Vail 7

A Novel

T. Alex Miller
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Vail 7
A Novel
By T. Alex Miller
Frisco, Colorado
Copyright 2009

Chapter 1

They were about two-thirds up the mountain on the old

chairlift when it stopped, then started to roll backwards

after a violent twitch on the cable.

Dana grabbed Tom’s arm as they both felt the backwards

momentum build quickly.

“It’s a rollback!” she yelled. “It won’t stop. We have to

jump!”

This just minutes after Dana, who’d been riding chairlifts

since she was about 5, had told a nervous Tom it was a piece

of cake. His first time … and, apparently, his last.

They both looked down. Already, the ground was racing past

in a blur of rocks, trees and patches of dirty snow left

over from winter. Jumping was already an impossibility

given the speed the lift had attained. They watched the

chairs on what would normally be the downhill side careering

up the hill, jumping on the line like ants on a string. Dana

saw one of them bounce past a lift tower and fly right off

the haul rope and into another chair. Both plummeted down to

land in a tangle mass on a rocky shelf. Dana heard Tom

scream an inhuman cry as the chair carrying the two of them

zipped over a knoll and toward the inevitable confrontation

with the bullwheel at the bottom.

 2

Painting lift towers was a sucky job, but for a lifetime

ski-area guy like Trip Bellmore, it was better paying and

steadier work than being a rafting guide – something a lot

of his buddies did in the summer. Trip liked to think

himself as something above that kind of gig. After all,

after nearly 15 years working Vail Mountain, he’d worked

himself up from a lift operator to trail crew to assistant

director of mountain operations. He even had a business card

now, although so far he’d only handed them out to his mother

and his sister. Dana had taken the card, looked at it

solemnly, then kissed him on the forehead and told him she

was proud of him.

That was three years ago, and unless the current mountain

manager somehow dropped dead, the assistant gig was as far

as he was likely to rise within the corporate structure of

Vail Resorts.

“You’re a lifer, just like me,” said his boss, Arn. “I’m

not going anywhere, so that means you’re second fiddle until

I kick it or retire.”

Trip just laughed, looking at the hard features and lean

figure of Arn. He’d live to be a hundred, probably still

skiing bumps and hiking the state’s highest peaks in summer.

The locals say you can’t live off the scenery, but that’s

what the ski companies seemed to expect with the salaries

they paid. Almost everyone he knew worked another job on top

of what they did on the mountain. Trip was actually lucky in

that he made enough to stick to his main gig on the mountain

 3

in winter and shift over to help lift maintenance in summer.

Sometimes that meant the relatively exciting work of helping

put in a new lift. Mostly, it meant painting lift towers and

replacing things like decking and lift shacks. This year,

though, the lift manager, Bobby Bibb, told him he’d hired a

“bunch of Mexicans” to paint the lifts.

“They’re legal and all,” he said, looking past Trip to a

spot on the wall above a tattered Salomon poster. “Just

cheaper. Budget cuts from the powers-that-be. You know the

drill.”

“Screw Bobby Bibb. You can go work for Tony Bing.”

It was the day after the ski area closed; he was sitting

in the Paradise Brewpub, halfway into his second pint of

pale ale with AirLane. A veteran of even more years on the

hill than Trip, AirLane was still a lift mechanic, spending

his days either on snowmobiles or ATVs and sporting ten

fingernails that would never be clean.

“Tony Bing is a slut,” Trip said. “A real estate slut.”

“Yeah, so? His money’s as green as Vail Resorts’.”

That was true enough. Bing may be the worst kind of

resort-town developer – a carpetbagger from Texas with no

sense of the land he was willing to despoil for profit – but

he was exactly the kind of guy locals ended up working for.

At least until they went bust or left town gorged on profit,

they paid regular, they paid well and they had plenty of

work.
 4

Bing’s plan had been in the works for years: 3,000 homes

built on the side of Black Gore Mountain, just across the

valley from Vail and Beaver Creek. Not content with the

potential windfall he stood to make on the sale of the lots,

Bing also had plans to build a miniature ski area, a terrain

park only. There was no way he was going to compete with

Vail’s 5,000 skiable acres or Beaver Creek’s highbrow

allure, but he spotted a trend among the younger freeskier

and snowboarder crowd: They didn’t give a shit about

thousands of acres of terrain, so long as they had halfpipes

and rails to practice their tricks on. They didn’t need

expensive high-speed lifts, either.

Trip couldn’t help but admire the plan. He knew from

firsthand experience how much Vail spent on lifts, grooming

and overall mountain maintenance and upkeep. A small terrain

park with a $20 lift ticket could do well against the

behemoth’s $85 cost. Bing had even contrived to purchase two

old fixed-grip double chairs from Vail Resorts – buying them

from an Oregon ski area that had originally purchased them

by upping the price and securing them before they even left

the valley.

“He’s smart,” Trip said, peering into his beer. “I don’t

know about building 3,000 houses no local could afford, but

the terrain park, that’s a good idea.”

“Well, he’s got them two old Poma chairs from Vail,”

AirLane said. “An’ guess what: He don’t know the first thing

about getting them put in. And there’s no way Poma’s going
 5

to help him, what with how old they are and not wanting to

piss off Vail.”

“Yeah?”

“So, Trip, for shit’s sake, go to the man and offer your

services. Charge him out the ass. An’ take me along for the

ride.”

Ever since the ski company had rescinded the rule about

on-mountain employees having facial hair, AirLane had

sported a long goatee, red now streaked with gray and long

enough to disappear into the top of the Carhart overalls he

wore at all times. The filthy Doppelmyr hat was just as much

a fixture, as was the imploring, searching pair of eyes that

always seemed to Trip to be asking for something.

Appearance-wise, AirLane was about as appealing to a

potential employer as a child molester. But he was a hard

worker who knew his way around a lift.

Trip could spend the summer bartending, as he’d done some

years in the past. He was a reformed binge drinker, though,

and the prospect of too much time in the company of out-of-

work drunks and rich gapers made him ill.

“How the hell can two guys put in two lifts in one

summer,” Trip said, his mind already working through the

details of how it could be done.

“Well, I’m pretty damn sure he’ll give you money to hire

some other idiots,” AirLane said. “You know Atilair closed

up in Idaho, so some of them boys’ll be looking for work.”

 6

Trip knew about the demise of Atilair. He also knew the

lift director up there, a former Vail guy named Petey Moore

who knew the old Poma doubles and triples better than

himself.

“Well, might be worth looking into,” Trip said, setting

down his glass still about a quarter full and standing up.

“Another one?” AirLane said, his eyes searching Trip’s for

signs of weakness.

“Nope, I’m done. I’m going to the movies with Dana. Wanna

come?”

AirLane signaled the bartender for another pint. “Nah. I’m

gonna get shit-faced and stagger home to the wife and kids.

Tina’s home now, polishin’ her rolling pin.”

“OK.”

“Hey Trip, you know, you keep having dates with your
sister, you ain’t never gonna get any. Move on, go on some

real dates.”

Trip smiled and patted AirLane on the shoulder.

“I like Dana.”

She was waiting for him in front of the movie theater,

holding the tickets in her hand. Her face brightened visibly

when she saw Trip emerge from his Subaru.

“Hey, Sis. What are we seeing tonight?”

She hugged him, with a bit more emphasis than usual.

 7

“What’s up?” he said, pulling back to search the eyes of

his big sister, eyes he’d known all his life and could read

like posters.

“Nothing, just work crap, I guess.”

“You guess?”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the doors.

“That, plus I’m an aging lesbian in a town full of guys

and hetero 20-something chicks in heat. And, it’s the end of

the ski season so even the chance of hooking up with a

visiting dyke are limited.”

“And don’t forget: Your only dates are with your bitterly

divorced younger brother.”

“Yep, there’s that. But there’s always popcorn to cheer me

up.”

Trip paid for their tickets and decided not to remind Dana
that popcorn depressed her. Something about how people just

sat there in the dark, mechanically lifting handfuls of the

stuff to their mouths and “masticating like billy goats.”

Making so much noise that you’re hard-pressed to even hear

the movie. For Trip, their dates to the movies weren’t about

the films or the popcorn but about the safe, almost womb-

like environment he and Dana were able to conjure together.

Oftentimes, they still held hands, like they did as kids

traipsing around the nearly empty summer streets of Vail.

Back then, before it occurred to the mountain company to

market summer, you could fire a cannon up Bridge Street and

not worry about hitting anything. Now, summer brought out

 8

the kind of gapers that made Dana crazy: Utterly ignorant,

brain-dead tourists whose experience of the mountains as an

ecosystem was limited to glancing at them from inside their

vehicles on their way to their condo.

“They don’t even know there’s a river.”

She said it quietly, as a kind of revelation, even though

she’d made the point a thousand times before. They were

sitting outside Loaded Joe’s in Avon, sipping drinks and

talking about the lousy movie they’d just seen.

“Oh, Dana …” Trip began. She waved her hand, not about to

be dismissed by another observation about how there was

little she could do to educate the tourons.

“Listen, Trip, if they don’t have any idea about what this

valley is beyond what man has built, how the hell are they

ever going to care about helping to preserve it?”

“It’ll never be their job, Dana. You know that. Hell,

that’s why you’re here.”

He sipped at his latte and studied his sister’s face. Dana

was the project director of the Eagle Valley Resource

Coalition, a job she inherited when her predecessor was

convicted of eco-terrorism (burning Hummers at a car

dealership in Denver). That wasn’t Dana’s style at all –

something she had to reaffirm to the Coalition board on

several occasions during her interview process. She

organized river clean-up days, fretted about the water

temperature and the algae content of the Eagle River and

spent many of her days in the field, looking for lynx tracks
 9

or bear scat. And she spent a lot of time in local

classrooms, having kids dissect owl pellets or showing them

her worn cross-section model of the Eagle River’s bed.

Now, she was gazing at a family that was emerging from a

motor home the size of a C-130. Big as it was, the great

vehicle still listed to one side as the colossal mom and dad

descended, followed by two commensurately obese girls. If

Trip had to sketch a stereotype of a gaper family, this was

it: Oversized sneakers, tent-like shorts, T-shirts that

contained messages like “Wall Drug, South Dakota” or

“Colorado: Rocky Mountain High.” Predatory eyes lit their

otherwise vacant expressions.

“They’re hungry,” Trip said.

“Thirsty, too,” said Dana, adding in a whisper: “Gaper go

home!”
Trip bristled involuntarily. As an employee of Vail

Resorts, he’d been admonished annually at the HR pep

meetings to never use a word like “gaper” or “turkey” to

describe the “guests.” Like all locals, he knew all too well

that his job wouldn’t exist without them, and he did his

best to tolerate even the most obnoxious behavior. Dana, on

the other hand …

“They’re like a plague upon the land,” she said, as if

pronouncing a sentence. She leaned back and sipped at her

drink and sighed. “But, then, we’re all a plague upon the

land. Human beings are the worst thing to happen to the

 10

Earth since that meteor stuck the Yucatan 65 million years

ago.”

“OK,” Trip said, smiling at her. “Anything else new?”

Dana edged closer to him, lowering her head nearer the

table. Trip followed.

“Is it a big secret?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

Trip waited a moment. “Well …?”

“I shouldn’t tell you.”

“Shouldn’t tell me what?”

Dana reached for both his hands and squeezed.

“I found some!” She leaned back with a smile on her face.

Trip studied her expression, then leaned forward and began

whispering again.

“Cats? Did you find cats?”

She nodded, her eyes shining.

“Actual cats?” he said. “Or tracks and scat?”

There was no one else on the deck at Loaded Joe’s, but the
enormity of what Dana was telling him kept them both

whispering, hunched over the table.

