Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
ALSO BY RIDLEY PEARSON
Killer View
Killer Weekend
Cut and Run
The Art of Deception
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer
(writing as Joyce Reardon)
The Pied Piper
Beyond Recognition
Undercurrents
BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
Peter and the Starcatchers series
(with Dave Barry)
The Kingdom Keepers series
Never Land series
(with Dave Barry)
Steel Trapp series
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pearson, Ridley.
Killer summer / Ridley Pearson.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-08154-9
1. Sheriffs—Idaho—Fiction. 2. Wine auctions—Fiction. 3. Theft—Fiction.
4. Sun Valley (Idaho)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.E234K54 2009b 2009012998
813’.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses
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For Betsy Dodge Pearson.
Have a Killer Summer, Mom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Christine Pepe, Amy Berkower, Nancy Litzinger, Dan Con-away, Dave Barry, Barge Levy, Steven Garman, Ed Stackler, Creative Edge, Storymill, and Mariner software. Thanks, too, to my family for giving me the time and support. But most of all I want to thank Jerry Femling, who in real life is nothing like the Jerry Fleming of this and other novels in the Killer series. I’ve twisted his character in the name of storytelling, and he’s a good sport to go along with it.
—RIDLEY PEARSON, SHANGHAI, CHINA, 2009
1
Walt Fleming didn’t want to be in the river. Any free time away from the office should have been spent applying for a loan of a hundred thousand dollars. That, or risk losing his house, and his daughters, to the divorce. But credit was tight, time short, and so there he was, along with his nephew, Kevin, knee-deep in the Big Wood River. The evening outing was a favor to his sister-in-law, Myra, who could guilt-trip along with the best of them.
Kevin, who would turn nineteen in August, glanced over at his uncle, looking away from the fly he was tying on his own line.
“What?” Walt asked, water gurgling past his waders.
He slipped on a pair of sunglasses to protect against flying hooks, and the glare of an evening sun. At eight-thirty P.M., it still shone brightly in the summer sky. Behind Walt, a rock wall rose out of the gurgling and bubbling river water, reaching two thousand feet nearly straight up into the cobalt sky. Dusk would linger well past ten, during which time the best fishing of the day would be had.
“No uniform.”
“Once a sheriff, always a sheriff? You’ve seen me out of uniform plenty of times. Don’t give me that.”
“Not recently.”
“Then obviously we haven’t been spending enough ti
me together,” Walt said. “Which is why we’re here in the first place.”
Kevin remained on the shore, poised as if reluctant to enter the water. A narrow concrete-and-steel bridge crossed fifty feet downstream, carrying the cracked asphalt of Croy Creek Road from downtown Hailey, Idaho, west into rugged terrain. Walt had parked the Jeep Cherokee in a dusty turnout before the bridge. The license plate read BCS-I—Blaine County Sheriff, vehicle 1.
Walt glanced east over Kevin’s head, up the slight rise at the town he called home. With a population of three thousand, Hailey was smaller than its famous neighbors to the north, Ketchum and Sun Valley, but larger than Bellevue to the south. The valley was defined by mountain ranges east and west, shaped into an upside-down V, the mouth of which emptied into a great plain of high desert populated by nothing more than rodents, rattlers, and lava rock.
“You hate fishing,” Kevin said. “You’re all about softball and gliding and your dogs. Besides, that’s a radio, right? A police radio?” He pointed to the handheld clipped to Walt’s fishing vest. “So it’s not exactly like you left the sheriff thing behind.”
“Are you going to fish or not?” Walt said, pricking his finger on the hook as he attempted to knot the fly to the line. He sucked the tip of his finger, tasting blood.
“You’re doing this because Mom told you to.”
“It’s true that I suck at fishing, not true about Myra. We’re here together, and I want to take advantage of that. It’s your call, but if you don’t get in the water, we’re done here.”
“And my job at the lodge? Your idea or Mom’s?”
“That one was all mine, buddy boy. Your mom had nothing to do with it.”
Kevin waded in up to his knees.
Progress, thought Walt.
“How’s that working out, anyway?” Walt asked.
“I’m good with it.”
Walt had thought he might get a thank-you. He’d pulled strings to get Kevin on as a bellboy at the Sun Valley Lodge. Better than working as a fry chef.
They moved downstream in tandem, keeping their distance from each other in order to avoid tangling lines. Walt’s brother, Robert, had taught his son to fly-fish at the ripe old age of eight. Kevin had taken to it like a prodigy. Walt studied Kevin’s technique, hoping some of it might rub off on him. He tried casting his line.
“We’re trying to hook them, not whip them to death,” Kevin said, sounding just like Robert.
“Ha-ha!” Walt replied, a lump in his throat.
“Less wrist.”
Walt stiffened his arm. His second try was an improvement.
“Thanks.”
“No charge.”
Walt’s radio crackled. He and Kevin exchanged a look.
“I’ve got to monitor it. That’s all.”
“Promise?”
Walt bit his tongue. Kevin was asking the impossible, and they both knew it.
2
Christopher Cantell couldn’t avoid looking at himself in a mirror—any mirror—a window’s reflection, a shiny hubcap. Waiting in the Sun Valley Airport’s parking lot, he was unaware that he’d turned the rearview mirror of the rented Yukon his direction. It wasn’t that he considered himself outrageously handsome. In fact, his attention focused on the flaws: the crow’s-feet framing his dark eyes; the fans at the base of his earlobes, the asymmetrical black eyebrows, the smirk on his thin lips that so many found offensive when it was nothing more than genetics, his father having suffered the same slash mouth. But the habit of looking was a tic, a kind of illness he suffered, that he couldn’t stop, that he hated so much he lived in constant denial of its existence. It wasn’t really him, this vanity. And if not him, then someone else, which implied a case of mild schizophrenia, something more troubling than the vanity itself. The busier he kept, the better: more focused, less self-aware. All his adult life he’d sought out impossible tasks with enormous consequences. Some might call him an everyday thief, but he considered that an insult. He could outsmart the smartest and steal what couldn’t be stolen. He thought of himself more as a magician, making valuable objects, including cash, disappear. The bigger the risk, the better. Anything to keep him from seeing those two faces in the mirror.
