Killer Summer (Walt Fleming) Read online

  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 53

  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

  New York

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada),

  90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

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  (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2009 by Page One, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do

  not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation

  of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  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

  at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors,

  or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over

  and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  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.