Snowdeath A novel by Seth Masia
I pushed the galoshes away, leaned across the table and stroked Maggy's hair. "Okay. I'll call Tug now."
The sheriff had checked out for the night, but I reached him at home.
"Yeah, Sam," he said, around a mouthful of supper.
"Tug, I think Marco was murdered."
"Huh." Chew and gulp. "What makes you think so?"
"Someone screwed up his bindings. They're set way higher than he ever skied them. And he was into the coke. Maybe someone was angry with him."
"A coke murder? Sam, were you involved in some kind of deal?"
"Hell, no."
"But if you were his roomie, someone might suspect it."
"Yeah, I already figured that out."
"I should have kept his skis, huh?" Tug said. "What have you done with them?"
"They're still in my car. I just opened them and found green springs."
"Any witnesses?"
"To what?"
"Could anyone confirm that you didn't put the green springs in yourself, after the fact?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Look, I'm just trying to figure out if the green springs are going to be kosher for evidence."
"Oh. Clipper Cobb was with me. He actually pulled the springs out."
"When was this?"
"A few minutes ago."
"And you had the skis all day, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Well."
"Well, what?"
"You gonna be home tonight?"
"No. The guy who killed Marco might come visiting."
"Yeah. Well, I'll want to look at Marco's room. Where can I find you?"
"I'll be at Maggy's."
"It'll take 'til morning to get a search warrant."
"Tug, if someone is out there looking for me, what makes you think he'll pass up the chance to go through Marco's stuff tonight? He may already have been out there."
"I guess I'd better get out there. Now I gotta go roust out the judge. Sam, you're a pain in the ass." "Tug, if someone is out there looking for me, what makes you think he'll pass up the chance to go through Marco's stuff tonight? He may already have been out there."
"I'd let you in without a warrant. There's a key hanging under the front steps."
"No, we do things by the book now. To be safe, don't tell anyone else where you'll be tonight. You still carry?"
"It's in the car."
"Don't talk to strangers."
At the nurse's station Maggy was sorting pills into little cups. "I've got meds and vitals to do," she said. "Pick up some dessert and a bottle of wine and I'll meet you at my place. It's not locked."
"Not locked?"
"I don't keep illegal drugs there, city boy."
"Listen, this isn't what I had in mind as a first date."
"Make it an expensive wine."
So I sprang for some Napoleons, a not-too-dry Sauterne, and a bottle of Armagnac for good measure, then let myself into Maggy's neat one-bedroom on Cooper Street, near the east end of town. It was on the ground floor, all warm colors in wool and burlap, with lots of fat soft pillows that made it more comfortable to lounge up against the furniture than on it. I lit a fire, showered, wrapped up in a big comforter and fell asleep on the sofa.
Soft hands woke me. "Shh," Maggy said.
"Mmph. Chloral hydrate time?"
"Not now. I want you awake."
"Uh." I sat up. "What time is it?" "12:30. I've been here awhile. The pastries are delicious. Here." She held her thumb to my mouth, all cream and sugar and crumbs. I gathered her into the comforter, rolling off the deep sofa into the pillows on the floor.
Awhile later, Maggy drew her nails lightly across my chest. "No reduced mental or physical function I can see," she said.
"Prognosis?"
"Full recovery."
"If I don't get shot."
"Don't get shot."
I traced my own nails up the back of her thigh. She shuddered and hugged me tight.
"You're lovely," I said. "You're sleek and eager. You know what you want and you know how to be happy."
"Yes, I do," she said. "Do you know how to be happy, too?"
"Not just now, but soon, I think. Help me?"
Maggy rolled onto an elbow, watching my face, and I watched hers, limned against the kitchen light. "You're worth it," she said.
"What?"
"You're the first man I've known in this town who wasn't a self-centered jerk."
"There are people who would disagree."
"Of course, no one thinks of himself as a jerk."
"That's not what I meant, dope."
Maggy snickered. "Who thinks you're a jerk?"
I told her about Craven, and about Carole. "Everyone says I'm wasting my life. Maybe it's time to be moving on."
