Blood Runs Cold

On its south side, Blue Lakes Road stretched two and a half miles off Highway 9 to meet it. In winter, it was plowed halfway. A small group of Search and Rescue volunteers stood by the trailhead sign, like a spread from a North Face commercial. Others sat in their 4x4s, gunning their heating against the outside minus sixteen. They all had different day jobs, but came together every Wednesday night to train for Search and Rescue. They were twenty-two to sixty-two, high-energy, wired and bold.

An empty Ford 150 was the last vehicle in the line. It belonged to the Summit County Coroner, Denis Lasco, aka – depending on who you talked to – the Slowmobile, Heavy D, or Corpses Maximus.

‘Can you believe the Slowmobile got here before we did?’ said Bob.

‘He was probably looking for a place to hibernate,’ said Mike.

‘With a mouthful of nuts,’ said Bob.

‘Lasco couldn’t keep anything in his mouth without swallowing it.’

‘That’s pretty shitty,’ said Bob. ‘He’s probably got a gladur thing.’

‘It’s glandular,’ said Mike.

‘No – gladur,’ said Bob. ‘Glad you’re full, refrigerator, glad you’re full.’

They cracked up.

‘Right,’ said Mike, ‘we’re going to have to step out of the vehicle.’

‘Ugh,’ said Bob. ‘You first.’

One of the volunteers walked toward them as they got out of the Jeep.

‘Hey, Sheriff, Undersheriff,’ he said.

‘Hello, Sonny,’ said Bob. ‘Mike, this is Sonny Bryant. His father, Harve, and me go way back. I’ve known Sonny nineteen years or, as the tired saying goes, since he was in diapers.’

‘Yeah, I’m over them now,’ said Sonny, smiling.

‘They’ll come back around,’ said Bob. ‘It’s like fashion trends. I’m only a few seasons away from them myself.’

Sonny and Mike laughed.

‘Good to meet you,’ said Mike, shaking Sonny’s hand.

‘You too, sir,’ said Sonny.

‘What have we got?’ said Bob.

‘There’s a body up there, all right,’ said Sonny.

‘Man, woman, child …?’ said Bob.

‘I don’t think I’m allowed to say,’ said Sonny. ‘Mr Lasco …’

Bob rolled his eyes. ‘Let me guess: wouldn’t let you commit.’

Sonny smiled shyly. ‘Yes.’

‘He’s some piece of work,’ said Bob. ‘Is he up there alone?’

Sonny nodded. ‘Yes, he went up with a team of three and sent them back down once he knew where he was going. He said he hates people trampling his scenes.’

‘That is too true,’ said Bob. ‘And too repeated. Soon, the day will come when Lasco won’t even allow himself into a crime scene.’

Sonny laughed. ‘OK, I’m going to take you up there,’ he said. ‘Are you both coming?’

‘Sadly, yes,’ said Bob.

‘Should take about an hour,’ said Sonny. ‘We need to get going – that sun is starting to heat up.’

Denis Lasco was standing by the body with his back to them. He was dressed in a giant sapphire-blue parka and green ski pants. His head was bent over his digital camera. He half-glanced over his shoulder when he heard their footsteps in the snow.

‘You all need to stand back,’ he said, raising a hand.

‘Jesus, Lasco, we’re frickin’ miles away,’ said Bob.

‘This accident slash murder could have happened miles away,’ said Lasco.

‘Hackles,’ said Bob loudly, ‘are the erectile hairs on the back of an animal’s neck, particularly a dog. For the purposes of the moment, I am a dog. And it appears that, yes, I can confirm, my hackles are up.’

‘Professionalism,’ said Lasco loudly, ‘is the art of performing one’s job to the highest possible standards. For the purposes of this moment and all moments, I am a professional. And it appears that, yes, I can confirm, this is what makes me a grown-up and the sheriff a jealous baby.’

‘America’s Biggest Loser,’ said Bob, loudly, ‘is a –’

Lasco went rigid.

‘All right, all right,’ said Mike. ‘That’s enough of that. We can come closer, Denis, right?’

‘Sure you can,’ said Lasco. ‘I’ve taken my wide shots from where you’re standing, so just walk in my tracks.’

Bob muttered to Mike. ‘Yeah, they’re deep enough to leave a lasting impression on the landscape.’

3

Her face was masked in a layer of clear ice. Her warm, dying breath had melted the snow that covered her. The carbon dioxide she exhaled had no place to go except back into her lungs. She was wedged from the chest down into the snow. She was zipped into a maroon ski jacket with white stripes down the arms. A navy blue Quiksilver hat covered her head. The angle of her neck was not an angle for the living.

