Ridley Pearson - Killer View

“Were you thinking about telling me about Kira?”

The boy had tipped. He was bursting to tell all. Wished for a quiet room, other circumstances. But Crabtree looked at the cruiser again and the light went out of his eyes. He fumbled for a cigarette. The moment had passed.

“There are a couple things that need to happen now,” Walt said.

“I promise you, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do shit to her, Sheriff.”

“You don’t have to go down for this. But I need more. Did she say anything to you? A name, maybe?”

Crabtree tightened. He took a long drag off the cigarette, and the smoke disappeared inside him. “You look scared, Taylor. Real scared. Of me? Of the possibility of prison? Or something else?”

It took Crabtree a long time to speak. “Something else.”

“A rape conviction puts you in the sex offender database. It’ll follow you the rest of your life. People will put posters up on telephone poles near your house. They’ll cross the street to avoid you.”

Crabtree twitched at the mention of rape, his eyes narrowing: he hadn’t known. A weight lifted from Walt. A smile slipped across his face, but he wiped it off with the back of his hand.

“Blah, blah, blah.” Crabtree glanced around again, either afraid to make eye contact with Walt or plotting an escape.

“Don’t try it,” Walt said.

“What?”

“Whatever it is you’re planning.”

“Are we going to do this or not?” He held out his hands to be cuffed.

“Work with me, Taylor.”

Crabtree looked Walt squarely in the eye. “Fuck you and your posters.”

“Please,” Walt pleaded.

“Do what you gotta do,” said Crabtree.

THE TERRAIN ROSE UP THROUGH THE TANGLED FOREST, THE dark bark of the trees like burnt offerings against the sparkling, sun-dappled snow. A snowmobile whined as it followed a game trail, its motor straining, its tread spewing ice and elk scat in its wake. The irritating sound grew fainter as it was swallowed by the landscape.

Along that same route stood a majestic fir tree, battle-scarred from a lightning strike forty years earlier. It was split from the first long-dead limb to its four-foot-diameter base. While half the tree had died as a result of the strike, new growth extended up the other half, with gnarly, tightly grouped branches, scarred with veins of charcoal, running like arrows toward the sky. The split gave the trunk a charred, inverted V shape that, at its base, looked like a door to a teepee. It was just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, which was exactly what Mark Aker had done hours earlier. He’d done so without leaving the game path, without causing any prints or impressions that might reveal his hiding place.

Forcing his way through the split in the tree, he’d fallen into the cavity, two feet below the snow’s surface, and onto a bed of leaves. Aker had burrowed down into the leaves, using them as both insulation and camouflage. He passed the coldest hours of the night drifting in and out of sleep, knees to the chest. The buzz of the snowmobile woke him, steadily approaching like a nagging insect. As it tore past his hiding place, he realized that at least for now he was safe. And, though he was regaining strength, if he hoped to save his feet from frostbite, he would have to get moving soon. At some point, he’d have to leave the game trail for deeper snow, even though it would create a path for his captors to follow.

He waited over forty-five minutes for the return of the snowmobile, sunlight blazing on the very tips of the trees he could partially see through. Coats had stripped him of his watch, but he was guessing it was late morning or early afternoon. The horrid machine came back more slowly than it had gone out, Gearbox no doubt at the controls and paying closer attention, attempting to track him. Aker hoped he’d done his job well enough; and when the snowmobile’s whine grew faint, he allowed himself to relax and plan his next move.

WALT WAS REELING WITH REGRET WHEN HE TURNED CRABTREE over to booking. The kid was eighteen now; Walt could no longer protect his record.

He ate a muffin to settle his stomach, but the lukewarm coffee chaser only added to his discomfort. Among his many phone messages were several he found impossible to ignore: a pair from Congressman McMillian, inquiring about Walt’s participation in the national law enforcement conference, and another from James Peavy. He couldn’t ignore them. He was an elected official; he needed both the support of his party and his party leadership, especially given that it was an election year.

“McMillian first?” Nancy asked him.

“Let’s hold off on that. Any word from the people out at the INL?” The possibility of radioactive water had led Walt to the obvious call: the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory, a facility covering nine hundred square miles in the center of the state and containing over thirty active or retired reactors.

“I’ve called a couple different people out there. They’ve all refused appointments. They were polite enough about it. But I get the feeling it’s not going to happen.”

“Okay, one more time: get me the director out there.”

“Now?”

“Now.” Walt stood there while Nancy made the call. She was put on hold several times before she eventually thanked someone and hung up. “Unavailable. He’ll return the call when he’s free.”

Walt considered the situation. The smart move would have been for them to take the meetings and calls and issue a string of denials. By refusing him, it implied they needed time to coordinate their denials, and that seemed to him the most advantageous time to strike. “Get hold of Fiona. Find out if she’s available for me later today. It may involve night photography, so tell her to bring the appropriate gear, and tell her to dress warmly.”

“Should I contact the Butte County sheriff and let him know you’re coming?”

“No. Call over to Sun Valley Aviation and see if you can get me a time for a tow.”

Nancy looked up at him quizzically. “The glider?”

Walt smiled for the first time all day.

WALT AND THE PILOT of the towplane coordinated the release of the glider. As the Cessna banked slowly to the right, diving below and away, Walt piloted the glider higher and slightly left.

“It’s noisier than I’d imagined,” Fiona said from behind him.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “I told you: I have no problem with small planes.” Walt had flown gliders since his early twenties, his interest born out of an envy of eagles and hawks and a budget that couldn’t afford renting single-engine airtime.

The glider suddenly caught an updraft off the base of the hills and gained a hundred feet in a matter of seconds, leaving both their stomachs somewhere up on the Plexiglas cockpit cover.

“Still okay?” Walt asked.

“I’m getting used to it.”

He saw the towplane now. It had come fully around, on a line with the Arco airstrip about twenty miles ahead. As arranged, rather than returning to Hailey, it would wait in Arco for them.

“Are we high enough?” Fiona shouted, to be heard over the roar created by wind over the wings. There was no motor, just the rush of the glider slicing through the sky.

“I’m working on it.”

Walt worked the glider into a wide spiral, climbing into an azure sky, carried aloft by thermals generated by the mountain landmass below. Killer view, Walt thought. To their right, the vast central plain of Idaho stretched out like a lake of desert sand, interrupted occasionally by volcanic cones dormant some ten thousand years. So random were these buttes, they appeared artificially placed. They saw bunkerlike buildings surrounded by tangles of pipes and aprons of parking lot. So secret was the work done here, so important to national security, that the entire area was grayed out on Internet-accessed satellite maps. Not even the topography was properly mapped-and it was the terrain and topography that most interested Walt.