The Empty Hours

1

The girl with Cotton Hawes had cold feet.

He didn’t know what to do about her feet because he’d already tried everything he could think of, and they were still cold. He had to admit that driving in subzero temperatures with a storm some fifteen minutes behind him wasn’t exactly conducive to warm pedal extremities. But he had turned the car heater up full, supplied the girl with a blanket, taken off his overcoat and wrapped that around her — and she still had cold feet.

The girl’s name was Blanche Colby, a very nice euphonic name which she had adopted the moment she entered show business. That had been a long time ago. Blanche’s real name was Bertha Cooley, but a press agent those many years back told her that Bertha Cooley sounded like a mentholated Pullman, and not a dancer. Blanche Colby had class, he told her, and if there was one thing Bertha Cooley wanted, it was class. She had taken the new name and gone into the chorus of a hit musical twenty-two years ago, when she was only fifteen. She was now thirty-seven, but all those years of prancing the boards had left her with a youthful body, lithe and long-legged. She was still, with a slight assist from Clairol, a soft honey-blonde. Her green eyes were intelligent and alert. Her feet, unfortunately, ahhhh, her feet.

“How are they now?” he asked her.

“Freezing,” she said.

“We’re almost there,” Hawes told her. “You’ll like this place. One of the guys on the squad — Hal Willis — comes up here almost every weekend he’s off. He says the skiing is great.”

“I know a dancer who broke her leg in Switzerland,” Blanche said.

“Skiing?”

“Sure, skiing.”

“You’ve never skied before?”

“Never.”

“Well ...” Hawes shrugged. “Well, I don’t think you’ll break any legs.”

“That’s reassuring,” Blanche said. She glanced through the window on her side of the car. “I think that storm is catching up to us.”

“Just a few flurries.”

“I wonder how serious it’ll be. I have a rehearsal Monday night.”

“Four to six inches, they said. That’s not very much.”

“Will the roads be open?”

“Sure. Don’t worry.”

“I know a dancer who got snowed in for six days in Vermont,” Blanche said. “It wouldn’t have been so bad, but she was with a Method actor.”

“Well, I’m a cop,” Hawes said.

“Yeah,” Blanche answered noncommittally.

They were silent for several moments. The light snow flurries drifted across the road, turning it into a dream-like, white, flowing stream. The headlights illuminated the shifting macadam. Sitting behind the wheel, Hawes had the peculiar feeling that the road was melting. He was glad to see the sign for Rawson Mountain Inn. He stopped the car, picking out the sign from the tangle of other signs announcing accommodations in the area. He set the car in motion again, turning left over an old wooden bridge, the timbers creaking as the convertible passed over them. A new sign, blatant red and white, shouted the features of the area — a sixteen-hundred-foot mountain, two chair lifts, a T-Bar, a rope tow, and, definitely not needed with a storm on the way, a snow-making machine.

The inn lay nestled in the foothills at the base of the mountain. The trees around the inn were bare, standing in gaunt silhouette against the snow-threatening sky. Snow-nuzzled lights beckoned warmly. He helped Blanche out of the car, put on his overcoat, and walked with her over old packed snow to the entrance. They stamped their feet in the doorway and entered the huge room. A fire was going at one end of the room. Someone was playing the piano. A handful of tired weekday skiers were sprawled around the fireplace, wearing very fashionable after-ski boots and sweaters, drinking from bottles onto which they’d hand-lettered their names. Blanche went directly to the fire, found a place on one of the couches, and stretched her long legs to the blaze. Hawes found the desk, tapped a bell on it, and waited. No one appeared. He tapped the bell again. A skier passing the desk said, “He’s in the office. Over there on your left.”

Hawes nodded, found the door marked OFFICE, and knocked on it. A voice inside called, “Yes, come in,” and Hawes twisted the knob and entered.

The office was larger than he’d expected, a good fifteen feet separating the entrance door from the desk at the opposite end of the room. A man in his late twenties sat behind the desk. He had dark hair and dark brows pulled low over deep brown eyes. He was wearing a white shirt open at the throat, a bold reindeer-imprinted sweater over it. He was also wearing a plaster cast on his right leg. The leg was stretched out stiffly in front of him, the foot resting on a low ottoman. A pair of crutches leaned against the desk, within easy reach of his hands. Hawes was suddenly glad he’d left Blanche by the fire.

“You’re not a new skier, I hope,” the man said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Good. Some of them get scared by the cast and crutches.”

“Was it a skiing accident?” Hawes asked.

The man nodded. “Spiral break of the tibia and fibula. Someone forgot to fill in a sitzmark. I was going pretty fast, and when I hit the hole ...” He shrugged. “I won’t be able to walk without the crutches for at least another month.”

“That’s too bad,” Hawes said. He paused, and then figured he might as well get down to business. “I have a reservation,” he said. “Adjoining rooms with bath.”

“Yes., sir. What was the name on that?”

“Cotton Hawes and Blanche Colby.”

The man opened a drawer in his desk and consulted a typewritten sheet. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Two rooms in the annex.”

“The annex?” Hawes said. “Where’s that?”

“Oh, just a hundred yards or so from the main buildings sir.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that’ll be ...”

“And that’s one bath, you understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re adjoining rooms, but the bathroom is in 104. 105 doesn’t have a bath.”

“Oh. Well, I’d like two rooms that do have baths,” Hawes said, smiling.

“I’m sorry, sir. 104 and 105 are the only available rooms in the house.”

“The fellow I spoke to on the phone ...”

“Yes, sir, that’s me. Elmer Wollender.”

“How do you do?” Hawes said.

“You told me both rooms had baths.”

“No, sir. You said you wanted adjoining rooms with bath, and I said I could give you adjoining rooms with bath. And that’s what I’ve given you. Bath. Singular.”

“Are you a lawyer, Mr. Wollender?” Hawes asked, no longer smiling.

“No, sir. Out of season, I’m a locksmith.”

“What are you in season?”

“Why, a hotel-keeper, sir,” Wollender said.

“Don’t test the theory,” Hawes answered. “Let me have my deposit back, Mr. Wollender. We’ll find another place to stay.”

“Well, sir, to begin with, we can’t make any cash refunds, but we’ll be happy to keep your deposit here against another time when you may wish ...”

“Look, Mr. Wollender,” Hawes said menacingly, “I don’t know what kind of a ...”

“And of course, sir, there are lots of places to stay here in town, but none of them, sir, none of them have any private baths at all. Now if you don’t mind walking down the hall ...”

“All I know is ...”

“... and sharing the John with a hundred other skiers, why then ...”

“You told me on the phone ...”

“I’m sure you can find other accommodations. The lady, however, might enjoy a little privacy.” Wollender waited while Hawes considered.

“If I give her 104…” Hawes started and then paused. “Is that the room with the bath?”

“Yes, sir, 104.”

“If I give her that room, where’s the bath for 105?”

“Down at the end of the hall, sir. And we are right at the base of the mountain, sir, and the skiing has been excellent, and we’re expecting at least twelve inches of fresh powder.”

“The radio said four to six.”

“That’s in the city, sir. We normally get a lot more snow.”

“Like what I got on the phone?” Hawes asked. “Where do I sign?”

2

Cotton Hawes was a detective, and as a member of the 87th Squad he had flopped down in a great many desirable and undesirable rooms throughout the city and its suburbs. Once, while posing as a dock walloper, he had taken a furnished room overlooking the River Harb, and had been surprised during the night by what sounded like a band of midgets marching at the foot of his bed. The midgets turned out to be giants, or at least giants of the species Rattus muridae — or as they say in English, rats. He had turned on the light and picked up a broom, but those brazen rat bastards had reared back on their hind legs like boxers and bared their teeth, and he was certain the pack of them would leap for his throat. He had checked out immediately.

There were no rats in rooms 104 and 105 of the annex to Rawson Mountain Inn. Nor was there very much of anything else, either. Whoever had designed the accommodations was undoubtedly steeped in Spartan philosophy. The walls were white and bare, save for a single skiing poster over each bed. There was a single bed in each room, and a wooden dresser painted white. A portable cardboard clothes closet nestled in the corner of each room. The room Hawes hoped to occupy, the one without the bath, was excruciatingly hot, the vents sending in great waves of heated air. The room with the bath, Blanche’s room, was unbearably cold. The single window was rimmed with frost, the floor was cold, the bed was cold, the heating ducts and vents were either clogged or blocked, but certainly inoperative.

“And I’m the one with cold feet,” Blanche said.

“I’d let you have the heated room,” Hawes said gallantly, “but this is the one with the bath.”

“Well, we’ll manage,” Blanche said. “Shall we go down for the bags?”

“I’ll get them,” Hawes answered. “Stay in my room for now, will you? There’s no sense freezing in here.”

“I may get to like your room,” Blanche said archly, and then turned and walked past him through the connecting door.

He went down the long flight of steps to the front porch, and then beyond to where the car was parked. The rooms were over the ski shop, which was closed for the night now, silent and dark. He took the two valises out of the trunk, and then pulled his skis from the rack on top of the car. He was not a particularly distrustful man, but a pair of Head skis had been stolen from him the season before, and he’d been a cop long enough to know that lightning sometimes did strike twice in the same place. In his right hand, and under his right arm, he carried the two bags. In his left hand, and under his left arm, he carried his skis and his boots. He struggled through the deepening snow and onto the front porch. He was about to put down the bags in order to open the door when he heard the heavy thud of ski boots on the steps inside. Someone was coming down those steps in a hell of a hurry.

The door opened suddenly, and a tall thin man wearing black ski pants and a black-hooded parka came onto the porch, almost colliding with Hawes. His face was narrow, handsome in a fine-honed way, the sharply hooked nose giving it the edged striking appearance of an ax. Even in the pale light filtering from the hallway, Hawes saw that the man was deeply tanned, and automatically assumed he was an instructor. The guess was corroborated by the Raws on Mountain insignia on the man’s right sleeve, an interlocking R and M in bright red letters. Incongruously, the man was carrying a pair of white figure skates in his left hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. His face broke into a grin. He had spoken with an accent, German or Swedish, Hawes couldn’t tell which.

“That’s all right,” Hawes said.

“May I help you?”

“No, I think I can manage. If you’d just hold the door open for me ...”

“It will be my pleasure,” the man said, and he almost clicked his heels together.

“Has the skiing been good?” Hawes asked as he struggled through the narrow doorway.

“Fairly good,” the man answered. “It will be better tomorrow.”

“Well, thanks,” Hawes said.

“My pleasure.”

“See you on the mountain,” Hawes said cheerfully and continued up the steps. There was something slightly ridiculous about the entire situation, the adjoining rooms with only one bath, the pristine cells the rooms had turned out to be, the heat in one, the cold in the other, the fact that they were over the ski shop, the fact that it had begun snowing very heavily, even the hurried ski instructor with his polite Teutonic manners and his guttural voice and his figure skates, there was something faintly reminiscent of farce about the whole setup. He began chuckling as he climbed the steps. When he came into his room, Blanche was stretched out on his bed. He put down the bags.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“I’ve decided this is a comic-opera hotel,” Hawes said. “I’ll bet the mountain out there is only a backdrop. We’ll go out there tomorrow morning and discover it’s painted on canvas.”

“This room is nice and warm,” Blanche said.

“Yes, it is,” Hawes answered. He slid his skis under the bed, and she watched him silently.

“Are you expecting burglars?”

“You never can tell.” He took off his jacket and pulled his holstered service revolver from his back hip pocket.

“You going to wear that on the slopes tomorrow?” Blanche asked.

“No. You can’t get a gun into those zippered pockets.”

“I think I’ll stay in this room tonight,’ Blanche said suddenly.

“Whatever you like,” Hawes said. “I’ll take the icebox next door.”

“Well, actually,” she said, “that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t detectives kiss people?”