“Just scat so far. But I’m getting close. Given the time

of year, I’m hoping there are kittens. Can you imagine that,

Trip? A litter of lynx kittens, right here in our valley?”

Trip straightened up and let out a breath. The presence of

lynx, a reintroduced endangered species, was like a nuclear

bomb to developers in a mountain resort area. Other than one

lift upgrade planned for the following year, Vail Resorts

 11

didn’t have any projects that would be affected, but Tony

Bing sure as hell did. And so did Mandelbaum, the guy from

Florida building Alpen Cliff Meadows, the private resort on

the other side of Battle Mountain. It all depended on where

the cats were calling home, and how big their range was.

And then, a week later, she told him she was wrong. It

wasn’t lynx, just a family of run-of-the-mill bobcats.

“Still very cool, and very cute, those kittens. But not

lynx.”

A month or so later, his big sister was dead. And not just

dead, mangled beyond belief in the dead boughs of a beetle-

killed lodgepole pine nearly 200 feet from the lower

terminal of the lift.

After two decades working around chairlifts, there wasn’t

a noise Trip hadn’t heard before. From the simple sound of a

grip bumping over a lift-tower sheave to the smorgasbord of

unique noises that emanate from a detachable gondola, all of

them were imprinted on his brain as the backing soundtrack

to the life he led on the hill. But on this early July day,

as he was working in the top motor room of the second lift

being installed at Tony Bing’s terrain park, Screamin’

Eagle, the sound he heard was the sickening groan of metal

on metal, followed by a tremendous whirring and punctuated

at the end by a series of crashes and, yes, a horrific

screaming.

The old Vail 7 chair was to be renamed “Bitchin’ Badger,”

and it was just visible through the trees about 200 yards
 12

south of the lift Trip was working on (a greatly shortened

version of Vail’s Chair 5, now tentatively named the “Mighty

Moose.”) When Trip ran out of the partially built motor

room, Vail 7 was already out of control, with chairs flying

off both the lower and upper bullwheels.

For a lift mechanic, watching a chair you built – or at

least reconstructed – roll back like this was tantamount to

a ship’s captain watching his vessel sink with all hands. He

had no idea his sister was on the lift, and that she was

already dead. And although he knew at this point there

wasn’t a thing he could do to stop the destruction, he

jumped on his ATV and sped to the top of the 7 chair,

getting there at about the same time the lift had finally

stopped.

Trip walked around the many mangled chairs lying about and
came to a stop under the motor room. The haul rope was still

clinging to the bullwheel and some of the lift towers, but

in other places it had fallen off completely, and the rope

itself – spliced at great expense just last week by a French

engineer who’d flown to Vail for that single purpose – was a

twisted mess.

“Holy fucking shit.”

It was all he could think to say. There was no one around

to share in the scene. Remarkably, the control pedestal next

to the loading area was still standing, and Trip crossed to

it and pushed in the emergency stop. He heard the hydraulic

release as the e-brake clamped onto the bullwheel. Had

 13

someone been up here to do that a few minutes before, he

thought, none of this would have happened.

But who was running the lift in the first place, and why?

Then, a cold chill sliced through his entire body as the

realization sunk in: If anyone was on this lift, they were

toast. He pulled the walkie-talkie off the chest strap where

it lived and keyed the button.

“AirLane! AirLane! Come in, this is Trip.”

No answer. It was July 3, and he’d given the crew the day

off for the holiday. AirLane had said he “might could maybe”

come up to help with some of the motor room stuff on Chair

5, which Trip took to mean he wouldn’t see any sign of him.

“Anyone on this frequency, come in?”

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. After telling

dispatch to get the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office up to

Screamin’ Eagle Terrain Park, he got back on the ATV and ran

down the trail under the chair. He saw a few chairs had

fallen off in the middle of the line, but suspected the

worst damage would be at the bottom, where gravity would

have flung chairs with even more force than at the top. As

he neared the bottom terminal, he marveled at the

destruction at the same time his eyes scanned the

surrounding area for anyone unfortunate to have been on this

wild ride.

“Oh, shit!”

There was a form, someone, lying face down a few hundred

feet from the terminal. Trip ground to a halt, jumped off

 14

and touched the man’s shoulder. There was a tremendous

amount of blood, but he couldn’t tell where, exactly, it was

coming from since the man was so completely battered. Both

legs and one arm were bent at impossible angles, and Trip

reached for a wrist to check for a pulse he doubted was

there.

But it was, ever so faint. He put his hand on the man’s

shoulder and gently turned him so he could see his face. No

one he knew.

“Hey! Hey man, can you hear me?”

A slight groan, the man’s eyes flickered open to reveal

what Trip would later think of as Tom Welter’s death mask:

The undeniable look of a man who knows he is about to part

ways with life.

“Just hang on, man. Help is on the way. I, I don’t think I

should move you or anything, so just, just hang tight.”

The man groaned again, then tried to utter a word.

“What’s that? I can’t understand? Was there anyone else

with you?”

The man closed his eyes and Trip looked around, scanning

for the telltale sign of clothing against the backdrop of

green and brown.

The man tried to speak again. After several attempts, Trip

was able to understand at least one word: “Dana.”

 15

Chapter 2

Detective Sergeant Jill Stewart was still tripping over

packing boxes in her Gypsum townhome, even though she’d

moved in more than four months ago. Since moving downvalley

following her divorce, she and her 5-year-old daughter

Morgan were still trying to decide what color to paint the

girl’s room and how to position the furniture in the living

room. But it had been an unusually busy spring and early

summer for the sheriff’s office’s first-ever female

detective. There was the campground shooting near Wolcott,

then a suicide in West Vail that looked a lot like a murder

to Jill. She also had to deal with a lot of petty crap, like

missing person follow-ups and check fraud investigations –

things she nevertheless relished since she now did it all

with the title “detective” in front of her name.

She was getting Morgan ready for another day at preschool

day camp when she heard the scanner crackle with news of the

chairlift accident at Screamin’ Eagle. Jill wasn’t a skier

or a snowboarder, and she’d never heard of the place. Was it

part of Vail, she wondered, or Beaver Creek?

“Mommy! Loud! Too damn loud!”

Morgan was taking time off eating her Reese’s Puffs to

cover her ears with her hands. She pointed to the scanner,

and Jill turned it down slightly. The “too damn loud,” she

knew, was yet another lingering gift from her ex, Jason.

“Please don’t say that word, Morgan. You know Mommy has to

listen to the scanner, sweetheart. It’s Mommy’s job.”

 16

It sounded like there was at least one fatal up at the

mountain, and Jill wondered, as she always did, if this

incident would concern her. Or, more to the point, would she

have to make it concern her. Certainly a chairlift accident

would be a change of pace from the usual day-to-day stuff

she’d dealt with as a regular sheriff’s deputy – a position

she’d held for eight years with the department.

She called Ted Cunningham, the undersheriff, on his cell.

“Yeah-ow Jill, what’s up?”

“The chairlift accident, what’s the story?”

“Don’t know much yet, Jill. I’m on the way, but sergeant

tells me it looks like some kind of freak accident. Whole

thing let go and rolled back down the hill. Looks like two

fatals.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Not yet, probably, let me get up there and — hold on a

sec …”

She listened as Ted talked on the radio to someone at the

scene. Morgan looked up at her and showed her empty bowl.

“All finished, Mommy!”

Ted came back on.

“You know, Jill, you could do me a favor. You know the

Colorado Tramway Board or whatever it’s called?”

Jill assured him she did.

“Cool, well see if you can get a hold of someone there and

tell them we need help – an inspector or something like

that.”
 17

“Will do Ted. Anything else?”

“Tell Morgan my little Lisa wants to do another play date

soon. Maybe this weekend?”

“I’m sure she’d love that, Ted, thanks. I’ll tell her.”

After dropping off Morgan at the day camp, Jill got to her

office, found the website of the Colorado Passenger Tramway

Safety Board and left a message on their answering machine.

Other than Old Kim at the front desk, the office was empty:

everyone up at the accident site.

“Those boys not letting you play again?”

Jill winced. Old Kim was a conversation vortex.

“No, Kim, I just need to do some research from here,” Jill

told her, moving purposefully back to her office.

“Well, you ask Old Kim and she’ll tell you those swinging

dicks don’t want a pair-a boobs acting like one of them.”

Jill slowed down and turned back to Old Kim.

“Is that really all you think it boils down to, Kim? Boobs

and dicks?”
“Well sure honey, s’what makes the world go ‘round.”

She couldn’t resist another question.

“Then what about your boobs, Kim? Which look to me like

about a 40 triple-D? How do they stack up?”

“Dun’t matter,” Old Kim said, turning back to the half-

eaten bear claw on her desk. “I’m no threat — too ugly for

them to worry about neither way.”

 18

Jill sighed and was about to attempt a positive comment on

Old Kim’s appearance when she was saved by her phone

ringing.

“Eagle County Sheriff’s Office, Detective Sergeant Jill

Stewart speaking.”

It was someone from the Tramway Board, an inspector named

Ben Kirk. When she told him what she knew of the accident,

he told her he was on his way.

“I’m in Lakewood, so it’ll take me about two hours. I was

up there just last week looking at that lift, so I know

where it is.”

“Thanks,” Jill said. “I’ll meet you at the site.”

She hung up and smiled. Now she had a perfectly good

excuse to go up there. Not that she needed one, she thought.

She was, in fact, the only detective in the department, and

this absolutely looked like something that needed

investigating. She didn’t know much about skiing or

chairlifts, being one of those ski country locals who didn’t

ski, but she’d figure it out.

She’d just figure it out as she went.

Before any of the rescue guys or cops showed up, Trip had

found Dana’s body. She was about 15 feet off the ground,

tangled in the branches of a lodgepole pine that was red and

dead: the unmistakable sign of the pine beetles that had

killed thousands of acres of pine all around the state.

Dana, who loved trees above all things, hated to see the
 19

widespread destruction in the forest while she decried the

ideas floated to combat the beetles. It was, she said, a

natural phenomenon akin to a great fire, an act of nature

that would benefit the forest in the end.

Trip couldn’t decide if her landing in one of the dead

trees’ arms was ironic, fitting or insulting, but after

climbing up and confirming that she was dead, he wanted her

down as soon as possible. He had rope, a climbing harness

and even a ladder in the lift shack, and it didn’t take him

very long to complete the task. But somewhere in those 15

feet, wrangling the dead body of the only person who’d ever

made complete sense to Trip, he felt a seismic shift.

I’m alone now.

When the first sheriff’s deputies showed up, they found

him cradling Dana’s body below the tree. Covered in her

blood and crying freely, Trip looked up and gave them a look

that stopped them in their tracks.

Deputy Joe Mann turned to Deputy Bill Stone and whispered:

“Better give him a minute.”

They both knew Trip and Dana, and looking around, it

didn’t take much imagination to put together what happened.

Bill Stone, for one, knew Trip was working on the lifts up

here, and he could only imagine how Trip would feel it was

revealed that anything he’d done putting it in had

contributed to Dana’s death.

“There’s another guy over there. Dead too.”

 20

Trip was pointing to the body of Tom Welter, and both

deputies hustled over to it as the sound of more sirens

coming up the dirt road consumed the forest.

“Well, it’s unprecedented, so far as I know.”

Ben Kirk was responding to a question from Jill Stewart

about how common rollbacks are at ski areas.

“Really? Like, never?”

“Like never. Never ever.”

Ben and Jill were at the top terminal the day after the

accident. Both wore surgical gloves and were picking through

some of the twisted chairs littering the ground.

“But we’re not going to find anything out here,” Ben said.

He pointed up. “The story is up there, in the motor room.”

