Trial by Ice and Fire (16 page)

“Did you go back to the boy's house?”

“Yeah. Even peeked in the window—he'd brought the boy back then taken off. So I drove back over to Wook's place but his truck wasn't there either. So now I'm just cruising around, looking. According to the desk, he's supposed to go on duty at midnight. I'm sorry, man.”

I can't really reprimand him although I'm tempted to. I'd done something far worse by leaving Cali unprotected when she went to the bathroom in the bar last night. Besides, Wook is no longer a suspect for the attempted kidnappings so it really doesn't matter. But I do want to know what he's up to. What his intentions are.

“Okay. Keep looking. Come by out here and see if he's lurking around again tonight. Don't worry about it, though. He's not looking as good as he did this morning.”

Jim promises to do just that. Right after I hit the
END
button another phone starts ringing. Cali, who's been watching me talk, gets up and takes her phone out of her bag.

“Is it Wook?” I ask as she studies the screen.

“No. It's Suzy Casey, the lawyer in the trial tomorrow.” Then she answers the phone by saying with a smile, “You aren't going to ask for a continuance
now,
are you, Suzy?”

Her smile fades as she listens to the answer.

“When did it happen?” A moment later, “Is he going to be all right?” Then finally, “Okay, of course I'll have no objection. You can tell the judge for me in the morning.”

After she hangs up she smiles again, but there's a wrinkle running across her forehead. She closes the case file with finality and puts her legal pad on top of it. “Her client was drinking and fell down some stairs about a half hour ago. Broke his collarbone and his nose. A concussion, too, the doctor said. The trial's off for another week or two.”

“Was anyone with him?”

“No. He was at home, alone.” The wrinkle grows more pronounced. “But he managed to crawl to a phone before he passed out.”

I go to the window and look out at the night. All I can see is my own distorted reflection in the glass. “Jim lost Wook about an hour ago.”

Behind me Cali doesn't say anything. But I know that both of us are wondering just what the hell is going on.

TWENTY

A
LITTLE LATER
she goes into the bathroom and comes out wearing an unlikely pair of pajamas. They have cartoon cats all over them. I can't help but smile at her. She grins back and says, “I'm not the ‘Too Drunk to Fuck' girl tonight.” Then she heads for the bed in the gear room. “I'm going to try and forget about this thing with Wook and Armalli and my defendant and get some sleep. Let's go into the mountains in the morning, okay? I can take a day off since the trial's postponed, and I've got to get away from this shit. We can stop by my house and pick up my skis.”

“That's more than fine with me.” I can wait until the afternoon to go looking for Armalli. And the desire to get a little air beneath my heels is almost a craving.
Feed the Rat.

She takes one last long look at me before she closes the door between the bedroom and the main room. There's no smile on her face now. Just a serious expression that's hard for me to read. It might be something close to pity. She shakes her head ever so slightly as she softly shuts the door.

I pick up my cell phone again and call for Mungo to come with me out onto the porch. As soon as we step out into the night the wolf heads for the trees. The light from the front window casts a glow out over the hood of my truck and into the lane. In that light I can see Mungo's tail lift high before she disappears. For a minute I listen and watch intently, half afraid of and half wanting to hear the rumble of a Sheriff's Office SUV and see a sweep of lights coming up the lane. If I knew anything for sure I would feel a lot better.

But the night is still.

I do the deep-breathing thing Rebecca had taught me, filling my belly with air then expelling the carbon dioxide in a steady puff along with the bad thoughts in my head. The first thing that goes out is any thought of Cali, the sight of her in her cat pajamas and last night's taste of her lips and tongue. Then goes Armalli and what I suspect is intended to be a horror show of performance art, and then Wokowski and his unknown intentions. After that I exhale my brother and my worries about what's going to happen to him. Finally, the thought of a life without Rebecca goes out, too, but then I somehow manage to suck it back in. Like it's some sticky phlegm putting up a fight. A cough that just won't clear. After a few more deep blows I feel its grip lessening. Ten or twenty more and I'm dizzy, seeing stars that aren't there, but the notion is finally no more than the leftovers of a mild cold.

“Hi,” I say when she picks up the phone. It's eleven at night, the time when Rebecca smokes the first of her three daily cigarettes before starting her best writing hours.

“Hi, Ant.” She sounds almost normal. It makes my heart involuntarily swell with hope. From those two words I can tell that the distance between us has fallen away temporarily. Maybe, just maybe, this is all going to work out.

“Are you coming up, 'Becca?”

“I'm coming.” I pump a fist into the night sky and grit my teeth with determination. If I can just see her then I'll win her back. Woo her, beg her, whatever it takes. “For just a couple of days. I'm taking some sick time. I'll be in Jackson tomorrow night. Dad and I will leave Denver at about ten, and according to MapQuest, we'll be in town by eight.”