“Huh?”

“We’ve been out twice together in the city, and we’ve just driven three hours alone together in a car, and you’ve never once tried to kiss me.”

“Well, I ...”

“I wish you would,” Blanche said thoughtfully. “Unless, of course, there’s a department regulation against it.”

“None that I can think of,” Hawes said.

Blanche, her hands behind her head, her legs stretched luxuriously, suddenly took a deep breath and said, “I think I’m going to like this place.”

3

There were sounds in the night.

Huddled together in the single bed, the first sound of which they were aware was the noise of the oil burner. At regularly spaced intervals, the thermostat would click, and there would be a thirty-second pause, and then a 707 jet aircraft would take off from the basement of the old wooden building. Hawes had never heard a noisier oil burner in his life. The aluminum ducts and vents provided a symphony all their own, too, expanding, contracting, banging, clanking, sighing, exhaling, whooshing. Down the hall, the toilet would be flushed every now and again, the noise sounding with cataract sharpness on the still mountain air.

There was another noise. A rasping sound, the narrow shrill squeak of metal upon metal. He got out of bed and went to the window. A light was burning in the ski shop below, casting a yellow rectangle onto the snow. Sighing, he went back to bed and tried to sleep.

Down the corridor, there was the constant thud of ski boots as guests returned to their rooms, the slamming of doors, the occasional high giggle of a girl skier intoxicated by the mountain air.

Voices.

“... will mean a slower track for the slalom ...”

“Sure, but everyone’ll have the same handicap ...”

Fading.

More voices.

“... don’t even think they’ll open the upper trails.”

“They have to, don’t they?”

“Not Dead Man’s Fall. They won’t even be able to get up there with all this snow. Seventeen inches already, and no end in sight.”

The 707 taking off again from the basement. The vents beginning their orchestral suite, the ducts supplying counterpoint. And more voices, raised in anger.

“... because he thinks he’s God almighty!”

“I tell you you’re imagining things.”

“I’m warning you! Stay away from him!”

A young girl’s laughter.

“I’m warning you. If I see him ...”

Fading.

At two o’clock in the morning, the Cats started up the mountain. They sounded like Rommel’s mechanized cavalry. Hawes was certain they would knock down the outside walls and come lumbering into the room. Blanche began giggling.

“This is the noisiest hotel I’ve ever slept in,” she said.

“How are your feet?”

“Nice and warm. You’re a very warm man.”

“You’re a very warm girl.”

“Do you mind my sleeping in long Johns?”

“I thought they were leotards.”

“Leotard is singular,” Blanche said.

“Singular or plural, those are the sexiest long Johns I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s only the girl in them,” Blanche said modestly. “Why don’t you kiss me again?”

“I will. In a minute.”

“What are you listening for?”

“I thought I heard an unscheduled flight a moment ago.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you hear it? A funny buzzing sound?”

“There are so many noises .”

“Shhhh.”

They were silent for several moments. They could hear the Cats grinding their way up the mountain. Someone down the hall flushed the toilet. More boots in the corridor outside.

“Hey!” Blanche said.

“What?”

“You asleep?”

“No,” Hawes answered.

“That buzzing sound you heard?”

“Yes?”

“It was my blood,” she told him and she kissed him on the mouth.

4

It was still snowing on Saturday morning. The promised storm had turned into a full-fledged blizzard. They dressed in the warm comfort of the room, Blanche putting on thermal underwear, and then two sweaters and stretch pants, the extra clothing padding out her slender figure. Hawes, standing six feet two inches tall in his double-stockinged feet, black pants and black sweater, presented a one-hundred-and-ninety-pound V-shaped silhouette to the window and the gray day outside.

“Do you think I’ll get back in time for Monday night’s rehearsal?” Blanche asked.

“I don’t know. I’m supposed to be back at the squad by six tomorrow night. I wonder if the roads are open.”

They learned during breakfast that a state of emergency had been declared in the city and in most of the towns lining the upstate route. Blanche seemed blithely indifferent to the concept of being snowbound. “If there’s that much snow,” she said, “they’ll cancel the rehearsal, anyway.”

“They won’t cancel the police department,” Hawes said.

“The hell with it,” Blanche said happily. “We’re here now, and there’s marvelous snow, and if the skiing is good it’ll be a wonderful weekend.”

“Even if the skiing is lousy” Hawes said, “it’ll be a wonderful weekend.”

They rented boots and skis for her in the ski rental shop, and then took to the mountain. Both chair lifts were in operation, but as one of the midnight voices had prophesied, the upper trails were not yet opened. A strong wind had arisen, and it blew the snow in driving white sheets across the slopes. Hawes took Blanche to the rope tow first, had her practice climbing for a while, teaching her to edge and to herringbone, and then illustrated the use of the tow — left hand clamped around the rope, right hand and arm behind the back and gripping the rope. The beginner’s slope was a gentle one, but Blanche seemed immediately capable of more difficult skiing. She was a trained dancer, and she automatically thought of the skis as part of a difficult stage costume, encumbering movement, but simply something to overcome. With remarkable coordination, she learned how to snowplow on the beginner’s slope. By midmorning, she had graduated to the T-Bar, and was beginning to learn the rudiments of the stem christie. Hawes patiently stayed with her all morning, restricting his own skiing to the elementary slopes. He was becoming more and more grateful for the snow-clogged roads. With the roads impassable, the number of weekend skiers was limited; he and Blanche were enjoying weekday skiing on a Saturday, and the fresh snow made everything a delight.

After lunch, she suggested that he leave her alone to practice for a while. Hawes, who was itching to get at the chair lift and the real trails, nonetheless protested that he was perfectly content to ski with her on the baby slopes. But Blanche insisted, and he finally left her on the slope serviced by the T-Bar, and went to the longest of the chair lifts, Lift A.

He grinned unconsciously as he approached the lift. Eight or ten skiers were waiting to use the chairs, as compared to the long lines one usually encountered on weekends. As he approached the loading area, he caught a blur of black movement from the corner of his eye, turned and saw his German or Swedish ski instructor from the night before wedeln down the mountain, and then turning, parallel in a snow-spraying stop near the lift. He did not seem to recognize Hawes, but Hawes was not at all surprised. Every skier on the line was wearing a hooded parka, the hoods covering their heads and tied securely beneath their chins. In addition, all the skiers were wearing goggles, most with tinted yellow lenses in defense against the grayness of the day, some with darker lenses in spite of the grayness. The result, in any case, was almost total anonymity. Male and female, they all looked very much alike. They could have been a band of Martians waiting to be taken to a leader. Instead, they were waiting for chairs. They did not have to wait very long.

The chairs on their cable kept rounding the bend, came past the grinding machinery. Hawes moved into position, watched the girl ahead of him sit abruptly as the chair came up under her behind. He noticed that the chair gave a decided lurch as it cleared the platform, and he braced himself for the expected force, glanced back over his shoulder as another chair rounded the turn. Ski poles clutched in his left hand, his right hand behind him to grip the edge of the chair as it approached, he waited. The chair was faster and had a stronger lurch than he’d anticipated. For a moment, he thought it would knock him down. He gripped the edge of the seat with his mittened right hand, felt himself sliding off the seat, and automatically grabbed for the upright supporting rod with his left hand, dropping his poles.

“Dropped your poles!” one of the loaders shouted behind him.

“We’ll send them up!” the other loader called.

He turned slightly in the chair and looked back. He could see one of the loaders scrambling to pick up his poles. There were two empty chairs behind him, and then a skier got into the third chair, and the loader handed him the poles Hawes had dropped. Behind that chair, two other skiers shared a chair. The wind and the snow made it difficult to see. Hawes turned his head abruptly, but the wind was even stronger coming down the mountain. The chair ahead of him was perhaps thirty feet away, but he could barely make out the shadowy figure of the person sitting in it. All he saw was a dim silhouette obscured by blinding snow and keening wind. He could feel snow seeping under the edges of his hood. He took off his mittens and tightened the string. Quickly, before the biting cold numbed his fingers, he put the mittens on again.

The lift was a new one, and it pulled the chairs silently up the mountain. On his right, Hawes could see the skiers descending, a damn fool snowplowing out of control down a steep embankment pocked with moguls, an excellent skier navigating turns in parallel precision. The wind keened around and under his hood, the only sound on the mountain. The ride was a pleasant one, except for the wind and the cold. In some spots, the chair was suspended some thirty feet above the snow below. In other places, the chair came as close as six feet to the ground. He was beginning to anticipate the descent. He saw the unloading station ahead, saw the sign advising him to keep the tips of his skis up, and prepared to disembark. The skier ahead of him met with difficulty as he tried to get off his chair. The snow had been falling too heavily to clear, and there was no natural downgrade at the top of the lift; the chair followed its occupant, rather than rising overhead at the unloading point. The girl ahead of Hawes was almost knocked off her feet by her own chair. She managed to free herself as the chair gave a sharp lurch around the bend to begin its trip down the mountain again. Hawes concentrated on getting off the chair. Surprisingly, he did so with a minimum of effort and without poles, and then waited while the two empty chairs passed by. The third following chair approached the station. A man clambered off the chair, handed Hawes his poles with a “These yours?” and skied to the crest of the slope. Hawes stood just outside the station booth, hanging his poles over his wrists. He was certain that the fourth chair behind his had contained two skiers at the bottom of the lift, and yet it seemed to be approaching now with only a single person in it. Hawes squinted through the snow, puzzled. Something seemed odd about the person in the fourth chair, something was jutting into the air at a curious angle — a ski? a leg? a ... ?

The chair approached rapidly.

The skier made no move to disembark.

Hawes opened his eyes wide behind his yellow-tinted goggles as the chair swept past the station.

Through the driving snow, he had seen a skier slumped back into the passing chair, gloved hands dangling limply. And sticking out of the skier’s chest at a malicious angle over the heart, buffeted by the wind and snow so that it trembled as if it were alive, thrust deep through the parka and the clothing, beneath it like an oversized, slender aluminum sword, was a ski pole.

5

The chair gave its sharp lurch as it rounded the bend.

The skier slid from the seat as the chair made its abrupt turn. Skis touched snow, the body fell forward, there was a terrible snapping sound over the keening of the wind, and Hawes knew instantly that a leg had been broken as bone yielded to the unresisting laminated wood and the viselike binding. The skier fell face downward, the ski pole bending as the body struck the snow, one leg twisted at an impossible angle, the boot still held firmly in its binding.

For a moment, there was only confusion compounded.

The wind and the snow filled the air, the body lay, motionless, face down in the snow as the chair whipped around the turn and started its descent. An empty chair swept past, another, a third, and then a chair came into view with a man poised to disembark, and Hawes shouted to the booth attendant, “Stop the lift!”

“What?”

“Stop the goddamn lift!”

“What? What?”

Hawes moved toward the body lying in the snow just as the man on the chair decided to get off. They collided in a tangle of poles and skis, the relentless chair pushing them along like a bulldozer, sending them sprawling onto the body in the snow, before it snapped around for its downward passage. The booth attendant finally got the message. He ran into the small wooden shack and threw the control switch. The lift stopped. There was a deeper silence on the mountain.

“You okay?” he called.

“I’m fine,” Hawes said. He got to his feet and quickly unsnapped his bindings. The man who’d knocked him down was apologizing profusely, but Hawes wasn’t listening. There was a bright red stain spreading into the snow where the impaled skier had fallen. He turned the body over and saw the ashen face and sightless eyes, saw the blood-stained parka where the pole had been pushed through the soft and curving breast into the heart.

The dead skier was a young girl, no more than nineteen years old.

On the right sleeve of her black parka was the insignia of a Rawson Mountain ski instructor, the interlocking R and M in red as bright as the blood which seeped into the thirsty snow.

