Ridley Pearson - Killer View

“Yeah… Okay.” Walt looked into the curiously sad eyes of his children, who understood his tone of voice well enough to know what this call meant to them. “I’ll be right there,” he said into the phone, trying to think of some new way to say what he’d said to his kids too many times before.

INVESTIGATIONS COULD spiral out of control. Walt did his best to keep things simple. But the more threads that were added, the more tangled they became. Randy Aker had been darted and had died, possibly because he was mistaken for Mark. Mark had run away, been found, and then abducted. A test tube had been left on his own back porch-a water sample that tested positive for low-level radiation. A CDC investigation had looked into Danny Cutter’s bottled-water company. Now, after two years of being clean, Danny Cutter was embroiled in a drug bust.

And, in the middle of it all, he’d been invited to a conference twenty-five hundred miles away.

Walt found himself giving Danny the benefit of the doubt as he approached room 223, on the second floor of the lodge. The plush carpet absorbed his footfalls. Framed black-and-white photographs of Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Clint Eastwood lined both walls.

Sight of the celebrity photographs reminded him of the two worlds he served: the obscenely affluent residents of Ketchum/Sun Valley and the locals that provided services for them. It was a medieval caste system with him in the middle, keeping the peace. The Sun Valley Lodge was the castle.

He knocked and a moment later was admitted. Danny Cutter lay on his back on a love seat, a pillow under his head, his eyes shut. There was a white smudge on his upper lip; his hair was a mess. He wore blue jeans, penny loafers, and a maroon cashmere sweater. Webb showed Walt the tape job under the sink. The baggie was thick with a white substance.

“Heroin?” Walt suggested.

“But taped under the sink? What is this, the Rockford Files?”

“Christ,” Walt said, taking in the room once again. “Happy hour downstairs?”

“Yeah. Macaroni’s playing.” He meant Joe Macarillo’s jazz trio.

“You called Sun Valley?” Walt asked.

“Be here any minute.”

“How much did you tell them?” Walt found himself considering tampering with the evidence, and, having never done anything close to that in his years in law enforcement, he wondered what motivated him. He owed Danny Cutter nothing; he’d given the man a number of breaks.

“I told them I had a guest needed medical attention, that maybe drugs were involved. They’ll be careful about it. Won’t make a big scene.”

“I can’t remove those drugs,” Walt stated, “even if I wanted to.”

“No one said you should.”

Walt met eyes with Webb and stared. And stared. Having not touched his phone, Walt said, “My cell’s got shitty reception in here. I’m going to try the hallway.” He did not break the eye contact. “You’ve helped out guests before, yeah? Covered up an infidelity or two, I would imagine.”

“That’s obstruction,” Webb said, glancing into the bathroom.

Walt said nothing, still staring.

“I had a call girl describe a scene to me one time,” Webb said. “This was in Portland, back when I was on the job. She and her pimp would Mickey a prospective john, get him up to the room, and lift his wallet. While the pimp hit the ATM, the girl pinched the john’s nose and covered his mouth until he was damn-near suffocated. Then she put a deep spoon of coke to his nose and released her fingers. John gasps for air and takes down a huge hit of coke. He’s now going to test positive if he involves the police. Not one of those guys ever fingered her or the pimp. They had a nice little thing going and it just kept on going.”

“So, in case we miss the smudge on his nose, they give us the ounce beneath the sink.”

“I don’t know. That’s an expensive way to do things. Why not a dime bag?”

“Because it’s got to stick. It’s got to be something we can’t ignore. And it’s got to look big-the way Danny Cutter does everything.”

“What if they covered themselves? What if there’s video and we’ve got it wrong?”

“That could do us some serious damage,” Walt agreed.

“Cameras these days-the size of a shirt button.”

“Yeah.”

“His prints are going to be on the bag,” Webb said.

“Yup.”

“He’ll go down for it.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” Walt said.

“And we’re supposed to just stand here and let it happen?”

Walt shrugged. “We could be completely wrong.”

“But we aren’t.” Webb leaned his head in the bathroom. “Thing of it is, when this door’s shut and the light’s off in there, no camera’s going to pick up anything.” He paused. “I thought you had a call to make.”

“I can’t back you up on this,” Walt warned.

“I’m a big boy. Go make your call.”

“Remember, Chuck: if this comes out that Danny’s culpable, he goes away for it, so don’t get your prints on that bag. You hear? And keep it somewhere handy. I may need it.”

“Hurry,” Webb said. “Before I lose my nerve.”

ROY COATS CAME THROUGH THE DOOR OF THE CABIN, LOOKING like Bigfoot. He was wrapped in layers of frost-coated clothing, his beard and mustache were white with globs of snotty ice, his face wind-burned from what had to have been a long snowmobile ride.

“Nice trip?” Mark Aker asked.

“Have you finished your paper?” Coats hung various pieces of clothing on wall hooks and the backs of chairs, in a semicircle around the woodstove. The Samakinn member who had delivered the insulin and stayed to watch Aker-Coats had called him Gearbox-he began dressing for outside. With the return of Coats, Gearbox was assigned perimeter patrol.

“Haven’t started it,” Mark Aker replied. “If it’s to be credible it has to be scientific. That takes time.”

Gearbox took off. Coats installed himself on a footstool in front of Aker, his left elbow up on the room’s only table.

“You’re stalling,” Coats said. “You’ve got all the insulin you need. We brought everything in from your cabin with us, so you’ve got your papers. Don’t push your luck, Doc.”

“They’re searching for me by now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

There was something about his confidence. Aker studied him carefully. “You have contacts in the sheriff’s office?” He waited for even the faintest of signs. “Challis?” He sighed. “So it’s Challis, is it?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Coats reminded.

“Didn’t have to. Your heartbeat gave you away. Your interior jugular vein. It runs continuous with the sigmoid sinus. A barometer to the soul, and your soul was disturbed when I mentioned the Challis sheriff’s office. So that much we both know: you’ve got an insider with Challis. And perhaps they might have ways of knowing what Custer or Lemhi County is up to. But do you think they could possibly know what Blaine is up to? Walt Fleming has trained with the FBI. Did you know that? His father invented the first SWAT team ever. You think he’s going to let Custer or Lemhi know what he’s doing? You think? Seriously? You know the toys he’s got available to him, all that money down in Blaine? Have you been listening for flyovers, Roy? Your boy out there on patrol-what kind of a heat signature does he throw off when he’s out there? How about this cabin? Your snowmobiles? You think Walt Fleming’s working with satellite images? I do. How long do you think you can keep this up?”

Coats turned, ostensibly to adjust his jacket on the back of a ladder-back chair, to help speed up drying. More than anything, he didn’t want Aker reading him like that. Not only did it creep him out, that someone could read his neck, but giving anything away cost him.