Zero-Degree Murder Read online

  Quite certain that bargaining never worked with the Supreme Being, she added anyway, If you get us out of this, I’ll do my level best to be a better person. I’ll be nicer to people. I’ll be nicer to Cashman. Well . . . I’ll try to be nicer to Cashman.

  Satisfied that that was plenty of sacrifice to placate Him or Her, she signed off with: If I think of anything else, I’ll get back to you.

  CHAPTER

  61

  RALPH slouched in a chair in the reception area of the visitor’s center and stared with unseeing eyes at the members of the alpine teams who stood in the kitchen—cheeks flushed pink with cold, snow melting on hats and parkas—sipping cups of coffee and hot chocolate.

  The alpine teams had never made it to the trailhead. Three miles in from the main highway, they had found the National Forest Service road that climbed up to the Aspen Springs Trail blocked by a massive snow slide. The road was impassable even to the snow cats in which the teams rode. They had been forced to return to the Command Post until a new search plan could be formulated.

  Contracting for a plow to clear the road would take hours, if not days. According to the National Weather Service, the long, narrow storm cell would leave the area by the following morning. The most prudent course of action for the search would be to wait until then when aviation could be deployed.

  Ralph blinked, then blinked again as it hit him for the first time since the search began that Gracie might not survive the storm. And with that came the stunning realization of how integral to his life she had become. She was the only bright spot in the darkness. If Gracie didn’t survive the storm, the precarious house of cards that was his life would collapse.

  Ralph pushed his glasses up on his head and rubbed his face with his hands. He shoved aside the dismal thoughts with a physical effort. If he didn’t do something constructive to occupy his mind, he was going to blow a gasket.

  He picked up the clipboard resting on the arm of the chair, his own clipboard containing the original Command Post sign-in sheets, notes, and radio log, and the personnel and background information of all of the MisPers—the same clipboard he had unearthed that morning from beneath a pile of three-ring binders on one of the Command Post tables.

  After the alpine teams had left for their ride up to the trailhead, Ralph had studied the headshots of Rob Christian and Tristan Chambers and the information about them gathered from the production company. He had just turned to Diana Petrovic’s when the alpine teams had returned with the news of the snow slide.

  Now he turned back to the missing woman’s information.

  Petrovic, Diana. Height: 5’0”. Weight: 97 pounds. Hair: brown. Eyes: brown. DOB: 9/15/85. One infraction on her driving record—a speeding ticket in L.A. County three years before. Background check showed no criminal record.

  Ralph studied the headshot of the actress. She was attractive as was to be expected. Hair and sparkling eyes, both listed as brown on the driver’s license, looked black in the photo. She wore bangs pushed off to the side and her straight hair shoulder-length.

  Petrovic sounded what? Russian? Eastern European?

  He flipped to the next pages. Van Dijk, Joseph A. Height: 5’9”. Weight: 205 pounds. Hair: gray. Eyes: blue. DOB:

  2/17/54. Clean as a whistle. No driving record. No criminal record.

  Ralph turned to the man’s driver’s license picture. He squinted at the tiny photo and wondered why the picture hadn’t been blown up further when it had been photocopied.

  Squared jaw, fleshy cheeks, thick neck. In the photo, Joseph Van Dijk was bald. Or at least his head had been shaved.

  Ralph looked more closely at the picture.

  He couldn’t be certain because the man’s head was turned very slightly to the left—possibly deliberately, but it appeared as if Joseph Van Dijk was missing an ear.

  CHAPTER

  62

  GRACIE had blown it. Big-time.

  Inside the shelter, she and Rob lay in their sleeping bags, heads on their crunchy pillows. Outside, the wind howled and moaned and shook and flapped the plastic above their heads.

  Rob appeared to be sleeping. At least his eyes were closed. And he had barely moved in thirty minutes.

  Gracie, on the other hand, had been puzzling over the realization that, in spite of everything, she was feeling an incongruous sense of contentment. It had been a patriarch’s age since she had felt remotely comfortable around a man other than her teammates, especially in anything resembling a prone position—multiple layers of fleece, down and polypropylene between them notwithstanding.

  Until it hit her like a charge of dynamite—without her being aware of it, her feelings for Rob had moved into the mine-filled realm of the personal. He was no longer some nameless someone from whom she was clinically detached, uninvolved, emotionally remote. The man lying beside her was a living, breathing human being of whom, she realized with another jolt, she had grown quite fond.

  Anxiety rose up to lodge a fist behind her sternum. The reality that she held Rob’s life in her own feeble hands suffocated her with a physical weight. If he died, she would never be able to live with herself.

  “Tell me about your life.” Rob’s soft voice barged in on her thoughts.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” Gracie said. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Enough. Where did you come from? Your family. Things like that.” He asked the questions offhandedly, like one would if one was used to everyday personal conversations.

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Gracie said, eyes focused back on the shelter ceiling.

  “I want to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m interested.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “Liar.”

  She turned over and propped her head up on her hand. She studied Rob through half-closed eyes, feeling as if she were teetering on the edge of a crevasse, arms windmilling, and she had to decide whether to leap across the abyss or remain safely where she was.