Lasco crouched down to the eerie eyes of the body, wide open, their frozen silver centers sparkling in the sun; a cruel trick of nature.

‘Pupils fixed and dilated,’ said Lasco. He stood up. ‘I love saying that.’

‘So,’ said Bob, pointing, ‘the glass-mask tells me she was buried alive, but how come her hat is still on? An avalanche would have ripped that right off her, right?’ He turned to Mike.

‘I guess so.’

‘Depends,’ said Lasco.

‘You are a commitment-phobe,’ said Bob.

‘It’s written into our contract,’ said Lasco. ‘Commitment comes back and bites you in the ass.’

Thirty feet back, Sonny Bryant stood beside the split stretcher he had assembled, ready to transport the body down to the trailhead. Lasco sent Bob and Mike over to join him and stayed with the body, taking the GPS co-ordinates and sketching a map of the crime scene.

‘What do you think happened to her?’ said Sonny, nodding in their direction.

‘Wood poisoning?’ said Bob. Wood poisoning was skier versus tree.

‘Could there be some skis buried under there?’ said Sonny.

‘Who knows?’ said Mike. ‘I’ve given up speculating. I’m always wrong.’

‘Come on, speculate,’ said Bob. ‘Make something up.’

Mike shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Corpses Maximus said no guesses. It plants things in people’s heads.’

‘Nothing gets planted in this head,’ said Bob. ‘Nothing at all.’

Mike and Sonny laughed.

The wind rose, whipping around them, fighting their balance. Mike and Bob had their back to it, buffering Sonny from the worst.

‘Hey,’ shouted Sonny, pointing to a figure higher up the peak.

Bob shook his head. ‘Same idiots, different season. You could paper Breck with “Get off the mountain by midday or we will shoot to kill” and these people would still not get out of their beds in time to haul ass.’

Lasco didn’t hear him and was waving from where he stood, holding something in the air, fighting to be heard over Bob and the wind.

‘Oh, shit,’ said Sonny. He lunged through the gap between Bob and Mike, lifting his spotting scope to his eye. He saw a man on backcountry skis, moving east–west across a snowfield. Bob, Sonny and Mike stood mesmerized, a combined weight of fear suspending any motion. Above them, the wind had raked the promontories, packing snow into ravines and chutes, pressing it deep into every hollow. The skier didn’t know what he was crossing; the difference between fallen and driven snow. He didn’t know that the black rock beneath him was a magnet to the afternoon sun. He didn’t know that the underside of the snow was heating up, turning to water, trickling downwards, weakening the platform beneath him.

Shooting cracks broke out under his feet, followed by the desperate sound of air rushing out of snow.

‘Jesus Christ!’ roared Bob. ‘Avalanche!’

‘Go right,’ roared Mike. ‘Go right.’

In seconds, a huge plume of white exploded into the sky as thousands of pounds of compacted snow shifted, plummeting toward them, four foot deep, warming as it moved, gaining the momentum to bury everything in its path, a deafening blast in the tranquil afternoon.

For seconds that felt longer, Mike was flying in an exhilarating powdered-snow rush. He was a snowboarder, busting a huge air, applause drowning out his proud cries. But somewhere inside, his instinct kicked in and he started to swim.

Bob felt like a rug had been pulled from under his feet, a rug he had been very happy with, the type that had protected him from the cold concrete underneath.

Lasco had descended barely four feet from the corpse when it was dislodged, hitting him hard in the back, forcing the wind from his lungs, sending them both plunging toward the ridge below.

Sonny became a centerpiece to the erupting snow, the height of its power, quickly descending to its crushing, savage depth.

In ten seconds, it was over. The snow had settled – twenty feet deep at the toe of the slide. Minutes passed before its powdery shower lifted, leaving in its wake a desolate white vacuum.

4

Mike Delaney knew that he wasn’t driving this motion, he was at the mercy of it. There was no skill to the rotations of his body. The sound he was hearing was the avalanche’s freight-train roar. If there was an audience that wasn’t being swept up and deposited all around him, they would have seen a spectacular final display … but would have turned away for the crash landing that was strangely void of sound.

A waitress kept trying to serve Sonny Bryant cocktails. His hand shook as he took each one and dropped it to the ground.

‘What is your problem?’ she kept saying.

‘You don’t get it. I’m freezing,’ he kept answering, again reaching out a shaking hand. ‘I’m freezing. Is this hot?’ He dropped the glass again.

‘What is your problem?’

He jerked awake. ‘I’m freezing.’

With the exception of one gloved hand, Sonny Bryant lay completely buried.

