Killer View

29

“ARE YOU GOING TO COME INSIDE OR JUST SIT OUT THERE all night?” Walt held the phone pressed to his ear while staring out his front window at Fiona’s Subaru.

During the long silence that followed, Walt could imagine her backing out and driving away, trying to pretend she hadn’t been parked out there for nearly twenty minutes. Nearly two days had passed since the drive to the Pahsimeroi. With Mark Aker still missing, it might as well have been a month for Walt. He battled the fatigue of twenty-one-hour days while trying to maintain a father’s patience for the sake of the girls. He’d put them to bed after twenty minutes of reading, during which he’d fallen asleep, not them. They’d tickled him awake. He told them a bear story and then turned off the light.

He slogged through his daily paperwork and meetings while exhausting every resource in his bid to find Mark Aker alive. Predictably, the Challis-led investigation into Brandon ’s shooting had produced nothing; if Brandon had died up there, with their history, Walt might have been accused of it. Francine Aker had failed to surface. The lab was taking its sweet time, as always.

The car arriving at his house, and just sitting there, had immediately won his attention, the midnight visit to his back porch still kept firmly in mind. But with the Subaru out front identified as Fiona’s, he’d given her a liberal amount of time before calling her.

He heard footsteps approach the front door, and he put away the phone. He greeted her and invited her inside. She stood by the open fire, warming her backside. He studied her body, in silhouette against the fire, his first unhurried appraisal of her. Despite all the time they’d worked together, only now did he really see her narrow hips, athletically lean figure, and the muscular curve of her backside.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For?”

“Sitting out there.”

“No charge for parking.” A pause. He added, “I’m terrible at jokes.”

“The night of the search and rescue-Randy-I was skiing with Roger Hillabrand.”

“I don’t think that’s any of my business.”

“I was flattered. Enchanted, even. No, charmed. I was charmed.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“He sent a guy of his out to deliver a message. This is after the search and rescue. Late, late, I’m talking about.”

“Fiona-”

“No. You’ve got to listen. You’ve got to help me make sense of this.” She turned away to face the fire. “He invited me to some gala event in San Francisco. He was flying private. I was supposed to drop everything and join him.”

“You and I were at the hospital the next day.”

“Exactly. I turned him down.” She moved to her left, standing in profile now, the reflections of the flames bouncing off her chest and below her chin. Her face flashed orange. “So now he tells me he didn’t go. He canceled the trip because I turned him down. At least, that’s what he told me. This, while he’s inviting me to dinner-”

“I still don’t see-”

“Can you just listen?”

The question hurt. Gail accused him of constantly interrupting.

“Please,” she added. A word Gail had seldom used.

“I’m listening,” he said, wishing she would get back in the Subaru and leave him the hell alone.

“He invited me over for tea this afternoon. Tea, just so he could ask me out for dinner. This guy is a very smooth operator.” She turned again. “But not too smooth. He gets a phone call after I’m there less than five minutes. There’s a phone right there in the living room, but, of course, he takes it somewhere else. Leaves me to watch the light on the phone glow for the duration. After fifteen minutes, I ask to be driven home.”

“Driven?”

“He lives halfway up Baldy. His people drive you up from the bottom of the hill. I’ve got all-wheel drive, but they won’t even let me try it. The gate is locked at the bottom. So I tell his guy Sean-Sean Lunn-it’s either he drives me or I walk. And he drives me. What’s interesting is, Sean doesn’t interrupt the boss and tell him I’m leaving. He just drives me down the mountain.”

“And that’s interesting because…?”

She snarled. “Because Roger was going to rip his head off when Roger found out he let me leave.”

“Let you.”

“You know…”

“Maybe not.”

“Are you listening?”

That was another line borrowed from the Gail playbook. He was beginning to wonder if Gail hadn’t sent her here to torture him.

“My role in this is?” he asked.

“Oh, God. I’m sorry.” Her expression moved through embarrassment to a feverish glance at the door. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to… But… The reason I had to see you… I don’t think he’s as interested in me as he is in you.”

“What?”