"Two people with their own neuroses think you're wasting your time. You must love this place very much, to value it over a career you've invested so much in."
"I do love it. I love the clean air, I love moving in the mountains. I feel free here. My body functions here and in the city I seem to slip into a tense, frantic panic."
"Then why listen to that other stuff?"
"I don't know. I feel as if they outvote me, that their sense of reality should be better grounded than mine. Who said that reality is hysteria agreed-upon?"
"I agree with your hysteria. So did Marco. So do all your jerky patrol friends. You consider Jack Craven a religious fanatic. Maybe Carole is a materialist fanatic. And maybe it's you who have woken to a clearer reality."
"I like that."
"The first order of business is to stay healthy. If the city makes you sick, stay here."
"With my jerky friends."
"Well, yes. If you like them."
"What makes them jerks?"
"Oh, a jerk is someone who isn't all there, someone you might like to spend a little time with but just a little. Look around you. Which of the guys we know here would make me a reasonable long-term lover?"
"Just me, I guess."
"Shut up," she giggled, and swung a slim leg over my thighs.
Maggy put her nose in my ear and whispered "Six-thirty. Up and at 'em."
Yawning, I punched the number for the Sundeck. "Yo," said Tim.
"Yo yo."
"Sam?"
"Yo, yo, yo."
"Clear and cold, no new snow, light breeze from the west, and you sound pretty goddamn chipper."
"Yo, yo, yo, yo."
"Yoyo Mama. Race day. Get up here." Tim hung up. So there was no route to run, just race prep. Maggy was already in the shower, so I padded onto the cold kitchen floor and lit the fire under the kettle, then crept through the steamy bathroom to cuddle against her slippery soapy back under the hot water.
"Clothes," I whispered in her ear. "Where did you put my clothes?"
They were stacked on the dryer, clean and neatly folded. I dressed quickly, stuck the .38 into my belt at the small of my back, found eggs and butter in the fridge and started breakfast. When Maggy sat down, crisp and glowing in hospital whites, I was looking for jam.
"Above the stove to the left," she said.
"What?"
"Unopened jar of jam. Peanut butter, marmalade, all that stuff."
"Does it strike you that we're on the same wavelength?"
"Hmph."
I sat down. "Serious. You're always half a step ahead of me, as if you can sort of read my mind."
"Maybe I'm just brighter."
"Okay."
"No, you're right. I'll tell you something. Last night you did everything I like, just the way I like, as if we'd practiced before."
"Is that part of not being a jerk?"
"Sort of. Have you ever danced with someone and it just felt natural, as if you'd rehearsed? You just moved the same way, easily?"
"Yeah." Carole and I never could do that, I thought. We were always colliding or stepping on each other.
"Well, we both led last night, but it worked," she said.
"Sure did."
"When can we do it again?"
"What's your day like?"
"I'll be off at 4:40."
"I'll have some things to do. The medical examiner's report on Marco should be out. I'll just come by the hospital after sweep. I still want to talk to Hildy, and find out about Art Conover's autopsy. And see Rusty."
"If you call around noon I may have the report on Art. Maybe I can get Marco's, too."
"Then I'll have to go out to the trailer, sometime. I can't have you doing my laundry every night."
"I'll come with you."
"I'll get Tug to go out with me."
"You don't want me in danger."
"No point to it."
"Okay. Just don't go alone."
Not much chance of that. As I stepped though the front door, blinking in the morning sun, a sheriff's deputy in a cruiser parked at the corner started his engine and flashed his lights. A cloud of white exhaust rolled brilliantly across the street before the light, frigid breeze. I walked over and he rolled down his window. His windshield was partly fogged by a hot cup of coffee on the dash, next to the muzzle of the shotgun clipped over the transmission tunnel.
"I'm Jim Murray," he said. "Sheriff Moran asked me to keep an eye on you."
"You been here all night?"
"Just checking from time to time. Mostly to see if anyone else is watching the place."
"That's great. I'm going to work now, and I don't think you'll need to follow me around the mountain. But I'd appreciate it if you could follow my girlfriend to work at the hospital."
