The Hunt aka 27 (49 page)

There had been two storms in forty-eight hours with a six-hour break between them. Phone lines were still down and they were just beginning to clear the roads. Keegan and Dryman, huddled against the harsh wind, which was beginning to slack off, scurried down the street and entered the ranger station. It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was just beginning to rise over the mountains. They had been holed up in their hotel room for two days.

Jack Lancey, a grizzled, white-haired ranger, was sitting behind his desk with his feet propped up, drinking hot chocolate.

“Howdy gents,” he said. “Got coffee and hot chocolate on the stove in the other room. It ain’t the White House but it’ll do.”

“How’s Duane’s ankle?” Keegan asked.

“A little better today but what the hell, a compound fracture. That’s gonna smart for a while. You sure did a good job with that splint there, Dryman. He could’ve been crippled for life.”

“I’m sorry I got him into this,” Keegan said.

“It’s his job, Mr. Keegan, He’s faced up to a lot worse.”

“Any news from Kramer’s cabin?”

Lancey shook his head. “This is a real pisser,” he said. “We can’t get jack shit on the radio and our phones are down. Don’t know whether Soapie went on up to the ridge or stayed at the high cabin. Hell, for all we know
Trexler
went into the gulch, too. He could be an ice cube by now.”

“No such luck,” Keegan growled. “Got a big map of this area, Jack?”

“Right in the radio room there, gents. Almost life-size.”

They went into the radio room and stared at the map, which covered almost one entire wall of the room. Lancey pointed to a spot with his pencil.”

“That’s us, right there,” he said.

“Let’s say he skied out of Kramer’s place, just for discussion’s sake, okay? Where would he most likely go?”

Lancey stared at the map for a few minutes.

“Well, he probably went to the Copperhead Ridge cabin first. From there it’s just about downhill to anyplace you’d want to go. Hell, there’s a buncha little villages he might’ve made it into. But he would’ve gone southeast, to avoid the river. Over in here someplace. Almont, Gunnison, Sapinero.”

“What’s this?” Keegan asked, tracing a broken line down the center of the map with his finger.

“That’s the Continental Divide.”

“Definitely would’ve gone south, right?”

“Had to. Too rough going north. I don’t care how good he

“Down in here someplace,” Keegan said, kneeling down and looking at the bottom of the map.

“You’re talking about thirty miles before you see a smokestack,” said Lancey. “
Trexler
didn’t ski thirty miles through that storm. If he tried, he’s dead.”

“What would he do if he did get to some little burg?” Dryman said. “Nobody’s going anywhere. Two, three feet of snow all over the area, roads closed.”

“They just got the plows and sand trucks out late last night,” Lancey said.

“I’m telling you, he’s down there somewhere. Maybe he’s holed up, but he’s down there.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he doesn’t think anybody would believe he could make it. And besides, everybody thinks he went into Leadville. He probably figures he’s safe.”

Lancey sighed.

“Well, hell,” he said. “We got a four-wheel-drive with slug chains on it. C’
m
on, we’ll pick up the sheriff and see if we can make it up to Kramer’s cabin and take a look.”

The sheriff was an enormous man, over six feet tall and weighing about 225, with skin tanned the color of cinnamon. A soft-spoken man with a ready smile and alert eyes, he wore a plaid shirt and cord pants and a bulky sheepskin jacket that made him look even larger. A battered felt hat covered his bald pate. He climbed in the front seat next to Lancey and twisting around with some effort, offered a hand the size of a melon to Keegan and Dryman.

“Sidney Dowd,” he said softly. “I’m the sheriff hereabouts.”

Keegan shook the big hand.

“Francis Keegan, White House Security. This is John Dry- man, my partner.”

“White House Security, huh?” Dowd said. “You boys go in and check things out ahead of the president?”

“No,” Keegan said. “We’re in Special Investigations.” He let it drop there, hoping the sheriff would not pursue the point, but it was wishful thinking.

“What’d Johnny
Trexler
do?”

“We need to talk to him,” Dryman said. “Part of an ongoing investigation.”

“Took the liberty of callin’ the White House,” Dowd said. “Talked to a fella name of Smith who seemed a little surprised you were way out here, but he did say you were official and the investigation was highly confidential.” He paused for a moment and added, “Whatever the hell that means.”

“We just didn’t want him to get on to us and turn rabbit,” Keegan said. “But somebody tipped him off and that’s exactly what happened.”

“Don’t think there was anything suspicious about the call,” Dowd said. “Jesse out at the airport heard you mention John’s name when you landed and got all excited. He called to find out if
Trexler
was going to the White House for some reason.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Keegan said. “I don’t mind telling you I was a little paranoid about that.”

