Killer Mountain

  Killer Mountain

  Peter Pinkham

  The threat of attack from foreign terrorists bent on damage to the United States has hung over the nation for years, bringing fear to many, and opportunity for profit to others. Killer Mountain begins with Preston Sturgis, a Boston developer and lower-echelon drug dealer, who mistakenly learns a deadly secret and flees for his life to his lawyer, Wally Carver, in New Hampshire. Former Carver son-in-law, Hudson Rogers, and his new wife, Cilla, are innocently pulled into the murderous pursuit when the gang attempts to kidnap Cilla, who is more skilled at self-defense than they know. Failing to capture her, the relentless hunters destroy the Rogers? home. A fast-paced cross-country offensive begins involving extortion, threats against thousands of lives, and a perilous expedition to the top of the highest peak in the northeast.

  KILLER MOUNTAIN

  PETER PINKHAM

  For Linda, my critic, my support and my love

  While I bear the burden of any mistakes or errors in this novel, there were many who did their best to help me prevent them: Ava Honan, whose computer expertise got Killer Mountain edited; Dorothy Blake persuaded me to publish it; Mike Pelchat allowed a look through the Yankee Building; and Ed Parsons, Rick Wilcox and Alain Comeau, whose knowledge of the White Mountains clarified locations and descriptions. There are many others, too numerous to mention, whose comments and support enabled me to stay on course. For all I am deeply grateful.

  Chapter 1

  February 10

  After locking the rental Cadillac, Preston Sturgis rolled the felt collar of his overcoat up against the cold night breeze off the Charles River. Nothing all day. Perhaps he’d gotten away with it. After all, why not? They were identical. But he couldn’t get around the fact that the importance of the note made it almost certain it would be missed. Had it been a mistake to return it at all? If it had, wouldn’t something have happened by now?

  He could argue on either side and had been doing so all day. He unlocked the gate and entered the small garden area onto which his Beacon Street apartment opened. Something landed on him with such force that his stout, middle-aged body was thrown back against the fence. Excited little squeals. Alfie, his wire-haired terrier. Sturgis’ heart settled back into normal rhythm. Of course it was Alfie, though what he was doing outside on such a cold night...His nerves had started to go when they blew up his car. It was only a warning; he’d have been in it otherwise. Okay, the message had gotten through. He was making good money and there were things he didn’t need to know. Night before last wasn’t his fault, just a mix-up. Surely they could see that.

  He unwrapped the steak bone from his dinner and held it out for Alfie, who took it in his sharp teeth and bounded for the dog door to the apartment. Garden apartments they called them, which sometimes meant they were underground. Not this one though, and the yard pleasant to sit in come Boston’s summer, though that was the last thing he was thinking of this bleak February evening.

  In the faint glow of a distant streetlight he could see the dog door swing back into place. Foolish mutt. Why venture outside on such a frigid night. Perhaps something had scared him; he always hid from the cleaning woman...The force of the explosion threw Sturgis to the ground, where he was pelted by chunks of wood and stone. The thought crossed his mind before he lost consciousness: they knew he’d seen it.

  Chapter 2

  E. Wallace Carver lifted his head from the neat piles of paper he had been arranging on his mahogany desk. The house creaked and groaned as the furnace came on. Perhaps that was it. The flow of hot water through the cast-iron baseboard system sometimes gave a feeling the house was alive, stretching itself as it prepared to battle the cold of a New Hampshire winter’s night.

  No, there it was again. A tapping, as though a chickadee on the roof working on a sunflower seed. He turned to look out the French doors behind him to where a cylindrical birdfeeder hung. It was dark; seed birds had sought shelter for the night. He rose from his carved chair and crossed to the bookcases that covered one wall of the heavy curtained, dark paneled living room. An open space in a row of precisely placed books - each coming exactly to the edge of the shelf - revealed a breaker box. A flip of a switch and suddenly it was day outside, as floodlights illuminated the woods around the two-floor-plus-finished-basement contemporary. He peered out the French doors, then the window next to it. In the small area he had whittled from dense northern New England woods, wind-hurled branches protruded from blank white snow like gnarled sailboat masts frozen in a plastic sea. The snow-encrusted raised deck revealed only the crosshatching of tiny bird feet.