“What is it?” the booth attendant shouted. “Shall I get the ski patrol? Is it an accident?”

“It’s no accident,” Hawes said, but his voice was so low that no one heard him.

6

As befitted this farcical hotel in this comic-opera town, the police were a band of Keystone cops led by an inept sheriff who worked on the premise that a thing worth doing was a thing worth doing badly. Hawes stood by helplessly as he watched these cracker-barrel cops violate each and every rule of investigation, watched as they mishandled evidence, watched as they made it hopelessly impossible to gain any information at all from whatever slender clues were available.

The sheriff was a gangling oaf named Theodore Watt who, instead of putting Lift A out of commission instantly while his men tried to locate the victim’s chair, instead rode that very lift to the top of the mountain, followed by at least three dozen skiers, hotel officials, reporters, and local cretins who undoubtedly smeared any latent prints lingering on any of the chairs, and made the task of reconstructing the crime almost impossible. One girl, wearing bright lavender stretch pants and a white parka, climbed off the chair near the booth and was promptly informed there was blood all over the seat of her pants. The girl craned her neck to examine her shapely behind, touched the smear of blood, decided it was sticky and obscene, and almost fainted dead away. The chair, meantime, was happily whisking its way down the mountain again to the loading station where, presumably, another skier would again sit into a puddle of the dead girl’s blood.

The dead girl’s name, as it turned out, was Helga Nilson. She was nineteen years old and had learned to ski before she’d learned to walk, as the old Swedish saying goes. She had come to America when she was fifteen, had taught in the ski school at Stowe, Vermont, for two years before moving down to Mt. Snow in that same fair state, and then abandoning Vermont and moving to Raws on Mountain, further south. She had joined the Rawson ski school at the beginning of the season, and seemed to be well-liked by all the instructors and especially by many beginning skiers who, after one lesson with her, repeatedly asked for “Helga, the little Swedish girl.”

The little Swedish girl had had a ski pole driven into her heart with such force that it had almost exited through her back. The pole, bent out of shape when Helga fell from the chair, was the first piece of real evidence that the Keystone cops mishandled. Hawes saw one of the deputies kneel down beside the dead girl, grasp the pole with both hands, and attempt to pull it out of her body.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he shouted, and he shoved the man away from the body.

The man glanced up at him with a baleful upstate eye. “And just who in hell’re you?” he asked.

“My name’s Cotton Hawes,” Hawes said. “I’m a detective. From the city.” He unzipped the left hip pocket of his ski pants, pulled out his wallet, and flashed the tin. The deputy seemed singularly unimpressed.

“You’re a little bit aways from your jurisdiction, ain’t you?” he said.

“Who taught you how to handle evidence?” Hawes asked heatedly.

Sheriff Watt sauntered over to where the pair were arguing. He grinned amiably and said, “What seems to be the trouble here, hmmm?” He sang out the “hmmm,” his voice rising pleasantly and cheerfully. A nineteen-year-old girl lay dead at his feet, but Sheriff Watt thought he was an old alumnus at Dartmouth’s Winter Carnival.

“Feller here’s a city detective,” the deputy said.

“That’s good,” Watt said. “Please to have you with us.”

“Thanks,” Hawes said. “Your man here was just smearing any latent prints there may be on that weapon.”

“What weapon?”

“The ski pole,” Hawes said. “What weapon do you think I…?”

“Oh, won’t be no fingerprints on that, anyway,” Watt said.

“How do you know?”

“No damn fool’s gonna grab a piece of metal with his bare hands, is he? Not when the temperature’s ten below zero, now is he?”

“He might have,” Hawes said. “And while we’re at it, don’t you think it’d be a good idea to stop that lift? You’ve already had one person smearing up whatever stuff you could have found in the ...”

“I got to get my men up here before I order the lift stopped,” Watt said.

“Then restrict it to the use of your men.”

“I’ve already done that,” Watt said briefly. He turned back to his deputy. “Want to let me see that pole, Fred?”

“Sheriff, you let him touch that pole again, and ...”

“And what?”

“... and you may ruin ...”

“Mister, you just let me handle this my own which-way, hmmm? We been in this business a long time now, and we know all about skiing accidents.”

“This wasn’t an accident,” Hawes said angrily. “Somebody shoved a ski pole into that girl’s chest, and that’s not ...”

“I know it wasn’t an accident,” Watt said. “That was just a manner of speaking. Let me have the pole, Fred.”

“Sheriff...”

“Mister, you better just shut up, hmmm? Else I’ll have one of my men escort you down the mountain, and you can warm your feet by the fire.”

Hawes shut up. Impotently, he watched while the deputy named Fred seized the ski pole in both hands and yanked it from Helga’s chest. A spurt of blood followed the retreating pole, welled up into the open wound, overflowed it, was sopped up by the sodden sweater. Fred handed the bent pole to the sheriff. Watt turned it over and over in his big hands.

“Looks like the basket’s been taken off this thing,” he said.

The basket, Hawes saw, had indeed been removed from the bottom of the aluminum pole. The basket on a ski pole is a circular metal ring perhaps five inches in diameter, crossed by a pair of leather thongs. A smaller ring stamped into the thongs fits over the end of the pointed pole and is usually fastened by a cotter pin or a tight rubber washer. When the basket is in place on the end of a pole, it prevents the pole from sinking into the snow, thereby enabling the skier to use it in executing turns or maintaining balance. The basket had been removed from this particular pole and, in addition, someone had sharpened the normally sharp point so that it was as thin as a rapier. Hawes noticed this at once. It took the sheriff a little while longer to see that he was holding a razor-sharp weapon in his hands, and not a normally pointed pole.

“Somebody been working on the end of this thing,” he said, the dawn gradually breaking.

A doctor had come up the lift and was kneeling beside the dead girl. To no one’s particular surprise, he pronounced her dead. One of the sheriff’s bumbling associates began marking the position of the body, tracing its outline on the snow with a blue powder he poured liberally from a can.

Hawes couldn’t imagine what possible use this imitation of investigatory technique would serve. They were marking the position of the body, true, but this didn’t happen to be the scene of the crime. The girl had been murdered on a chair somewhere between the base of the mountain and the top of the lift. So far, no one had made any attempt to locate and examine the chair. Instead, they were sprinkling blue powder onto the snow, and passing their big paws all over the murder weapon.

“May I make a suggestion?” he asked.

“Sure,” Watt said.

“That girl got on the lift with someone else. I know because I dropped my poles down there, and when I turned for a look, there were two people in that chair. But when she reached the station here, she was alone.”

“Yeah?” Watt said.

“Yeah. I suggest you talk to the loader down below. The girl was a ski instructor, and they may have recognized her. Maybe they know who got on the chair with her.”

“Provided anyone did.”

“Someone did,” Hawes said.

“How do you know?”

“Because ...” Hawes took a deep breath. “I just told you. I saw two people in that chair.”

“How far behind you?”

“Four chairs behind.”

“And you could see four chairs behind you in this storm, hmmm?”

“Yes. Not clearly, but I could see.”

“I’ll just bet you could,” Watt said.

“Look,” Hawes insisted, “someone was in that chair with her. And he undoubtedly jumped from the chair right after he killed her. I suggest you start combing the ground under the lift before this snow covers any tracks that might be there.”

“Yes, we’ll do that,” Watt said. “When we get around to it.”

“You’d better get around to it soon,” Hawes said. “You’ve got a blizzard here, and a strong wind piling up drifts. If ...”

“Mister, I hadn’t better do anything. You’re the one who’d just better butt his nose out of what we’re trying to do here.”

“What is it you’re trying to do?” Hawes asked. “Compound a felony? Do you think your murderer’s going to sit around and wait for you to catch up to him? He’s probably halfway out of the state by now.”

“Ain’t nobody going noplace, mister,” Watt said. “Not with the condition of the roads. So don’t you worry about that. I hate to see anybody worrying.”

“Tell that to the dead girl,” Hawes said, and he watched as the ski patrol loaded her into a basket and began taking her on her last trip down the mountain.

7

Death is a cliché, a tired old saw.

He had been a cop for a good long time now, starting as a rookie who saw death only from the sidelines, who kept a timetable while the detectives and the photographers and the assistant M.E. and the laboratory boys swarmed around the victim like flies around a prime cut of rotten meat. Death to him, at that time, had been motion-picture death. Standing apart from death, being as it were a uniformed secretary who took the names of witnesses and jotted in a black book the arrivals and departures of those actually concerned with the investigation, he had watched the proceedings dispassionately. The person lying lifeless on the sidewalk, the person lying on blood-soaked sheets, the person hanging from a light fixture, the person eviscerated by the onrushing front grille of an automobile, these were all a trifle unreal to Hawes, representations of death, but not death itself, not that grisly son of a bitch.

When he became a detective, they really introduced him to death.

The introduction was informal, almost causal. He was working with the 30th Squad at the time, a very nice respectable squad in a nice respectable precinct where death by violence hardly ever came. The introduction was made in a rooming house. The patrolman who had answered the initial squeal was waiting for the detectives when they had arrived. The detective with Hawes asked, “Where’s the stiff?” and the patrolman answered, “He’s in there,” and the other detective turned to Hawes and said, “Come on, let’s take a look.”

That was the introduction.

They had gone into the bedroom where the man was lying at the foot of the dresser. The man was fifty-three years old. He lay in his undershorts on the floor in the sticky coagulation of his own blood. He was a small man with a pinched chest. His hair was black and thinning, and bald patches showed his flaking scalp. He had probably never been handsome, even when he was a youth. Some men do not improve with age, and time and alcohol had squeezed everything out of this man, and drained him dry until all he possessed was sagging flesh and, of course, life. The flesh was still there. The life had been taken from him. He lay at the foot of the dresser in his undershorts, ludicrously piled into a heap of inert flesh, so relaxed, so impossibly relaxed. Someone had worked him over with a hatchet. The hatchet was still in the room, blood-flecked, entangled with thin black hair. The killer had viciously attacked him around the head and the throat and the chest. He had stopped bleeding by the time they arrived, but the wounds were still there to see, open and raw.

Hawes vomited.

He went into the bathroom and vomited. That was his introduction to death.

He had seen a lot of death since, had come close to being dead himself. The closest, perhaps, was the time he’d been stabbed while investigating a burglary. The woman who’d been burglarized was still pretty hysterical when he got there. He asked his questions and tried to comfort her, and then started downstairs to get a patrolman. The woman, terrified, began screaming when he left. He could hear her screams as he went down the stairwell. The superintendent of the building caught him on the second floor landing. He was carrying a bread knife, and he thought that Hawes was the burglar returned, and he stabbed repeatedly at his head, ripping a wound over his left temple before Hawes finally subdued him. They let the super go; the poor guy had actually thought Hawes was the thief. And then they’d shaved Hawes’s red hair to get to the wound, which time of course healed as it does all wounds, leaving however a reminder of death, of the closeness of death. The red hair had grown white. He still carried the streak over his temple. Sometimes, particularly when it rained, death sent little signals of pain to accompany the new hair.

He had seen a lot of death, especially since he’d joined the 87th, and a lot of dying. He no longer vomited. The vomiting had happened to a very young Cotton Hawes, a very young and innocent cop who suddenly awoke to the knowledge that he was in a dirty business where the facts of life were the facts of violence, where he dealt daily with the sordid and grotesque. He no longer vomited. But he still got angry.

He had felt anger on the mountain when the young girl fell out of the chair and struck the snow, the ski pole bending as she dropped into that ludicrously ridiculous posture of the dead, that totally relaxed and utterly frightening posture. He had felt anger by juxtaposition, the reconstruction of a vibrant and life-bursting athlete against the very real image of the same girl, no longer a girl, only a worthless heap of flesh and bones, only a body now, a corpse. “Where’s the stiff?”