“It’s a small town, gentlemen. Gossip is not uncommon.”

“I thought we might swing by Trexler’s place on the way up the mountain, just to check it out,” Keegan suggested.

“You think he went up to base camp and killed Soapie Kramer instead of going into Leadville?”

“Yes, we do,” Keegan answered.

“I really doubt that,” Dowd said and shut up.

They fell silent as they drove through the town and out the highway toward the base camp trail. Snowplows had piled snow deep on both sides of the road and the chains clinked rhythmically beneath them as they crunched over the road. Lancey could handle the vehicle. He wheeled into the mountain road that led to the
Trexler
and Kramer cabins, double-clutched down to first gear, and started up the trail at about ten miles an hour. The truck snaked up through the snow, its chains biting through the mud and slush into hard ground. Lancey kept a steady speed, made the turn into Trexler’s driveway and swung around in an arc so the pickup was facing back out on the road.

They got out and walked toward the cabin. Keegan took Dryman’s arm and held him back a little as they stomped a path through almost two feet of snow.

“Find a screwdriver,” he said. “And take the handle off the commode. Use gloves.”

“The
commode?”
Dryman said.

“Fingerprints, Dry. Nobody wears gloves when they take a leak.”

Dryman thought about that for a moment and nodded. “That’s right,” he agreed.

The cabin was clean and neat. Keegan checked all the closets. No suitcase. He checked the size of a pair of shoes.
10
D
. Pocketed a hairbrush with strands clinging to the bristles.
Trexler
’s skis and poles were leaning near the back door.

“Doesn’t look like he was planning to ski anywhere,” Dowd said.

“He wants this place to look like he went out of town for a couple of days,” Keegan said. “I’m sure he was planning to use Kramer’s skis. Notice something else? Not a picture in the room. Nothing personal.”

Dowd shrugged. “Well, Johnny’s a little eccentric, maybe,” he said. “But that still don’t make him a killer.”

“Come to think of it, he was real funny about photos,” Lancey said, going into the kitchen. “Never would stand still for a picture, said it was bad luck.”

Lancey looked in the refrigerator. Ice cream—strawberry. Several cans of smoked herring. Pork sausage. Pancake batter. Three bottles of maple syrup. Two Milky Way candy bars, frozen, in the ice compartment.

“That’s one of those new candies,” Dowd said. “Never tried one before.”

“Never realized
Trexler
had such a sweet tooth,” said Lancey.

“How about this,” Dowd said as he opened the cupboard door. They looked in. There was a case of French champagne on the floor.

“Candy bars and French champagne,” Dowd said with a shrug. “Got weird eatin’ habits. Still don’t make him a mass murderer.”

Dryman came into the kitchen from the bathroom and winked to Keegan.

“Let’s get on up to Kramer’s cabin,” Keegan said.

It took almost forty-five minutes to get to the top. Dowd got out of the truck and lit a cigar. They were on a broad flat almost at the crest of the mountain. The cabin stood near the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley. Behind it was a large meadow with a lake in its center ringed with stubby pine trees. Beyond the trees, the land fell away again. Below them on three sides a deep valley carved its way through the mountains, leaving deep gorges in its wake. The snow covered many of its traps—the potholes, ice slicks and fallen trees—but even cloaked in new snow, the terrain itself looked awesome and dangerous. It was a stunning sight, this tabletop poised on the edge of the valley. The sheriff nodded toward the gorge.

“I was a fair skier in my younger days,” Dowd said. “Grew up here. Hell, I was born not fifty miles away. In my best day and in bright sunlight I wouldn’t think of trying a run like that. And you think your man did in that storm?”

He shook his head and hefted his way through the knee- deep snow toward the cabin. Keegan stared at the brutal vista.
Is it possible he actually made it out of here?
Doubts began to creep into his theory.

The cabin was barren. The radio had been shut down and unplugged, which was standard procedure. Kramer’s pack and skis were gone. The refrigerator was empty.

Lancey shook his head. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, Mr. Keegan. Kramer cleaned the icebox out, shut down the radio. Uh, he took a couple of his big sectionals, but you know, maybe he thought he’d need ‘em.”

“Sectionals?”

“Large-scale maps like the one down in my office.”

“Hmm,” Keegan answered.

Lancey went into the radio room and swung the telescope around toward a high peak to the west. He squinted into the eyepiece.

“That’s Snowmass, the big fella,” he said. “A fourteen- thousand-footer. Copperhead Ridge is on the side of her. Come take a look.”

Keegan peered through the scope at a snowbound cabin tucked against the side of the mountain. He watched it for several minutes. It was obviously deserted.

The sheriff entered the glass-enclosed room. “No car around,” he offered.