  He walked across the room and through the entryway to the front door. The sidelight told him a Cadillac Seville was parked in the driveway. Its interior lighting was on, and the driver’s door hung open, but there was no sign of driver. The heavy oak front door protested a winter opening; a line of footprints ran from the car up to it. He stood on the snow-covered front step - unshoveled, as in winter he himself used the back door leading directly to the garage. On his left was a clump of juniper bushes. And a body. In city topcoat and dress shoes, the man had obviously not come prepared for the snow and cold of Mt. Washington Valley, New Hampshire.

  “Slipped,” gasped the body struggling to get up.

  “Preston Sturgis!” exclaimed Carver. “What are you...oh hell, let’s get you inside.”

  Carver, a firm grip for his seventy-five years, pulled Sturgis to his feet and soon had him lying on the brown leather couch perpendicular to the huge fieldstone fireplace, a brandy at his elbow. Carver, adding a log, could see the man’s dark blue topcoat with velvet collar was torn, and there was blood and exhaustion on his graying face.

  “Do you need a doctor?”

  “No! Please no.”

  “You know you’re bleeding?”

  “Yes...Banged my head.”

  The eyes closed. Carver watched for a moment, then went to the door.

  Sturgis raised on an elbow. “Where are you going?”

  “To shut your car door.”

  Sturgis fell back on the couch. Carver slipped on a heavy overcoat and went out. The night was still and cold, and the brittle snow crunched under feet encased in fur-lined boots. The car was empty, the keys in the Cadillac’s ignition. He took the keys, closed the door and returned to the house. He studied the man on the couch, then went to the telephone.

  “Who are you calling?” Sturgis was up again.

  “My son-in-law.”

  “No!...Who?”

  “Hudson Rogers. Actually he’s a son-in-law by his former wife. He lives next door.”

  “Why? I don’t want anyone else.”

  “I do. You arrive bleeding on my doorstep, too exhausted to give a proper knock or stand long enough for me to get the door open. You don’t want a doctor. You should at least be in bed, and I am certainly not going to attempt to lug your overweight corpus upstairs by myself. What in heavens name has happened to you?”

  Sturgis eased himself down again. “They’re after me, Wally. I had no place else to go.”

  “No place closer to Boston? A hundred and forty miles away? Who is after you?”

  “You never see them. You just know they’re there.”

  Carver sighed. “What have you gotten yourself into, Preston?”

  Sturgis shook his head as though loosening a stiff neck. “I’m sixty-two years old, Wally. All I wanted was a little security.”

  “And...?”

  “You know my story. You got me through the...problem.”

  “You mean your Chapter Eleven filing?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like. Sure, the legal stuff. But you’ve always had plenty of money. You don’t know what it is to be retirement age with nothing to retire on.
”

  “So you robbed a bank.”

  “Of course not!” Sturgis sat up and took a swallow of his brandy. “Why the hell I hired you I don’t know. You are the least sympathetic....”

  “Most cold blooded bastard…”

  “Yes!”

  “What did you do?”

  Sturgis fell back on the couch. “How many ways do you know to make back a lot of money - enough to retire on - when you’re my age?”

  “Legal, of course.”

  “God damn it, Wallace!”

  “I see.” Carver looked at him. “Drugs?”

  Sturgis lowered his eyes. “I just carried them; I didn’t push people to use them.”

  “It isn’t the government that’s after you, is it?”

  “No.”

  “What happened? Did you steal from them?”

  “Of course not.” He sat up. “I’m not a thief. I’ve accidentally come across something I shouldn’t have seen. They’re a little upset.”

  Carver sighed. “Preston, tell me straight. Do you have any drugs with you?”

  “No, I swear I don’t!”

  “How in hell did you ever get into this? How did you make contact with these people?”