They climbed the ladder and poked through the hole into
the old Poma motor room. There was a pervasive smell of

cooked motor oil and burned rubber, and Jill could see that

some of the chairs had bunched up on one side of the

enormous wheel. Ben pointed to them.

“That’s part of the reason the thing stopped eventually.

These chairs just started piling up as the grips slipped on

the haul rope.”

“The haul rope, that’s the big wire the chairs hang from?”

Ben smiled at her.

“Let me give you a quick primer on lifts, Detective. This

one here is, or was, Chair Number 7 on Vail Mountain, and it

was one of the first installed when the mountain opened in

 21

the early 1960s. It’s what’s called a ‘fixed grip’ chair, as

opposed to a detachable, like a gondola or a high-speed

quad.”

“What’s the difference?” Jill asked, happy that he’d

called her “Detective” and not “Little Lady” or something

stupid.

“Well, a fixed-grip was all there was, pretty much, until

the high-speeds started getting built in the 1980s. Fixed-

grip just means that the grip – the part of the chair that

holds it onto the haul rope – doesn’t move. On a detachable,

the grip has a big ol’ spring that holds it on there. That’s

what lets it clamp onto the haul rope after it’s slowed down

in the terminal. The idea is you can have a lift going 1,000

feet per minute, but people can’t get on the thing going

that fast. You have to get the chair off the haul rope, move
it around the bullwheels at top and bottom more slowly, then

gradually bring it back up to speed and let the spring grip

grab back on.”

Jill nodded, pretty sure she understood. Ben continued.

“But none of that has to do with this old lift, which is

about as basic as they come. This electric motor here turns

this wheel – what we call the ‘bullwheel’ – and the chairs

just hang on the rope. The motor’s at the top, so at the

bottom there’s no real components other than another

bullwheel, and a few other things.”

Ben then went on to show her the braking system.

 22

“Typically, you hit the stop button and turn the motor

off, the lift stops,” he said. “The gears in the

transmission keep gravity from pulling the chairs back down

the hill — like putting your car in ‘park.’ There’s two

other things in place to prevent a rollback from happening.

One is the emergency brake, which is right there.”

He pointed to what looked like a big clamp on the

bullwheel.

“See how it’s grabbed onto the bullwheel? Trip Bellmore

said he hit the e-brake when he got up here, more or less

for the hell of it, since the damage had already been done.

But that’s instinct for anyone who’s ever worked lifts;

I’d’ve done it too.”

Jill was taking notes, and she scribbled: “Post-accident

e-brake activation normal: Kirk.”

Now, Ben pointed to another spot on the bullwheel.

“The last line of defense in a rollback situation is this

dog, this big piece of metal that’s supposed to drop down

and stop the wheel turning.”

“It looks like it’s almost fallen off completely,” Jill

said.

“That’s right. The bolts that hold it in place are … well,

they look to me like they were either only partly installed,

or they were loosened.”

Jill scribbled, Ben stood up and stroked his beard.

“So, there’s lots more to look at, but it’s hard to call

this an accident. It’s either gross negligence or …”

 23

There was a moment where they both stared vacantly at the

motor and bullwheel.

“Or sabotage?” Jill said.

“Yeah, I guess you’d have to call it that.”

Ben walked over to the open door at the back of the motor

room and Jill followed, still scribbling notes.

“Beautiful day,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” Jill said, suddenly aware that she was alone

with a man – the first time that had happened in some time.

It hadn’t escaped her notice that Ben Kirk was a good-

looking guy, even though she didn’t typically like guys with

beards. He was tall, probably six-two or more, and in his

khaki shorts and T-shirt it was easy to see he was fit.

Probably mid-40s – well within her age range – and, most

importantly, no ring.
“You know, Detective, I know Trip Bellmore pretty well.

I’m the industry rep on the Tramway board; my day job is

with Poma America. I’ve worked hand-in-glove with Trip and

his boss, Arn, on a lot of projects. And it’s hard for me to

think of someone who’s more professional, more meticulous

than Trip.”

“So you don’t think the gross negligence option is an

option?”

Ben turned and walked back to the bullwheel and pointed to

the bolts holding the chock. He kneeled down and Jill knelt

next to him.
 24

“Now look, you can’t rule out anything at this point.

Maybe Trip screwed up, all I’m saying is I doubt it. And

look at those bolt heads.”

“They look scratched.”

“Exactly.”

“But wouldn’t that happen when they were installed,

tightened?”

Ben shook his head. “Not really. You have the correct-size

socket head or wrench, you crank those suckers down as much

as you can there still won’t be scratches visible like

that.”

They were close, an inch apart, and Jill was adding

another item to her mental checklist about Ben: He smelled

good, like ‘clean man’ with a touch of spice. Was it

cologne, she wondered, or something else? Then, suddenly,

she felt her body listing to one side as she momentarily

lost balance. She reached out and grabbed Ben’s shoulder,

and he quickly circled her with his arm and brought her back
to center. “Whoops! There we go!” was all he said, and he

immediately removed his arm.

“So, what are you saying?” Jill said, in a slightly choked

voice. He seemed so unperturbed, yet she was practically

swooning. What was going on? She quickly tried to estimate

where she was in her cycle. Was she ovulating or something?

Here she was, investigating what may well be a murder case,

and she was ready to do it on the floor of a chairlift motor

room with a guy she’d just met.

 25

“What I’m saying, or what I’m guessing, at this point, is

that whoever loosened these bolts didn’t have the exact size

wrench, or they used a big Crescent – an adjustable wrench.

It’d be hard to loosen bolts that big with one of those, but

with a cheater bar, maybe.”

Jill stood up and tried her best to get back into the

mindset of serious detective rather than ovulating divorcee.

“Well, I’m planning to interview Trip Bellmore this

afternoon. He’s not much of a suspect, but he’s the only one

we’ve got so far.”

Ben nodded.

“I’ve got to stay up here, take some pictures, write up my

report then get back down the hill,” he said. “I’ll call you

Friday, after the holiday.”

Death is a pain in the ass.

So thought Trip as he was steeped in the bureaucracy of

mortality. Just when you wanted to crawl into a hole and die
yourself, there were a million things to take care of,

questions to answer and people to deal with.

He’d just returned from the county medical examiner’s

office, where he’d filled out forms and identified Dana’s

body. He resisted touching her, but let his eyes linger over

the still face, trying to remember its animated form and

turning away as the ghoulish hopelessness of it all crashed

in.
 26

Now, he was sitting in the office of Carla Odekirk, Dana’s

boss at the Coalition. He was early, and he spent the time

looking at the maps and photos that covered the walls.

Topographic maps showed mine tailings and other waste that

awaited cleanup; aerial photographs depicted the Eagle

River, with trouble areas highlighted in red; photos of

grinning volunteers, Carla and Dana on a raft trip together;

certificates of appreciation from the towns of Vail, Avon,

Eagle and the county.

Trip stopped at one large, framed photograph that showed

Carla and Dana decked out at some kind of fundraiser. Dana

was wearing a man’s white tuxedo while Carla sported a tiny

black dress with a plunging neckline. They looked like an

almost-perfect couple, and the two women liked to joke that

it was a shame Carla wasn’t gay.

He heard someone enter the office and sensed Carla behind

him.

“Unbelievably beautiful,” he said, turning slowly. “Both

of you.”

Carla just folded herself into Trip’s arms, and they stood

like that for a long time, swaying and sobbing gently, as if

engaged in some bizarre dance. The death thing was new to

Trip, and he wondered, after a time, what the accepted

period for mourning hugs was. If he started to break it up,

would Carla think him unfeeling? Or would she welcome the

chance to move on? Before he could think too much about it,

though, some imperceptible signal ran through them both, and

 27

they moved apart. It reminded Trip of makeout sessions in

high school, when he used to puzzle over how the partners

knew when to stop.

Carla sat on the small, ratty couch and motioned for Trip

to sit next to him.

“Tell me everything you know,” she said simply, and Trip

recounted the previous day’s events as best he could. He

hadn’t been up to the motor room himself yet, but he’d

spoken to Ben Kirk, who’d told him about the broken piece on

the bullwheel. He assured Carla that he’d inspected the

piece in question himself on numerous occasions, and that

there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

“Trip, this is fucked up to even think about, but was Dana

whacked by someone, someone who needed to shut her up?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you. I mean, she told me

about pretty much everything she was working on, but I’m

sure there’s stuff you know that I don’t. Like what about

these lynx she thought she’d found, then said she didn’t?”
Dana, Carla told him, had pretty much told her the same

story.

“But that’s just weird,” she said. “She was so excited

about lynx, so she finally thinks there’s some in the valley

and then she’s like, ‘Oh, never mind.’”

Trip looked at Carla, who’d emerged from the bout of

crying looking as beautiful as ever, and shrugged.

“It doesn’t add up, but, well, I guess it’s not our job to

figure it out. I wanted to go up to the lift motor room with

 28

Ben Kirk from the Tramway Safety Board, but he said I was

barred from the scene. I don’t think I’m a suspect or

anything, but I put the friggin’ lift together so … it

doesn’t look good for me right now.”

“Oh, Trip!”

He left out the little detail of getting fired. It didn’t

seem too important at the moment, and he didn’t want to

appear too pathetic.

“And then I got a call from this woman at the sheriff’s

office, a detective. She wants to talk to me later today.

And I’ve got all these details to deal with – our parents

are totally freaked out, of course, and they’re flying in

tomorrow from Sao Paulo, cutting their vacation short. And

Jesus Carla, how are you supposed to know how to deal with

any of this stuff?”

She reached over and took both his hands, looking him in

the eyes.

“I know Trip, I’m so sorry. But I do have some things I

can do. I have a list here …”

“Of course you do, you always have a list!” Trip said,

forcing a smile.

“So take a look when you get a sec. I’ve put down all the

things I think need to be done and who should do them, and

I’ve picked up a lot of it so you can, I dunno, chill.”

“Thanks Carla. I don’t think I’ll be doing much chilling,

but thanks.”
 29

“So, my side of the story is this, Trip: Carla told me she

was going up on the hill to check sed fences. She had this

intern from the Watershed Council with her.”

“Tom Welter, yeah,” Trip said. “Carla, I watched him die.

Did you know him?”

“No, god Trip. He was just up here for the summer, a

student at CU in Boulder. Dana was laughing about him, said

he was nervous about riding a chairlift for the first time.”

Trip said: “Get out the irony board, huh? First and last.

But Carla, that doesn’t make any sense. Sed fences? All the

ground disturbance was done weeks ago, and Dana knows I

wouldn’t let any of that shit into the creek. So that was

bullshit. She was up there for something else.”

“Or maybe she was just being nice to this kid, showing him

how it’s done,” Carla said. “Who knows?”

Sed fences were a kind of black fabric the Forest Service

required to be installed around any sites where disturbed

earth could potentially be released into any nearby water,

and Trip had installed a few miles of them in his day. He

could imagine Dana taking this intern up there to show him

how it was done, but that didn’t explain why they’d need to

go up the lift: no water up there to be sed-fenced.

Carla shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense, unless of

course there was something else she was going to show him,

like lynx. Maybe someone new in town would seem safe, I

don’t know.”
 30

“And then there’s the other question I want answered: Who

the hell started the lift for them?”

“You can’t turn it on from the bottom?”

“Hell no. You have to be up top and have a key to the lift

shack and the motor room and start the motor from up there.

She’d have asked me to do it, but she didn’t, so what the

hell?”

Carla sighed.

“I don’t know, Trip, I just don’t know. Hopefully our

Barney Fife cops around here can figure it out.”

She picked a folder up from her desk.

