Zero-Degree Murder (A Search and Rescue Mystery) (6 page)

CHAPTER

T
HE
wraith that was Diana crept down the trail.

Overhead the last of daylight’s glow outlined the ragged mountain peaks. But the black velvet curtain the approaching night had already laid across the canyon was so opaque, so complete, that Diana could see nothing of her hands stretched out in front of her. The harsh wind moaned up the canyon, rocking and creaking the unseen trees on all sides.

Diana slid her feet along the ground, feeling for the smooth dirt of the trail. She squinted ahead, but saw no sign of anyone, no movement ahead on the trail. She listened, but could hear nothing above the wind.

She froze.

She had caught a hint of something in the air.

What was it?

She closed her eyes and breathed in the frigid night air.

Cigarette smoke.

Her eyes flew open. She half turned, muscles tensed to run. Her breath came in quick shallow puffs through her nose.

She peered down the trail over her shoulder.

Then she saw it—a black shape moving slowly, methodically up the trail. The burning end of a cigarette flared—a red eye winking in the darkness.

Milocek.

Searching for her, for where she had left the trail.

Panic rose as sour vomit in Diana’s throat. She took a step backward. Then another. And another. Until she rounded a curve in the mountain.

Then she turned and sprinted on silent feet back up the trail.

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
slammed the door of the Command Post trailer so hard the windows rattled. The clock on the wall shook loose from its nail, zipped past Ralph’s right ear, and smashed onto the metal desk an inch from his arm. The single battery flew out of its casing and landed in the wastebasket next to the door.

Without so much as a flinch, Ralph swiveled around in his chair sat and glowered at Gracie.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling off her gloves. She flopped into another chair, forgetting about its broken back, and almost tipped over backward. “Dammit!” She flailed with her legs to regain her balance and plant her boots back on the linoleum.

“All right, Kinkaid,” Ralph growled. “Spill it.”

The use of her last name told Gracie that the reason for her behavior and the near-miss with the clock had better be a good one.

• • •

PAVEMENT QUEEN, GRACIE
thought as she crossed the parking lot to the sleek black motor home. How did they get this behemoth all the way here?

She stopped in front of the door at the side of the RV, the butterflies that always made a cameo appearance whenever she had to actually socialize with strangers pirouetting in her stomach.

This was one part of the job she dreaded—talking with people she didn’t know. But who the hell else was going to interview the RPs? Cashman?

Inside her fleece gloves, her palms were as sweaty as if she had been clutching a handful of pennies. She pulled the gloves off, tucked them into a pocket, then wiped her hands dry on her parka.

Her legs were trembling.

Dammit, Kinkaid! Get a grip
.

She sucked in a long, heavy breath through her nose, blew it out through her mouth, and rapped on the door.

Her knuckles had barely left the metal before the door swung open revealing a woman with shoulder-length blond hair and water-balloon breasts so enormous they threatened to burst out of her fuchsia cashmere sweater.

Gracie actually took a step backward. Self-consciousness flared up and she threw off her hood in an attempt to look slightly less dorky.
“Sheriff’s Department. Search and Rescue,” she announced, employing her official voice. “I’d like to ask you some more questions— Crap!” She slammed her hand on her head to anchor her beanie as a gust of wind almost lifted it right off.

Gracie was expecting anything from Lauren Bacall to Betty Boop, but the voice that said, “Come on back,” definitely sounded Midwestern.

Without waiting for an answer, the woman climbed up the stairs, leaving the door open behind her.

Gracie clumped behind her, feeling even more acutely like the Michelin Hippopotamus. She pulled off her beanie and tried in vain to smooth down the wisps of static-cling hair floating around her face.

Polished wood, black leather, and mirrors were all Gracie noticed about the interior of the motor home. The blond woman slid behind a table in the kitchen, which, Gracie noted with dismay, was bigger than her own.

Sitting around the table were another woman and three men, all as physically flawless as air-brushed fashion models, all looking some combination of unhappy, unfriendly, and bored.