“My working for you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I wish it were. But I’m not so sure. He and I have so little in common. I admit that. He flirts with me at a wedding I’m shooting. I wanted to think that was for real, but I’m not so sure. He takes me that same night skiing down Baldy-very romantic-but doesn’t make anything like a pass. I have to leave him because you call me up to the search and rescue. He barely objects, and he isn’t surprised when I tell him I work part-time for you. Not surprised at all. And another thing: I got that wedding at the last minute. Who waits to hire a wedding photographer until the day before? Not in this town. Not in any town. Just isn’t done. Sean, his guy, is waiting for me when I get home that night-this is in a snowstorm, don’t forget. Parked outside the fence. Scares the hell out of me, coming up behind on foot. Says he’s there to invite me on the private jet the next morning. Hello? Ever heard of cell phones? You think a guy like Roger Hillabrand can’t get my cell number?”

“Checking up on you, maybe? Hillabrand could have been trying to find out if you ditched him for another guy. Sends his boy to see how many are in your car, how many cars in the drive. It doesn’t spell conspiracy; it spells hormones. You’re pretty. You sparkle. Men go crazy for that.”

Hearing this from him clearly caught her off guard. “Sparkle?” she asked. “Did you say I sparkle?” She stepped closer, laid her hands on his shoulders. “Listen to you!”

Her palms felt warm through his uniform. She smelled of lilac and cinnamon, and, for a moment, she was everything-all he could smell, all he could sense.

A noise from out on the porch surprised them both. He jerked his head in that direction, still skittish from the encounter out back a few nights earlier.

Gail. Her face pressed to the glass and framed by open curtains; her expression that of a voyeur caught in the act. Walt immediately saw the scene from Gail’s point of view: the fire burning. Fiona’s hands on his shoulders, their bodies close. Gail, the most jealous woman he’d ever known. Jealous, no matter what. Almost a matter of pride.

She hurried off the porch. Walt ran to the front door and burst outside, calling her name. The car door thumped shut. Tire rubber whistled on the ice and then gripped. Walt charged up the shoveled path, shouting her name. The car shot back out into the street, fishtailing. He saw only taillights then, as he stood in the middle of the empty street. Still shouting for her to stop.

Since the split, Gail hadn’t come by the house unannounced. Not once. For her to have done so meant… something. His awkward talks with Brandon came to mind. Had Brandon carried the conversation home? Had she wanted to weigh in? Negotiate a truce?

A neighbor, Mrs. Shunt, had ventured out onto her porch to see what all the shouting was about. The sheriff, in full uniform, stood in the street without a jacket, shouting at a departing car. A familiar car. The curtains at the Fridlers’ house moved: the old bird had been spying on him as well. The sheriff’s marital problems were well known, but this was the first time he’d been seen chasing his soon-to-be-ex wife’s car down the street and shouting at her.

Worse, when he turned, there was Fiona at the open front door, partially backlit and actually glowing. Looking radiant. He imagined what Gail must have imagined.

He arrived at the top of the steps, wearing the porch light like a crown, a harsh shadow cast down on him, turning his eye sockets black and hollow. He stood there for a second, wondering if his actions had looked as childish as they now felt. Afraid to go inside with her. Too cold to do anything otherwise.

“That was her?” Fiona asked.

“Yeah.”

“You think she… I mean… we weren’t doing anything.”

The last thing he wanted, the last thing he could handle right then, was a discussion.

Then his mouth betrayed him. “She gave me a lecture about not setting the girls against her. This, despite her bailing on them. When they visit her for a night-a rarity-it’s at a friend’s, never at Brandon ’s. She has this all worked out, as long as it’s her way. And seeing us just now… Oh, boy.”

Fiona approached him. He held up his hands to stop her advance. With the porch light overhead, it felt as if they were both on stage, acting out some melodrama.

Fiona had no intention of embracing him. Instead, with a panicked look on her face, she reached through his defensive pose and grasped the CDC biosensor tag clipped to his uniform’s right chest pocket. She angled it up and into the porch light so that they both could see it.

One wedge of the white hexagon-separated by plastic dividers- was a distinct lavender, on its way to purple.

“You’ve been exposed to something.”