He felt anger when Theodore Watt and his witless assistants muddied the residue of sudden death, allowing the killer a precious edge, presenting him with the opportunity for escape — escape from the law and from the outrage of humanity. He felt anger now as he walked back to the building which housed the ski shop and the rooms overhead.

The anger seemed out of place on the silent mountain. The snow still fell, still and gentle. The wind had died, and now the flakes drifted aimlessly from overhead, large and wet and white, and there was a stillness and a peace to Rawson Mountain and the countryside beyond, a lazy white quiet which denied the presence of death.

He kicked the packed snow from his boots and went up the steps.

He was starting down the corridor toward his room when he noticed the door was slightly ajar. He hesitated. Perhaps Blanche had come back to the room, perhaps ...

But there was silence in the corridor, a silence as large as noise. He stooped and untied the laces on his boots. Gently, he slipped them from his feet. Walking as softly as he could — he was a big man and the floor boards in the old building creaked beneath his weight — he approached the room. He did not like the idea of being in his stockinged feet. He had had to kick men too often, and he knew the value of shoes. He hesitated just outside the door. There was no sound in the room. The door was open no more than three inches. He put his hand against the wood. Somewhere in the basement, the oil burner clicked and then whoooomed into action. He shoved open the door.

Elmer Wollender, his crutches under his arms, whirled to face him. His head had been bent in an attitude of... prayer, was it? No. Not prayer. He had been listening, that was it, listening to something, or for something.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Hawes,” he said. He was wearing a red ski parka over his white shirt. He leaned on his crutches and grinned a boyish, disarming grin.

“Hello, Mr. Wollender,” Hawes said. “Would you mind telling me, Mr. Wollender, just what the hell you’re doing in my room?”

Wollender seemed surprised. His eyebrows arched. He tilted his head to one side, almost in admiration, almost as if he too would have behaved in much the same way had he come back to his room and found a stranger in it. But the admiration was also tinged with surprise. This was obviously a mistake. Head cocked to one side, eyebrows arched, the boyish smile on his mouth, Wollender leaned on his crutches and prepared to explain. Hawes waited.

“You said the heat wasn’t working, didn’t you?” Wollender said. “I was just checking it.”

“The heat’s working fine in this room,” Hawes said. “It’s the room next door.”

“Oh.” Wollender nodded. “Oh, is that it?”

“That’s it, yes.”

“No wonder. I stuck my hand up there to check the vent, and it seemed fine to me.”

“Yes, it would be fine,” Hawes said, “since there was never anything wrong with it. I told you at the desk this morning that the heat wasn’t working in 104. This is 105. Are you new here, Mr. Wollender?”

“I guess I misunderstood you.”

“Yes, I guess so. Misunderstanding isn’t a wise practice, Mr. Wollender, especially with your local cops crawling all over the mountain.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the girl. When those imitation cops begin asking questions, I suggest ...”

“What girl?”

Hawes looked at Wollender for a long time. The question on Wollender’s face and in his eyes looked genuine enough, but could there possibly be someone on the mountain who still had not heard of the murder? Was it possible that Wollender, who ran the inn, the center of all activity and gossip, did not know Helga Nilson was dead?

“The girl,” Hawes said. “Helga Nilson.”

“What about her?”

Hawes knew enough about baseball to realize you didn’t throw your fast ball until you’d tried a few curves. “Do you know her?” he asked.

“Of course, I know her. I know all the ski instructors. She rooms right here, down the hall.”

“Who else rooms here?”

“Why?”

“I want to know.”

“Just her and Maria,” Wollender said. “Maria Fiers. She’s an instructor, too. And, oh yes, the new man. Larry Davidson.”

“Is he an instructor?” Hawes asked. “About this tall?”

“Yes.”

“Hooked nose? German accent.”

“No, no. You’re thinking of Helmut Kurtz. And that’s an Austrian accent.” Wollender paused. “Why? Why do you want to ... ?”

“Anything between him and Helga?”

“Why, no. Not that I know of. They teach together, but ...”

“What about Davidson?”

“Larry Davidson?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean, is he dating Helga, or ...”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Larry’s married,” Wollender said. “I would hardly think ...”

“What about you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You and Helga. Anything?”

“Helga’s a good friend of mine,” Wollender said.

“Was,” Hawes corrected.

“Huh?”

“She’s dead. She was killed on the mountain this afternoon.”

There was the fast ball, and it took Wollender smack between the eyes. “Dea—” he started, and then his jaw fell slack, and his eyes went blank. He staggered back a pace, collided with the white dresser. The crutches dropped from his hands. He struggled to maintain his balance, the leg with the cast stiff and unwieldy; he seemed about to fall. Hawes grabbed at his elbow and pulled him erect. He stooped down for Wollender’s crutches and handed them to him. Wollender was still dazed. He groped for the crutches, fumbled, dropped them again. Hawes picked them up a second time, and forced them under Wollender’s arms. Wollender leaned back against the dresser. He kept staring at the wall opposite, where a poster advertising the pleasures of Kitzbühel was hanging. -

“She…she took too many chances,” he said. “She always went too fast. I told her ...”

“This wasn’t a skiing accident,” Hawes said. “She was murdered.”

“No.” Wollender shook his head. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No. Everyone liked Helga. No one would ...” He kept shaking his head. His eyes stayed riveted to the Kitzbühel poster.

“There are going to be cops here, Mr. Wollender,” Hawes said. “You seem like a nice kid. When they start asking questions, you’d better have a more plausible story than the one you invented about being in my room. They’re not going to fool around. They’re looking for a killer.”

“Why ... why do you think I came here?” Wollender asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe you were looking for some pocket money. Skiers often leave their wallets and their valu—”

“I’m not a thief, Mr. Hawes,” Wollender said with dignity. “I only came here to give you some heat.”

“That makes it even,” Hawes answered. “The cops’ll be coming here to give you some.”

8

He found the two loaders in the lodge cafeteria. The lifts had been closed at four- thirty, the area management having reached the conclusion that most skiing accidents took place in the waning hours of the afternoon, when poor visibility and physical exhaustion combined to create gentle havoc. They were both burly, grizzled men wearing Mackinaws, their thick hands curled around coffee mugs. They had been loading skiers onto chairs ever since the area was opened, and they worked well together as a team. Even their dialogue seemed concocted in one mind, though it issued from two mouths.

“My name’s Jake,” the first loader said. “This here is Obey, short for Obadiah.”

“Only I ain’t so short,” Obadiah said.

“He’s short on brains,” Jake said and grinned. Obadiah returned the grin. “You’re a cop, huh?”

“Yes,” Hawes said. He had shown them his buzzer the moment he approached them. He had also told an outright lie, saying he was helping with the investigation of the case, having been sent up from the city because there was the possibility a known and wanted criminal had perpetrated the crime, confusing his own double-talk as he wove a fantastic monologue which Jake and Obadiah seemed to accept.

“And you want to know who we loaded on them chairs, right? Same as Teddy wanted to know.”

“Teddy?”

“Teddy Watt. The sheriff.”

“Oh. Yes,” Hawes said. “That’s right.”

“Whyn’t you just ask him?” Obadiah said.

“Well, I have,” Hawes lied. “But sometimes a fresh angle will come up if witnesses can be questioned directly, do you see?”

“Well, we ain’t exactly witnesses,” Jake said. “We didn’t see her get killed, you know.”

“Yes, but you did load her on the chair, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. We did, all right.”

“And someone was in the chair with her, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Jake said.

“Who?” Hawes asked.

“Seems like everybody wants to know who” Jake said.

“Ain’t it the damndest thing?” Obadiah said.

“Do you remember?” Hawes asked.

“We remember it was snowing, that’s for sure.”

“Couldn’t hardly see the chairs, it was snowing that hard.”

“Pretty tough to reckernize one skier from another with all that wind and snow, wouldn’t you say, Obey?”

“Next to impossible,” Obadiah answered.

“But you did recognize Helga,” Hawes suggested.

“Oh, sure. But she said hello to us, you see. She said, ‘Hello, Jake. Hello, Obey.’ And also, she took the chair closest to the loading platform, the inside chair. The guy took the other chair.”

“Guy?” Hawes asked. “It was a man then? The person who took the chair next to her was a man?”

“Well, can’t say for sure,” Jake said. “Was a time when men’s ski clothes was different from the ladies’, but that don’t hold true no more.”

“Not by a long shot,” Obadiah said.

“Nowadays, you find yourself following some pretty girl in purple pants, she turns out to be a man. It ain’t so easy to tell them apart no more.”

“Then you don’t know whether the person who sat next to her was a man or a woman, is that right?” Hawes asked.

“That’s right.”

“Coulda been either.”

“Did this person say anything?”

“Not a word.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Well, we ain’t established it was a he” Jake reminded him.

“Yes, I know. I meant the ... the person who took the chair. It’ll be easier if we give him a gender.”

“Give him a what?”

“A gen— if we assume for the moment that the person was a man.”

“Oh.” Jake thought this over. “Okay, if you say so. Seems like pretty sloppy deduction to me, though.”

“Well, I’m not actually making a deduction. I’m simply trying to facilitate…”

“Sure, I understand,” Jake said. “But it’s sure pretty sloppy.”

Hawes sighed. “Well ... what was he wearing?”

“Black,” Jake said.

“Black ski pants, black parka,” Obadiah said.

“Any hat?” Hawes asked.

“Nope. Hood on the parka was pulled clear up over the head. Sunglasses over the eyes.”

“Gloves or mittens?” Hawes asked.

“Gloves. Black gloves.”

“Did you notice whether or not there was an insignia on the man’s parka?”

“What kind of insignia?”

“An R-M interlocked,” Hawes said.

“Like the instructors wear?” Jake asked.

“Exactly.”

“They wear it on their right sleeves,” Obadiah said. “We told you this person took the outside chair. We couldn’ta seen the right sleeve, even if there was anything on it.”

Hawes suddenly had a wild idea. He hesitated before he asked, and then thought, What the hell, try it.

“This person,” he said, “was he ... was he carrying crutches?”

“Carrying what?” Jake asked incredulously.

“Crutches. Was his leg in a cast?”

“Now how in hell ... of course not,” Jake said. “He was wearing skis, and he was carrying ski poles. Crutches and a cast! My God! It’s hard enough getting on that damn lift as it is. Can you just picture ...”

“Never mind,” Hawes said. “Forget it. Did this person say anything to Helga?”

“Not a word.”

“Did she say anything to him?”

“Nothing we could hear. The wind was blowing pretty fierce.”

“But you heard her when she said hello to you.”

“That’s right.”

“Then if she’d said anything to this person, you might have heard that, too.”

“That’s right. We didn’t hear nothing.”

“You said he was carrying poles. Did you notice anything unusual about the poles?”

“Seemed like ordinary poles to me,” Jake said.

“Did both poles have baskets?”

Jake shrugged. “I didn’t notice. Did you, Obey?”

“Both seemed to have baskets,” Obadiah said. “Who’d notice a thing like that?”

“Well, you might have,” Hawes said. “If there’d been anything unusual, you might have noticed.”

“I didn’t notice nothing unusual,” Obadiah said. “Except I thought to myself this feller must be pretty cold.”

“Why?”

“Well, the hood pulled up over his head, and the scarf wrapped almost clear around his face.”

“What scarf? You didn’t mention that before.”

“Sure. He was wearing a red scarf. Covered his mouth and his nose, reached right up to the sunglasses.”

“Hmmm,” Hawes said, and the table went still.

“You’re the fellow dropped his poles on the way up, ain’t you?” Jake asked.

“Yes.”

“Thought I remembered you.”

“If you remember me, how come you can’t remember the person who took the chair alongside Helga?”

“You saying I should, mister?”

“I’m only asking.”