Dryman snooped around outside the cabin. On the corner of the building he found the stub of the phone line. He kicked around in the snow and finally found the other section of the line. He went back into the cabin.

“Kee?”

“Yeah?”

“Phone line’s cut. Outside going into the house.”

Keegan shook his head. “Okay, the phone line’s cut, radio’s shut down. Kramer’s pack’s gone. And his maps
. .

“Hold on, the wind could have snapped the line,” said Dowd. “Naturally Kramer took his pack
and
shut off the radio. And anybody’d take maps with them if they were heading out in that storm.”

“Uh huh,” said Keegan. “Come with me a minute.”

He led them back outside and waded through the heavy snow to the edge of the frozen lake.

“First of all, we
know
he came up here,” Keegan said. “He didn’t turn down to the main highway, we got his tracks. Second, he didn’t come back down. We were down there in the storm horsing with that Jeep until dark. By that time nobody could’ve gotten through. So, why did he come up here? And the biggest question—where’s his car?”

Dowd stared at him, his breath misting around his mouth. He looked around as Keegan walked gingerly out on the ice, bouncing cautiously on the frozen pond. He stared out across it, knelt down and squinted across the surface. It was covered with several inches of wind-rippled snow, its banks outlined by drifts.

“My guess is,
Trexler
’s car’s in here. And Soapie Kramer’s probably in the trunk.”

“Why the lake?” Dowd asked.

“Where else around here could you hide an automobile?” Keegan looked out over the wide outline of the lake. “If he ran it off a cliff it would be too easy to spot. But this lake? Hell, it’ll be frozen over for months.” He paused a moment, then added:

“Besides, the son of a bitch is partial
to
water.”

“So your theory is he’s out there somewhere?” Dowd said, nodding toward the ragged snowbound mountains.

“Yep.”

“I don’t know anybody could ski through that storm,” Lancey said, shaking his head. “Hell, friend, we had twenty inches of snow in thirty-six hours.”

“If we’d had twenty
feet
of snow, he would’ve made it, friend. This guy’s dedicated, Sheriff. He’s a driven man. He’s diabolical, clever, tough, resourceful, a planner, and completely without conscience. And I hate to say it, but damn near invincible.”

The sheriff raised his eyebrows.

“I said damn near,” Keegan said.

“Sounds a little like you got a kind of begrudging respect for him,” Dowd said.

“No, don’t get me wrong. I
understand
him. There’s no way I could respect him. I hate this man with a passion I don’t even think
I
could explain. And I’ll tell you something else, Sheriff, I’ll follow him straight through the gates of hell if I have to. He’ll never get off the hook. I’m going to bring this guy down.”

“You sound a little driven yourself, Mr. Keegan,” he said.

“I suppose so,” Keegan answered with a wry smile.

“Ever read
Moby Dick
?“
Dowd asked, relighting his cigar.

Keegan smiled. “Which one do you think I am, Sheriff? Ahab or the fish?”

One of the sheriff’s deputies called to him from the truck. “Sheriff, you got a call here. Think you better take it.”

“Excuse me,” Dowd said, and walked to the brown sedan.

He talked on the radio for two or three minutes and then trudged back through the deep snow. He looked troubled. He shifted the cigar to the corner of his mouth.

“Mr. Keegan,” he said. “1 will admit I thought you were nuttier than peanut brittle on the way up here but I think I
just changed my mind.”

“What happened?”

“We got a whole family butchered down to Pitkin. Man, his wife, and two high school kids, boy and a girl. Shotgunned.”

“That son of a bitch,” Keegan said angrily. “How far’s Pitkin?”

Dowd looked south, down through the harsh valley.

“Overland? About thirty-five miles,” he said with a touch of awe.

There was a landing strip in Gunnison, about twenty miles from the scene of the murders. Dowd begrudgingly agreed to fly down with them. He sat in the gunner’s cockpit behind Keegan, stiff-legged and hard-jawed as the plane swept down through the canyons, ducking in and out of the tall mountain peaks. The trip took a half hour.

“Hang on,” Dryman said, guiding the plane down through a mountain pass toward the narrow landing strip bulldozed through the snow. “If we skid, we’re up shit creek.”

Dowd braced himself, his teeth set in a grimace, as the plane leveled off and whooshed down on the hard-packed snow.

“Lovely, Dry,” Keegan said with relief as they pulled up to the hangar and stopped.

A youthful police officer named Joshua Hoganberry was waiting for them. His badge was pinned to the crown of a blue campaign hat. It was the only thing he wore that resembled a uniform; he was dressed for the weather.

“Hi, Josh,” Dowd said, introducing the cop to Keegan and Dryman. “Sorry to get you way out here in this weather.”

