Warren Murphy: Timber Line

Remo nodded and ran past the building, across the hundred yards of snow. He found the spot where he had been standing, where the sound had seemed the loudest. Now there was only a faint whistle coming from below his feet somewhere.

Remo reached down into a snowdrift and found it — a battery-operated cassette tape player, whistling now with the signal that it had reached the end of the tape.

Remo pressed a button on the wet machine to run the tape back a few feet. Then he pressed the play button and the hissing, whispering voice sounded over again.

"Remo... Remo... Remo..."

He turned off the machine angrily. Someone had planted this out here to get Remo out of the A-frame, so that it could be blown up without his interference, and an anger overwhelmed him that he had been used as a pawn, a dupe by someone.

Whoever that someone was would pay.

There was nothing left in the A-frame to salvage, so Pierre LaRue had brought in a bulldozer to level the wreckage of the building and then bury it in snow.

Roger Stacy had told Joey to move into Oscar Brack's log cabin and had helped wipe it clean of its more odious bloodstains.

Remo told Stacy to double his guard on the copa-iba tree farm. "Make sure they have guns and make sure they know how to use them," Remo said. "Tell them to shoot anything that moves."

Stacy nodded. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to sleep," Remo said.

Finally, he and Chiun and Joey were in the log cabin. LaRue had left after burying the A-frame next door. Stacy had gone back to the main camp.

Joey had built a good, roaring fire. Chiun's sleeping mat was unrolled on the floor in a corner, and he was sleeping.

Joey and Remo sat in front of the fire.

"Poor Oscar," she said.

"He was trying to save your life."

"So many deaths," she said.

Remo nodded.

"And more to come," he said coldly. "More to come." Idly, he pressed the buttons on the tape recorder he had found in the snow.

It was afternoon. Remo had spent much of the day wandering through the woods where they had found Oscar Brack, where he had found the buried tape recorder, looking for something, anything, that would indicate who was behind the violence.

But he found nothing.

Who was behind the violence? He didn't know. And if the trees were the target, why not just have burned them down? Why kill? Why kill Danny O'Farrell, Joey's fiance? Why kill Oscar Brack? Why try to kill Joey Webb?

Maybe the trees could be replaced too easily for burning them down to mean anything. But perhaps the brains at work trying to make the copa-ibas an alternate source of oil for America, perhaps those brains were not easily replaceable. Maybe that was the reason for the murders and the attempts on Joey.

But who? Who had used the tape recorder to lure him from the A-frame last night before putting it to the torch?

Who had killed Danny O'Farrell and Brack?

Last night, when the A-frame went ablaze, Pierre LaRue had said instantly that it was the work of the Mountain Highs. After all they had tried to set the forest ablaze earlier in the night. But, Remo felt, somehow killing would not be their style. And who was to say that it wasn't LaRue or Roger Stacy who were behind the killings?

So many questions and so few answers.

Remo walked back to Alpha Camp. He decided he had to start somewhere, and the Mountain Highs were as good a place as anywhere else.

He reached the log cabin just as Joey and Chiun were stepping outside.

"We're going to look at the copa-ibas," she said. "Chiun has an idea."

Remo leaned close and whispered, "He has an idea that this is a Korean tree that you people stole from his country. Be careful."

Joey just nodded and smiled. "There was a phone call for you," she said.

"Who?"

"No message. But it sounded like... well, like Dr. Smith."

"Thanks," Remo said. "Do you know where the Mountain Highs camp out?"

Joey pointed to the direction of the main road and told him he could find their camp about three miles from the main office of Tulsa Torrent.

"You going there?" she said.

"Maybe," said Remo. "Have to start looking somewhere."

"Be careful," she said.

"I'm always careful."

It wasn't really a town. It was just a small widening in the road as it passed through the California hills, and there was a gas station and a small grocery store. Behind these roadside structures a few hundred yards down the road, Remo could see the tents that belonged to the Mountain High Society.

He stopped in at the grocery store and dialed Smith's 800 area-code number.

Smith picked up the telephone in his darkened office at Folcroft Sanitarium.

"You called?" Remo said.

"Have you found out anything?"

"Nothing yet," Remo said.

"I heard of the trouble last night."

"Yeah," Remo said. "We've had nothing but trouble. Joey's all right, though."

"She is no more important than anyone else involved in this matter," Smith said sternly. "Do not let personal considerations..."

"You're a cold-assed fish," Remo said. "You helped raise the kid."

"I know," Smith said.

There was an awkward pause and Remo said, "Have you found out who those two guys were who tried to burn down the copa-ibas last night?"

"No," Smith said. "No information has been received yet in Washington."

"Damn local police," Remo said. "They were supposed to get the prints out right away, to try to identify them."

"I will keep my eyes open," Smith said. "Anything else?"

"Yes," Remo said. "A tape recorder. You think you could trace it from a serial number?"

"Perhaps. What is the number?"

Remo read him a long nine-digit number, written on the back of a matchbook.

"Whoever owns that recorder is involved," Remo said.

"I will try to run it down," Smith said. "Anything else you need?"

"You might run the Mountain High Society through your computers. I don't know if they're involved or not, but they're certainly all over this joint."

"Fine," Smith said. "I'll check."

"Oh, and one last thing," Remo said.

"What is that?"

"Smile. Remember this is the first day of the rest of your life."

"I'll keep that in mind," Smith said as he hung up.

For a gang of a hundred, the Mountain Highs had a small encampment, Remo thought as he approached it on foot.

There was a large trailer home set in back of the clearing. Scattered around the grounds in front of it were a half-dozen high-walled tents, which could sleep no more than four each.

Remo remembered all the designer jeans and snow-suits he had seen last night at the protest rally and decided that the majority of the Mountain Highs had chosen to forego the wilderness and sleep in hotel rooms in the nearby town. But he was interested in only one of them.

He found her sitting in the trailer, on a sofa, drinking a martini with olives. Music played from a large wall-hung stereo. Through the back windows of the trailer, the sun was turning orange as it moved down toward the horizon.

She looked up as Remo came through the front door without bothering to knock. When she saw who it was, she smiled.

"I was expecting you," she said.

"I know," said Remo. He watched as Cicely Winston-Alright stood and stretched herself. She was wearing a tight T-shirt and skin-tight slacks.

She showed him a lot of teeth in a milk-white face. "Can I give you something? Anything?"

"Everything," Remo said and waited for her to put down her martini glass, before lifting her in his arms and carrying her over to the waiting bed.

There were thirty-seven steps in bringing a woman to total sexual ecstasy, and Remo had learned them many years before, back when he had been normal and sex had been a pleasure and not just another technique to learn perfectly or face Chiun's wrath.