“Well, like maybe if I seen a guy wearing black pants and a black hood, and sunglasses, and a scarf wrapped clear around his face, why maybe then I would recognize him. But, the way I figure it, he ain’t likely to be wearing the same clothes right now, is he?”

“I don’t suppose so,” Hawes said, sighing.

“Yeah, neither do I,” Jake answered. “And I ain’t even a cop.”

9

Dusk was settling upon the mountain.

It spread into the sky and stained the snow a purple-red. The storm was beginning to taper off, the clouds vanishing before the final triumphant breakthrough of the setting sun. There was an unimaginable hush to the mountain, and the town, and the valley beyond, a hush broken only by the sound of gently jingling skid-chains on hard-packed snow.

He had found Blanche and taken her to the fireplace in the inn, settling her there with a brace of double Scotches and a half-dozen copies of a skiing magazine. Now, with the mountain and the town still, the lifts inoperative, the distant snow brushed with dying color, he started climbing the mountain. He worked through the deep snow directly under the lift, the chairs hanging motionless over his head. He was wearing ski pants and after-ski boots designed for lounging beside a fire. He had forsaken his light parka for two sweaters. Before he’d left the room, he had unholstered the .38 and slipped it into the elastic-reinforced waistband of his trousers. He could feel it digging into his abdomen now as he climbed.

The climb was not an easy one.

The snow under the lift had not been packed, and he struggled against it as he climbed, encountering drifts which were impassable, working his way in a zigzagging manner across the lift line, sometimes being forced to leave the high snow for the Cat-packed trail to the right of the lift. The light was waning. He did not know how much longer it would last. He had taken a flashlight from the glove compartment of his car, but he began to wonder whether its glow would illuminate very much once the sun had set. He began to wonder, too, exactly what he hoped to find. He was almost certain that any tracks the killer had left would already have been covered by the drifting snow. Again he cursed Theodore Watt and his inefficient slobs. Someone should have made this climb immediately after they discovered the dead girl, while there was still a possibility of finding a trail.

He continued climbing. After a day of skiing, he was physically and mentally exhausted, his muscles protesting, his eyes burning. He thumbed on the flashlight as darkness claimed the mountain, and pushed his way through knee-deep snow. He stumbled and got to his feet again. The snow had tapered almost completely, but the wind had returned with early evening, a high keening wind that rushed through the trees on either side of the lift line, pushing the clouds from the sky. There was a thin sliver of moon and a scattering of stars. The clouds raced past them like silent dark horsemen, and everywhere on the mountain was the piercing shriek of the wind, a thin scream that penetrated to the marrow.

He fell again.

Loose snow caught under the neck of his sweater, slid down his back. He shivered and tried to brush it away, got to his feet, and doggedly began climbing again. His after-ski boots had not been designed for deep snow. The tops ended just above his ankles, offering no protection whatever. He realized abruptly that the boots were already packed with snow, that his feet were literally encased in snow. He was beginning to regret this whole foolhardy mission, when he saw it.

He had come perhaps a third of the way up the lift line, the mountain in absolute darkness now, still except for the maiden scream of the wind. The flashlight played a small circle of light on the snow ahead of him as he stumbled upward, the climb more difficult now, the clouds rushing by overhead, skirting the thin moon. The light touched something which glinted momentarily, passed on as he continued climbing, stopped. He swung the flashlight back. Whatever had glinted was no longer there. Swearing, he swung the flashlight in a slow steady arc. The glint again. He swung the light back.

The basket was half-covered by the snow. Only one edge of its metallic ring showed in the beam of his light. It had probably been covered completely earlier in the day, but the strong fresh wind had exposed it to view again, and he stooped quickly to pick it up, almost as if he were afraid it would vanish. He was still bending, studying the basket in the light of the flash, when the man jumped onto his back.

The attack came suddenly and swiftly. He had heard nothing but the wind. He had been so occupied with his find, so intent on studying the basket which, he was certain, had come from the end of the ski-pole weapon, and when he felt the sudden weight on his back he did not connect it immediately with an attack. He was simply surprised, and his first thought was that one of the pines had dropped a heavy load of snow from its laden branches, and then he realized this was no heavy load of snow, but by that time he was flat on his belly.

He rolled over instantly. He held the ski pole basket in his left hand, refusing to let go of it. In his right hand, he held the flashlight, and he swung that instantly at the man’s head, felt it hitting the man’s forearm instead. Something solid struck Hawes’ shoulder; a wrench? a hammer? and he realized at once that the man was armed, and suddenly the situation became serious. He threw away the flashlight and groped for the .38 in his waistband.

The clouds cleared the moon. The figure kneeling over him, straddling him, was wearing a black parka, the hood pulled up over his head. A red scarf was wrapped over his chin and his mouth and his nose. He was holding a hammer in his right hand, and he raised the hammer over his head just as the moon disappeared again. Hawes’ fingers closed on the butt of the .38. The hammer descended.

It descended in darkness, striking Hawes on his cheek, ripping the flesh, glancing downward and catching his shoulder. Hawes swore violently, drew the .38 in a ridiculously clumsy draw, brought it into firing position, and felt again the driving blow of the other man’s weapon, the hammer lashing out of the darkness, slamming with brute force against his wrist, almost cracking the bone. His fingers opened involuntarily. The gun dropped into the snow. He bellowed in pain and tried to kick out at his attacker, but the man moved away quickly, gained his feet, and braced himself in the deep snow for the final assault. The moon appeared again. A thin silvery light put the man in silhouette against the sky, the black hooded head, the face masked by the scarf. The hammer went up over his head.

Hawes kicked out at his groin.

The blow did nothing to stop the man’s attack. It glanced off his thigh, missing target as the hammer came down, but throwing him off balance slightly so that the hammer struck without real force. Hawes threw a fist at him, and the man grunted and again the hammer came out of the new darkness. The man fought desperately and silently, frightening Hawes with the fury of his animal strength. They rolled over in the snow, and Hawes grasped at the hood, tried to pull it from the man’s head, found it was securely tied in place, and reached for the scarf. The scarf began to unravel. The man lashed out with the hammer, felt the scarf coming free, pulled back to avoid exposing his face, and suddenly staggered as Hawes’ fist struck home. He fell into the snow, and all at once, he panicked. Instead of attacking again, he pulled the scarf around his face and began to half run, half stumble through the deep snow. Hawes leaped at him, missing, his hands grabbing air. The man scrambled over the snow, heading for the pines lining the lift. By the time Hawes was on his feet again, the man had gone into the trees. Hawes went after him. It was dark under the trees. The world went black and silent under the pines.

He hesitated for a moment. He could see nothing, could hear nothing. He fully expected the hammer to come lashing out of the darkness.

Instead, there came the voice.

“Hold it right there.”

The voice startled him, but he reacted intuitively, whirling, his fist pulling back reflexively, and then firing into the darkness. He felt it connecting with solid flesh, heard someone swearing in the dark, and then — surprisingly, shockingly — Hawes heard the sound of a pistol shot. It rang on the mountain air, reverberated under the pines. Hawes opened his eyes wide. A pistol? But the man had only a hammer. Why hadn’t ... ?

“Next time, I go for your heart,” the voice said.

Hawes stared into the darkness. He could no longer locate the voice. He did not know where to jump, and the man was holding a pistol.

“You finished?” the man asked.

The beam of a flashlight suddenly stabbed through the darkness. Hawes blinked his eyes against it, tried to shield his face.

“Well, well,” the man said. “You never can tell, can you? Stick out your hands.”

“What?” Hawes said.

“Stick out your goddamn hands.”

Hesitantly, he held out his hands. He was the most surprised human being in the world when he felt the handcuffs being snapped onto his wrists.

10

The office from which Theodore Watt, sheriff of the town of Rawson, operated was on the main street alongside an Italian restaurant whose neon sign advertised LASAGNA * SPAGHETTI * RAVIOLI. Now that the snow had stopped, the plows had come through and banked snow on either side of the road so that the door of the office was partially hidden by a natural fortress of white. Inside the office, Theodore Watt was partially hidden by the fortress of his desk, the top of which was covered with Wanted circulars, FBI flyers, carbon copies of police reports, a pair of manacles, a cardboard container of coffee, a half-dozen chewed pencil stubs, and a framed picture of his wife and three children. Theodore Watt was not in a very friendly mood. He sat behind his desk-fortress, a frown on his face. Cotton Hawes stood before the desk, still wearing the handcuffs which had been clamped onto his wrists on the mountain. The deputy who’d made the collar, the selfsame Fred who had earlier pulled the ski pole from Helga Nilson’s chest, stood alongside Hawes, wearing the sheriff’s frown, and also wearing a mouse under his left eye, where Hawes had hit him.

“I could lock you up, you know,” Watt said, frowning. “You hit one of my deputies.”

“You ought to lock him up,” Hawes said angrily. “If he hadn’t come along, I might have had our man.”

“You might have, huh?”

“Yes.”

“You had no right being on that damn mountain,” Watt said. “What were you doing up there?”

“Looking.”

“For what?”

“Anything. He gave you the basket I found. Apparently it was important enough for the killer to have wanted it, too. He fought hard enough for it. Look at my cheek.”

“Well now, that’s a shame,” Watt said drily.

“There may be fingerprints on that basket,” Hawes said. “I suggest ...”

“I doubt it. Weren’t none on the ski pole, and none on the chair, neither. We talked to the two loaders, and they told us the one riding up with Helga Nilson was wearing gloves. I doubt if there’s any fingerprints on that basket at all.”

“Well ...” Hawes said, and he shrugged.

“What it amounts to, hmmmm,” Watt said, “is that you figured we wasn’t handling this case to your satisfaction, ain’t that it? So you figured you’d give us local hicks a little bigtime help, hmmmm? Ain’t that about it?”

“I thought I could possibly assist in some ...”

“Then you shoulda come to me,” Watt said, “and asked if you could help. This way, you only fouled up what we was trying to do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve got six men on that mountain,” Watt said, “waiting for whoever killed that girl to come back and cover his mistakes. This basket here was one of the mistakes. But did our killer find it? No. Our helpful big-city detective found it. You’re a lot of help, mister, you sure are. With all that ruckus on the mountain, that damn killer won’t go anywhere near it for a month!”

“I almost had him,” Hawes said. “I was going after him when your man stopped me.”

“Stopped him, hell! You’re the one who was stopping him from doing his job. Maybe I ought to lock you up. There’s a thing known as impeding the progress of an investigation. But, of course, you know all about that, don’t you? Being a big-city detective. Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry if I ...”

“And of course we’re just a bunch of local hicks who don’t know nothing at all about police work. Why, we wouldn’t even know enough to have a autopsy performed on that little girl, now would we? Or to have tests made of the blood on the chair, now would we? We wouldn’t have no crime lab in the next biggest town to Rawson, would we?”

“The way you were handling the investigation ...” Hawes started.

“... was none of your damn business,” Watt concluded. “Maybe we like to make our own mistakes, Hawes! But naturally, you city cops never make mistakes. That’s why there ain’t no crime at all where you come from.”

“Look,” Hawes said, “you were mishandling evidence. I don’t give a damn what you ...”

“As it turns out, it don’t matter because there wasn’t no fingerprints on that pole, anyway. And we had to get our men up the mountain, so we had to use the lift. There was a hell of a lot of confusion there today, mister. But I don’t suppose big-city cops ever get confused, hmmmm?” Watt looked at him sourly. “Take the cuffs off him, Fred,” he said.

Fred looked surprised, but he unlocked the handcuffs. “He hit me right in the eye,” he said to Watt.

“Well, you still got the other eye,” Watt said drily. “Go to bed, Hawes. We had enough of you for one night.”

“What did the autopsy report say?” Hawes asked.

Watt looked at him in something close to astonishment. “You still sticking your nose in this?”