“And I know this is kind of a weird time, but I should let

you know that Dana was a full-time employee, of course, and

she had … things in place.”

“Things in place? You mean, like a will?”

“I don’t know about a will, but she had insurance, a

couple of different kinds. And you’re the beneficiary.”

Trip was amazed. Dana was as buttoned-down a researcher

and activist as one could hope for, a woman who kept

extensive and precise notes and knew state and federal

regulations governing wildlife and the environment backwards

and forwards. But when it came to her personal life, she was

the kind of person who had nothing in the fridge, bounced

checks all over the place and relied on Trip to remind her

to do things like change the oil in her car or get her snow

tires put on.

“It’s like, a fair amount of money, Trip.”

 31

“Oh, god, Carla. I can’t think about that now. It’s just

weird.”

She handed him the folder and the list.

“Of course. Just, you know, check it out when you can,

when the dust settles.”

Trip took the papers and stood up. They hugged again, a

shorter one this time, and promised each other to talk later

in the day.

“But Carla, I don’t think this dust is going to settle for

a long time.”

It was a good 40-minute ride from Carla’s office in Avon

to Trip’s home in McCoy. The hilly, winding road was as

familiar to him as his tired old Subaru, and he was able to

try to assemble some of the pieces of the situation in his

mind as he drove. There were about 10 people who had keys to

the motor room, assuming it wasn’t forced open. Whoever

started the lift took off shortly afterward, which was odd
unless, of course, that person was responsible for messing

with the bullwheel brake.

“The saboteur,” Tom said aloud, testing the word out on

his tongue. “Messing with my fucking lift. Killing my sister

… and the other guy. Why the hell would someone do that?”

Trip lightly hit the steering wheel in frustration,

realizing once again that his capacity to display anger was

pathetic. It was one of the reasons Katie had cited for

 32

wanting a divorce: He had the emotional capacity of a shark.

He didn’t show anger, she’d said, or any other emotion.

“It’s all in here,” Trip had told her at the time,

pointing at his chest. “You just don’t know how to access

it, is all.”

When he pulled up in front of his cabin, there was an

Eagle County Sheriff’s Office SUV sitting in his driveway. A

woman sat behind the wheel, and she got out of the truck as

Trip approached.

“You must be from the sheriff’s office,” Trip said.

“I am,” said Jill. “Mind if I come in?”

The cabin Trip was living in was the kind of one-room

hermitage many recently divorced guys gravitate to. It was

neat and clean, but beyond rustic to the point of being run-

down. There was only the bed and two kitchen chairs to sit
on, and Trip motioned the sheriff’s office lady to one of

them.

She sure as hell didn’t look like a cop. She was dressed
like a local, in blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. She

probably had 10 years on Trip, but she was a nice-looking

woman with an easy, kind face and simply cut brown hair.

Jill held out her hand.

“Detective Sergeant Jill Stewart, Eagle County Sheriff’s

Office.”

Compared to other body parts, the hand is a poor

communicator of emotion and character. Trip always thought

people put too much stock in the tenor of a handshake, and

 33

he wasn’t a big fan of shaking hands with women in general.

It seemed too formal, too macho. A hug in this situation was

obviously out of the question, but he would have been fine

with no handshake at all.

But there it was, the outstretched hand. He took it,

clasped it briefly and looked Jill in the eye.

“Thanks for coming, Detective. I hope you can find out who

did this.”

They sat down.

“What makes you think someone did anything?” Jill asked.

“Wait, before you answer, is it OK if I record this?”

Trip shrugged and she pulled out an iPod with a little

microphone attached. She pushed a button and said “OK,

shoot.”

“Because that lift was in perfect working order when I

left it on Wednesday,” Trip said. “Ben Kirk, the Tramway

rep, told me about the bullwheel dog coming loose. Like

someone tried to make it look like an accident, or

negligence. I’m sorry, but that’s just bullshit.”

Jill had him start at the beginning, his work with Vail

Resorts, his knowledge of lifts and lift construction, how

he’d become involved with Tony Bing’s company.

“So you were essentially laid off for the summer from Vail

Resorts, by Arn Johnson, so you were moonlighting, kind of?”

Jill said.
 34

“I guess you could say that, but I wouldn’t want Arn to

know,” Trip said, shifting in his chair. “But I guess that

cat’s out of the bag now.”

Trip admired the way the detective methodically moved her

questions in such a logical order. Slowly, patiently, she

was working her way up to the big event, sketching a

portrait of Trip, the lift, his sister, the whole situation.

It occurred to him to offer her a drink.

“Oh, just water would be great, thanks,” she said.

“Or I can make coffee. It’s no problem.”

She hesitated. This was about the time of day she’d hit

Loaded Joe’s for a latte.

“Coffee it is,” Trip said, getting up to make it.

“Intuitive,” Jill said, pausing the recording. “You’d make

a good husband.”
“Apparently not,” Trip said, flashing a brief smile. “My

wife left me about a year ago. Something about being

emotionally unavailable.”
“Well, all guys have that problem,” Jill said. “The

woman’s job is to tease it out of them without pissing them

off.”

Trip gave her a penetrating look.

“Intuitive. You’d make a good wife.”

“I did. I just had the misfortune to marry someone who

didn’t appreciate all that goodness.”

They laughed, and both felt the ground shift in their

conversation. This was what they’d taught her at the

 35

detective academy interview course to look for: the

icebreaker moment when the interview subject feels he’s in a

conversation and not an interrogation.

I can do this Jill told herself, while mentally chiding

herself for letting her gaze linger on Trip’s perfect,

Carhartt-clad backside as he stood at the counter.

“What do you take in your coffee?”

“In a perfect world, agave nectar and vanilla soy milk,”

Jill said.

“Got it,” Trip said, reaching into the cabinet.

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. I don’t like sugar or the fake stuff, so someone

suggested this agave stuff to me, and I’ve been using it for

years. And I’m lactose intolerant, so I’ve always been a soy

milk guy. Just don’t tell the guys on the hill.”

“Perfect. Thanks so much.”

He set the coffee in front of her and sat down with his

own cup. “Where were we?”

Trip gave her the list of people who had a key to the lift

shack and motor room: Himself, AirLane, Petey Moore, six or

seven guys on the lift construction crew and the mountain

manager, Dale Beck.

“And I’m pretty sure Tony Bing has one that I gave him,

although he’s only come up there once that I know of,” Trip

said.

“When was that?”

 36

“Two weeks or so ago, when we got Number 7 turning and

ready for passengers.”

“What do you know about Tony Bing?”

Trip leaned back and sighed.

“He’s one of these guys with money from out of state.

Texas, Dallas area, strip malls and shopping centers was

what he was doing. Then he was in a big, messy divorce – he

told me all of this at my interview, and believe me, he did

all the talking. So he decided to take some of his money and

move to Colorado, do something different. He found the land

over there by Edwards and bought it. He read a story in a

magazine, he told me, about how popular terrain parks are

getting, and he figured he didn’t need to build another

Vail; a couple of lifts and some rails and kickers and he’d

be in the ski business. It’s not a bad plan, if you ask me.”
“And he’s building a bunch of homes too, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t have anything to do with that, and

I think he’s a year or two away from breaking ground. Said

he wanted to get some money coming in from the terrain park

first, and generate interest in the area. Jack up the value

of the real estate, I guess, if you’ve got a popular little

terrain park going.”

“Mr. Bellmore …” Jill began.

“Trip, please,” he said.

“OK, Trip: I have some unpleasant questions I have to ask.

I have to ask them.”

“I understand. Shoot.”
 37

“Did you knowingly do anything to that chairlift that

would cause it to malfunction or crash?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Did you have any idea your sister was going to be on it,

with Mr. Welter, yesterday morning?”

“No, no idea.”

A tear appeared in the corner of Trip’s eye. Jill pressed

forward.

“Did your sister, did she say anything when you found

her?”

“No. She was already dead.”

“Did your sister have any enemies that you know of, people

who would want her dead?”

“She pissed people off, especially the Powers That Be

around here,” Trip said. “But resort folks and developers,

shit, they’re used to tree huggers like Dana hassling them.

They know how to work around ‘em. In most cases, it’s

actually pretty friendly. I mean, it’s a small town, in a

lot of ways. Small county, I guess you’d say.”

“So no enemies that you knew of?”

“No, none. Dana was a real sweetheart, everyone loved

her.”

Trip stood up and tore a paper towel off the holder and

wiped his eyes.

“If you need a moment …” Jill said.

“No, let’s keep going,” Trip said. “It’s never going to be

easy.”
 38

“Any boyfriends, ex-husbands, who might be nursing a

grudge?”

“Dana was gay, for one. She hadn’t had a girlfriend in a

while, like two or three years. And she was always friends

with the ones she broke up with.”

Even so, Jill asked for names, and Trip provided them. One

of them was one of the local prosecutors, which caused her

eyebrows to go up. But Trip was crying freely now, and her

training told her it was time to end the session. She wanted

to hug the poor guy, but pushed that thought away and

remembered that he was still a suspect, however unlikely.

She stood up.

“Trip, that’s enough for now. I’m so sorry for your loss,

I know this is a terrible time for you and your family.”

He grabbed another paper towel and blew his nose while

motioning for her to sit down.

“Hang on Jill. I’ve got to tell you about the lynx.”

 39

Chapter 3

In October of 1998, Chelsea Gerlach, Kevin Tubbs,

Josephine Overaker and Stanislas Meyerhoff were led by

William Rodgers in an arson attack on Vail Mountain. The

group, which called itself the “Earth Liberation Front” and

which was promptly dubbed “ecoterrorists” in the media, set

fire to the Two Elk Lodge perched on the edge of soon-to-be-

opened bowl skiing in Blue Sky Basin. Their stated reason

was to speak out for the lynx, the habitat of which they

assumed would be compromised by the ski area expansion.

Ten years later, there still weren’t any lynx in Blue Sky

Basin (or any sign of them). Gerlach, Tubbs, Overaker and

Meyerhoff were doing time in federal penitentiaries and

Rodgers was dead – a jailhouse suicide. Vail took the

insurance money and promptly rebuilt Two Elk bigger and

better, and 9-11 made ecoterrorism – or any other kind, for

that matter – unfashionable.

But despite the Earth Liberation Front’s failure to

eliminate skiing and development in Blue Sky Basin, they did

underscore the problem lynx presented to developers. The

diminutive bobcat with the signature pointy ears was

reintroduced to Colorado in 1999, with more cats added every

year to the recovery area in the San Juan Mountains in the

southern portion of the state. Cute, wild and somewhat

mythical given their sparse numbers and endangered species

status, the Canada lynx is an atomic bomb to developers:

Discover lynx habitat on the property you want to develop

 40

into second homes, clubhouses and golf courses and you’re

project may well be doomed. Seeing one may be tantamount to

a unicorn sighting for someone like Dana Bellmore, but for

the Tony Bings of the world, they were only trouble.

But so far, nothing. If any of the cats had made it this

far north, they were keeping well hidden. After Trip told

Jill about Dana’s fascination with lynx and occasional false

alarms about their presence locally, the detective added

Tony Bing to her short list of suspects. Trip also suggested

she add Mandelbaum to her list. That developer, Trip told

her, had a more apparent problem than an elusive feline:

Actual, verified pollution from an old zinc mine on his

Alpen Cliff Meadows property that was still leaching into

the Eagle River.

“Dana was on his ass about it, along with the Watershed
Council folks and the EPA,” he told her. “Dana said

Mandelbaum once told her he wished she’d be abducted by

aliens.”
At that precise moment, as his situation and personality

were being discussed by a lift mechanic and a detective,

Mitchell K. Mandelbaum was relaxing on a tiny atoll in the

Pacific. Mandelbaum – who never used his first name – was

delightfully wealthy, but he had friends that were even more

so: the kind of people who owned tiny atolls so private that

they didn’t have names or appear on maps.