For a moment, Walt couldn’t get past the Gail fiasco. Exposed to the wrath of an ex-wife. But taking notice of the purple triangle, the cold intensified.

Fiona instinctively stepped back.

Contaminated.

Each of the six sections represented a different contaminant. He understood what it meant. “There’s this CDC woman; might still be in town. She’ll know what’s next.”

“Jesus, Walt.”

“You’d better keep back. In fact, you’ll need to stay here until it’s sorted out.” He paused, still processing what it all meant. “This is not good.”

30

WALT FRANTICALLY SEARCHED HIS CLUTTERED DESKTOP, DISTINCTLY remembering being handed a business card. He’d left Fiona at his house, awaiting his call. The discovery of the triggered biosensor had panicked him. An unfamiliar reaction. He had no love of hospitals; abhorred the early hours of a flu or head cold.

Never mind he felt perfectly normal. Unable to distinguish fever from panic, he began to work himself up. The call to Brandon had gone unanswered. He’d left a message for his deputy to check his own biosensor and to quarantine himself-and Gail-if necessary. Procedure dictated stringent guidelines. Walt was stretching those procedures by visiting his office.

He found the business card at last. Called the cell number and got voice mail. Called the business number and was told by recording that Dr. Lynda Bezel was out of the office until Monday. She was likely still in the valley-Danny Cutter’s water source and bottling plant were located in the Lost River Range, east of Mackay, a three-hour drive each way this time of year. He guessed her investigation would require trips to the plant. Cutter was Walt’s best shot at finding her. More voice mail. He felt feverish and sick to his stomach, his skin itched, his bones ached, his head hurt. He donned a blue hazmat suit over his clothes in the privacy of his office, grateful that, given the hour, he had to walk by only the duty officer. He hurried outside to his Cherokee and drove, determined to find her.

Driving north took him into money country. Ketchum/Sun Valley wasn’t just rich, it was superrich, with more per capital wealth concentrated in such a small area than possibly any place in the country. He was accustomed to driving past the second-home estates, each the size and look of a country club. He arrived at Patrick Cutter’s fifteen-thousand-square-foot vacation home, in which his younger brother occupied a suite in the eastern wing, wearing his impatience and disgust openly on his tormented face.

Patrick Cutter’s estate consisted of five New England barns, all authentic timber-frame structures disassembled and moved from New Hampshire and Vermont and reassembled into an interconnected masterpiece. It was landscaped, even in winter, as if it had been standing for thirty years, and was surrounded by a privacy fence. Walt drove up to the closed gate, his headlights shining across the heated terrace-stone driveway. The only car he saw parked out front was a blue sedan with Boise plates and a rental-car sticker on the bumper. He knew the identity of the renter without running the registration, and, judging by the lack of interior lights, the house looked closed up for the night. Patrick used the place as a second home, spending less than six weeks a year here. His younger brother currently called it home.

Walt tried the phone number again, elected not to leave a second voice mail, and then called in on the gate box. Danny Cutter answered on the fourth ring. Walt announced himself and asked for Dr. Bezel.

“She’s right here,” Danny said. “We were just reviewing inspection reports.”

I’ll bet you were. Danny had a reputation. It was a few minutes past ten. “I need to speak to her.”

He was buzzed through the gate and parked in front of the rental. Danny Cutter answered the door barefoot, his polo shirt untucked, his hair tousled; but it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Danny was a young Jack Nicholson in training.

“Sheriff, you look like a housepainter,” Danny quipped. “Come in.”

“I’ll be in my car,” Walt said, turning.

“I didn’t mean to offend you!” Cutter called after him. Walt didn’t bother answering.

Bezel had put herself together quickly. She’d thrown on a pantsuit that was either similar to or the same one he’d seen her in previously. She’d pulled her hair back and had even managed to apply lipstick. But she’d forgotten the perfume, and her strong scent revealed far too plainly what Danny Cutter had been inspecting. An awkward, embarrassing moment lingered as long as the interior light, which finally dimmed and went dark. Walt reached up and switched it back on. She’d been too self-absorbed to notice his paper suit. But now she did, and some of the red left her face.