The detritus of a high-rent brunch littered the table: half-empty bottles of champagne and vodka along with several containers of what Gracie guessed were various juices, a giant platter holding the remnants of Brie, prosciutto, melon slices and kiwi, and other Epicurean delights that Gracie couldn’t identify.

She slid into the only empty seat, trying not to think about her own pathetic dinner of a peanut butter sandwich and a PayDay candy bar. She cleared her throat, introduced herself, and explained that she needed to go over some of the information the deputy had already covered.

“My name’s Michael,” said an angelic-faced man who looked young enough to be taking Beginning Composition at Hollywood High. “What’s your pleasure? Mimosa? Bloody Mary? Something stronger?”

Love to
, Gracie thought. She declined with a smile and a shake of her head and cleared her throat again. “First off, the faster I can compile this information, the more quickly we can get into the field and begin looking for your friends.”

“They’re not my friends,” said an Asian woman, wearing a mink fur vest that left Gracie feeling slightly nauseated, whose stunning beauty was marred by a perpetual pout.

“Shut up, Monica,” grumbled one of the men who Gracie identified from the LPQ as Jeremy and who she would swear was wearing clear fingernail polish.

“To confirm, there are three people we know to be missing.” She glanced down at the LPQ. “Rob Christian, Joseph Van Dijk, and Tristan Chambers.”

“That woman is with them, too,” said the blond woman whom Gracie identified as Brittany.

“She would be,” Monica sneered.

“No, she’s not,” Michael said, taking a lazy sip of mimosa.

“Who cares if she is?” Jeremy asked.

A man with sculpted muscles and skin the exquisite color of rubbed mahogany introduced himself in a deep voice as Erik. “The woman’s name is Diana,” he said, sounding utterly embarrassed by the rest of the group. “I don’t remember her last name. It’s unusual. Eastern European maybe. Anyway, she’s an actor.”

“Wannabe,” Monica added.

“She went back down to the hotel with Cristina and Carlos,” Michael said.

Gracie scribbled furiously.

“She hiked on with the others,” Erik said. “But Cristina and Carlos drove back down to the hotel.”

“No, they didn’t.”

Erik ignored the interruption. “They were heading back to L.A. for the weekend.”

Gracie fastidiously filled in the gaps about the physical descriptions of all six possible MisPers about which there miraculously was some consensus. Everyone agreed that Rob and Joseph wore black North Face down jackets. Tristan wore a bright red down jacket over a neon yellow shirt. That tidbit everyone agreed upon since apparently the colors had been the subject of a lengthy discussion about the current trends in men’s fashion. Diana wore a full-length maroon coat, almost to her ankles, and multicolored knit gloves and hat, which Monica described: “It had a pom-pom, for God’s sake!” Cristina and Carlos wore matching black leather biker jackets with silver studs and blue jeans.

Brittany raised her hand and ventured, “Tristan’s wearing tennis shoes.” She dropped her hand. “If that helps any.”

“It helps a lot,” Gracie said and smiled at her.

“Nikes,” Jeremy said.

“They’re Reeboks,” Monica said, her mouth looking as if she had just sucked on a lemon.

Gracie’s attention sharpened. Nikes or Reeboks? She had tracked people wearing both brands in the past. The Nike swoosh or the entire word
Reebok
could often be seen in the dirt as clearly as if it had been made with a rubber stamp. She scribbled both brands with question marks next to where the cute deputy had written “white sneakers.” Maybe she would get to do some tracking after all. Tracking was time-consuming, fatiguing, back-breaking, but, in Gracie’s opinion, one of the surest, most reliable ways to locate a missing person.

“Rob’s are some kind of regular shoes,” Erik said. “Or boots.”

“Black,” Brittany offered, more boldly this time.

A long way to hike in city shoes, Gracie thought.

Nothing about the footwear of the other four was known except that Cristina and Carlos were wearing black boots of some kind.

Gracie felt sweat forming at her temples and unzipped her parka. “Are any of them familiar with the area?”

Erik said, “No,” while several heads nodded.

“Any have experience in the outdoors?”

Erik said, “Joseph, I think,” while others shrugged their shoulders.