“I’d still like to help, yes.”

“Maybe we don’t need your help.”

“Maybe you can use it. No one here knows ...”

“There we go with the damn big-city attitu—”

“I was going to say,” Hawes said, overriding Watt’s voice, “that no one in the area knows I’m a cop. That could be helpful to you.”

Watt was silent. “Maybe,” he said at last.

“May I hear the autopsy report?”

Watt was silent again. Then he nodded. He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and said, “Death caused by fatal stab wound of the heart, penetration of the auricles and pulmonary artery. That’s where all the blood came from, Hawes. Wounds of the ventricles don’t usually bleed that much. Coroner figures the girl died in maybe two or three minutes, there was that much loss of blood.”

“Anything else?”

“Broke her ankle when she fell out of that chair. Oblique fracture of the lateral malleolus. Examiner also found traces of human skin under the girl’s fingernails. Seems like she clawed out at whoever stabbed her, and took a goodly part of him away with her.”

“What did the skin tell you?”

“Not a hell of a lot. Our killer is white and adult.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. At least, that’s all from the skin, except the possibility of using it later for comparison tests — if we ever get anybody to compare it with. We found traces of blood on her fingers and nails, too, not her own.”

“How do you know?”

“Blood on the chair, the girl’s blood, was in the AB grouping. Blood we found on her hands was in the O grouping, most likely the killer’s.”

“Then she scratched him enough to cause bleeding.”

“She took a big chunk of skin from him, Hawes.”

“From the face?”

“Now how in hell would I know?”

“I thought maybe ...”

“Couldn’t tell from the skin sample whether it came from the neck or the face or wherever. She coulda scratched him anyplace.”

“Anything else?”

“We found a trail of the girl’s blood in the snow under the lift. Plenty of it, believe me, she bled like a stuck pig. The trail started about four minutes from the top. Took her two or three minutes to die. So, assuming the killer jumped from the chair right soon’s he stabbed her, then the girl ...”

“... was still alive when he jumped.”

“That’s right.”

“Find any tracks in the snow?”

“Nothing. Too many drifts. We don’t know whether he jumped with his skis on or not. Have to have been a pretty good skier to attempt that, we figure.”

“Well, anyway, he’s got a scratch.”

Hawes said. “That’s something to look for.”

“You gonna start looking tonight?” Watt asked sarcastically.

11

Blanche Colby was waiting for him when he got back to the room. She was sitting up in his bed propped against the pillows, wearing a shapeless flannel nightgown which covered her from her throat to her ankles. She was holding an apple in her hand, and she bit into it angrily as he entered the room, and then went back to reading the open book in her lap.

“Hi,” he said.

She did not answer him, nor did she even look up at him. She continued destroying the apple, continued her pretense of reading.

“Good book?”

“Excellent book,” she answered.

“Miss me?”

“Drop dead,” Blanche said.

“I’m sorry. I ...”

“Don’t be. I enjoyed myself immensely in your absence.”

“I got arrested, you see.”

‘You got what?”

“Arrested. Pinched. Pulled in. Collared. Apprehen—”

“I understood you the first time. Who arrested you?”

“The cops,” Hawes said, and he shrugged.

“Serves you right.” She put down the book. “Wasn’t it you who told me a girl was killed on this mountain today? Murdered? And you run off and leave me when a killer ...”

“I told you where I was going. I told you ...”

“You said you’d be back in an hour!”

“Yes, but I didn’t know I was going to be arrested.”

“What happened to your cheek?”

“I got hit with a hammer.”

“Good,” Blanche said, and she nodded emphatically.

“Aren’t you going to kiss my wound?” Hawes asked.

“You can kiss my ...”

“Ah-ah,” he cautioned.

“I sat by that damn fireplace until eleven o’clock. Then I came up here and ... what time is it, anyway?”

“After midnight.”

Blanche nodded again. “I would have packed up and gone home, believe me, if the roads were open.”

“Yes, but they’re closed.”

“Yes, damn it!”

“Aren’t you glad I’m back?”

Blanche shrugged. “I couldn’t care less. I was just about to go to sleep.”

“In here?”

“In the other room, naturally.”

“Honey, honey ...”

“Yes, honey-honey?” she mimicked. “What, honey-honey baby?”

Hawes grinned. “That’s a very lovely nightgown. My grandmother used to wear a nightgown like that.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Blanche said sourly. “I put it on especially for you.”

“I always liked the touch of flannel,” he said.

“Get your big hands ...” she started, and moved away from him swiftly. Folding her arms across the front of her gown, she sat in the center of the bed and stared at the opposite wall. Hawes studied her for a moment, took off his sweaters, and then began unbuttoning his shirt.

“If you’re going to undress,” Blanche said evenly, “you could at least have the modesty to go into the ...”

“Shhh!” Hawes said sharply. His hands had stopped on the buttons of his shirt. He cocked his head to one side now and listened. Blanche, watching him, frowned.

“What ... ?”

“Shhh!” he said again, and again he listened attentively. The room was silent. Into the silence came the sound.

“Do you hear it?” he asked.

“Do I hear what?”

“Listen.”

They listened together. The sound was unmistakable, faint and faraway, but unmistakable.

“It’s the same buzzing I heard last night,” Hawes said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs. To the ski shop,” he answered, and swiftly left the room. As he went down the corridor toward the steps, a door at the opposite end of the hall opened. A young girl wearing a quilted robe over her pajamas, her hair done in curlers, came into the hallway carrying a towel and a tooth brush. She smiled at Hawes and then walked past him. He heard the bathroom door locking behind her as he went down the steps.

The lights were on in the ski shop. The buzzing sound came from somewhere in the shop, intermittent, hanging on the silent night air, ceasing abruptly, beginning again. He walked silently over the snow, stopping just outside the door to the shop. He put his ear to the wood and listened, but the only sound he heard was the buzzing. He debated kicking in the door. Instead, he knocked gently.

“Yes?” a voice from inside called.

“Could you open up, please?” Hawes said.

He waited. He could hear the heavy sound of ski boots approaching the locked door. The door opened a crack. A suntanned face appeared in the opening. He recognized the face at once — Helmut Kurtz, the ski instructor who had helped him the night before, the man he’d seen today on the mountain just before he’d got on the chair lift.

“Oh, hello there,” Hawes said.

“Yes? What is it?” Kurtz asked.

“Mind if I come in?”

“I’m sorry, no one is allowed in the shop. The shop is closed.”

“Yes, but you’re in it, aren’t you?”

“I’m an instructor,” Kurtz said. “We are permitted ...”

“I just saw a light,” Hawes said, “and I felt like talking to someone.”

“Well ...”

“What are you doing, anyway?” Hawes asked casually, and casually he wedged one shoulder against the door and gently eased it open, casually pushing it into the room, casually squeezing his way into the opening, casually shouldering his way past Kurtz and then squinting past the naked hanging light bulb to the work bench at the far end of the room, trying to locate the source of the buzzing sound which filled the shop.

“You are really not allowed ...” Kurtz started, but Hawes was already halfway across the room, moving toward the other small area of light where a green-shaded bulb hung over the work bench. The buzzing sound was louder, the sound of an old machine, the sound of ...

He located it almost at once. A grinding wheel was set up on one end of the bench. The wheel was still spinning. He looked at it, nodded and then flicked the switch to turn it off. Turning to Kurtz, he smiled and said, “Were you sharpening something?”

“Yes, those skates,” Kurtz said. He pointed to a pair of white figure skates on the bench.

“Yours?” Hawes asked.

Kurtz smiled. “No. Those are women’s skates.”

“Whose?”

“Well, I don’t think that is any of your business, do you?” Kurtz asked politely.

“I suppose not,” Hawes answered gently, still smiling. “Were you in here sharpening something last night, too, Mr. Kurtz?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, were you ...”

“No, I was not.” Kurtz walked up to the bench and studied Hawes slowly and deliberately. “Who are you?” he asked.

“My name’s Cotton Hawes.”

“How do you do? Mr. Hawes, I’m sorry to have to be so abrupt, but you are really not allowed ...”

“Yes, I know. Only instructors are allowed in here, isn’t that right, Mr. Kurtz?”

“After closing, yes. We sometimes come in to make minor repairs on our skis or ...”

“Or sharpen up some things, huh, Mr. Kurtz?”

“Yes. Like the skates.”

“Yes,” Hawes repeated. “Like the skates. But you weren’t in here last night were you, Mr. Kurtz?”

“No, I was not.”

“Because, you see, I heard what could have been the sound of a file or a rasp or something, and then the sound of this grinding wheel. So you’re sure you weren’t in here sharpening something? Like skates? Or ...” Hawes shrugged. “A ski pole?”

“A ski pole? Why would anyone ... ?” Kurtz fell suddenly silent. He studied Hawes again. “What are you?” he asked. “A policeman?”

“Why? Don’t you like policemen?”

“I had nothing to do with Helga’s death,” Kurtz said immediately.

“No one said you did.”

“You implied it.”

“I implied nothing, Mr. Kurtz.”

“You asked if I were sharpening a ski pole last night. The implication is…”

“But you weren’t.”

“No, I was not!” Kurtz said angrily.

“What were you sharpening last night?”

“Nothing. I was nowhere near this shop last night.”

“Ahh, but you were, Mr. Kurtz. I met you outside, remember? You were coming down the steps. Very fast. Don’t you remember?”

“That was earlier in the evening.”

“But I didn’t say anything about time, Mr. Kurtz. I didn’t ask you when you were in this shop.”

“I was not in this shop! Not at any time!”

“But you just said, ‘That was earlier in the evening.’ Earlier than what, Mr. Kurtz?

Kurtz was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Earlier than ... than whoever was here.”

“You saw someone here?”

“I ... I saw a light burning.”

“When? What time?”

“I don’t remember. I went to the bar after I met you ... and I had a few drinks, and then I went for a walk. That was when I saw the light.”

“Where do you room, Mr. Kurtz?”

“In the main building.”

“Did you see Helga at any time last night?”

“No.”

“Not at any time?”

“No.”

“Then what were you doing upstairs?”

“I came to get Maria’s skates. Those.” He pointed to the figure skates on the bench.

“Maria who?”

“Maria Fiers.”

“Is she a small girl with dark hair?”

“Yes. Do you know her?”

“I think I just saw her in the hallway,” Hawes said. “So you came to get her skates, and then you went for a drink, and then you went for a walk. What time was that?”

“It must have been after midnight.”

“And a light was burning in the ski shop?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t see who was in here?”

“No, I did not.”

“How well did you know Helga?”

“Very well. We taught together.”

“How well is very well?”

“We were good friends.”

“How good, Mr. Kurtz?”

“I told you!”

“Were you sleeping with her?”

“How dare you ...”

“Okay, okay.” Hawes pointed to the skates. “These are Maria’s, you said?”

“Yes. She’s an instructor here, too. But she skates well, almost as well as she skis.”

“Are you good friends with her, too, Mr. Kurtz?”

“I am good friends with everyone!” Kurtz said angrily. “I am normally a friendly person.” He paused. “Are you a policeman?”

“Yes. I am.”

“I don’t like policemen,” Kurtz said, his voice low. “I didn’t like them in Vienna, where they wore swastikas on their arms, and I don’t like them here, either. I had nothing to do with Helga’s death.”

“Do you have a key to this shop, Mr. Kurtz?”

“Yes. We all do. We make our own minor repairs. During the day, there are too many people here. At night, we can ...”

“What do you mean by all? The instructors?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Then any of the instructors could have ...”

The scream was a sentient thing which invaded the room suddenly and startlingly. It came from somewhere upstairs, ripping down through the ancient floor boards and the ancient ceiling timbers. It struck the room with its blunt force, and both men looked up toward the ceiling, speechless, waiting. The scream came again. Hawes got to his feet and ran for the door. “Blanche,” hewhispered, and slammed the door behind him.