On his laptop, Mandelbaum was scowling at a PDF terrain

and elevation model of his property in Colorado. The map

 41

showed all the water sources and tributaries that led into

the Eagle River, as well as the locations of the several

zinc mines that were causing him so much grief.

“Who the fuck uses zinc, anyway?” Mandelbaum said,

addressing the question to the nude Thai prostitute

sunbathing next to him. She just looked up and smiled.

And he thought he’d been so smart, buying the property

just adjacent to the Superfund site where they’d cleaned up

much of the toxic runoff from the old Eagle Mine. Bobby

Ginn, a rival developer also from Florida, had bought the

lion’s share of the available property after he was assured

he’d not be liable for any other pollution problems. In two

locations in Florida and one on the Georgia coast,

Mandelbaum had come in after Ginn and built what he

considered to be a better resort. When he heard about Ginn’s

Colorado project, he couldn’t resist doing it again.

But now, this. “Non-point-source pollution” they called

it, meaning it was hard to know exactly where the shit was
coming from. But the water engineers from the EPA had

identified it as most certainly coming from somewhere on

Mandelbaum’s property, and his own engineers had confirmed

it. And then there was some stupid hearing they wanted him

at.

“Well, sweetheart,” he said, closing his laptop and

throwing off a towel to reveal his semi-rigid dick, “There

ain’t nothing for it but to throw some more lawyers at the

 42

situation … and enjoy another blowjob before I jet outta

here.”

At the last word, the Thai whore came to life. She tilted

her head at him and eyed his rising tide. “Blowjob?”

Mandelbaum nodded and she got to work as he contemplated

the necessity of leaving this place for yet another trip to

Colorado.

“If those dickheads I left in charge can’t figure it out,

sister, looks like ol’ daddy Mandelbaum is going to have to

ride to the rescue.”

After Jill left his house, Trip strapped a water bottle on

his hip and walked into the woods behind his house. There

wasn’t much in the way of trails back there, but it wasn’t

too hard to pick a path through the scrub and sage and find
a way among the pine trees that were either dead, dying or

too scrawny to have attracted the beetles in the first

place. As he walked along, he tried to identify things he

saw. He knew what sage looked like, but had no clue what the

other myriad different plants and bushes were. He saw a

couple of delicate red-flowered stalks he remembered Dana

telling him were called Indian paintbrush. And while he knew

the lodgepole pine and aspen, the other varieties of

evergreen meant nothing to him. Were they fir, spruce, other

kinds of pine, what?

“I’ve lived here 22 years, I should know this stuff,” he

thought to himself, settling on a rock about 200 yards from

 43

his house. He resolved to look in the Colorado Mountain

College catalog that had come in the mail to see if there

was a course on learning local nature stuff. He then

remembered the times Dana had tried to point these things

out to him, and he’d just laughed it off as ignorance he

relished.

“Knowing all the names would taint the experience for me,”

he told her. “All these plants and critters, they don’t know

they have names, do they? They just are, and that’s how I

like to enjoy them.”

Trip liked trees as much as the next guy. The strong

perfume of the pine forest, mixed with the underlying layer

of sage, was the background scent of his workaday life, and

he loved it. As he sat on his rock, he breathed it in and

thought of Dana and let more tears come. Better this way, he
thought, with no one around to make him feel self-conscious

about it. Not that he thought men shouldn’t cry, but if it

could be done discretely, so much the better.

Katie, his ex, had left a message on his cell, as had

several other friends. But in times like this, there was

only one person Trip had ever turned to, and that was Dana.

The realization kicked his weeping into more active sobbing

– something he hadn’t done or felt since childhood. He

thought about standing on the rock and yelling something.

Like “NO!” or “Why her? Why!”

But he continued to sit there, dismissing the Hollywood

gesture as out of character for Trip Bellmore. And when the

 44

tears came fewer and farther between, his thoughts turned

again to the issue of identity: Who did this, and why? The

concept of revenge and retribution, justice and punishment,

were moving to a central spot in his mind, and it occurred

to him that, were he to be confronted with the person he was

sure was Dana’s killer, he would have no problem killing

that man.

For it had to be a man. Women don’t run around sabotaging

chairlifts and killing people. That should eliminate about

40 percent of the county’s population, he figured.

Thinking of people caused him to pull out his cell and

flip through the numbers of the people who’d called. Arn

over at Vail, a couple of numbers he didn’t recognize, Katie

and also a few family members: an uncle he barely knew in

Florida, a cousin in California.

But still no AirLane. More than anyone, Trip wanted to

talk to the one person who knew the No. 7 lift as well as

he. But it was July 3, and the McNair family liked to

disappear into the backcountry whenever they could – places

where no cell service reached. They had an old pop-up camper

AirLane had reinforced to withstand rough roads, and it was,

he said, the only thing that seemed to keep his marriage

together.

“June, she just likes me to be around 100 percent with the

kids,” he’d told Trip. “I leave the cell phone and the bar

behind, she gets all lovey-dovey on me. Ain’t so much of a

whiney thing, neither.”

 45

So, it might be Sunday, three days away, before he could

talk to AirLane. He also knew he had to return one of

several calls he’d received from his Vail Resorts boss, Arn.

No doubt he’d heard about the lift incident and Trip’s

involvement. He wouldn’t be happy to hear about it, although

Dana’s death would hopefully temper a lot of whatever anger

or corporate uptightness Arn was running off of.

There were also a couple of messages from Tony Bing, but

since he’d just fired him, Trip figured that could wait –

although he could imagine what the greedy bastard wanted,

now that he’d satisfied his outsized ego by firing Trip.

He’d want to know why the lift he’d just spent 200 grand

putting in was a twisted and worthless scrap of metal now.

The cheap bastard, thought Trip. With all the money Bing

had, he could have afforded a couple of new lifts instead of

these tired old beaters. Maybe none of this would even have

happened with a new Poma or Doppelmyr – both of which now

had much more effective and fool-proof anti-rollback systems

on them.

He still couldn’t believe the destruction around the old

lift. Like all lift mechanics, he knew the danger of a

rollback, but it had always seemed such a remote

possibility. The only instance of a lift rolling back like

this Trip knew of was a deliberate exercise in destructive

testing done at the Winter Park Ski area in the early 1990s.

When the resort decommissioned the old Eskimo lift, they

loaded up all the chairs with cinder blocks and let the lift
 46

roll back to see what would happen. They’d made a film,

which was now online for anyone to see. He made a note to

mention it to the detective.

Even more amazing than the damage to the lift was what it

had done to his sister. He closed his eyes against the image

of the shattered body he’d had to get down from the tree.

The fact of mortality, all that being turned into

nothingness so suddenly, it was hard to grasp. We stuff so

much stuff into a body over the course of a lifetime, he

thought. All the memories, the physical and emotional

experiences, the shit we say, the stuff we do, the people we

know, the money we spent, the food and drink we consumed.

What did it all mean now? And in Dana’s case, she hadn’t

even left any children behind to … to what? Carry on her

legacy? His sister didn’t have a problem with kids, but she
had believed that adding more people to what she called an

already overburdened planet made no sense.

Maybe her legacy was a lighter footprint, then. But it

would live on in their memories and in some of her actions.

There were some nice footbridges spanning important wetlands

over in Edwards, and the small nature center in Minturn Dana

had worked tirelessly to fund and create. Maybe Carla would

see to it that some kind of plaque went up.

Trip stood up and said: “A plaque” in a flat, tired voice.

Then he walked back to his house, got in his car and drove

down the road a few miles to a spot where he got cell phone

reception. It was time he talked to his bosses. Maybe Tony

 47

had come to his senses and realized he’d never get a lift in

for the next season without Trip.

She’d done her best to play the stoic professional when

Trip had visited her, and she’d had to endure an entire day

of official pronouncements, questions and media calls. Now,

Carla Odekirk was sitting on her deck allowing grief to wash

over her. Her golden was next to her, and Scout looked up at

her frequently with eyes that seemed wide with sympathy.

“You know, don’t you Scout?” Carla said.

For answer, Scout licked her hand. The dry hand was

holding a snapshot of her and Dana from a river cleanup a

few years back. She regarded the two smiling women in the

photograph and imagined what might have been, if only.

Dana’s dream, as related to Carla, was to save enough money

to adopt a kid of her own from China or Russia — or to find

a suitable donor and have a child herself. With or without a

partner, Dana wanted more than anything to be a mom.

“You’d have been a great mom, Dana,” Carla said to the

picture. “And if I ever had a daughter, Dana will most

certainly be her name.”

She turned back to Scout.

“How long is that going to take, Scout? I don’t even have

a boyfriend. And I’m no Dana: Kids’ve got to come with a

dad. No way I’m doing it alone.”

Scout smiled and wiggled like she did whenever Carla

talked to her directly like this. She insinuated her head

 48

under Carla’s arm and got the slow, affectionate stroke she

was looking for as Carla leaned back and sighed.

“But I tell you, Scout, that Trip … He makes my insides

feel funny. What do you make of that, huh?”

It was true. She’d never given Trip much thought since

he’d been married most of the time she’d known him, and she

hadn’t seen him much since his divorce. But he was about her

age and she knew what a good guy he was from Dana. Sisters

were biased, of course, but if even half of what she said

about Trip were true, the guy should be able to go a couple

of yards, at least, walking on water. On the purely visceral

level, there was nothing not to like. According to Dana,

he’d beaten the twin demons of alcohol and tobacco years

ago, and though he was a blue-collar guy who worked with his

hands, he was a tireless autodidact, a constant reader who

dreamed of going back to school for a master’s degree.

Carla reached for another photo and held it up to her

face. This one showed just Trip and another volunteer whose
name escaped her. Trip was holding a chainsaw and smiling

broadly for the camera. That had been about two years ago,

and Carla remembered telling Trip that, if it hadn’t been

for him on that trail reconstruction, they’d never have

gotten it done. Her eyes passed slowly over the photo:

strong chin, wild shock of thick, black hair, arms and chest

taut against an ugly orange Broncos T-shirt, strong legs

clad in the signature Carhartt tan denim Trip was rarely

seen without.
 49

She threw the photo down and addressed Scout again.

“Oh, this is ridiculous! Dana’s dead and all I can think

about is my maternal alarm clock. It’s almost the Fourth of

July, Scout. You ready for our hike?”

“Hike” was a word that caused Scout to act in Pavlovian

fervor. She ran inside and retrieved her leash off the wall,

then came back out and turned happy circles on the deck as

Carla laced up her boots and strapped on a light water pack.

Scout hated fireworks above all things, so it was a custom

for them to hike far into the backcountry to get away from

the pyrotechnics being set off all around their tiny

townhome in Avon. It was nothing like the Long Island suburb

she’d grown up in – which sounded like a war zone for much

of early July – but it only took a few loud bangs to send

Scout shivering in fear for hours on end. In the evening,

when the big fireworks went off over Beaver Creek, Carla

would drive Scout up to the top of Vail Pass for a night

walk far from the noises that tormented the poor dog.
She planned to leave her cell phone behind, but it rang as

she and Scout were heading out the door. An unfamiliar

number; she answered it.

“Hey,” said a short, annoyed voice. “This is Tony Bing. I

don’t mean to sound rude at a time like this, but what the

hell was your employee doing up on my mountain, getting

herself killed with that other guy.”

A foreign-feeling chill zipped through her body, and a

voice foreign to Carla answered him.