Denis Lasco was on his back, pinned beneath his charge, the pair taking the shape of a skewed cross on the snow. The corpse’s vitreous mask had cracked open, leaving a pale cheek an inch from Lasco’s lips. As he breathed frigid air through his nose, a slim strand of her hair was sucked against his nostrils. Lasco’s head shook violently, struggling to exhale it away. But the rise of his chest was restricted. In his panic, his neck muscles went rigid, supporting him long enough to observe a contributory factor to the woman’s death; a massive exit wound. A mash-up mix of reds and blacks had been ripped through the back of her snowsuit. It was the last thing Lasco saw before his breath exploded out of him and the picture went black.

When he was fourteen years old, Bob Gage had to dissect a cow’s eyeball in biology class. He remembered how it flinched under his scalpel, how he fought to secure it, finally piercing what he expected would be soft, yielding flesh. But it crunched as the blade hit its center. What the butcher had given him was a frozen eyeball. And it had turned Bob’s stomach more than cutting into the flesh of something that could have oozed.

Bob now stared at the heavy white world that surrounded him, possessed by the icy cold of his eyeballs, no less sickening now than a thirty-year-old memory. He knew nobody would be dissecting his eyeballs if he didn’t make it out of this, but he knew a sharp blade would be coming into his dead world and it was more than he could take. You can’t scream from the top of your lungs when they’re searching for oxygen that isn’t there. But Sheriff Bob Gage gave it his best shot.

For the second time that afternoon, an all-call went out and pagers across Summit County beeped, one of them under the snow of Quandary Peak. Twenty volunteers were called to a scene most of them were already at. The ones who hadn’t made it first time around were paged again and told why, this time, they might want to show up.

Bob could see something blue sticking out of the snow. He turned on his side and rolled on to his knees. He crawled uphill toward it, staggering to his feet when he saw it was a gloved hand. He trampled a path to it, then fell down and started digging.

‘We’re going to get you out,’ he said. ‘Hang in there. Hang in there.’ For a moment, he thought it might be the corpse. He pulled off the glove and felt a lukewarm hand and a weak pulse.

‘Shit, come on,’ he said, replacing the glove, working harder to tunnel an airway to whoever lay beneath the surface.

‘I’m getting there,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’

He could hear desperate, muffled groans. He looked around into the blank white.

‘Help,’ he shouted. ‘Someone help.’

He kept going, scooping back snow, his arms trembling, his heart pumping hard. His body was on fire. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. In his panic, he couldn’t pin down the passing of time; did he still have a chance, or was it too late? Had he been there for wasted hours or just minutes? Finally, he heard a huge intake of breath.

‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Thank God. Jesus Christ. Who’s down there?’

The voice was faint. ‘Sonny.’

‘OK, Sonny. You wait right there …’ He paused. ‘I mean, I’m going to get help. You’re going to get out of there, OK?’

He heard a muffled reply. He sat back on the snow, his breath heaving. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He grabbed the radio from his belt and radioed down to the trailhead to call in Flight-for-Life, the medevac helicopter run out of Frisco, ten miles north of Breckenridge.

‘I need to go check on Lasco,’ he said to Sonny. ‘I’m sure my buddy, Mountain Mike, is already back at the office.’

Further down the slope, by a small stand of trees, Denis Lasco lay on his back on top of the snow. Bob dropped to his knees and checked him for a pulse. He found one. But he couldn’t rouse Lasco.

The gentle snowfall quickly turned heavy.

‘Lasco, you wake the fuck up by the time I’m back,’ he said, hurrying up the slope to Sonny, slumping to the snow beside him. He pulled off one of his snow-shoes and used it to start digging. In ten minutes, Sonny’s head and shoulders were exposed. But the rest of his body was compressed so tightly, Bob had to hide his fear.

‘We need to keep you hydrated,’ he said. He took a bottle of water from his jacket and held it to Sonny’s mouth. Sonny’s eyes started to close.

‘No you don’t,’ said Bob. ‘Wakey, wakey, OK? Jesus, I’m the one who’s just done the physical exertion. If anyone gets to sleep here, it’s me.’ He wiped his sleeve across his forehead.

Sonny smiled a drunken smile, but opened his eyes wide. He sipped more water.

‘Good,’ said Bob. ‘Keep looking at me. It’s not easy, I know …’

Sonny blinked instead of smiling. Bob scanned the area for Mike, but found nothing. ‘I’ve never been in an avalanche in my life,’ said Bob. ‘It’s the scariest fucking shit …’ He laughed through the panic rising in his chest. Sonny’s skin was almost gray, his eyes shadowed and sunken, his lips pale and dry. Sonny was failing.

