Zero-Degree Murder (A Search and Rescue Mystery) (24 page)

CHAPTER

C
RIMSON.
Vermillion. Red.

Bright red.

Blood red.

Blood.

Gracie’s eyes were open and focused before her brain fully comprehended that what she saw was her own blood saturating the snow around her head like a macabre snow cone.

Her other senses seeped back—the taste of blood filling her mouth, cheek on fire with cold, heart beating a bass drum in her chest. An overall ache permeated her body.

She lay on her side, curled in a fetal position, lodged among the leafy branches of a manzanita bush, and half-buried in the snow. Her head faced downhill.

Decidedly uncomfortable
, she thought.
And really hard to breathe.

She tensed her muscles to move so she could draw in a full breath. Pain shot through her right shoulder so piercing that she cried out. She froze, sucking in air through clenched teeth until the pain eased. “Guess I’ll stay right here and not move,” she mumbled into the snow.

Seconds slipped away as Gracie sipped air into her lungs.

She moved her eyes a fraction to focus on a black Gore-Tex mitten lying inches from her face. Her mitten. Her hand.

Gracie sent the message to wiggle the fingers and was relieved when they actually responded. She lifted her hand off the snow. No pain. No perceptible wrist injury. Again, relief.

Where her left hand with its corresponding arm was and in what shape, she had no idea. Beneath her somewhere. But she could neither see nor feel it. For all she knew, it lay back up on the trail.

The trail.

She had fallen from the trail. How in the world had she done that? She remembered the fall itself only in whirling vignettes, a vertiginous jumble of arms and legs and mind and pain. But nothing about how or why.

Her cheek was numb. Not a good thing. And her chest was so compressed by her own weight, it was impossible to draw in a decent breath.

Time to try to move again.

She sent the message to lift her arm, but the resulting movement brought on another paroxysm of pain that she cried out and lay still again.

How about the legs?

She tried her feet, one at a time, then both legs together. Her hips and knees were bruised and sore, and one calf stung like a yellow jacket, but she could endure the pain of moving them. Slowly, with gravity’s help, she swung her legs around, pivoted her torso and, with a crackling of branches, slid off the bush and onto the hillside. She eased onto her back, straightening her body so that she lay with her feet facing downhill, knees bent, crampons holding her in place.

At least she could inhale more than a millimeter. Except now, blood filled her mouth and pooled at the back of her throat. If she swallowed too much, she would eventually throw it back up, which in her current state she considered a fate worse than death. She tried to spit out the bloody mouthful, but it drooled down the side of her cheek and into her ear.

Lovely.

One by one, she moved various parts of her body, testing, assessing, until she isolated the most significant injuries. She had torn ligaments somewhere and broken something in her right shoulder, maybe the clavicle, maybe the scapula, maybe both. The sharp pain in her calf was most likely a puncture from a crampon point. Her chest and right wrist were notably sore. She felt blood on her face from a cut somewhere around her left eye. With her tongue she could feel the source of the blood in her mouth—a slice, inches long, on the inside of her cheek.

Not great, but nothing life threatening.

At least not yet.

A sound drew her eyes to the slope above.

At the edge of the avalanche chute, someone was making his way down the mountain in a barely controlled glissade. Black jacket. The side of his face red with what looked like—

Joseph.

A rush of images flooded back. She knew exactly where she was and why.

Joseph had thrown her over the side. He had watched her fall. He had seen her move. He knew she was still alive. He was leaving nothing to chance.

He’s coming to finish the job.

Gracie cradled her injured arm with the other and rolled over. She pushed herself up to kneel on the ground, then wobbled to her feet.

She looked up.

Joseph was moving faster now, sliding down through the deep snow.

She could see no weapon. He probably didn’t need one.

Gracie took a step and slipped, landing hard on the snow. Starbursts of pain flashed before her eyes as the broken ends of bone ground against each other, tearing more tissue.

She wasn’t going to escape.

From where she lay, Gracie watched Joseph come until he slid to a stop in the snow beside her. He looked down on her, his mouth pulling back into a ghoulish grimace, red with blood. The wound in his cheek gaped like a second mouth, exposing teeth and bone. He sank to his knees beside her.

Rob flew out of the trees like an eagle diving for the kill and swung a thick pine branch directly at Joseph’s head.

The branch landed on a forearm raised in defense and burst into a thousand fragments. Joseph fell backward into the snow.

Rob’s own momentum overbalanced him and he pitched forward. He grabbed on to a rock to keep from sliding down the hill, then scrambled up as Joseph pushed himself to his feet.

The two men faced each other.

The wolverine and the panther, Gracie thought absurdly.

Then Joseph lunged forward to tackle Rob around the waist.