 50

“Well, Mr. Bing, I mean to be rude and what the hell was

your chairlift doing killing people when it was supposed to

be all ready and safe? I’m sure Dana was up there with good

reason, and I wonder if there’s something up there she knew

about that was going to slow down your precious development.

Believe me, I’m going to look into it, and if there’s smoke

or fire of any kind up there, I will honor Dana’s memory by

bringing it into the open and then burning your ass if

you’re building when you shouldn’t be – not to mention

running unsafe equipment on Forest Service land.”

“Listen, you stupid bitch …” Tony began, but Carla had

already hung up and tossed the phone on the counter.

“Come on Scout, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Her hands were shaking as she drove her Prius east on I-70

towards Minturn. How could that Tony Bing character call her
up and accost her like that the same day Dana was killed on

his mountain? The horror of Dana’s death was now compounded

by the sinking realization that this was going to be a big

deal of some sort. It wasn’t like she’d just died; she’d

been killed, violently, and set off something big behind

her. In some ways it was a fitting end for a woman who was

just about impervious to any kind of scathing rhetoric that

came her way. She used to just laugh at the letters in the

Vail Daily that singled her out as a “clueless tree hugger”

or a “liberal moron.” And after a decade or so fighting the

fight herself, Carla was pretty inured to the name-calling

 51

and sordid tactics the other side used to score points in

the court of public opinion.

But Bing’s words cut deep. What if he was right in some

way? Was it Carla’s fault that Dana was up there in the

first place? She hadn’t even known about the site visit, but

as the executive director, she was responsible for whatever

her employees (all two of them) were up to. And could Bing

sue the Coalition for trespassing or something stupid, just

to deflect blame from himself? Technically, Dana and Tom had

been on U.S. Forest Service land, but he had a lease to

operate the ski area on it, so what would the law have to

say about that?

As she turned off the interstate onto Highway 24 to

Minturn, Carla noticed the same vehicle that had been behind

her since Avon following her around the curving off-ramp.

Was she being followed? Quickly, she signaled and turned

into the parking lot of the Forest Service ranger district

office. The other vehicle, a silver Lexus SUV, continued

past.

Carla looked at Scout’s curious look.

“Don’t worry sweetie. Mommy’s just paranoid now. On top of

everything else.”

Anthony Carmine DiBenedetto changed his name after his

sophomore year in college, when he transferred from Queen’s

College to Texas A&M. Where he’d grown up in Brooklyn, a

“guinea” name like his attracted little attention, but he

 52

figured it would be an unnecessary burden in a place like

Texas. He picked “Bing” out of the air, mostly, thinking it

had a nice-sounding pop with “Tony.” There was also just

that hint of Italian, if one thought of “bada-bing.” People,

he reasoned, would never forget a name like that.

Tony ended up in Texas because of his uncle Frank, who’d

made his way to Texas a decade earlier and who worked in the

Aggies’ provost’s office doing what Tony never quite figured

out. But Uncle Frank had helped grease the wheels for Tony

to get into the school with a pretty decent scholarship. He

did OK in business school, getting grades that were just

enough to let him go to the next level. Tony called it

“getting my ticket punched,” and viewed education as a sort

of bureaucratic rung he had to climb to reach his next goal.

He had fun in College Station, drinking his face off,

banging a few girls along the way and emerging with a couple

of what would turn out to be life-long friends. And though

he professed to despise Texas and everything it stood for,

he never left it – at least not until this opportunity in

Colorado arose.

Tony Bing hadn’t planned on acquiring the title of “strip-

mall developer,” but it’s what he turned out to be. With one

of his college buddies, whose wealthy family bankrolled

them, he got in on the ground floor with a development

outside Houston. He rolled his impressive share of the

profits into another project just a mile or so from the

first. By the time he was 25, he had become a millionaire –

 53

on paper, at least – and he was amazed at how simple it had

been. “Seed money” became his core belief: that if a man had

that, a start, he could do anything. Over the next two

decades, Tony Bing was able to take that seed money and

translate it into an income of several million dollars a

year. He married a woman named Christy Sabine, who took some

of her own seed money from Tony’s pile and started her own

real estate agency. Before long, she stopped asking him for

money and rode a hot market all the way up to the 2006

housing crash.

Christy had offices in seven different locations, and she

closed them one by one while laying off staff with

apologetic gift baskets and two-week severance checks.

Tony’s business had dried up to the point where he spent his

days on the golf course, lamenting the state of the housing

and development industry with others in the same boat. And

when he drove home one evening and happened to pass a motel

with Christy’s Mercedes parked out front, it was a simple

matter of reading Business Week for an hour or so until he

saw her emerge with another man – a guy 20 years her junior

who looked, laughably, Tony thought, like a tennis

instructor.

Tony wasn’t jealous; he and Christy had ceased having sex

together years ago, and he was no slouch in the mistress

department. But this was, to his knowledge, Christy’s first

liaison, and all Tony could think of were the liquid assets

that could be dished up in divorce fallout: about $17

 54

million in cash and securities, another $8-$10 million in

real estate (including three homes in Texas, one in Vail and

another in Florida) and a very nice boat where Tony had, at

last count, bedded 47 different women (or 21, if he didn’t

count the professionals).

As Tony wondered if he should move to hide or protect

things, Christy moved quicker after he confronted her with

his knowledge. Investing everything she had left in a

phalanx of lawyers, she was able to strip the strip-mall

king of almost everything he owned, largely based on the

claim that he couldn’t have done it without her.

It reminded Tony of what it was like as a kid to get your

ass beaten in the school yard by a much bigger kid. It had

happened to him twice, and he remembered, 40-some-odd years

later, the sensation of surrender and inevitability that

accompanied the beatings. Once it seemed apparent that there

was no fighting back, once surrender had been presented as

an option and then accepted in his mind, there was then only
the inevitability that, no matter how much it hurt, an

ending would come eventually. And then he would move on.

It must have had something to do with his love for

Christy, he told himself. His own lawyers urged him to fight

her on the same grounds, to hit below the belt as she was

doing to him. But it was more amusing for Tony to play the

game as a sort of disinterested victim, and he watched

intrigued as the woman he’d shared a bed with for 27 years,

and with whom he’d had three children, systematically

 55

destroyed the little empire they’d built together and moved

almost all the pieces to her side of the board.

When it was all over, he retreated to the one thing he’d

insisted on keeping: The small, 1970s-vintage condo he’d

bought in Vail on a whim following their honeymoon together

there. He spent a lot of time skiing while also working

part-time in a local real estate office to get a feel for

the market. All the while, he kept an eye out for more seed

money.

On July 3, Tony Bing was informed of the accident up at

the terrain park by Putty Du, who floated into his office

and gazed out the window while relating what details he knew

to a shocked Tony.

Putty Du was the price of seed money: the ethnically and

sexually ambiguous go-between he’d had to accept as part of

a deal with a Chinese sporting goods family he’d gotten his

money from. As was nearly always the case with anything

important, Putty Du had already spoken to the family and had

a message ready.

“Fix it quick before it interrupts the opening this ski

season.” His voice, as always, a linguistically vague

amalgam, nearly whispered. Like a cross between a resident

of French Polynesia and an Apache reservation, it had the

effect of pissing Tony off no matter what Putty said.

And this was the guy he had to spend most of his waking

hours around. It was enough to make him miss the groping,

shrill Christy.
 56

Tony grabbed for a phone and addressed Putty Du while he

dialed.

“Of course I’m going to fix it, you fucking gook goofball!

What the hell you think … Hello, Trip? Goddamnit, answer

your phone OK? I need to talk to you. What the hell happened

up there? Call me NOW!”

“Let’s go, Putty. You drive, I’m too freaked out. Two

people killed up there, I mean, holy shit!”

Putty Du agreed to the arrangement with a slight incline

of his head and a sideways look at Tony. The fat, stupid

American hated to have anyone but himself drive the black

Escalade with the “Screamin’ Eagle Terrain Park” sticker on

the door. He told Putty Du that he drove like “a thousand

drunk pussies,” and once even reached his foot over to give

the vehicle more gas as Putty Du attempted to pass a

tractor.

He was no less patient on this morning.

“C’mon Pussy, I mean Putty! Put your foot into it fer

chrissakes. There’s people dead up there!”

They were just loading the broken bodies of Dana Bellmore

and Tom Welter into ambulances when Putty Du slid the

Escalade into a spot behind the Eagle County Water Rescue

truck.

“What the hell do they need these guys for?” Tony said,

opening his door before they’d come to a complete stop and

hopping to the ground.

 57

To himself, Putty Du thought: “Everyone wants to come to

the party,” while to Tony he leveled an unnoticed look that

said: “I’ve known slime molds more appealing than you.”

The first member of the Screamin’ Eagle Terrain Park Tony

encountered was Petey Moore, the “hotshot” Trip has insisted

on hiring from some closed-down ski area in Idaho and whose

driveway, so far as Tony could tell, didn’t make it all the

way to the road.

“What happened, Petey?” Tony said, trying to assume a

voice of calm, control and understanding and resisting the

urge to grab the man by his collar and shake.

“Dunno chief,” said Petey. “I’m off today, actually.”

“Then what the hell are you doing up here?”

“Dunno. Trip called me. He’s over there.”

Tony turned and saw Trip sitting on a rock, apparently

staring into space. The developer’s short legs propelled him

in that direction, and he waved his arms in the air for good

measure, to let Trip know he was coming. He had to step over

mangled chairs and other unidentifiable pieces of chairlift,

and his mind was mentally trying to calculate what this was

going to cost to repair.

He was still 10 feet from Trip when Ted Cunningham,

stepped in front of him and grabbed his arm.

“Hey, what the hell?!” Tony said, instinctively trying to

wrench free.

“Mr. Bing, hold on just a second. I’m Ted Cunningham, the

undersheriff.”
 58

“Congratulations. Now let me go.”

Ted didn’t relax his grip on Tony’s arm but spoke close to

his ear in a low, even voice.

“I understand you’re upset at what happened here. But I

just need you to know that one of the people killed here was

Dana Bellmore, Trip’s sister. So before you go tearing him a

new one about whatever, just keep in mind the man just lost

his sister. And she was pretty, well, pretty beat up and

mangled. Found her up in a tree.”

The man let go of his arm and Tony said “fine.” He

approached Trip more slowly now, not sure how to properly

heap blame and derision on an employee who’d just lost a

family member.

“Trip?”

Trip, his face a picture of gloom, looked up at Tony.

“Oh, hey Tony. What a mess, huh?”

For a split second, Tony contemplated sitting on the rock

next to Trip, then decided that was too, too something. He

settled for standing in front of Trip with his hands in his

pockets. That didn’t feel right, either, but he was

determined to wait a few moments before taking his arms out

of his pockets and then … he wasn’t sure what he was going

to do with them.

In a barely audible voice, Trip gave him the details of

what he knew about the accident.

“Someone messed with it, Tony. Someone wanted it to crash.

That much I know.”

 59

“Right,” Tony said. “OK.”

“And Tony? I know you’re wondering so I’ll just tell you

outright: This lift is fucked, completely beyond repair. We

have to rip the whole thing out, towers and all, and put in

a new lift. Or a new used one, if we can find one. We’ll

have to act fast if we want something in place by December.

And even then … I don’t know. It’ll be tight. It’s not like

chairlifts are just, you know, sitting on a shelf

somewhere.”

Tony nodded and felt what he now knew as the “money pit”

take hold of his insides. It was a relatively new phenomenon

that started to manifest itself a few years ago, when

Christy calmly informed him she was planning to leave and

“twist off his financial balls.” Now, the money pit was

linked directly to an extremely unpleasant task Tony knew

now lay before him: He was going to have to ask the Chinks

for more money. And, knowing the first thing they were going

to ask, he put a hand on Trip’s shoulder and said:

“I’m really sorry about your sister, Trip. And I know this

is a bad time but … You’re fired.”