Bob’s radio struck up. A calm voice said, ‘Flights’re on their way.’

‘That’s great,’ said Bob. He looked up and down the slope. They were near the bottom, but there was no ground nearby at the right angle for a helicopter to land. And by the time the SAR team made it up to them from the trailhead, another half-hour would have gone by.

Sonny Bryant had got a perfect score in his EMT exams, so he knew exactly how he was going to die. He knew that the kind, smiling sheriff beside him knew how he was going to die. His limbs were crushed. As soon as the weight of the snow was taken away, toxins would rush to his bloodstream. His kidneys wouldn’t take it. There were no IV fluids. There was only a half-liter of water that was almost gone. That was it. It wasn’t enough. Bob Gage was holding his hand. Should he look him in the eye when they pulled him free? He didn’t really want to leave Bob with an image that could haunt him for life. But he didn’t want to stare into the blank white snow. Just in case wherever he was going was blank too.

5

The Summit County Medical Center stood on Highway 9 in Frisco. The Flight-for-Life helicopter hadn’t moved from its hangar outside. Two hours after the avalanche hit, an ambulance had carried Denis Lasco and Mike Delaney from the trailhead. Lasco’s deputy had arrived to take Sonny Bryant to the morgue in the van he used to call the Deathmobile.

Bob Gage stood by the window in Mike Delaney’s hospital room. Mike was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in a navy sweatshirt and baggy track pants, pushing his feet into sneakers.

‘We were pretty fucking lucky up there,’ said Mike.

‘No shit,’ said Bob. ‘No shit.’ He shook his head. ‘Christ Almighty, though, Sonny Bryant …’

‘Poor kid.’

‘Harve’s a mess. He wanted to know every detail. He was clinging to me, thanking me – for what, I don’t know – then asking me to go through what happened over and over again. I was half-thinking of saying that Sonny said to tell them all he loved them. Then I thought that would be a shitty thing to do. Then I thought yeah, it would mean Sonny would have known he was going to die, which would mean that that would have been absolutely frightening –’

‘Bob, Bob …’ said Mike. ‘Take a breath, OK? Take it easy. You did everything you could for Sonny, and I’m sure you’ll do everything you can for Harve, if he needs you.’

Bob didn’t say anything for a little while. When he finally spoke, his voice was showing cracks. ‘I just … don’t want to be elevated to some special status because I was the last person to see his son alive. Or he thinks I’m this great hero who tried to save him. I mean, there you were, Mike, with all your mountain experience; there’s Lasco, a guy who knows all about the human body. So when you think about it, I am literally the last person who could have saved Sonny Bryant.’

‘Bob, that’s bullshit. None of us could have saved Sonny. Look, it makes no sense, but someone up there thought it was his time to go.’

‘At nineteen,’ said Bob.

‘At nineteen.’ Mike stood up. ‘Life fucking sucks.’

Bob followed him to the door. They took the elevator to the floor below. In a room at the end of the hallway, Denis Lasco lay sleeping.

‘Damn that Heavy D,’ said Bob, looking through the window. ‘Here I am, giving a shit.’

‘The laxative of concern,’ said Mike.

‘Where’s my camera?’ Lasco shouted, trying to struggle up from his bed.

Bob and Mike rushed into the room.

‘Whoa,’ said Bob. ‘Lasco, lay back down for Christ’s sake.’

Lasco collapsed on to the bed, freaking out when he saw the IV line, the hospital bed, the incongruity of worry in Bob and Mike’s faces.

‘Hey,’ said Bob, putting a hand on Lasco’s. ‘You’re all right, you’re all right. Take it easy.’

‘Don’t cry on us,’ said Mike, smiling.

Lasco squeezed his fingers to his eyes. ‘Jesus. That was the worst … that …’ He paused. ‘I’ve never …’

‘Damn right it was,’ said Bob. ‘And here we all are, OK? We’re good. We’re living to tell the tale.’

‘Have I been out long?’ said Lasco.

‘Not long enough,’ said Bob.

‘Where’s my camera?’

‘In a snowy grave,’ said Bob.

‘That was brand new,’ said Lasco. ‘Top of the range. And all the photos I took of the scene …’

Bob’s phone rang. He held up a finger to Lasco and took the call.

‘You have to be shitting me,’ said Bob. He paused. ‘Jesus Christ. Sit on this for now. I’ll call you.’ He snapped his phone shut. ‘Your camera’s the least of our problems,’ said Bob. He stared up at the ceiling. ‘It turns out the body’s gone too.’

‘What?’ said Mike.

