her before the talk.”
“You must be thrilled,” Walt said.
He glowered.
“No worries. He can’t roadblock me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Dryer can play the federal card. Couple phone calls and the local guy is out of it. That’s you.”
Walt mulled over his options. “I don’t have much of a role anyway. We secure transportation routes. That’s about it. It’s up to Dryer and Dick O’Brien after that. They’re the ones that have to keep her safe once inside.”
“But if you’re right about this shooter…”
“I am right,” Walt said. “The guy is here, Dad. No doubt about it. He’s here and he means to fulfill that contract.”
“So how do I help?”
“What?” He made no attempt to mask his astonishment.
“Let’s just say, hypothetically, I was going to help you…I have six men with me. That’s not insubstantial. My men will be on the inside. You may not be.”
“Are you playing me?” Walt asked, bewildered. He glanced around the bar and up into the restaurant. “What’s going on?”
“Focus, son,” his father said, motioning to his own bloodshot eyes. “What can my guys do on the inside tomorrow? What are we looking for?”
“You do believe me,” Walt nearly said aloud. Instead, he reached over and sucked down some of his father’s Scotch. Jerry raised his hand and signaled a waitress for two drinks.
“If she goes down on your watch, son, you not only won’t be reelected, you’ll lose any shot at corporate work, private work. Any kind of work. You’ll be blackballed the rest of your life.”
“And it’ll be a stain on the family name,” Walt said bitterly. “Like Bobby.”
Jerry stiffened. “That’s not what this is about.”
“You did such a good job with that one,” Walt said.
“Fuck you. I’m offering to help,” Jerry said.
Walt caught sight of the waitress heading back with the two Scotches. It all felt too cozy. He stood before the drinks arrived and threw a five-dollar bill down on the table. It landed in a ring of water left from the Scotch glass. Jerry went back to consulting his ice.
Walt moved toward the door, reluctantly at first, wondering if he was making a terrible mistake.