  “Went where they sell. Asked questions, like a fool. Don’t ever do that, not that you’re about to. They don’t like questions.” He fell back on the couch and waggled his head from side to side. “I was lucky, they roughed me up a little, but after a while I got to meet someone. He discovered I knew something about social contacts - looked the part more than any of them. So, I’ve been the retired tourist. Until this.”

  “Until what? What’s happened?”

  “They blew up my car - that’s a rental outside.

  “You injured?”

  “No, Alexandra had it. Alice’s daughter. You never met her; she went with Alice after the divorce.”

  “She hurt?”

  “No. She wasn’t in it at the time. She was with Vasquez that day.”

  “Vasquez?”

  “Her old nanny. Cuban refugee, more a mother to her than Alice was. Took over when Alexandra was born. Did she ever. The kid spoke...hey, I’m the one with a problem. You don’t need all this shit about the family. Tonight my apartment was blown up, Wally!”

  Carver was disbelieving. “On Beacon Street? They set off a bomb in a Beacon Street apartment?”

  Sturgis nodded. “I was just coming in when the damn thing went off. Threw me clear across the yard. Killed poor Alfie.”

  “And they’re `a little upset’. I suppose you don’t know if you were followed?”

  “I wasn’t, I’m sure of it. I turned off in Portsmouth on the way up and drove around the town for a while just to see. There was no one.”

  “And now?”

  “Now you got to hide me. Wally, I’m desperate. I called Phil Stang’s place at Cave Mountain. He’s the only other person I know around here and he’s in Florida. You’re my last chance.”

  “Hah,” More bark than laugh.

  “Oh God, I’m sorry, Wally.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “They’ve got a long gun. They can find me almost anywhere. But they may not think to look up here in the mountains.”

  “So I’m to hide you for the rest of your life, huh? That’s what it would amount to, Preston, from what you’re telling me.”

  Wheedling, “Just for a few days. Long enough for me to work out details. Wallace, I’m going to change my identity, go away. Another part of the country. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “And do what? You’re broke, you change your name you can’t even collect social security. What are you going to live on?”

  “I’ll get along. I can still earn a living, I’ll just have to keep working longer.”

  “Real estate development is not a low profile business.”

  “No real estate. I’m going to teach.”

  “What not to do?” He sighed. “All right. Tonight you’ll stay here in this house. Tomorrow I’ll hide you.” He eyed Sturgis’s velvet collared overcoat and polished shoes. “And get you some country clothes.”

  “Wally, one thing. Promise me. No one must know I’m here. Even your son-in-law or whatever he is. These people seem to have ears everywhere.”

  “Alright. Though the more I hear the less I like this,” said Wally. He rose. “One thing clear, your word; you’re through with drugs.”

  Sturgis was like an aged golden retriever, practically licking Carver’s hand. He was also less hurt than he had first appeared; with sanctuary granted, making it thankfully to an upstairs guest room without help.

  Carver stood looking at the blackness outside his French doors. His instinct was still to call Hudson, then remembered he was in Europe on some sort of ski area errand for his wife, Cilla. He sighed again. He should never have agreed to Sturgis’ request. He was getting soft in his dotage.

  Chapter 3

  Cilla Wheaton Rogers stood behind her desk looking at the office. It would have to go. Other than the well-used oak desk, which came from her late father’s house, nothing else suited her. The former occupant had furnished it to his military taste - cold, formal and smelling of tobacco. Still. It had been four months since the man had last used it; any longer and she’d call in an exorcist.

  She sat down to paperwork. Running the ski area for her Abenaki relatives had more to it than fun runs swooping its trails, as she was discovering each day of the two months she’d been its general manager. She studied the proposal from Breugen Corporation for a detachable quad lift that Hudson had faxed, and smiled; he didn’t like what another lift meant - more people at the area. But if he had his way the mountain would be a private ski park for the two of them. It wasn’t that he was antisocial. He just didn’t like people much, particularly in numbers. He felt the mentality of a group sank to that of its slowest member, and a decision to put more skiers on Great Haystack’s existing trails was received with an acquiescent sigh - particularly coupled with the discovery that he’d be making the trip to Germany to discuss final arrangements. He wasn’t wild about flying. No, he didn’t like flying at all. She had a feeling something must have happened in the years before she met him. Which was all of them, until a few months ago.