The courier wasn’t much to look at either. He had a purple birthmark on his neck that extended beyond the open collar of his green golf shirt. And he looked a little soft, though Cantell wasn’t buying it: couriers with Branson Risk knew their stuff. This guy was certain to put up a fight, if given half a chance. But Cantell’s plan eliminated chance altogether. The courier mustn’t be allowed to place a call or use a pager. Cantell suspected he was carrying two GPS transmitters—one inside his phone or BlackBerry; the other secreted in the oversized black carbon-fiber briefcase in his custody. Cantell watched as the courier slipped behind the wheel of a Ford Taurus. Cantell had expected a bigger rental: an Expedition, Suburban, or Yukon like his, but neither the make nor the size of the car bothered him. His team was well prepared. He’d spent the past two months and a good deal of money planning and scripting the events of the next few days. He liked to make things complicated. Law enforcement couldn’t handle complicated. Theirs was a world of systems, records, and repetition.
He adjusted the rearview mirror—what the hell was it aiming at him for?—to see out the back of the Yukon. He used the Nextel’s direct-connect feature to broadcast his report to the others.
“It’s a metallic-blue Taurus. Leaving now. Idaho plate Victor-alpha-five-seven-two. I’m the black Yukon, pulling up right behind him. Matt?”
“In position,” came the nasal reply.
“Lorraine?” said Cantell.
“The full cycle is two minutes twenty. On my mark we’re currently forty-five seconds into green,” she said. Cantell tracked the second hand on his watch. “Mark! I’m in position.”
“Pulling up to the attendant now,” Cantell reported. “Okay, the Taurus is in play.” Cantell rolled down his window and handed over his parking ticket to the woman attendant, who clearly didn’t catch that Cantell was holding it by the edges to avoid leaving prints. The first half hour of parking was free. The display showed AMOUNT YOU OWE: 0.00.
“Have a nice day,” the attendant said.
Cantell rolled up the window. The red-and-white-striped restraining bar lifted. The Yukon followed the Taurus out through a light-industrial park.
The airport access road passed the Hailey Post Office, where the two vehicles stopped for a red light. On the green, they turned left onto Main Street—State Highway 75—with the Taurus now behind a red tow truck. Cantell pulled even with the wrecker, preventing the Taurus or any other vehicle from passing. Traffic was moving at a steady twenty-five miles per hour, just as the posted signs required.
Small towns, he thought.
As Main Street angled north, passing a medical clinic, Cantell got a good look at the town’s main traffic light. It was yellow.
Two blocks to go.
“Passing Elm,” Cantell announced.
Each of his three team members checked in. The operation was a go.
The light changed to red.
Traffic slowed and stopped. Cantell looked out at the pavement between his Yukon and the wrecker to the left. The evening light made a shadow on the road that came snaking from under the wrecker. It was cast by Matt Salvo, who hung upside down from the undercarriage. Salvo was already moving toward the back of the tow truck. Had the light stayed red only a few seconds longer . . . But it was not to be.
The light turned green, and traffic rolled.
“I’ve got your twenty,” Lorraine announced. “Showtime.”
Cantell spotted five feet seven inches of well-packed California girl on the next corner. She had her hands on a baby carriage and her eyes on the prize.
He’d met her at the Telluride Film Festival, and had been with her for the three years since.
She pushed the stroller off the curb and into the pedestrian crossing. Idaho law required traffic to yield. He an
d the wrecker braked. Together they blocked all trailing traffic. Not a single car horn sounded in protest.
Small towns.
Cantell watched Matt’s shadow move all the way to the back of the wrecker.
Lorraine, in the pedestrian crossing now, dropped her bag. Hitting the pavement, it spilled out Pampers, a baby’s bottle, and a stuffed toy. As she scrambled to reclaim the contents, Cantell popped his door and hurried to help her before some other good-natured soul felt obliged to do so.
Small towns.
He made a dramatic effort to search beneath the wrecker, as if something had been lost under there. He then stood and motioned for the driver to back up the tow truck to where it nearly hit the Taurus. He looked again and came up with one of the stuffed animals—all a ruse.
Beneath the wrecker, Matt Salvo released his harness and dropped to the pavement. He quickly fed a tube through the Taurus’s grille and into the vehicle’s fresh-air intake. He then turned the valve on a small tank the size of a fire extinguisher that was attached to the wrecker’s undercarriage. He freed the tow truck’s hook, reached under the Taurus, and found the tow ring with it.
“Hook’s on,” he announced into his headset.
“Ten seconds to green,” Lorraine told Cantell under her breath. She made a show of thanking him for his help.
He hurried back into the Yukon just as the traffic light changed.
Salvo grabbed the undercarriage and clipped himself back into the harness. He worked the hydraulic controls from there as the wrecker’s engine labored. The Taurus’s front tires lifted off the pavement.
Cantell, once again behind the wheel of the Yukon, stole a look at the Taurus: the driver was slumped against the side window.
“We’re a go,” he announced into the Nextel. He fastened his seat belt, stretching to sneak a look at his face in the rearview mirror.
The traffic light’s left-lane arrow turned green.
Roger threw his hand out the window of the tow truck and made the turn from the center lane. Tethered to the truck in front of it, the Taurus swung left.