Ridley Pearson - Killer Summer

The third book in the Sun Valley series, 2009

For Betsy Dodge Pearson.

Have a Killer Summer, Mom.

Thanks to Christine Pepe, Amy Berkower, Nancy Litzinger, Dan Con-away, Dave Barry, Barge Levy, Steven Garman, Ed Stackler, Creative Edge, Storymill, and Mariner software. Thanks, too, to my family for giving me the time and support. But most of all I want to thank Jerry Femling, who in real life is nothing like the Jerry Fleming of this and other novels in the Killer series. I’ve twisted his character in the name of storytelling, and he’s a good sport to go along with it.

– RIDLEY PEARSON, SHANGHAI, CHINA, 2009

Walt Fleming didn’t want to be in the river. Any free time away from the office should have been spent applying for a loan of a hundred thousand dollars. That, or risk losing his house, and his daughters, to the divorce. But credit was tight, time short, and so there he was, along with his nephew, Kevin, knee-deep in the Big Wood River. The evening outing was a favor to his sister-in-law, Myra, who could guilt-trip along with the best of them.

Kevin, who would turn nineteen in August, glanced over at his uncle, looking away from the fly he was tying on his own line.

“What?” Walt asked, water gurgling past his waders.

He slipped on a pair of sunglasses to protect against flying hooks, and the glare of an evening sun. At eight-thirty P.M., it still shone brightly in the summer sky. Behind Walt, a rock wall rose out of the gurgling and bubbling river water, reaching two thousand feet nearly straight up into the cobalt sky. Dusk would linger well past ten, during which time the best fishing of the day would be had.

“No uniform.”

“Once a sheriff, always a sheriff? You’ve seen me out of uniform plenty of times. Don’t give me that.”

“Not recently.”

“Then obviously we haven’t been spending enough time together,” Walt said. “Which is why we’re here in the first place.”

Kevin remained on the shore, poised as if reluctant to enter the water. A narrow concrete-and-steel bridge crossed fifty feet downstream, carrying the cracked asphalt of Croy Creek Road from downtown Hailey, Idaho, west into rugged terrain. Walt had parked the Jeep Cherokee in a dusty turnout before the bridge. The license plate read BCS-I-Blaine County Sheriff, vehicle 1.

Walt glanced east over Kevin’s head, up the slight rise at the town he called home. With a population of three thousand, Hailey was smaller than its famous neighbors to the north, Ketchum and Sun Valley, but larger than Bellevue to the south. The valley was defined by mountain ranges east and west, shaped into an upside-down V, the mouth of which emptied into a great plain of high desert populated by nothing more than rodents, rattlers, and lava rock.

“You hate fishing,” Kevin said. “You’re all about softball and gliding and your dogs. Besides, that’s a radio, right? A police radio?” He pointed to the handheld clipped to Walt’s fishing vest. “So it’s not exactly like you left the sheriff thing behind.”

“Are you going to fish or not?” Walt said, pricking his finger on the hook as he attempted to knot the fly to the line. He sucked the tip of his finger, tasting blood.

“You’re doing this because Mom told you to.”

“It’s true that I suck at fishing, not true about Myra. We’re here together, and I want to take advantage of that. It’s your call, but if you don’t get in the water, we’re done here.”

“And my job at the lodge? Your idea or Mom’s?”

“That one was all mine, buddy boy. Your mom had nothing to do with it.”

Kevin waded in up to his knees.

Progress, thought Walt.

“How’s that working out, anyway?” Walt asked.

“I’m good with it.”

Walt had thought he might get a thank-you. He’d pulled strings to get Kevin on as a bellboy at the Sun Valley Lodge. Better than working as a fry chef.

They moved downstream in tandem, keeping their distance from each other in order to avoid tangling lines. Walt’s brother, Robert, had taught his son to fly-fish at the ripe old age of eight. Kevin had taken to it like a prodigy. Walt studied Kevin’s technique, hoping some of it might rub off on him. He tried casting his line.

“We’re trying to hook them, not whip them to death,” Kevin said, sounding just like Robert.

“Ha-ha!” Walt replied, a lump in his throat.

“Less wrist.”

Walt stiffened his arm. His second try was an improvement.

“Thanks.”

“No charge.”

Walt’s radio crackled. He and Kevin exchanged a look.

“I’ve got to monitor it. That’s all.”

“Promise?”

Walt bit his tongue. Kevin was asking the impossible, and they both knew it.

Christopher Cantell couldn’t avoid looking at himself in a mirror-any mirror-a window’s reflection, a shiny hubcap. Waiting in the Sun Valley Airport’s parking lot, he was unaware that he’d turned the rearview mirror of the rented Yukon his direction. It wasn’t that he considered himself outrageously handsome. In fact, his attention focused on the flaws: the crow’s-feet framing his dark eyes; the fans at the base of his earlobes, the asymmetrical black eyebrows, the smirk on his thin lips that so many found offensive when it was nothing more than genetics, his father having suffered the same slash mouth. But the habit of looking was a tic, a kind of illness he suffered, that he couldn’t stop, that he hated so much he lived in constant denial of its existence. It wasn’t really him, this vanity. And if not him, then someone else, which implied a case of mild schizophrenia, something more troubling than the vanity itself. The busier he kept, the better: more focused, less self-aware. All his adult life he’d sought out impossible tasks with enormous consequences. Some might call him an everyday thief, but he considered that an insult. He could outsmart the smartest and steal what couldn’t be stolen. He thought of himself more as a magician, making valuable objects, including cash, disappear. The bigger the risk, the better. Anything to keep him from seeing those two faces in the mirror.

The courier wasn’t much to look at either. He had a purple birthmark on his neck that extended beyond the open collar of his green golf shirt. And he looked a little soft, though Cantell wasn’t buying it: couriers with Branson Risk knew their stuff. This guy was certain to put up a fight, if given half a chance. But Cantell’s plan eliminated chance altogether. The courier mustn’t be allowed to place a call or use a pager. Cantell suspected he was carrying two GPS transmitters-one inside his phone or BlackBerry; the other secreted in the oversized black carbon-fiber briefcase in his custody. Cantell watched as the courier slipped behind the wheel of a Ford Taurus. Cantell had expected a bigger rental: an Expedition, Suburban, or Yukon like his, but neither the make nor the size of the car bothered him. His team was well prepared. He’d spent the past two months and a good deal of money planning and scripting the events of the next few days. He liked to make things complicated. Law enforcement couldn’t handle complicated. Theirs was a world of systems, records, and repetition.

He adjusted the rearview mirror-what the hell was it aiming at him for?-to see out the back of the Yukon. He used the Nextel’s direct-connect feature to broadcast his report to the others.

“It’s a metallic-blue Taurus. Leaving now. Idaho plate Victor-alpha-five-seven-two. I’m the black Yukon, pulling up right behind him. Matt?”