  Come on. If I can jump out of a helicopter, I ought to be able to do this. “Born and raised in a small blue-collar town in the middle of Michigan,” she said.

  Rob sat up inside his sleeping bag. “Michigan. Detroit, right?”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Never been there.”

  “Congratulations. Nah, that’s not fair. Parts of the state are gorgeous. It’s the cities I can’t stand.”

  “Ever been to London?”

  “No.”

  “New York?”

  “No. I told you, I hate cities.”

  “How can you hate cities you’ve never been to?”

  “I’ve never stuck a red-hot poker in my eye either. I don’t have to do it to know I won’t like it.”

  “Why don’t you branch out a little from your placid, uneventful life? Do something adventurous for a change. Come to New York for a visit.”

  “There are three chances of me ever going to New York City,” she said. “Slim, fat, and none.”

  “Cheeky, aren’t you?”

  “Cheeky. You asked me a question, so let me answer.”

  “So answer already.” He grinned. “I’m tired of waiting for you.”

  She shot him a look. “Reader’s Digest condensed version. Morris. Stepfather. Executive. Workaholic. Evelyn. Mother. Racquet Club wife.” A half brother and half sister from her mother’s first marriage. She glossed over a childhood filled with symphonies, theater and ballet lessons. U of M. Budding career in advertising. “You can’t find this interesting,” she said with a grimace.

  “I consider myself a student of human nature.” He looked pointedly at her. “So you’re the youngest?”

  “Yep.”

  “What about your little sister?”

  “What little sister?”

  “The one yo
u sold into slavery for that sleeping bag?”

  “Huh, yeah. That little sister. Oops.”

  “Uh-huh. What other lies have you told me?” he asked, eyes crinkling.

  Gracie inhaled to protest, but clapped it shut again because at that moment Rob looked so beautiful it was surreal.

  “What about men?” he asked. “You said you were engaged. What happened?”

  “Burned. No, chewed up and spit out is more like it. That’s all I’m going to say. Your turn. I want to hear every boring detail straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  Rob stretched out full length on his sleeping pad, resting his head back on his pine-needle pillow. “My life’s not nearly as interesting as yours.”

  “Nice try,” she said, turning over onto her back again. “Spill it.”

  As the snow piled up outside the shelter, Gracie listened as Rob presented to her a compendium of his life, which boiled down to born and raised in London, fifth out of nine children, two boys and seven girls. “My way of getting attention in such a big, noisy crowd was to act out, be the ham. I was a royal pain in the arse.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Eventually university. Cut to present day. Currently renting a flat in New York. Upper West Side. Great restaurants and pubs and bagel shops and newspaper stands. But quiet on my street.”

  “Mmmm,” was all Gracie could muster.

  “There’s an energy about the city. A vibrancy. You need a whole different set of skills to survive there.”

  Gracie looked over at him.

  “It’s true,” he said.

  “Like I said before, three chances . . .” As if to punctuate the point, Gracie’s stomach rumbled audibly.

  Rob smiled. “I heard that.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Holding her eye, Rob drawled, “I’m so hungry, I could eat a sow an’ nine pigs an’ chase the boar half a mile.” Before Gracie had time to roll her eyes, he sat bolt upright. “Hold on! I had a rucksack!”

  “Keep your voice down!” Gracie hissed.

  Rob dropped his voice back to a whisper. “A . . . a backpack. I completely forgot about it. I was carrying leftovers from the lunch. Must have lost it when I fell.”

  “Could I find it?”

  His face fell. “Bloody hell, I don’t know.”

  “That’s all right. I can backtrack up to it.” She scrambled out of her bag and grabbed her Gore-Tex pants, lying flat on her back to pull them on.

  Rob watched her slip her radio chest pack over her head and clip it in place. “I want to go with you,” he said in a deep voice.

  “I don’t want you re-injuring your ankle.”

  “I don’t like you going out there alone. It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Gracie said, wishing she felt as confident as she sounded. “I’m taking the pack. Block the entrance with my sleeping bag.” She grabbed her mountaineering boots. “If something happens and I don’t come back—”

  Rob’s eyes widened. “Don’t say that!”

  “If something happens,” she said, “stay here. Do not—Are you listening to me?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Do not try to hike out. You have the most important things—shelter and water. A person can survive for weeks without food.” At Rob’s panic-stricken face, she quickly added, “Not that there’s any way this is going to last that long. As soon as this storm breaks, they’ll send aviation in. Describe the rucksack.”

  “Blue. Dark blue. Black straps.”

  “Pass me my crampons.”

  As she Velcroed her gaiters over her boots, he retrieved the steel spikes from the little storage area at the back of the shelter and handed them to her. “Nasty-looking things.”

  “Very useful for walking on ice and slippery slopes,” she said, fastening them to the outside of her pack. “Ice axe.”

  He held it up. One end of the axe head—the adze—was flattened to a cutting edge; the other end, the pick, well-honed to a sharp point. The three-foot metal shaft itself ended in a spike. “Another nasty-looking thing.” He turned it in his hands. “What’s it for?”