“That’s okay, Sheriff. We can use all the help we can get. It’s a bad mess we got up there at the Trammel place.”

“Friends of yours?” Dryman asked.

“Why, hell, been knowin’ Lamar since I was born,” the policeman said, obviously still shaken by the Trammel massacre.

“Nice man. Quiet, worked his ass off. Good kids, never any trouble. And his wife Melinda was pretty as spring flowers.”

“What happened?” Keegan asked.

“Bastard
just gunned down Lamar and Melinda where they sat. Old Trammel was readin’ the paper. Blew a hole right through it. Shot Byron and Gracie, the kids, in the back as they was running away.”

“Who found them?”

“Was a fluke, really. Doc Newton was comin’ back from deliverin’ the McCardles’ new baby and saw the front door standin’ open. He went in and found them.”

The ranch house was five miles outside of’ town, between Gunnison and Pitkin, a plain two-story brick place sitting a hundred feet or so from the local road that had been cleared by a snow plow. There were two state patrol vehicles and an ambulance parked in a wide space bulldozed out of the drifts when Hoganberry pulled up in the Ford sedan. A footpath was worn through the snow to the front door.

Trammel and his wife were in the living room. He was sitting in an overstuffed chair, the remnants of a newspaper splattered against what was once his chest. His wife lay sideways on the sofa. One shot from the twelve-gauge had blown away most of her face. The daughter lay crumpled face-down on the stairs, a three-inch hole in the middle of her back. The boy was just outside the back door, face-down in the red-drenched snow. The back of his head was gone.

“My God,” Dowd breathed.

They searched the house methodically, one room after the other. In the downstairs room, Keegan spotted a bloody towel in a trash can in the bathroom. There was a half-filled glass of water and an empty packet of B-C powder on the night table near the bed. Keegan wrapped the glass and empty B-C packet in the towel and stuffed them in the pocket of his coat. When he went back outside, Dowd and Hoganberry were standing on the front porch.

“Kind of blows up your theory about him killing Soapie to set himself an alibi, don’t it?” Dowd said, lighting a cigar. “He
m
ust’ve known we’d pin this on him sooner or later.”

“Not at all. I told you, he’s resourceful. All he has to do is get out of these mountains and he’ll vanish. He made it this
far.
Obviously he was hurt in some way. The Trammels helped him and he repaid the kindness by killing them.”

“Why? We all know what he looks like.”

“To give himself time, Sheriff. He probably figured it would be four, five days before anybody found the Trammels. By that time he planned to be long gone.”

Keegan stared out across the rugged landscape, its hidden dangers buried beneath two feet of snow.

“My guess is he skied down into Pitkin. Probably before that second snowstorm. There’re no tracks around.”

“Well, if he did he’s still there.”

“Let’s check it out.”

“I can tell you right now, they ain’t been any strangers down in Pitkin, sir,” Hoganberry said, stuffing a pinch of tobacco into his cheek. “I live there. If you fart at dinner everybody knows it before you finish dessert.”

“Then he went south, down through that forest.”

“He must be one hell of a skier,” Hoganberry said.

“He got here from Aspen,” said Keegan. “Thirty-some miles—in a blizzard. What’s south?”

“Salida. Over the shelf there, maybe twenty miles. He’d have to go southeast to get around Antero Peak. It’s fourteen thousand feet. By road, close to forty miles.”

“How big’s Salida?”

“Well, it’s a pretty fair-size town for these parts,” Dowd said. “Three, four thousand people maybe. Even got themselves a little airport there, ‘bout the size of Jesse Manners’s place.”

Keegan stared at the sheriff.

“They’ve got an airport there?” he said. “Any planes down there?”

“Why, that’s what an airport’s all about, Mr. Keegan,” the sheriff said with a smile.

“I mean, could he charter somebody to fly him up to, say, Denver?”

“That’s Billy Wisdom’s outfit,” said Hoganberry. “Hell, for the price he’d fly you to the moon. Used to be a barnstormer.”

“Phone lines working between here and there?” Keegan asked.

“Let’s talk to Mr. Wisdom.”

Hoganberry drove them back out to the strip at Gunnison. Dowd had made arrangements for one o
f
his deputies to drive down from Aspen and get him. He’d had enough flying for one day. Keegan and Dryman were flying on south to Albuquerque.

“Well, I got to admit, John Trexler had us all fooled,” Dowd said. “Skis thirty-five, forty miles through a blizzard, murders a whole family, skis another fifteen miles and hires crazy Billy Wisdom to fly him down to New Mexico.”

“And disappears like a drop of water on a summer sidewalk,” said Keegan.