“Your dad's coming?”

“It was his idea to come along. He wants to get out of town, too. He's been pretty stressed out lately.”

Her father is a law professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I like and respect him but we've not been close. I can't figure out what it means, her wanting to bring him up when we have such a personal discussion planned. I know I'm not his idea of the perfect companion for his daughter. Afraid of hearing something I don't want to hear, something that will undermine my newfound confidence and determination, I restrain myself from asking more.

“Will you stay with me? He can stay here, too.”

“With you and your stalking victim, you mean? That place you rented doesn't sound all that big.” Her voice isn't mistrustful, the way it had been last night. There's a lightness in it now. The hard edge that started appearing about a month ago is apparently in remission tonight.

“No, 'Becca. Just you and me. I'll put my vic somewhere else for the night if I need to. But I'm hoping to wrap this up anyway tomorrow afternoon. I'm pretty sure I know who he is and where he's hiding out.” This is more than optimistic, considering the new wrinkle with Wook and Cali's injured defendant. But still, I'm
determined.

“You'll be safe, won't you? None of that soloing BS, not in the mountains or when it comes to arresting bad guys, okay?”

I want to laugh, it's so good to hear her talking this way. “Promise.”

“Good. My dad's gotten us a condo at a place called Spring Creek Ranch. He's feeling pretty down—this week is the fifth anniversary of my stepmom's death, you know. I really feel like I ought to stay with him.”

“You can both stay here. There's the spare bedroom downstairs. I'll clean the place up,” I tell her quickly, wanting to press my advantage while it lasts. “I'll make you both dinner. I'll serve you breakfast in bed. And I'll throw in some serious lovemaking.
Quiet
lovemaking for once, so he won't hear. I'll even throw in some earplugs, just in case. And maybe a muzzle for you.”

Rebecca laughs.

More seriously, letting out everything I feel for her and trying to put it in my voice, I say, “Stay with me, 'Becca.”

She manages to ignore whatever she hears in my tone. “He's already made the condo reservations, but we'll see. We'll be getting in late. Meet us at a restaurant called the Granary at nine o'clock. We'll see where we go from there.”

TWENTY-ONE

T
HE DAWN IS UNUSUALLY DARK
, with low clouds blocking out the stars. According to the weather-forecast recording at the park headquarters, these clouds, which could hang around all day, offer little hope of rain for the parched valley. When the sun starts to brighten the eastern horizon it looks like a gauzy curtain has been draped over the Teton Range.

Where we're headed isn't one of the big mountain chutes Cali has on her tick list. There's not enough time for that today. I want to find Myron Armalli before the sun goes down—before Rebecca arrives—and I can't risk the uncertain schedules caused by the higher peaks. I need to be back on the hunt by noon. The northeast face of Mt. Wister initially sounded dull to Cali, but when I explained that we just might find two thousand vertical feet of late-season powder stashed between the peaks there she agreed to give it a try.

At seven o'clock we're two hours up the trail and sharing an orange at the start of the North Fork of Avalanche Canyon. Mungo, on a long leash tied around my waist, sniffs at every plant or mineral protruding from the ground. Below us is the steep wall of Shoshoko Falls, which we'd just ascended by switchbacking up through mud and snow and downed trees. The number of splintered trunks lying shattered near the wall's base gives literal meaning to the canyon's name.

Mt. Wister's steep north face is hidden by the clouds even though it can't be more than a few hundred yards to our left. The entire cirque, formed on the north by South Teton, Cloudveil Dome, Shadow Peak, and on the south by Wister's three summits, is completely shrouded. All that's visible ahead is the still-frozen surface of tiny Lake Taminah.

Sucking down the orange slices Cali insists on feeding me, I feel a breeze rise up behind and below us. The mist, mingled with the waterfall's spray, is wet on the back of my neck. I turn to look back down the canyon, hoping the wind will lift the fog enough so that I can spot the mother moose and the calf we'd passed near the base of the headwall. We'd had to hurry past because Mungo was doing her best to pull me off my feet and send me mud-skiing behind her in pursuit of moose burgers.

There is something moving down there, but it's not a moose's gangly shape. It's upright and walking very slowly. The parka is indistinct at this distance—it could be blue, black, or green. The hump of a dark pack is also evident. I watch it as it drops into a crouch, maybe studying our tracks.

“Looks like we're not alone,” I say.

Cali looks down and spots him, too. “Should we check him out?”

Then the breeze dies and, like a sheet being spread over a bed, the mist drops again. There's nothing to see now but particles of moisture suspended in the gray air.

“It's probably just a hiker,” I say. But I think it's probably Roberto, being a pain in the ass. I'd checked for headlights following us to the trailhead but hadn't noticed any. I realize now that I should have employed a simple countersurveillance technique and pulled over at some point.