‘Search and Rescue weren’t able to locate it,’ said Bob. ‘That’s it. Swept away in the slide.’

‘What?’ said Lasco. ‘What? It was on top of me! How’d you get me out without pulling the body off of me?’

‘It wasn’t there when I checked on you,’ said Bob. ‘I guess you blacked out when it landed on you. It probably slid right over your head, kept on trucking.’

Lasco turned his head into the pillow, pressing his hand to his stomach.

Mike turned to Bob. ‘Are they going back up there to get it?’

‘Hell, no. They got us out. Hung around as long as they had to. But it’s way too unstable. They won’t risk anyone else.’ He shrugged. ‘Shit. No body. We’re going to have to have a press conference.’ He shook his head. ‘So … let’s get in agreement about a few things. OK. Victim – female, aged between thirty and forty –’

‘Or male,’ said Lasco.

‘What do you mean “or male”?’ said Bob.

‘The body was wedged right in. We could only see from the chest up, really.’

‘So you’re saying you didn’t see tits and a va-jay-jay, so it could be a male? Give me a break. This noncommittal thing of yours is starting to get ridiculous.’

Lasco looked patiently at him. ‘Well, I’m still not sure you’re getting it,’ he said. ‘How many scenes have I been to where you guys have messed with shit before I show up? Pulling up people’s pants, taking weapons and laying them on a night stand … You guys walk in and take a guess at what happened. What you need to do is go on exactly what is there in front of you. Not what you’re adding to the picture. I could imagine all kinds of things happened to that body, but it doesn’t mean I would be correct.’

Bob stared through him. ‘FEMALE, aged thirty to forty, maroon jacket, white stripes down the arms. A navy blue wool hat?’

‘Fleece,’ said Lasco.

‘Fleece,’ said Bob. He was writing as he spoke. ‘What about eye color?’

‘Hard to say,’ said Lasco. ‘I wouldn’t be happy making that call.’

‘Hair?’

‘Hat.’

‘Nothing sticking out?’

‘I don’t recall.’

Bob looked patiently at Mike.

‘Obviously, neither do you,’ said Lasco.

‘Yeah, ’cos you’re so good about letting us get close to the body.’ He paused. ‘So,’ he said, ‘in conclusion, we have … fuck all.’

‘Oh,’ said Lasco. ‘Flashback: her hair went up my nose. Blonde.’

Bob sucked in a breath.

‘Oh,’ said Lasco. ‘Gunshot wound. Massive exit wound through her back.’

‘Holy shit,’ said Bob. He paused. ‘But why gunshot? You sure that wasn’t a puncture wound, a tree branch …’

‘No. It was a GSW,’ said Lasco.

‘You sure?’ said Bob. ‘It wasn’t a hole made by some chopsticks, a broom handle? Let’s keep one of those open minds here.’

‘Ha. Ha,’ said Lasco.

‘Ha. Ha. Ha,’ said Bob. He sat on the edge of the bed and closed his notebook. ‘I’m not looking forward to this shitstorm,’ he said. ‘Not one bit.’

There was a knock on the door. Bob walked over and opened it a crack. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘How you doing?’ He turned back to Lasco. ‘It’s a special visit from some Special Agents.’

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI were friends with benefits; one had local knowledge, the other had extra manpower, big budgets and technical resources. There were four hundred FBI resident agencies – RAs – across the United States, usually with one to three agents. The closest one to Breckenridge was in Glenwood Springs, one hundred miles west in Garfield County.

‘We were on a call-out to Frisco,’ said Tiny Gressett. ‘We heard the report, thought we’d stop by, see how Mr Lasco is … see if there’s anything we can do.’

There was no irony in Tiny Gressett’s name – a hair cut would have put him under the FBI height requirement. He was in his fifties with the lined, papery face of a smoker and the wind-burn of a mountain man. He had wavy black hair and razor-shy sideburns.

‘You enjoy the snow today?’ he said to Lasco.

‘Total blast,’ said Lasco.

Todd Austerval stepped a shy foot toward the patient. He was tall, blond and in his early thirties, straight-nosed with sharp cheekbones. He should have been more handsome, but he had a snarly mouth and blue eyes two shades too pale to ever warm. He spent his life trying to soften his appearance with good humor. ‘Heard you were snowcorpsing.’

‘Nothing is sacred around here,’ said Lasco.

‘Sure isn’t,’ said Gressett.

There was another knock at the door.

‘Let me get that,’ said Gressett.

The door pushed open anyway and one of the new recruits from the Sheriff’s Office walked in. He paused when he saw the two men in suits and looked, panicked, to Bob and Mike.