The two men fought. Gouging, biting, clawing, kicking, ripping. Eyes, ears, throat, knees, testicles, all fair game. Ugly, primitive, brutal. Both men grunted, yelled. Fell, slid down, then surged up again.

Blood sprayed, Jackson Pollock red across white snow.

The reality that Joseph was going to kill Rob slammed into Gracie.

Do something!

The ice axe still dangled from its strap on her injured arm. She slipped it off her wrist and, with her left hand, dug the pick into the snow and dragged herself up the slope. With every dig of the axe, she gained a foot. Another. Another.

Only feet above her, the men broke apart.

Joseph stumbled backward, fighting to remain upright. He gulped in air like a drowning man rising to the surface. His damaged arm hung limply at his side. His one good ear was torn and bleeding. The gaping hole in his cheek dripped blood onto the ground.

Rob knelt in the snow, head hanging, eyes lifted toward Joseph, mouth a smear of bright red. He dragged air into his lungs. One eye had ballooned closed. A cut on his cheekbone spilled blood down his face.

Joseph lunged again, hitting Rob with a body slam that knocked them both into the snow with Joseph on top. His hands encircled Rob’s head, thumbs digging for the eyes.

With a yell, Gracie surged upward and buried the pick of her axe into the muscle of Joseph’s calf.

The man’s bellow of pain was lost as a crack echoed throughout the canyon. He rolled off Rob and grabbed around at the axe handle, trying to pull the pick loose.

Rob threw himself toward the edge of the chute, picking Gracie up by her parka along the way. He flung her down next to the manzanita bush, dove on top of her, and held on.

High above, the entire hillside shifted and the mountain released its hold. The giant slab broke free, instantly a roaring slide of churning snow. Shaking the ground, it swallowed Joseph and swept him away. A glittering white plume flowered high into the air. Beyond it, a tiny speck grew larger, rotor blades pulsing, soundless against the roar of nature’s fury.

Sixty King.

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
and Rob sat perched on the side of the mountain, Rob’s arm cradling Gracie close.

Sixty King hovered overhead. They watched a Sheriff’s Department medic being lowered at the end of a cable, dangling like a spider on a filament of silk.

“You’re going first,” Rob said, sounding like his mouth was full of cotton balls.

“No, I’m not,” Gracie answered through a mist of pain.

“You’re in no shape to argue.”

With the demeanor of a cranky old lady, Gracie submitted to being treated first. Her right arm and shoulder were strapped in place. Butterfly bandages closed the cut encircling the outside of her eye and the deep puncture on the back of her leg. A wad of gauze stuffed inside her cheek soaked up the blood.

And even though shock had set her body to quivering like a plucked harp string, she insisted in a loud voice on stepping into the litter of her own volition. She carped and crabbed as she was strapped in, or, as Rob archly informed her, “Packaged.”

When she was ready, black webbing crisscrossing her body and holding her in position, the clear acrylic head shield ready to be lowered, Rob slowly dropped to his knees and kissed her gently on the mouth. Then he fell back and watched as the shield was clamped in place.

Sixty King swooped back. The rotor blades whirled the powdery snow into a blinding white tornado that, even with the shield lowered, pierced Gracie’s cheeks with a thousand tiny ice crystals.

She watched with a critical eye as the medic clipped the litter rigging onto the cable that had been lowered and tightened the quick-link closed. Her eyes slid back to Rob, who flashed her a lopsided smile.

Then she felt a tug on the cable and was swept up and up into the air.

CHAPTER

“D
AMN,
Kinkaid! You look like shit!”

“More like death warmed over.”

“Shit warmed over.”

Gracie looked down the length of her body to her teammates standing in a cluster at the end of the hospital bed. “Gee, thanks, guys,” she said, fighting to talk intelligibly with a cheek swollen to the size of a baseball. Her unbandaged eye zeroed in on Lenny, who stood looking uncomfortable, one hand thrust deep in the front pocket of his jeans, a stack of newspapers held close to his side with an elbow. The other hand held what looked like an inexpensive Walmart bouquet of carnations, the bright orange sale sticker still stuck to the plastic wrap. “Those for me?” she asked.

The young man blushed, his own eyes sliding over to an enormous basket of pink, yellow, and white roses with brightly colored balloons, which sat on a table in the corner of the room.

“They’re beautiful,” Gracie said. “Carnations are my favorite.”

Lenny grinned with relief and crept up to lay the bouquet on the rolling tray next to the bed.

Kurt stepped forward and gave her a light peck on her good cheek. “How ya doing, kid? How does it feel to be a hero?”

Gracie’s eye moved over to where Ralph stood just inside the doorway leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “Hey, Ralphie,” she said.