He'd shown up again last night just as I was getting off the phone with Rebecca. I smelled him before I saw him. And Mungo, who'd joined me on the porch, had smelled him long before me. She'd been lifting her head in the direction of the forest on the other side of the lane, snuffing at the air, and wagging her tail for several minutes. The scent of sweat, sunburnt skin, and wood smoke reached me as I pushed the button to end the conversation.

Across the road a match flared and my brother's lean features were revealed in its orange light. He was lighting a joint that he'd rolled as tight and as expertly as a commercial cigarette. Illuminated by the match, I could see that the backs of his hands and his fingers were wrapped with dirty athletic tape. The tape was dark with blood.

I'd followed Mungo as she danced up to him.

“What's shaking,
che
?” he asked.

I fanned the marijuana smoke away into the night. “How was the climbing?”

“Fantastic. You should've been there. The Rat ate his fill and then some. I'm just mellowing out now.” He took a long drag on the joint and held in the smoke. “So, you hook your boy yet?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. It could be the cop you saw around here last night, but it's looking more and more like it might be another guy, a twenty-one-year-old psychopath who knew her when she was a kid. The cop, Wokowski, he might be lovesick and bent, but this other guy's a certifiable wacko.” Then, with a smile, I added, “No offense, 'Berto.”

After listening to him chuckle out the smoke, I described Armalli, adding, “
He's
a guy you can grab if you see him skulking around here.” I thought it would be nice to wake up in the morning and find Armalli bound and gagged on the porch. It would save me the trouble of going looking for him myself in that combustible hollow.

“Be a lot more fun to bag the cop.”

“Only if you want to get yourself shot, 'Berto. Or end up back in prison.”

“When are you going to get this wrapped up? Time's running short, bro. I'm turning myself in on Thursday, you know. That's in four days.”

Buoyed by my talk with Rebecca, I made a decision that I
will
climb with him one more time. Blood is more important than the risk to my deteriorating career. I couldn't let myself forget that.

“Day after tomorrow, I hope. I'm going to ski in the morning with the girl in there then try to find the
demente
in the afternoon. After that, I'm having dinner with Rebecca. Give me a call or something the next morning.”

Roberto's ever-present smile grew broader. “How 'bout I come along in the morning? You got some extra boards, don't you,
che
? Keep you on the straight and narrow, pure for your little reporter.”

I'd like nothing better than to see my brother ski again. He might even be a match for Cali—whatever skill he lacks he more than makes up for in gusto.

But I had to look my brother—who's risking his deal with the Feds and his freedom to get into the mountains with me—in the eye and say, “You can't come. She's a prosecutor, 'Berto. And I'm a cop. I can't even have you hanging around like this.”

Who could say whether Wokowski would barge in right then to profess his love, or whether Myron Armalli might decide to pay a visit with a new stun gun and another roll of tape. In either case it would be hard to explain an escaped fugitive's presence in my cabin. Or his accompanying us on a skiing jaunt.

The grin fell away from my brother's face. Most people would have flinched at what replaced it, but I knew him too well. It was hurt he was feeling. Rejection, not anger.

“I thought you said you told her, and that she was cool with it.”

My voice was almost pleading as I said, “Yeah, but being
seen
with you is something else. I'm willing to take the chance, but I can't put her out on the edge like that. I'm supposed to be protecting her, not getting her into more hot water.”

Without another word Roberto faded back into the dark forest.

“Ready?” I ask.

Cali smiles at me, her green eyes bright behind the yellow lenses of her sunglasses. “Ready.”

We climb through snow interspersed with patches of talus up the south side of the cirque. Although Cali and I find ourselves struggling to posthole through the deep snow, Mungo dances on the surface with her big snowshoe-like paws. The prints she leaves are as big as my hand when I spread my fingers. Soon the rock wall of Wister's north face is visible through the mist, as is the steep snowfield to the left. We seem to be reaching the top layer of clouds. Although the saddle between the summits remains murky, the slope itself looks even better than I'd hoped.

It is wide, several hundred feet across, and not quite as steep as what we'd skied two days ago on Teewinot's East Face. The angle appears to be no more than forty-five or fifty degrees but because of the mist it's a little hard to tell. White and untracked, the snow is bright even beneath the gray sky and it looks like soft powder. There's far more of the stuff than I'd expected. Because of the northeast aspect of the face and the cirque's high, shielding peaks, hardly any sunlight would reach it. Here it might as well be midwinter still.

I plow on up through deepening snow and angle for the right side of the snowfield, where it meets the steeper rock. I'm moving faster now, resolving to ignore the fact that my brother may be trailing us and getting more and more excited by the thought of making turns. We're only at the base of the snowfield and already I'm sinking up past my thighs. As difficult as it is to wade up through the stuff, Cali is close at my heels and is clearly getting excited, too.