Trip looked up, his eyes simply moving to a deeper shade

of grief. Tony gave the undersheriff his card and told him

to call with news or questions.

“You should really stick around, Mr. Bing,” Cunningham

said. “The detective will be here shortly, and I’m sure

she’ll want to talk to you.”

Tony kept walking.

 60

“I’ve got to go, just have her call me.”

And then he and Putty Du got into the Escalade and slowly

bumped back down the road.

“I’m going too, Ted,” Trip said.

“Trip …”

“I can talk to her tomorrow, just not today.”

Trip fished a card out of his wallet and handed it to the

undersherrif.

“My cell’s on there. Have her call. Petey can answer any

questions about the lift anyway.”

The Chinks had a palatial home up in Beaver Creek. Putty

Du texted ahead and received confirmation that they would

see them. He found himself actually feeling sorry for the

fat Texan, who he knew was in for an unpleasant time of it.

On the other hand, Putty Du loved to visit the Zhengwu home,

which was 5,300 square feet of sumptuous awfulness.

The Zhengwu family had purchased the home from an Oklahoma

oilman who’d had the place tricked out with every imaginable

excess that could be thrown at a mountain home. There were

two elevators, a five-car garage, and a colossal, cherub-

studded indoor fountain that never worked quite right. While

Tony went into to his meeting with the family, Putty Du

stood and watched the fountain gurgle. Jets of water would

occasionally misfire, randomly shooting streams at the

marble wall with a salaciousness that always caused Putty Du

to grin.
 61

“Why don’t we fix it, right?”

The voice seemed to appear out of nowhere, but Putty Du

knew it to belong to Sian Dang, the Zhengwu majordomo and

problem solver who’d helped Putty Du get his job overseeing

Tony.

Putty Du turned and felt his chest tighten as he took in

Sian. From the severely straight cut of the jet-black hair

that went halfway down her back to the tiny topsiders on her

feet and the crisp, blue denim of her jeans, he could never

find anything on Sian that strayed far from perfect. She was

a Beijing girl through and through, but she spoke perfect,

unaccented English from her years at Pepperdine, and she

dressed with informal, American ease. No American girl,

Putty Du thought, could ever make blue jeans and a checked

blouse look so alluring.

“Hello Sian. Yes, the house is immaculate, yet you allow

these …”

“Ejaculations?”
“If you must.”

“We are all here because of one,” she said, gliding up to

stand next to him. “The spurt of life, and most of the times

wildly unpredictable. Who can see which act of coitus will

result in a person?”

“Some say ‘god,’” Putty Du said, looking into her green-

flecked brown eyes.

She nodded. “But what do you say, Mr. Putty Du?”

 62

“Who cares? I, like you, am but a servant to greater

masters who hold my fate in their hands. And I am no closer

to fathering a child than that statue over there. My

ejaculations are inconsequential.”

Sian tipped her head back and let out a wonderful,

trilling laugh. She started to say something to Putty Du

just as a jet of water from the misfiring fountain caught

her square in the chest.

“You see?” she said, laughing anew. “It’s unpredictable. I

was standing in a place that I was certain was safe from the

water, yet I was hit just as I was about to make an

inappropriate comment to you!”

The water had doused her shirt enough to reveal the lace

of her brassiere underneath, a brief glimpse beyond the

well-manicured exterior that, Putty Du thought, made her all

the more beautiful.

She caught his gaze and turned to leave the room.

“I must change, Mr. Putty Du. But think about that.”

She disappeared through a door, then popped her head back

out.

“And the fountain, Putty? It was like that, but it was the

elder Mr. Zhengwu’s idea to leave it be. He loves a good

metaphor.”

Putty Du watched the door close behind her and sighed.

Considering the fountain again, he wondered when and where

the next spurt would occur. A watcher might have been almost

frightened by his face, which was looking at the fountain

 63

with the kind of cold calculation a killer might use before

thrusting the knife in. Putty Du’s cheeks were deeply

scarred from the acne he suffered through as a teenager, and

all the way into his 20s. He would otherwise have a perfect

face, as he sometimes told himself looking in the mirror.

There, he saw an ideally formed nose with no bumps of any

kind discernible in profile. His was a strong, noble chin

matched against a high forehead half hidden by his straight,

dark hair. His eyes were dark, yet contained a hint of

deepest blue that conspired to give him a slightly sinister

look. A gift from the American GI father he never met, the

eyes were his constant reminder that he wasn’t a true

Vietnamese, not a true Asian. Tainted or blessed by the

Yankee blood he couldn’t decide. Certainly in some cases

saying he had an American father opened doors, and there was

no denying he was of mixed race, a thang Tay so far as his

fellow Asians were concerned. It usually didn’t take him

long to see the condescension in the way they looked at him.

The part-thang Tay lackey serving the meathead Texan.

But not Sian. She was playing the same game, in some ways,

from the other side of the fence.

Putty Du was wearing dark gabardine trousers and a gray-

black Rayon shirt with a barely detectable palm tree

pattern. On his feet were a pair of Italian loafers he’d

picked up in San Francisco, and his left wrist sported an

understated Tag-Heuer – nothing like the garish, blocky

Rolex Tony wore. He was also wearing a pair of tight Jockey

 64

briefs, plain white. No matter how subtle or loose his

outside clothes were, wearing the briefs always gave him a

feeling of immediacy, like he was being urged on by the seat

of his pants. They also were a nod to his father, since his

mother had told him that’s the kind of underwear the big

American wore when she knew him all those years ago. Both

the men and the women Putty Du slept with were surprised at

his choice, and on several occasions he’d been counseled on

the superiority of boxers – even receiving several nice pair

as gifts.

Eyeing the fountain with equal parts fascination and

contempt, Putty Du thought of his comfortable, dry and

expensive clothing and decided it wasn’t worth it. He moved

down the hallway, expecting to meet Sian after she’d

finished changing her shirt. Finding his way into a small

study, he sat in a supremely ugly chair fashioned from aspen

wood and began reading a brand-new copy of the China

Business Review. He shut out the sound of raised voices

coming from down the hall and devoted his attention to a

feature on the yuan.

Tony Bing’s copious rear end was occupying only about 18

inches of the fabric that covered the very edge of the seat

that sat facing the Zhengwu patriarch, who was known in

America as, simply, “Bob.” Standing in the corner of the

room mostly looking out the window and appearing to wish he

was elsewhere, was the scion of the Zhengwu clan, a 27-year-

 65

old cliché who went by the American name “Skippy Pong.” Bob,

Tony knew, regarded Skippy as mostly useless, except when

they were trying to have a more in-depth conversation and

the younger man was able to help translating for his father.

Tony was trying to explain what he knew about the

chairlift accident – which wasn’t much, since he’d just

about fled the scene after canning Trip on the spot. He was

glad he had now, though, since that bit of information was

the only thing he told the old man that seemed to please

him. Tony was used to being on the other side of the desk

doing the yelling, and the only thing that kept him from

speaking in kind was the money pit: No matter how pissed off

he got, he told himself going in, he had to kiss the old

man’s ass and get the hell out of there with a check. He

could leave his dignity behind for the moment.

Now, Bob was standing up, pacing behind Tony’s chair and

speaking rapidly to Skippy in Mandarin. Skippy turned to

Tony with a crooked smile.

“This man is a complete and utter idiot. I think we may

have made a big mistake. Tell him …”

But Skippy was interrupted by Bob, who took two quick

steps and slapped his son hard in the face. More fast

Chinese followed until Skippy, rubbing his cheek but looking

as bored as ever, slipped from the room.

“My apologies, Mr. Bing. My son is …”

Tony stood and held out his hand.

 66

“Don’t worry about it, Bob. I’m truly sorry about all

this, and I understand you need to think about things so …”

Bob shook his head and resumed his seat at the desk. Tony

felt the mood change, no doubt brought on by Skippy’s

embarrassing the old man.

“No, no, we must move forward. These things happen. Tell

me when you know how much it will take. Send Putty Du for a

check.”

Tony put in another 15 minutes with the elder Zhengwu,

trying his best to answer questions about the terrain park

project. The reality was, Tony was much more involved in the

housing development, which didn’t concern the Zhengwus. He’d

left most of the planning and construction of the terrain

park to Dale Beck, the so-called mountain manager. He’d come

to suspect that the brains and driving force behind it all

had been Trip – the guy he’d just fired. As he sat supplying

Bob with vague, bullshit answers about the features and

amenities the park would have, he was trying to envision how

much he’d have to become involved with Beck and how he’d fit

it in with the money-raising junket he had planned for the

rest of the summer.

Mercifully, the little Asian hottie who ran the house came

in and told Bob he had a call from China.

“That Skippy Pong is little prick, but he just saved our

ass,” Tony told Putty Du as they drove back down the

mountain.

“Oh?” said Putty Du, evenly.

 67

“Shit, that’s right, he’s your boss, right? Can’t dis on

your man.”

“I work for Zhengwu Sports, I do not report to Skippy,”

Putty Du said.

“Right,” said Tony.

Putty Du hesitated for a moment, then offered more

information than he usually gave Tony Bing.

“It is not clear to me that Skippy works for the family

business, Tony. It is not clear to me that Skippy works for

anyone, or that he does much beyond his … social

activities.”

When Tony pressed him for more insight on the occupations

of Skippy Pong, Putty Du clammed up. After a while, Tony

gave up and looked out the window as they headed west on the

interstate to the Eagle Ranch Golf Course. Tony had a tee

time with another Texan in the valley for the holiday. A

friend of a friend, he was a natural gas guy who’d made a

killing with wells in the western part of Colorado. Tony

loved oil and gas guys, since they had so much money they

didn’t even get that worked up when they lost a few million

here and there.

Who knows, he thought. If he could get enough money there

he could back out of the arrangement with the Chinks. That

would not only free him of having to travel around with the

nearly silent Putty Du, but from the humiliating

appearances, hat in hand, up at the Beaver Creek house.

Tony cleared his throat.

 68

“Putty-poo, you can just drop me at the course and I’ll

call you when I’m ready,” he said. “Take the rest of the day

off and go do … whatever it is you do. I bet you’re a big

white-water rafting guy right?”

Putty Du turned his head and gave Tony a dismal look.

“Mountain biking?”

Another slight shake of the head.

“OK, I got it Putty: You like nothing more than getting

jacked up on crystal meth, firing back a quart of Jack

Daniels and kickin’ it in a hot tub with three or four of

your peeps. Lessee, that’d be one teenage boy, an aging

Vegas whore, a guy halfway through a sex-change wearing a

nun’s outfit, and a Cuban-Chinese with dyed hair and a

tattoo of Guantanamo Bay on his arm.”

Putty Du kept driving, looking pointedly straight out the

window, but Tony thought he saw the hint of a smile at the

corner of his mouth.

“And the lady cheetah,” Putty Du said finally. “Don’t

forget the lady cheetah. No hot tub party flies without a

top predator.”

Tony laughed but couldn’t think of a response that that.

Was Putty mocking him somehow, or actually joining in the

joke. It was impossible to tell, so he resumed looking out

the window and thought about new chairlifts.

 69

Chapter 4

Jill was able to get to the daycare camp by 5:29 to pick

up Morgan, thus avoiding the $40 late fee. She’d paid it

twice, and hated herself for days after – not so much for

the money but that it put picking up Morgan into this

category of a chore to be checked off by a certain time.

Jason may have been in the running for Biggest Dickhead

Husband ever, but he wasn’t a bad dad, and as a couple they

were able to keep Morgan pretty happy.