She was standing in the corridor outside the hall bathroom, not really standing, but leaning limply against the wall, her supporting dancer’s legs robbed of stance, robbed of control. She wore the long flannel nightgown with a robe over it, and she leaned against the wall with her eyes shut tight, her blond hair disarrayed, the scream unvoiced now, but frozen in the set of her face and the trembling openness of her mouth. Hawes came stamping up the steps and turned abruptly right, and stopped stock still when he saw her, an interruption of movement for only a fraction of a second, the turn, the stop, and then a forward motion again which carried him to her in four headlong strides.

“What is it?” he said.

She could not answer. She clung to the wall with the flat palms of her hands, her eyes still squeezed shut tightly, the scream frozen in her throat and blocking articulation. She shook her head.

“Blanche, what is it?”

She shook her head again, and then pulled one hand from the wall, as if afraid that by doing so she would lose her grip and tumble to the floor. The hand rose limply. It did not point, it only indicated, and that in the vaguest manner, as if it too were dazed.

“The bathroom?” he asked.

She nodded. He turned from her. The bathroom door was partly open. He opened it the rest of the way, rushing into the room, and then stopping instantly, as if he had run into a stone wall.

Maria Fiers was inside her clothing and outside of it. The killer had caught her either dressing or undressing, had caught her in what she supposed was privacy, so that one leg was in the trousers of her pajamas and the other lay twisted beneath her body, naked. Her pajama top had ridden up over one delicately curved breast, perhaps as she fell, perhaps as she struggled. Even her hair seemed in a state of uncertain transition, some of it held firmly in place by curlers, the rest hanging in haphazard abandon, the loose curlers scattered on the bathroom floor. The hook latch on the inside of the door had been ripped from the jamb when the door was forced. The water in the sink was still running. The girl lay still and dead in her invaded privacy, partially clothed, partially disrobed, surprise and terror wedded in the death mask of her face. A towel was twisted about her throat. It had been twisted there with tremendous force, biting into the skin with such power that it remained twisted there now, the flesh torn and overlapping it in places, the coarse cloth almost embedded into her neck and throat. Her tongue protruded from her mouth. She was bleeding from her nose where her face had struck the bathroom tile in falling.

He backed out of the room.

He found a pay telephone in the main building, and from there he called Theodore Watt.

12

Blanche sat on the edge of the bed in room 105, shivering inside her gown, her robe, and a blanket which had been thrown over her shoulders. Theodore Watt leaned disjointedly against the dresser, puffed on his cigar, and said, “Now you want to tell me exactly what happened, Miss Colby?”

Blanche sat shivering and hunched, her face pale. She searched for her voice, seemed unable to find it, shook her head, nodded, cleared her throat, and seemed surprised that she could speak. “I ... I was alone. Cotton had gone down to see what ... what the noise was.”

“What noise, Hawes?” Watt asked.

“A grinding wheel,” he answered. “Downstairs in the ski shop. I heard it last night, too.”

“Did you find out who was running the wheel?”

“Tonight, it was a guy named Helmut Kurtz. He’s an instructor here, too. Claims he was nowhere near the shop last night. But he did see a light burning after midnight.”

“Where’s he now?”

“I don’t know. Sheriff, he was with me when the girl was killed. He couldn’t possibly have ...”

Watt ignored him and walked to the door. He opened it, and leaned into the corridor. “Fred,” he said, “find me Helmut Kurtz, an instructor here.”

“I got that other guy from down the hall,” Fred answered.

“I’ll be right with him. Tell him to wait.”

“What other guy?” Hawes asked.

“Instructor in 102. Larry Davidson.” Watt shook his head. “Place is crawling with goddamn instructors, excuse me, miss. Wonder there’s any room for guests.” He shook his head again. “You said you were alone, Miss Colby.”

“Yes. And I ... I thought I heard something down the hall ... like ... I didn’t know what. A loud sudden noise.”

“Probably the bathroom door being kicked in,” Watt said. “Go on.”

“And then I ... I heard a girl’s voice saying, ‘Get out of here! Do you hear me! Get out of here!’ And ... and it was quiet, and I heard someone running down the hall and down the steps, so I ... I thought I ought to ... to look.”

“Yes, go on.”

“I went down the ... the hallway and looked down the steps, but I didn’t see anyone. And then, when I ... when I was starting back for the room, I ... I heard the water running in the bathroom. The ... the door was open, so I ... Oh Jesus, do I have to?”

“You found the girl, is that right?”

“Yes,” Blanche said, her voice very low.

“And then you screamed.”

“Yes.”

“And then Hawes came upstairs, is that right?”

“Yes,” Hawes said. “And I called you from the main building.”

“Um-huh,” Watt said. He went to the door and opened it. “Want to come in here, Mr. Davidson?” he asked.

Larry Davidson came into the room hesitantly. He was a tall man, and he stooped as he came through the doorway, giving an impression of even greater height, as if he had to stoop to avoid the top of the door frame. He was wearing dark trousers and a plaid woolen sports shirt. His hair was clipped close to his scalp. His blue eyes were alert, if not wary.

“Guess you know what this is all about, huh, Mr. Davidson?” Watt asked.

“Yes, I think so,” Davidson answered.

“You don’t mind answering a few questions, do you?”

“No. I’ll ... I’ll answer anything you ...”

“Fine. Were you in your room all night, Mr. Davidson?”

“Not all night, no. I was up at the main building part of the time.”

“Doing what?”

“Well, I ...”

“Yes, Mr. Davidson, what were you doing?”

“I ... I was fencing. Look, I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“You were what, Mr. Davidson?”

“Fencing. We’ve got some foils and masks up there, and I ... I was just fooling around. Look, I know Helga was stabbed, but ...”

“What time did you get back here, Mr. Davidson?”

“About ... about ten-thirty, eleven.”

“And you’ve been in your room since then?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do when you got back here?”

“I wrote a letter to my wife, and then I went to sleep.”

“What time did you go to sleep?”

“About midnight.”

“Did you hear any loud noise in the hall?”

“No.”

“Did you hear any voices?”

“No.”

“Did you hear Miss Colby when she screamed?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I was asleep.”

“You sleep in your clothes, Mr. Davidson?”

“What? Oh. Oh, no. Your fellow ... your deputy said I could put on some clothes.”

“What were you sleeping in?”

“My pajamas. Listen, I barely knew those girls. I only joined the school here two weeks ago. I mean, I knew them to talk to, but that’s all. And the fencing is just a coincidence. I mean, we always fool around with the foils. I mean ever since I came here, somebody’s been up there fooling around with…”

“How many times did you scream, Miss Colby?” Watt asked.

“I don’t remember,” Blanche said.

“She screamed twice,” Hawes said.

“Where were you when you heard the screams, Hawes?”

“Downstairs. In the ski shop.”

“But you were in your room, right down the hall, Mr. Davidson, and you didn’t hear anything, hmmm? Maybe you were too busy ...”

And suddenly Davidson began crying. His face twisted into a grimace, and the tears began flowing, and he said, “I didn’t have anything to do with this, I swear. Please, I didn’t have anything to do with it. Please, I’m married, my wife’s in the city expecting a baby, I need this job, I didn’t even look at those girls, I swear to God, what do you want me to do? Please, please.”

The room was silent except for his sobbing.

“I swear to God,” he said softly. “I swear to God. I’m a heavy sleeper. I’m very tired at night. I swear. Please. I didn’t do it. I only knew them to say hello. I didn’t hear anything. Please. Believe me. Please. I have to keep this job. It’s the only thing I know, skiing. I can’t get involved in this. Please.”

He lowered his head, trying to hide the tears that streamed down his face, his shoulders heaving, the deep sobs starting deep inside him and reverberating through his entire body.

“Please,” he said.

For the first time since the whole thing had started. Watt turned to Hawes and asked his advice.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I’m a heavy sleeper, too,” Hawes said. “You could blow up the building, and I wouldn’t hear it.”

13

On Sunday morning, the church bells rang out over the valley.

They started in the town of Rawson, and they rang sharp and clear on the mountain air, drifting over the snow and down the valley. He went to the window and pulled up the shade, and listened to the sound of the bells, and remembered his own youth and the Reverend Jeremiah Hawes who had been his father, and the sound of Sunday church bells, and the rolling, sonorous voice of his father delivering the sermon. There had always been logic in his father’s sermons. Hawes had not come away from his childhood background with any abiding religious fervor — but he had come away with a great respect for logic. “To be believed,” his father had told him, “it must be reasonable. And to be reasonable, it must be logical. You could do worse than remembering that, Cotton.”

There did not seem to be much logic in the killing of Helga Nilson and Maria Fiers, unless there was logic in wanton brutality. He tried to piece together the facts as he looked out over the peaceful valley and listened to the steady tolling of the bells. Behind him, Blanche was curled in sleep, gently breathing, her arms wrapped around the pillow. He did not want to wake her yet, not after what she’d been through last night. So far as he was concerned, the weekend was over; he could not ski with pleasure anymore, not this weekend. He wanted nothing more than to get away from Rawson Mountain, no, that wasn’t quite true. He wanted to find the killer. That was what he wanted more than anything else. Not because he was being paid for the job, not because he wanted to prove to Theodore Watt that maybe big-city detectives did have a little something on the ball — but only because the double murders filled him with a sense of outrage. He could still remember the animal strength of the man who’d attacked him on the mountain, and the thought of that power directed against two helpless young girls angered Hawes beyond all reason.

Why? he asked himself.

Where is the logic?

There was none. No logic in the choice of the victims, and no logic in the choice of the scene. Why would anyone have chosen to kill Helga in broad daylight, on a chair suspended anywhere from six to thirty feet above the ground, using a ski pole as a weapon? A ski pole sharpened to a deadly point, Hawes reminded himself, don’t forget that. This thing didn’t just happen, this was no spur-of-the-moment impulse, this was planned and premeditated, a pure and simple Murder One. Somebody had been in that ski shop the night before the first murder, using a file and then a grinding wheel, sharpening that damn pole, making certain its end could penetrate a heavy ski parka, and a ski sweater, and a heart.

Then there must have been logic to the choice of locale, Hawes thought. Whoever killed Helga had at least planned far enough ahead to have prepared a weapon the night before. And admitting the existence of a plan, then logic could be presupposed, and it could further be assumed that killing her on the chair lift was a part of the plan — perhaps a very necessary part of it.

Yes, that’s logic, he thought— except that it’s illogical.

Behind him, Blanche stirred. He turned to look at her briefly, remembering the horror on her face last night, contrasting it now with her features relaxed in sleep. She had told the story to Watt three times, had told him again and again how she’d found the dead girl.

Maria Fiers, twenty-one years old, brunette, a native of Montpelier, Vermont. She had begun skiing when she was six years old, had won the woman’s slalom four times running, had been an instructor since she was seventeen. She skated, too, and had been on her high school swimming team, an all-around athlete, a nice girl with a gentle manner and a pleasant smile — dead.

Why?

She lived in the room next door to Helga’s, had known Helga for close to a year. She had been nowhere near the chair lift on the day Helga was killed. In fact, she had been teaching a beginner’s class near the T-Bar, a good distance from the chair lift. She could not have seen Helga’s murder, nor Helga’s murderer.

But someone had killed her nonetheless.

And if there were a plan, and if there were supposed logic to the plan, and if killing Helga on a chair halfway up the mountain was part of that logic, then the death of Maria Fiers was also a part of it.

But how?