“Sheriff?”

He unzipped the hazmat suit, reached in and picked the biosensor off his chest pocket. He handed it to her. “I’m supposed to report this.”

“Jesus…” She threw open the car door and stood outside in the cold. She knocked for Walt to put down the passenger window. “Shit, Sheriff, there’s protocol involved here! Procedure. What the hell were you thinking?”

“That you were the closest expert.”

“You’re supposed to isolate yourself and call the 800 number. You know the drill.”

“This is a small community, in case you hadn’t noticed. If a van full of space aliens shows up at my front door-and we both know how the government reacts to these situations-it’s going to throw this valley into a panic. My first and most important job is maintaining the peace, not causing riots. What’s that thing trying to tell me? I’m perfectly willing to do whatever’s necessary.”

She left the car and walked over to the light at the front door. Walt caught sight of Cutter inside, keeping his eye on developments. She turned the biosensor in the light, called inside to Cutter, and he handed her purse to her. She made a call on her cell phone. Walt was thinking he’d made the right choice-it was better if the space aliens showed up at Patrick Cutter’s isolated mansion than on Third Avenue South in Hailey. She returned to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. For the first time in about an hour, Walt felt some relief.

“Mild exposure to low-level radioisotopes,” she stated.

“I’m radioactive? Seriously?”

“If it had been a darker shade, there’d be reason for concern. The tags were modified post nine-eleven to be supersensitive. That way, if a container inspector, for instance, had had contact with even ultralow levels of radiation, it would be detected. Yours isn’t exactly ultralow, but it’s not high. You can lose the suit. We’ll ask that they run a few tests at the local hospital, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Walt leaned back against the headrest and let out an audible exhale.

She said nothing for a moment. “Must have scared you.”

“You think?”

“About my being here…” It became clear she’d had no intention of finishing the sentence when Walt made no attempt to interrupt her.

“About your being here,” Walt said, taking unexpected pleasure in her awkwardness.

“I’m a big girl. I can separate the two.”

“I’m not saying you can’t.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

“I know Danny’s history.”

“Preliminaries aren’t in. If there’s biological contamination at the bottling plant, we’re having a hell of a time finding it. Much less ID’ing it.”

“Do you carry one of those?” he asked, referring to his tag in her hand.

“Of course.”

“Did you wear one at the plant?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

Walt considered this. He had a scenario in his head that he wasn’t willing to voice without a lot more proof. Her tag coming up blank didn’t sit well with his theory. “Have you asked Danny what he did out at the plant before your arrival?”

“Meaning?”

“What if his brother’s private jet happened to have flown in a wet team?”

“You’re saying he deep-cleaned the facility prior to my inspection?”

“You sound so shocked.”

“That’s illegal.”

“I doubt that. More like it violates some regulation.”

“Same thing to us.”

“Maybe so. But not really.”

“There’s protocol. I questioned Mr. Cutter. He answered me faithfully and to my liking.”

“You’re not on trial, Dr. Bezel. And drop the ‘Mr. Cutter’ crap, will you? Ask again,” Walt said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Are you telling me my job?”

“I’m telling you your sugar daddy can sweet-coat anything, can sweet-talk anyone, can fast-talk the best of them, and I put nothing past him. I’m betting he professionally hosed down his facility before you arrived, and that if you had a tape of your Q and A-which you don’t, I’m guessing-that you’d find he never lied to you but failed to tell the truth.” He paused. “Meet Danny Cutter, Dr. Bezel.”

She blinked repeatedly, pursed her lips, turned her face toward the house, and then trained her rage on Walt. “What is it with you people out here?”

“Ah, come on. He dodges a few questions. No one’s ever done that? And, at least for an evening, he’s managed to take your mind off work. Score two points for Danny.”

“Stop it!” Her lower lip was quivering. She looked ready to bite his head off.

“Test the plant for low-level radioisotopes,” Walt said.

Her neck made a cracking sound, she spun it so quickly. “You’re saying you were there? At the bottling plant?”

Walt considered how to answer this. “No, I wasn’t,” he said. “And that’s the hell of it.”