"I'll check in and get the okay to do that."
"Do you know if anyone's been out to my house?"
"Watching it?"
"Or searching it?"
"No, I don't know."
"I'll call Tug."
"Yup, call Tug."
As I drove through the bright empty streets the gun in my belt pressed unnaturally against my back, a reminder that this was no ordinary morning. At the mountain, the cats rumbled up the course in normal race-day drill. I shoehorned the pistol into my patrol pack, changed, and headed up.
With no new snow, the grooming crews had finally been able to harden the course reasonably well, and after several rounds of sideslipping it even began to feel safe underfoot. Craven pulled the patrol off course-slipping duty before nine o'clock and stationed us at the same spots we'd had Saturday. So I watched the race from the top of Aztec. Dick Bester led his remaining boys down the course one more time at around 9:15. He waved. The forerunners came through starting at 9:55. On firmer snow, times were faster today. A couple of kids tumbled off the course but there were no injuries. Some kid from Squaw Valley won it. By 11:30 we had started taking down signs and fences to reopen Ruthie's for the public.
By 12:30 the mountain looked as it does any Sunday afternoon. Aztec was even building up some moguls. I rode the lifts to the Sundeck and phoned Maggy.
"Art had a myocardial infarction," she said. "Marco suffocated. He had a little cocaine in his system, but nothing else. The trauma at the back of the skull was a mild concussion, and the ME says it wasn't the cause of death. He died in the position you found him."
"What else?"
"Nothing else."
"No neck trauma?"
"No."
"That's it, then. Ninety percent of guys who go die in tree wells head first do some neck or spine damage. So Marco must have been bopped on the head and pushed in there by someone else."
"Oh."
"I'd better call Tug, now. Is Hildy awake? I need to talk to her."
"Sort of awake. But you should be able to talk to her tonight."
"What about Rusty?"
"Airlifted to Denver. Off the critical list."
"Okay, Mag. I'll try to be in early."
I called Tug. He had the ME's report in front of him. I told him what I surmised about the absence of a neck injury, and he grunted. "He was slugged from behind," I repeated.
"Slugged with what?" he asked.
"If the ME didn't specify what, then it would have to be a spruce bough, or a fir two-by-four, something that would look consistent with smacking his head on the tree trunk itself."
"Tough to prove."
"How many murders do you think pass for accidents?"
"Not that many. Maybe an occasional shooting."
"Like Spider Sabich?"
"Look, I know that Marco was killed in some kind of cocaine deal, and you know it, but I'm only warning you that it's going to be real hard to prove he wasn't just skiing crazy. Especially with the dope in his blood. You might be able to get a judge to consider the binding springs as evidence, but I doubt it. The fact that his neck wasn't broken doesn't prove he was murdered. If we come up with some hard evidence, great. If you do, let me know. Right now, just cover your own ass."
"What did you find at my trailer?"
Tug paused a long moment.
"You're lucky you have a house left. Someone turned the place upside-down before we got there."
"Is there a lot of damage?"
"Drawers emptied. Furniture upended. Carpet pulled up. Ceiling tiles pulled down. Closets emptied. Nothing structural. They ripped up the sofa pillows, stuff like that."
"Why didn't you let me know?"
"Tried to call you this morning but your dispatcher said you were unavailable. Didn't want you running out there last night."
"Did you find anything at all?"
"You mean drugs? Nothing I'd bust anyone for. But it looks like anything valuable that belonged to Marco is gone. The west bedroom was picked clean. I couldn't tell if anything else was missing. Now that they've been through the place, I guess it's safe for you to go home. But tell me when you're going and I'll send Deputy Murray out to meet you there. Let me know if you think anything else is missing."
After he hung up I moved away from the patrol table and stared across the valley toward Highlands Bowl. There were a couple of big, fresh slides on top, where the Highlands patrol had blown away the cornice. That bowl was a trap -- I knew three guys who came out of there dead one day, and another whose left leg is now two inches shorter because he took a ride there. I looked into that sparkly white death for ten minutes before thinking about a hamburger, and I wouldn't think about my trashed trailer at all.
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