  Actually, she knew just a fraction of what she felt was there to know about her new husband. But that had been enough. She’d spend the next fifty or so years getting to know the rest. And with Hudson there’d be something new learned every week, because very little of himself was made available to others at any one time. A tall man at nearly six foot three with wrestler’s shoulders, yet gentle, almost shy. She’d seen the delight he took in a miniature waterfall appearing unexpectedly around a bend in the trail; enjoyed with him the quiet of a softwood forest roofed by tall pines, where one could almost hear “the tiptoe of a bird” - where had she heard that phrase? Hudson had found his home in Bartlett, New Hampshire next to the National Forest. From the sluggish flatlander she’d first met last June whose idea of a nature trip was a ride on the swan boats in Boston’s Public Garden, he’d developed - partly through her she admitted - an appreciation for each plant, each animal and a place where they could grow together without human interference.

  A triple knock on the door announced her mountain manager: late-thirties; dark good looks, solidly built. Kurt Britton had the self confident, almost aggressive bearing of the Marine Corps captain he had been until hired by Floyd Carr, the ski area’s former general manager, two years before.

  “The summit’s getting gusts over forty.”

  “Had we better close the triple?”

  “Already done. The east chair and the Borvigs can handle the crowd we’ve got today.” He paused. “We took a little kid to the hospital. Not skiing, at the nursery. Two years old. Jill found her unconscious in that little penned area; she’d been making snow cookies.” He looked at notes. “Susie Tarden. We reached the mother in the base lodge; she’s gone with her.”

  Cilla rose from her chair.

  “Y
ou’re not planning to go to the hospital yourself.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s not the job of the General Manager.”

  “She got sick at my area.”

  “A lot of people have accidents at a ski area. You can’t follow each one to the hospital.”

  “This isn’t a ski accident. This is a child, Kurt. A baby.”

  “What can you do there that the doctors can’t?”

  “I can at least show that we care.”

  Kurt shook his head.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “That’s your problem. You’re too soft with people. And it shows in your relations with employees.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You have tea with Gail every day, for example.”

  “So?”

  “It takes her away from her work.”

  “If you mean today, her shift was over.”

  “You know what I mean. She’s just a ticket seller.”

  “No. She’s a friend.”

  “Can’t you see how it looks? She’s an employee. You’re the general manager.”

  “And I’m twenty-five years old just learning the business; she’s fifty and been in it thirty. There’s a lot I can learn from her.” She turned her palms up. “Maybe you could too if you took the time.”

  His eyes locked onto hers. “I know my job.”

  She nodded. “Yes you do, or you wouldn’t still have it. Kurt, you’ve obviously become a fine mountain manager in just two years. I’m impressed with your ability to pick things up. You learn fast, and I don’t have to second-guess you when it comes to the mountain. With people it’s a different story. We’re running a ski area not a boot camp. You can’t treat people here like recruits.”

  “You can’t treat them like your flower people and still have an organization.”

  Cilla sat back in her chair. She’d left the ashram barely four months ago after two years of what he’d consider aberrant behavior, maybe communist, certainly disorderly living. She knew what he saw: a tall skinny hippie in the seat of authority. Perhaps where he felt he should sit. She studied him. His ski pants were neatly pressed. His muscular frame stretched an expensive Norwegian sweater. Rapidly thinning hair on his head suggested an oversupply on his chest, confirmed by tufts sprouting from his collar. What had Hudson said about barrel chests? Prone to heart attacks. Sometimes that was true about men in general. The stronger they looked the more vulnerable they were. Like big dogs. Irish wolfhounds last only half as long as smaller more fragile looking breeds. This wolfhound liked to strain at the leash.