“Hey, Gracie girl,” he said and winked at her.

Gracie laid her head back on the crisp pillow and let the sound of her teammates’ banter and joke-telling flow over her. Her eyes traveled from face to face to face.
I love these guys
, she thought. In spite of the fact that she felt like she had been flattened by a steamroller, and every square inch of her body was as sore as hell, in spite of the fact that only half of her face worked, she smiled with contentment. “Where’s Cashman?” she asked. “I wanna whup his butt for leaving me out there.”

Silence in the room. Gracie’s words hung in the air. Her eye moved from one man to the next until Lenny piped up, “Hey, Gracie! You’re everywhere!”

“I am?”

“Yeah! Look!” The young man plopped the pile of newspapers he had been holding onto the bed beside her. He held up the front page of the L.A.
Times
so she could read the headlines:
WOMAN RESCUES ACTOR!
with her own team ID picture and a headshot of Rob beneath. Lenny picked up another paper. “This one’s from San Francisco. “‘They’re Alive!’” he read. “And this one. You’ve been on TV, too! Here.” He grabbed the remote from the bedside table, turned on the television hanging on the wall near the ceiling, and flipped through the channels. “Even . . . What’s that one program . . . ?”

“
Entertainment Tonight
?” someone suggested.

“Yeah!
Entertainment Tonight
,” Lenny said. “There!”

The same ID photo of Gracie and a different picture of Rob filled the television screen. A woman’s voice announced: “. . . Hiking party caught in a Thanksgiving Day snowstorm in the San Raphael mountains one hundred miles east of Los Angeles.”

“It’s friggin’ awesome!”

A half-ton weight settled in the middle of Gracie’s chest. “Turn it off.”

“No, wait—”

Kurt reached up and pushed the Power button on the television. The screen went black.

A series of clicks out in the hallway drew everyone’s attention toward the door where a man stood just outside the room, a camera pointed directly at Gracie.

“A camera!” she wailed and turned her head away.

Ralph and Kurt dived out into the hall with the rest of the men on their heels. The door swung closed and Gracie was left alone in the room. She listened to several minutes of scuffling, pounding feet, muffled voices, cursing, and receding footsteps until the door swung back open and her teammates ambled back in.

“He got pictures of me,” she moaned. “Like this!”

“Not anymore,” Kurt said, his head lowered and concentrating on deleting the pictures from the digital camera.

“Don’t know how that joker got through security.”

“There’s security?” Gracie asked.

“Reporters are camped outside the front door downstairs,” Warren said.

“And in front of your house.”

“Oh, God!” Gracie’s head sank back into the pillow.

“Guys,” Ralph said and signaled with a barely perceptible nod of his head toward the door.

Kurt leaned over Gracie and whispered in her ear, “Don’t let the assholes get you down.”

The men trooped out of the room.

“Don’t be getting a big head . . .”

“We’ll be back . . .”

“. . . a couple of days . . .”

“. . . bring a bottle of Cuervo.”

“. . . have to smuggle it in.”

“. . . in a backpack.”

“. . . a water bottle.”

The laughter and voices faded down the hallway.

Ralph closed the door after them. He walked over and sat down in the chair next to the bed.

Gracie studied his face. Even through the haze of painkillers, it shocked her how haggard and old he looked, how drawn his cheeks were, how pronounced the lines on his forehead and around his mouth. And that he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a week. “You look like shit yourself, Ralphie,” she said.

He nodded and said, “I checked your house. I put up some crime scene tape to keep the reporters out.”

“Thanks.”

“Threw out the sour milk. And green sandwich meat.”

Gracie rolled her one good eye.

“Your answering machine was full. You got an offer from a book publisher. And one from a movie company. Your mother left four messages.”

“Of course.”

“She sounded distraught.”

“Of course.”

“I think she’s genuinely worried. I can call her back for you.”

“I’ll do it. Maybe tomorrow.” Gracie closed her eyes. “Where’s Cashman?”

Ralph picked up Gracie’s hand in his cool, dry one. With his gravelly voice low and quiet, he described how Rob had been airlifted out to a landing zone at Aviation’s headquarters. A private helicopter whisked him from there to an undisclosed L.A. hospital, where he was kept overnight for observation. Except for multiple bruises, his injured ankle, and two facial cuts requiring microscopic plastic surgery, he was declared to be in reasonably good condition considering his ordeal.

Ralph provided only vague generalities about Tristan Chambers and Diana Petrovic, and about Joseph Van Dijk, aka, Radovan Milocek, aka The Surgeon. There was ample time later to delve deeper into that nightmare.

And in the quiet of her hospital room, Ralph told Gracie that Steve Cashman was dead.