Her question of “Did anyone have a map of the area?” was met with a deafening silence that Gracie translated as “What the hell is a map?”

Fielding bits and pieces of the story thrown at her from all sides, Gracie was able to fill in some of the gaps of information gained during the briefing.

That morning, a group of the movie’s cast and crew had driven from a resort hotel in Timber Creek up to the San Raphael Wilderness Area, setting out from the Aspen Springs Trailhead parking lot around midmorning. They had hiked for only about a mile before stopping for an “awesome” brunch packed by the hotel. Some of the group had been drinking along the way: several bottles of champagne, blackberry brandy, and hot chocolate laced with Yukon Jack Permafrost. After they had eaten, six members of the group wanted to return to the motor home (“Too windy.” “Too cold.” “My feet hurt.” “Too dirty.”). Rob Christian had wanted to continue hiking. Others in the group—Tristan Chambers and Joseph Van Dijk, possibly Cristina and Carlos Sanchez, and Diana Nobody-Knew-Her-Last-Name—agreed to accompany him down the trail for another mile or two, then return to the parking lot no later than one
P.M
.

The little hiking party had never returned.

When Gracie left the motor home, the RPs were arguing about who should have gone on with Rob and whose fault everything was and what they were going to eat for dinner. She had to work to uncross her eyes as she walked back to the Command Post. And the beginning of a stress headache was tightening the back of her skull.

• • •

“LIKE HERDING CATS,”
Gracie said to Ralph as he scanned the LPQ. “Hells bells. They can’t even agree on exactly how many people are missing. The only thing they do agree on besides what everyone was wearing was that Rob Christian is among the MisPers along with two other guys: Tristan Chambers and Joseph Van Dijk.”

She leaned carefully back in her own chair so she wouldn’t look like an abject moron by tipping backward again. “Not much,” she said, massaging the back of her neck with her fingers. “But it was all I could get. Any potential tracks in the parking lot have been obliterated.”

“Where’s Cashman?” Ralph asked.

“Haven’t seen him.”

“Go find him and let’s get you two out on the trail.”

As if in response, boots clumped up the rickety trailer stairs outside and Cashman burst into the trailer.

“Don’t slam the—” Gracie and Ralph said in unison.

The door slammed. Gracie’s eyes slid to the clock still lying on the desk at Ralph’s elbow.

“Where have you been, Cashman?” Ralph asked.

“Got some autographs for my wife,” Cashman said too loudly for the little trailer.

But only after she had left the motor home, Gracie noted. Where had he been before that? Probably gabbing with the cute deputy.

“Really not the time or place,” Ralph said with more restraint than Gracie could have mustered. One reason Ralph was the team’s Commander and Gracie never would be.

Cashman dropped into a metal folding chair and the team of three planned the search. Their course of action would be straightforward. For the first portion of the trail, Gracie and Cashman would move fairly quickly, spending little time looking for tracks. Near the trailhead, where the boots and sneakers of countless hikers and casual sightseers had pounded the path smooth, individual prints would be indistinguishable. Farther down, where all but the more serious hikers turned back toward the trailhead was where they would find tracks or portions of tracks. That’s where the serious tracking would begin.

Where an offshoot trail rose up to meet the Aspen Springs Trail—the point at which Gracie calculated the group had eaten their lunch, then separated—the steep terrain on both sides prevented anyone from easily leaving the trail. Up to that point, there was essentially one way in and one way out.

“I’ll call down to the SO,” Ralph said. “Try to get a deputy or two to do a bastard search in town. See if any of the MisPers show up there.”

“Make sure they check the hotel first,” Gracie said. “According to one of the RPs, Cristina and Carlos may have headed back there.”

“I’ll get Montoya out there to go back and talk to the RPs. Interview them separately if need be. See if we can sort out some of this cluster.”

Montoya. That’s the cute deputy’s name.

“Eight-TAC-One,” Ralph said.

Cashman turned the little knob at the top of the HT to the search channel. “Got it.”

Ralph picked up his GPS. “Ready for coordinates?”