The hell with it, Hawes thought. I can’t think straight any more. I want to crack this so badly that I can’t think straight, and that makes me worse than useless. So the thing to do is to get out of here, wake Blanche and tell her to dress and pack, and then pay my bill and get out, back to the city, back to the 87th where death comes more frequently perhaps, and just as brutally — but not as a surprise. I’ll leave this to Theodore Watt, the sheriff who wants to make his own mistakes. I’ll leave it to him and his nimble-fingered deputies, and maybe they’ll bust it wide open, or maybe they won’t, but it’s too much for me, I can’t think straight any more.

He went to the bed and woke Blanche, and then he walked over to the main building, anxious to pay his bill and get on his way. Someone was at the piano, practicing scales. Hawes walked past the piano and the fireplace and around the corner to Wollender’s office. He knocked on the door, and waited. There was a slight hesitation on the other side of the door, and then Wollender said, “Yes, come in,” and Hawes turned the knob.

Everything looked exactly the way it had looked when Hawes checked in on Friday night, an eternity ago. Wollender was sitting behind his desk, a man in his late twenties with dark hair and dark brows pulled low over deep brown eyes. He was wearing a white shirt open at the throaty a bold reindeer-imprinted sweater over it. The plaster cast was still on his right leg, the leg stretched out stiffly in front of him, the foot resting on a low ottoman. Everything looked exactly the same.

“I want to pay my bill,” Hawes said. “We’re checking out.”

He stood just inside the door, some fifteen feet from the desk. Wollender’s crutches leaned against the wall near the door. There was a smile on Wollender’s face as he said, “Certainly,” and then opened the bottom drawer of the desk and took out his register and carefully made out a bill. Hawes walked to the desk, added the bill, and then wrote a check. As he waved it in the air to dry the ink, he said, “What were you doing in my room yesterday, Mr. Wollender?”

“Checking the heat,” Wollender said.

Hawes nodded. “Here’s your check. Will you mark this bill ‘Paid,’ please?”

“Be happy to,” Wollender said. He stamped the bill and handed it back to Hawes. For a moment, Hawes had the oddest feeling that something was wrong. The knowledge pushed itself into his mind in the form of an absurd caption: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? He looked at Wollender, at his hair, and his eyes, and his white shirt, and his reindeer sweater, and his extended leg, and the cast on it, and the ottoman. Something was different. This was not the room, not the picture as it had been on Friday night. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? he thought, and he did not know.

He took the bill. “Thanks,” he said. “Have you heard any news about the roads?”

“They’re open all the way to the Thruway. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“Thanks,” Hawes said. He hesitated, staring at Wollender. “My room’s right over the ski shop, you know,” he said.

“Yes, I know that.”

“Do you have a key to the shop, Mr. Wollender?”

Wollender shook his head. “No. The shop is privately owned. It doesn’t belong to the hotel. I believe the proprietor allows the ski instructors to ...”

“But then, you’re a locksmith, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Isn’t that what you told me when I checked in? You said you were a locksmith out of season, didn’t you?”

“Oh. Oh, yes. Yes, I did.” Wollender shifted uneasily in the chair, trying to make his leg comfortable. Hawes looked at the leg again, and then he thought, Damn it, what’s wrong?

“Maybe you went to my room to listen, Mr. Wollender. Is that possible?”

“Listen to what?”

“To the sounds coming from the ski shop below,” Hawes said.

“Are the sounds that interesting?”

“In the middle of the night, they are. You can hear all sorts of things in the middle of the night. I’m just beginning to remember all the things I heard.”

“Oh? What did you hear?”

“I heard the oil burner clicking, and the toilet flushing, and the Cats going up the mountain, and someone arguing down the hall, and somebody filing and grinding in the ski shop.” He was speaking to Wollender, but not really speaking to him. He was, instead, remembering those midnight voices raised in anger, and remembering that it was only later he had heard the noises in the shop, and gone to the window, and seen the light burning below. And then a curious thing happened. Instead of calling him “Mr. Wollender,” he suddenly called him “Elmer.”

“Elmer,” he said, “something’s just occurred to me.”

Elmer. And with the word, something new came into the room. With the word, he was suddenly transported back to the interrogation room at the 87th, where common thieves and criminals were called by their first names, Charlie, and Harry, and Martin, and Joe, and where this familiarity somehow put them on the defensive, somehow rattled them and made them know their questioners weren’t playing games.

“Elmer,” he said, leaning over the desk, “it’s just occurred to me that since Maria couldn’t have seen anything on the mountain, maybe she was killed because she heard something. And maybe what she heard was the same arguing I heard. Only her room is right next door to Helga’s. And maybe she knew who was arguing.” He hesitated. “That’s pretty logical, don’t you think, Elmer?”

“I suppose so,” Wollender said pleasantly. “But if you know who killed Maria, why don’t you go to ...”

“I don’t know, Elmer. Do you know?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“Yeah, neither do I, Elmer. All I have is a feeling.”

“And what’s the feeling?” Wollender asked.

“That you came to my room to listen, Elmer. To find out how much I had heard the night before Helga was murdered. And maybe you decided I heard too damn much, and maybe that’s why I was attacked on the mountain yesterday.”

“Please, Mr. Hawes,” Wollender said, and a faint superior smile touched his mouth, and his hand opened limply to indicate the leg in the cast.

“Sure, sure,” Hawes said. “How could I have been attacked by a man with his leg in a cast, a man who can’t get around without crutches? Sure, Elmer. Don’t think that hasn’t been bugg—” He stopped dead. “Your crutches,” he said.

“What?”

“Your crutches! Where the hell are they?”

For just an instant, the color went out of Wollender’s face. Then, quite calmly, he said, “Right over there. Behind you.”

Hawes turned and looked at the crutches, leaning against the wall near the door.

“Fifteen feet from your desk,” he said. “I thought you couldn’t walk without them.”

“I ... I used the furniture to ... to get to the desk. I ...”

“You’re lying, Elmer,” Hawes said, and he reached across the desk and pulled Wollender out of the chair.

“My leg!” Wollender shouted.

“Your leg, my ass! How long have you been walking on it, Elmer? Was that why you killed her on the mountain? So that ...”

“I didn’t kill anybody!”

“... so that you’d have a perfect alibi? A man with his leg in a cast couldn’t possibly ride a lift or jump from it, could he? Unless he’d been in and out of that cast for God knows how long!”

“My leg is broken! I can’t walk!”

“Can you kill, Elmer?”

“I didn’t kill her!”

“Did Maria hear you arguing, Elmer?”

“No. No ...”

“Then why’d you go after her?”

“I didn’t!” He tried to pull away from Hawes. “You’re crazy. You’re hurting my leg! Let go of ...”

“I’m crazy? You son of a bitch. I’m crazy? You stuck a ski pole in one girl and twisted a towel around ...”

“I didn’t, I didn’t!”

“We found the basket from your pole!” Hawes shouted.

“What basket? I don’t know what ...”

“Your fingerprints are all over it!” he lied.

“You’re crazy,” Wollender said. “How could I get on the lift? I can’t walk. I broke the leg in two places. One of the bones came right through the skin. I couldn’t get on a lift if I wanted ...”

“The skin,” Hawes said.

“What?”

“The skin!” There was a wild look in his eyes now. He pulled Wollender closer to him and yelled, “Where’d she scratch you?”

“What?”

He seized the front of Wollender’s shirt with both hands, and then ripped it open. “Where’s the cut, Elmer? On your chest? On your neck?”

Wollender struggled to get away from him, but Hawes had his head captured in both huge hands now. He twisted Wollender’s face viciously, forced his head forward, pulled back the shirt collar.

“Let go of me!” Wollender screamed.

“What’s this, Elmer?” His fingers grasped the adhesive bandage on the back of Wollender’s neck. Angrily, he tore it loose. A healing cut, two inches long and smeared with iodine, ran diagonally from a spot just below Wollender’s hairline.

“I did that myself,” Wollender said. “I bumped into ...”

“Helga did it,” Hawes said. “When you stabbed her! The sheriff’s got the skin, Elmer. It was under her fingernails.”

“No,” Wollender said. He shook his head.

The room was suddenly very still. Both men were exhausted. Hawes kept clinging to the front of Wollender’s shirt, breathing hard, waiting. Wollender kept shaking his head.

“You want to tell me?”

Wollender shook his head.

“How long have you been walking?”

Wollender shook his head again.

“Why’d you keep your leg in the cast?”

Again, Wollender shook his head.

“You killed two young girls!” Hawes bellowed. He was surprised to find himself trembling. His hand tightened on the shirt front, the knuckles showing white through his skin. Perhaps Wollender felt the sudden tension, perhaps Wollender knew that in the next instant Hawes would throttle him.

“All right,” he said. His voice was very low. “All right.”

“Why’d you keep wearing the cast?”

“So ... so ... so she wouldn’t know. So she would think I ... I was ... was unable to walk. And that way, I could ... could watch her. Without her knowing.”

“Watch who?”

“Helga. She ... She was my girl, you see. I ... I loved her, you see.”

“Yeah, you loved her enough to kill her,” Hawes said.

“That’s not why I ...” He shook his head. “It was because of Kurtz. She kept denying it, but I knew about them. And I warned her. You have to believe that I warned her. And I ... I kept the cast on my leg to ... to fool her.”

“When did it come off?” Hawes asked.

“Last week. The…the doctor took it off right in this room. He did a bivalve, with an electric saw, cut it right down the side. And…and when he was gone, I…I figured I could put the two halves together again, and…and…hold it in place with…with tape. That way, I could watch her. Without her knowing I could get around.”

“And what did you see?”

“You know what I saw!”

“Tell me.”

“Friday night, she ... I ... I saw Kurtz leaving the annex. I knew he’d been with her.”

“He was there to pick up Maria’s skates,” Hawes said. “To sharpen them.”

“No!” Wollender shouted, and for a moment there was force in his voice, a vocal explosion, fury and power, and Hawes remembered again the brute strength of Wollender’s attack on the mountain. Wollender’s voice died again. “No,” he said softly, “you’re mistaken. He was with Helga. I know. Do you think I’d have killed her if ...” His voice caught. His eyes suddenly misted. He turned his head, not looking at Hawes, staring across the room, the tears solidifying his eyes. “When I went up to her room, I warned her,” he said, his voice low. “I told her I had seen him, seen him with my own eyes, and she ... she said I was imagining things. And she laughed.” His face went suddenly tight. “She laughed, you see. She ... she shouldn’t have laughed.” His eyes filled with tears, had a curiously opaque look. “She shouldn’t have laughed,” he said. “It wasn’t funny. I loved her. It wasn’t funny.”

“No,” Hawes said wearily. “It wasn’t funny at all.”

14

The storm was over.

The storm which had started suddenly and filled the air with fury was gone. The wind had died after scattering the clouds from the sky. They drove in the warm comfort of the convertible, the sky a clear blue ahead of them, the snow banked on either side of the road.

The storm was over.

There were only the remains of its fury now, the hard-packed snow beneath the automobile, and the snow lining the roads, and the snow hanging in the branches of the trees. But now it was over and done, and now there was only the damage to count, and the repairs to be made.

He sat silently behind the wheel of the car, a big redheaded man who drove effortlessly. His anger was gone, too, like the anger of the storm. There was only a vast sadness inside him.

“Cotton?” Blanche said.

“Mmmm?” He did not take his eyes from the road. He watched the winding white ribbon and listened to the crunch of snow beneath his heavy-duty tires, and over that the sound of her voice.

“Cotton,” she said, “I’m very glad to be with you.”

“I am, too.”

“In spite of everything,” she said, “I’m very very glad.”

He did a curious thing then. He suddenly took his right hand from the wheel and put it on her thigh, and squeezed her gently. He thought he did it because Blanche was a very attractive girl with whom he had just shared a moment of communication.

But perhaps he touched her because death had suddenly shouldered its way into that automobile, and he had remembered again the two young girls had been Wollender’s victims.

Perhaps he touched her thigh, soft and warm, only as a reaffirmation of life.