We pause to leave Mungo at the last semiflat spot. Unable to find a horn of rock to loop her leash around, I slot a wired nut into a crack in the granite and clip the leash to it with a carabiner. Mungo looks unhappy at the prospect of being tied up and left behind. Her long face grows longer.

“Stay, Mungo. We'll be right back, girl.” The wolf faces away from me and stares mournfully down into the cirque. “Think about how lucky you are that I brought you this far.”

The logic of it seems to have no effect on her mood—she won't look at me. Cali and I keep churning our way uphill through the soft, white powder.

“We should have brought beacons,” Cali says when we're halfway up, referring to the radio devices that allow a skier to be located after being buried under an avalanche. I'd been beginning to feel the same apprehension.

“I didn't think we'd need them this late in the season. I didn't think there'd be
this
much snow.”

In Alaska, avalanches occurred year-round. But I hadn't seriously considered the danger here, not in late May in the lower 48, especially not after a weeklong heat wave.

“We're still going to do it, aren't we?” she asks.

To the left the snow looks so perfect. Like a brilliant white canvas, just begging to be painted with a half-helix down its center. The only marks that mar its surface are three vertical columns of rocks that define the entry chutes at the top. But there's also an ominous bulge beneath the small cornice on the opposite side of the slope. It's a two-story-house–sized mass of snow stuck to the side of the incline, the kind of convex hair trigger that a skier's weight could easily pull.

“Let's dig a pit.” I stamp out a platform to hold my pack then shrug it off. I assemble the shovel that's strapped to the pack and start cutting into the mountainside, throwing snow. The first few scoops are easy—the snow is almost without mass. Deeper down the blade starts to crunch a little and the snow gets heavier. Ten minutes later we have a pit almost six feet deep with a vertical wall on the uphill side. Finally the blade scrapes on stone.

What I see at the bottom of the pit isn't encouraging. Instead of broken talus to anchor the snow, it appears that the slope sits on a smooth slab of rock. I hope it's just in this one place where I happened to dig, but I know it's dangerous to make assumptions like that. Worse still, the bottom layer of snow has been crystallized by the unseasonably warm weather into little ice pellets the size and shape of ball bearings. I scoop out a gloveful and make a fist, compressing it. When I open my palm the snow remains uncompacted and sifts through my fingers. It wouldn't take much additional weight to cause the snow to collapse down onto those pellets and get the whole thing rolling on the granite slab.

It had been sensible to dig this pit. Not so sensibly, I decide to ignore the implications.

“It's sketchy,” I admit, “but I've never heard of a big avalanche this late in the season. We should be all right. But we'll have to watch each other, go down one at a time and avoid that bulge over there.”

Above us at the top of the snowfield are the three chutes leading down from the right-hand edge of the ridge. I head for the one closest to the rock wall because it looks less steep and the cornice at its crest appears smaller.

Thirty minutes later I'm using my ax to knock off the cornice's whipped-cream swirl, carving a path to the ridge top. I swim more than climb up it and find myself on a knife-edge spine between Wister's easternmost summits. On the other side is a verticle drop that disappears into the cloud. While Cali swims up after me, I set about stomping out a new platform and cutting away at the cornice with my ax. Unlike the cornice atop Teewinot, which was so hard as to be almost ice, this one is like a pile of fluffy cotton.

“Have you seen the hiker?” Cali asks.

The cirque is so hazy with mist that I can barely make out Mungo, wagging her tail anxiously twelve hundred feet below us.

“No, but I can't see much. Don't worry about it. It was just a hiker.”

Cali throws her pack down in the snow and begins unstrapping her skis. “I can't get it out of my mind that it could be the guy, you know?”

“If you want to know the truth, it was probably my brother, okay?”

She stops what she's doing and stares up at me with a questioning look. “Why didn't you tell him to join us?”

“Do you want to go to jail as an accessory?”

“No, but I'd like to meet him. No one would see us together up here.”

The truth is that I don't want to be in her debt more than I already am. I already owe her for keeping his presence around my cabin a secret. Having her actually meet him would just be like doubling or tripling the outstanding sum.

When I don't say anything she goes back to readying her skis. “What if it's not him?” she asks.

“I'm going to go down first, so if whoever it was
did
follow us up the canyon, I'll be able to check him out. Don't worry about it. Just spot me, okay? If it slides, keep an eye on where I am.”

Despite the familiar adrenaline beginning to leak into my bloodstream, I can't entirely dismiss a rising anxiety about the stability of the slope. But I snap into my bindings anyway, and set my poles under my armpits and lean out to pick my line.

“Make it a good one,” Cali says, reading my thoughts and following my gaze. “I'll eight you if you don't make a mess out of it.”

I plan my route. I'll make the elevator-shaft drop dead ahead—jump turns at first until the angle eases—then cut right. Start making real turns, staying to the left side of the face until beneath that fat house-size bulge. Then carve it up right down the middle.