  “Mostly a sort-of walking stick in the snow.” Taking it from him, she gripped the shaft in one hand, placing the other on top of the axe head, the pick facing forward. “But if I fall, I jab it into the snow like this and, theoretically at least, slow myself down. It’s called self-arrest.”

  “And you’ve done this?”

  “In trainings. It’s really hard.”

  “Bloody remarkable.”

  “Takes a lot of upper body strength and a lot of practice to become really proficient. I’m not very good.”

  Rob watched as she stuffed her arms into her parka sleeves and stretched a balaclava over her head, followed by the helmet, then flipped her hood up on top of everything.

  She turned to crawl out of the shelter, then stopped. She pulled up her jacket, unsheathed the hunting knife and laid it carefully on the sleeping bag next to Rob.

  “What’s that for?”

  Her eyes lifted to meet his. “Just in case.”

  She heard Rob curse under his breath as she turned again to leave. He grabbed hold of her arm to stop her. “Gracie,” he said in a low voice. “Be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  She tried to turn away yet again, but he held on to her arm. “Gracie.”

  She turned back.

  He looked her right in the eye. “Be careful.”

  She looked steadily back. “I always am.”

  Gracie tossed her mostly empty pack ahead of her into the snow and crawled out of the shelter.

  CHAPTER

  63

  GRACIE climbed up the side of the mountain, her body falling into a natural rhythm to conserve energy. Breathing in through her nose, she planted the end of her ice axe, kicked a step in the snow and placed her foot until her crampons grabbed. Then, while breathing out through her mouth, she pushed up, straightening her leg and momentarily resting the muscle. Then she took another breath and another step. Another breath. Another step.

  Every few minutes, she stopped to catch her breath or unzip the underarm zippers of her parka. She glanced around, squinting her eyes against the blowing snow, taking note of landmarks—an oddly shaped boulder, a fallen log, a tangle of manzanita—anything that would help her negotiate her way back to the shelter. Before she had left the shelter, she had set her GPS to track. But she never relied solely on technology. Technology often failed. The thought of not being able to find her way back to Rob chilled her bones in a way the weather couldn’t.

  The wind grew even more ferocious as she worked her way up. It pelted her face with icy slivers and whipped the air from her lungs. Her breathing grew more labored. Gradually all thought ceased until nothing existed but: Breathe in. Plant the ice axe. Step right. Straighten the leg. Breathe out. Plant the ice axe. Step left. Straighten. Breathe in.

  She stopped again, chest heaving, the exposed skin on her face burning with the cold. She could see not far above her head, the jumble of boulders that formed the base of the rock promontory.

  Thank Almighty God.

  Gracie turned around in a circle, eyes half-closed against the wind, searching the hillside for any sign of Rob’s knapsack. But no blue cloth stood out against the snow.

  Gracie climbed up past the rock outcropping and hauled herself up onto the trail. As she straightened, a freight train of wind slammed into her, almost tipping her over. She staggered to regain her footing and braced herself against the wind as if against a solid wall. Then she tottered, zombielike with arms outstretched, across the trail and wedged herself into a narrow crack in the rock to catch her breath.

  Gracie’s body was sweating even as her cheeks and fingers stung with cold. Any moisture on her skin would quickly sap away the heat her
body produced and she would soon be shivering. She unzipped her parka a couple of inches, flapped freezing air inside onto her bare skin, then zipped it back up.

  Her eye caught on a streamer of neon orange flagging tape whipping crazily in the wind a few feet up the trail from where she stood. Was that there the first night? She didn’t remember seeing it when she had aimed her flashlight up the trail. Flagging tape was the kind of thing she would have noticed. She hadn’t walked very far past the point where the prints had left the trail. Cashman had, but she was confident he hadn’t tied it there.

  The only logical explanation for the orange tape was that a search team had hiked up the trail, marking their progress along the way.

  Gracie’s spirits hit bottom.

  The search team had bypassed the rock outcropping and continued on up the trail. They hadn’t known Gracie and Rob were down in the canyon, which meant they hadn’t received the GPS coordinates of the bivouac. The possibility was zero that Cashman had reached the CP and told someone where she and Rob were.

  Cashman had never made it back to the Command Post.

  No one knew where they were.

  Another thought slammed into her. She leaned out from the crack in the rock and looked down the trail, searching for a flash of the neon green flagging tape Cashman had tied when they first descended into the canyon. The wind bit at her face and whipped tears from the corners of her eyes back into her hair. She squinted so her eyelashes blocked most of the blowing snow. No neon green stood out against the white surroundings.

  Gracie ducked back into the shelter of the crack.

  There was no question in her mind that Cashman had flagged the spot where they left the trail. She distinctly remembered him tying several lengths. A quick check of her GPS confirmed she was in the right place.

  Flagging tape was tough. It required a concerted, deliberate effort to remove it. A search team bypassing the outcropping without blowing whistles or shouting or following their trail down the side of the hill meant only one thing—someone had removed the green tape with the express purpose of preventing the searchers from finding her and Rob.