Killer View Read Online Free

not.”
    “I’m not looking for the missing kid, Tommy. I want some photos before everything’s covered.”
    “Randy skied off the Drop, Sheriff. End of story.”
    As far back as Walt could remember, Tommy had never called him by anything other than his rank. It made the guy even harder to dislike.
    Walt told him about hearing the branch snapping, how his first reaction had been gunshot .
    The Hummer was idling for warmth, the slap-slap of its wipers rising above the grind of the engine.
    “But Randy wasn’t shot.”
    “We don’t know anything about what drove him off those rocks. Mark and I had to get the body out. There was no time to look around.”
    He dug into the back of the Hummer and withdrew a broken piece of ski and tangled metal edging. It was a piece from the middle of a ski and contained the sophisticated mountaineering binding that allowed the heel to be locked down or the toe to be used as a three-pin binding. The equipment was different than that found on recreational downhill skis. A hybrid system, this gear allowed a cross-country skier to convert his equipment to downhill on a single pair of skis. He passed it to Brandon, who shook the water off—the snow having melted—and studied it.
    “So what?” Brandon said.
    “The sticker,” Walt said, taking the broken piece of ski from him. He pointed out the ® just below the three pins that secured the toe of the boot.
    “It’s a patent, or whatever. So what?”
    “It’s not a registered trademark, Tommy. It’s an R , for right —as in right ski for the right boot . They’re paired, same as downhill skis. And this ski was on his left foot.”
    Brandon took it out of Walt’s hand and studied it in the light from the car’s interior. “So he got ’em mixed up. It was dark and snowing. Big deal.”
    “You’ve never cross-country skied, I see. He’d have known in the first few seconds he had them reversed. The skis don’t track well. They pull to the outside. Drives you crazy and costs you energy. A guy like Randy wouldn’t have reversed them in the first place, but, if he had, he’d have stopped and made it right within the first few minutes. Storm or no storm.”
    “Yeah, but maybe it just didn’t bother him, Sheriff.” He looked on as Walt fastened the second of his two snowshoes to his boots. “Or maybe he took them off for some reason. Had to take a dump or something. Put them back on reversed. Jumped off the cliff. Who the hell knows?”
    “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
    “Then I’m going with you.”
    “No need, Tommy. I’ll be fine. It’s late. Get back and get the paperwork started on Randy. I’ll call you in an hour, if that’ll make you feel better.”
    Tommy crossed to his truck and returned with his own snowshoes.
    Nothing more was said between the two men for over twenty minutes. Walt navigated a more direct route to the Drop, following the GPS. Both men arrived at the top of the rock outcropping winded and sweating. The storm had covered an area of snow greatly disturbed by dozens of prior skiers.
    Walt had been right about the snowfall covering any chance to backtrack Randy’s movements. It was nearly too late already.
    Working on his theory that Randy had taken a bathroom break, Brandon followed a set of ski tracks that deviated from the main route into the woods.
    Walt was leaning over the rocks, aiming his six-cell down at the hole, some forty feet below, when Brandon called out over the radio.
    “Sheriff? Got something interesting here.”
    Walt followed Brandon’s fresh tracks into the quiet stillness of the forest. They curved to the right, slightly downhill, and aimed southwest—toward State Highway 75. Brandon had traveled a long distance. Walt found him at the base of a tree. With the evergreens acting as giant umbrellas, the snow cover here was only a few inches deep.
    The area was heavily disturbed.
    “You do this?”
    “No, sir. Wolves maybe. I think they may have treed