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  Killer Summer

  Ridley Pearson

  In this third installment of Pearson's Sun Valley series, KILLER SUMMER takes us back to the high-stakes world of the wealthy and politically connected – just in time for the area's 17th Annual Wine Auction. The world's most elite wine connoisseurs have descended on Sun Valley to taste and bid on the world's best wines, including three bottles which are said to have been a gift from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams.

  With sky-high prices all but guaranteed for these priceless items, it's no wonder a group of thieves is out to steal them. Sheriff Walt Fleming is responsible for all aspects of the auction, from security of the dignitaries to the physical safety of the auction site to the transportation and security of the rare wines themselves. When a bomb explodes just as the auction revs up, Walt is thrown headlong into the fray, investigating not just an explosion, but an even bigger heist planned by a criminal mastermind who will stop at nothing to gain his prize.

  Ridley Pearson

  Killer Summer

  The third book in the Sun Valley series, 2009

  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 time 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 and 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.

  3

  From thirty-five thousand feet, the two pivot-irrigated parcels of farmland looked like large green eyes above a smile of curving mountains. Summer Sumner peeled herself away from the window of her father’s prized Learjet to glimpse him across the aisle, contemplating a laptop open on the collapsible mahogany table that separated a pair of leather club seats, each the size of a recliner. His Airphone was pinched beneath his chin. The Lear could seat eight, including Mandy, the flight attendant. Mandy wasn’t on this trip, however, which told Summer more about the family’s financial picture than her father, Teddy, probably intended.

  Summer relished her father’s panic-stricken expression, as he ran his two-hundred-dollar fountain pen across a notepad. He wore his fatigue well; few would have guessed he’d celebrated sixty a few years earlier. The golf tan helped. So did Tanya, his personal trainer. Summer enjoyed hearing the tension in his voice. She turned her attention back out the window, but secretly kept an eye on him in its reflection. “If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” And he thought she never listened to him.

  “How much?” Teddy Sumner barked into the Airphone. “What exactly are we talking about short-term?” He danced the pen through his fingers, like some kind of circus act. To her, just another example of too much time spent at a desk.

  He dared a look in her direction. She hoped he wouldn’t say anything. She had no intention of ever speaking to him again.

  “Okay, seven’s doable,” he said. “How soon?” He listened for a moment. “No, not possible. A month at the earliest. Sixty to ninety days, is more like it.” He grimaced. “Listen, I would if I could, but this is my last trip on it. Let me get this straight: seven will put a clamp on it. Two-point-two to tie it off?” He ran his hand across his mouth, a gesture signaling pent-up frustration and potential anger. They knew each other all too well.

  Summer wasn’t about to start feeling sorry for him. He’d explained their financial situation as being “fluid.” But she knew more than she should have: he’d cobbled together some television-commercial work to help pay preproduction costs of a feature film that was never going to get off the ground. He owed payments on several loans, all of them large. He couldn’t face that he was a one-hit wonder. Mastermind had been his only success, and without the foreign box office even it would have failed. Compounding his frustration, no doubt, his wife had started up that film, not him. Summer’s mother had been the successful filmmaker, and she was gone now. Gone for good.

  She squirmed in her seat, wishing he’d allowed her to stay behind in L.A. She’d given in too easily. He had an Eleanor Roosevelt quote for that: “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.” So when had she
given him her permission, anyway?

  “I know, I know, I know,” he repeated into the phone, his unpredictable temper barely contained. “I will, okay? Listen, we’re landing in a minute. I’ve got to hang up.” He paused. “Yeah, okay. You too.” He hung up.

  She braced herself for what was coming. She became his verbal punching bag when things went south, which, basically, was all the time. He would apologize later, as if that made it all okay.

  “So,” he asked, “what do you think? Pretty, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t breathe. She’d not expected a tour guide.

  “Are we going to go through the whole weekend with you not talking to me?”

  He got his answer.

  “It’s not right, not at seventeen. Somewhere inside, you know that. And don’t compare it with my meeting your mother because that was completely different, and we both know it. It was at a country club, our parents already knowing one another, having socialized together. It wasn’t some twenty-two-year-old Brazilian on the tennis circuit. Guys like that, sweetheart… that’s not you.”

  But your hooking up with Tanya… she felt like saying. What kind of training was she supposed to be helping with, exactly?

  “You’ll like it up here. It’s like Telluride, only… better. More to do. Really nice people. And, I promise, there’ll be all sorts of kids around. Everybody brings their kids along on these weekends.”

  She hated him calling her that.

  “I can still get us into the mixed doubles tournament. You know, we can whip some butt with that serve of yours. It’s all for a good cause.”

  She thought it unfair that silence was her only available weapon. No matter how effective it was-and it was effective-she felt robbed of a voice. He treated her like she was still thirteen and that it was still B.C.: before cancer.