But now he was living over in Breckenridge – close enough

to make the weekly exchanges with Morgan at the Vail Pass

summit rest area pretty simply, but far enough away to make

himself useless in any kind of daily crisis. And that was

Morgan’s life now, Monday through Friday with Jill and

Friday at 6 to Sunday at 6 with Jason. It sucked to never

have her on weekends, but it did allow her to get some work

done. She’s also found unexpected free time on her hands,

which she’d at first not known what to do with. The previous

five years had been a blur of caring for a baby, then a

hyperactive toddler and preschooler. Morgan wasn’t the kind

of kid who like to just sit and play with her dolls in the

corner. If she was awake, she demanded attention. Even

asleep, she called on Jill and Jason, spending half or more

of her nights snuggled between them in bed for a variety of

real and trumped-up reasons.

Now, she was sitting strapped into her booster seat,

singing a song from “SpongeBob” as Jill drove them home.

 70

Just as Jill was making room in her conscience to relish the

sound of her daughter’s singing, she stopped.

“Mommy! I was the last one today again!”

“I know sweetie, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s OK. Miss Julie got out some Play-Do and we made

snakes. But I hate snakes. But not so much the Play-Do

snakes. They’re OK, and they smell good. They’re not real,

so they can’t hiss or bite you.”

“No, they can’t,” Jill said, smiling at Morgan in the

rear-view mirror as the little girl’s mind abruptly switched

gears and she started singing again. Despite her promise to

leave work at work, Jill’s thoughts fluttered back to the

awful accident earlier that day.

She’d handled one murder investigation already since

becoming a detective nine months earlier. But it was an easy

case: The addled homeless guy who’d shot the camper was

found wandering along the river road two days after the

murder, and he offered a full confession. Jill was convinced

the man wanted to go to prison for free room and board – not

to mention the stripping away of goals and ambition that

comes with a life sentence. Sitting in the courtroom during

the sentencing, Jill pondered the question of what it would

be like to face life without parole. Her own life was so

goddamned complex, every waking moment a struggle, every

simple thing hopelessly bloated into a tangled mess.

Or so it seemed. Compared to the jail- or prison-bound

“clients” she dealt with in her work, her life, she knew,
 71

was a seahorse ride over a rainbow, to borrow an image from

one of Morgan’s Noggin shows. When interrogating suspects or

just interviewing people she knew existed in the realm of

lawlessness, she was always tempted to ask them: “How do you

do it? A normal, law-abiding life is incredibly difficult,

but you layer on top of it all kinds of other shit. You get

pulled over with a loaded gun in the car, no license, no

insurance, a bag of weed under the seat and a blood alcohol

content twice the legal limit. These are things that would

destroy me, destroy any average person. Yet you take it in

stride, do your time in the county jail, appear before the

judge, then get released after a few weeks or months and

resume your life as it was. What can that possibly feel

like? Or have you stopped feeling?”

And Jill had come to the conclusion that such was most
likely the case. Whether it was through an extraordinary

amount of alcohol or other substance or just a gradual

process to inure the mind, heart and soul, these people had
been essentially stripped of feeling. How else could they

endure the repeated trips through the system that removed

any dignity they might have left? They were dead, in many

ways, enlivened only when they got drunk or high enough to

forget the previous day’s cavity search or court appearance.

Then, of course, they got too animated and got in trouble

all over again – whether it was by getting behind the wheel

or belting their wife or just doing something inordinately

stupid.
 72

Jill couldn’t resist smiling at the recollection of the

guy who came home three nights ago after seeing a late-night

showing of some action movie. Blotto, he went out on his

deck and emptied two whole clips into the sky, then

staggered down into his bedroom and passed out. The Eagle

Police and the sheriff’s office had spent the entire night

staked out in front of his house while a S.W.A.T. team

rushed up from Jefferson County. When they finally broke in,

automatic weapons at the ready, they found the guy in his

underwear, lying in bed passed-out and drooling on his

pillow. He was amazed to find the S.W.A.T. team in his

bedroom, and even more interested to learn what he’d done.

But this new case, this was something different, Jill

knew. It seemed obvious that alcohol, stupidity or the

actions of society’s lower rungs had nothing to do with the

accident – the incident – that caused the deaths of Dana

Monroe Bellmore and Thomas Kurt Welter. Something bigger was

in play, and she felt the presence of the money that flowed
through Eagle County’s real estate and development channels.

There was this Tony Bing character, whom she still hadn’t

been able to get a hold of. But she didn’t think of him as a

major suspect. Sure, it could be an insurance fraud kind of

thing, but from what Trip Bellmore had told her, the guy

wanted the chairlifts up and running more than anything.

Still, he was on the short list, as was Trip. She hated to

leave him there, but until there were some more likelys to

move to the top, he’d have to remain. She’d already decided

 73

she liked him a great deal – an observation Ted Cunningham

had chided her about over the phone when she updated him on

the case.

“You like him?” Ted had asked. “You mean you like him as a

suspect or as a person?”

“As a person,” she said. “He’s a nice guy. I just don’t

think he could have …”

“Jilly Jilly Jilly,” Ted said, employing a tone and a

nickname she despised. “The world is full of nice people.

I’m nice, your nice, Trip Bellmore is nice. Some people

probably thought Charles Manson was a helluva guy, and even

Osama bin Laden has friends. Don’t let ‘nice’ get in the way

of your investigation. Don’t let that personal shit cloud

your vision. You have to see through ‘nice’ to get to the

truth.”
It had been a section in detective school, she recalled. A

slideshow that offered quick bios of some of the nastiest

criminals and how “nice” they had been considered by their

friends, family and even victims before the truth came out.

Jill didn’t need Ted to tell her that a murderer can put on

a civil face and skate along unsuspected for years. And if

she had any reasonable suspicion that Trip Bellmore was one

of them, she’d be happy to focus her attention there.

But this guy didn’t kill his sister. Even this early in

the investigation it didn’t make sense in any way. Tony Bing

seemed entirely too obvious, the ex-girlfriends didn’t seem

 74

too likely – although they’d all be questioned. And then

there was the lynx question …

“Mommy?”

Morgan’s voice snapped her into the present.

“Why are we just sitting in the driveway? I want to get

out.”

“Good idea sweetheart,” Jill said, turning off the

ignition and grabbing her bag. “Let’s go.”

Skippy Pong’s place in Edwards was an urban loft-style

apartment with 20-foot ceilings and a lot of brushed

aluminum. Widely loathed by the community, it was, by

design, the exact opposite of the tacky, twisted-pine

mountain haus look his father had bought into up in Beaver

Creek. Standing at his gleaming metallic bar mixing drinks,

he watched with a mixture of disgust and satisfaction as the

large living room filled with guests. He had no idea who

most of them were, but they all had the same happily vacant
expression he’d found was the norm among healthy,

athletically inclined Americans living in a ski resort

community. Many of the people he’d met in Vail were devoid

of knowledge of the world outside the valley, and they

weren’t nearly as concerned with making money as other

Americans he’d met. They were happy if they got 100 or more

days on the mountain in winter, and they mountain biked,

hiked, kayaked, climbed, golfed and rafted nearly every day

in summer.
 75

“Hey Skippy, what’s shaking?”

The face that suddenly loomed in Skippy’s vision was that

of Sarah, a towering blonde mountain bike racer who’d found

her way into Skippy’s bed just a few nights ago. Skippy

offered her a thin smile.

“Just making lemon-drop martinis, Sarah. The perfect

summer drink. Have one … or six.”

Sarah made a face.

“I’ll take a Fat Tire, thanks.”

“You know where they are,” he said, jerking his chin

toward the fridge that was used exclusively for drinks.

Holding her beer, Sarah came up behind him and put her

hand on his ass. He tensed and stiffened so much that she

stepped back and looked at him.

“What?”
He shrugged. “Just, you know, people around.”

So that was it, the one-night-only guy. Sarah looked at

him quizzically, and felt the alien sensation of having her

ego bruised. She, Sarah Mann, who men tripped over to buy

drinks, who’d been profiled in Outside magazine and Sports

Illustrated, being brushed off after one night with this

Chinese guy. This spoiled rich kid who spent all his time in

the gym just to build up muscles he’d use only to attract

women.

“OK, Skippy, I get it. Just the one night and that’s it

with you, huh?”

Skippy shrugged and offered a guilty grin.

 76

“Guilty as charged. But don’t take it personally Sarah,

please. You’re beautiful, babe. Really.”

“Babe? Skippy, give me a break.”

And she set down her bottle and strode quickly out the

door.

“What the hell was that?”

It was Mike, his neighbor who never missed one of Skippy’s

parties.

“Don’t know Mike,” said Skippy, handing him a glass

brimming with martini. “Some chicks don’t like the one-time

treatment. What the hell — did she expect me to propose or

something?”

Mike, who had a face like a gargoyle and the body of a

wildebeest, loved to hear Skippy’s tales of conquest.

“So you banged the famous Sarah Mann,” he said, leering.

“Skippy, that’s a pretty good notch on your belt. She’s

unbelievable, a fucking Amazon. Her ass could be in the

Museum of Great Asses.”

He shook his head.

“That’s not a one-timer, man. You should go back for more

of that.”

Without looking in her direction, Skippy said: “Look in

the corner next to the fireplace. The dark-haired one in the

little green skirt.”

“Got her,” said Mike, slurping at his drink. “Major mega

babe bombshell. Kinda tiny. Don’t know her.”

 77

“She’s the one tonight,” Skippy said softly. “Just a

waitress; served me lunch today at the club. Don’t stare,

Mike.”

Mike turned his head a few degrees and, peering at one of

Skippys unadorned white walls, said: “How did you get her up

here?”

Skippy smiled, knowing that, for Mike, getting girls to do

anything was beyond his capacity. Maybe this was a teaching

moment.

“Mike, you don’t ‘get’ girls to do anything. You have to

put things in place to convince them they want to know more

about you.”

Skippy shrugged and gestured towards Kim, the waitress in

the green skirt.

“I noticed she had a couple of tattoos and showed her this

one on my wrist.”

Skippy turned his hand over to reveal a Chinese character

done in plain black ink.

“Symbol for ‘tiger,’” Skippy said.

“So she came to your party because you have a little

tattoo that means ‘tiger?’ Bullshit!”

Skippy picked up two fresh drinks and pointed himself

toward Kim. Over his shoulder he said: “That, and I gave her

a hundred-dollar tip.”

Skippy weaved his way through the small crowd. It was only

about 9 p.m., and his parties tended to start late. Skippy

knew that the dead-broke locals he deliberately invited as

 78

“party extras” would step out on the deck at one point and

call a friend or two. They would tell of the free booze, the

table of food that was continually replenished, and the 20-

person hot tub out back. The locals amused the hell out of

Skippy, who watched them peripherally all night long to see

how they reacted to the trappings of wealth. Some of them

would even stuff some food in their pockets before leaving,

especially in winter when their loose parkas could hold

more.

It was, Skippy thought, one of his favorite parts about

being rich; this throwing of crumbs to the local pigeons.

Most of them were so grateful that they would offer whatever

they could: ski lessons, car tune-ups, concert tickets – all

of which Skippy would politely decline. At the end of the

evening, the only thing he was interested in was the one

thing any young woman could give him free of charge.

“Hello Kim,” he said, handing her the drink.

She flashed him a bright smile and accepted the martini.

“Thanks Skippy! Great place!”

Skippy looked around, as if he’d just discovered the loft.

“It is a … passable hovel, I admit.”

“A passable hovel, right,” Kim said. “This is Jess. We

used to wait tables together up at Beano’s in Beaver Creek.”

After more introductions – what Skippy considered the

tiresome American habit of extracting rather personal

details of college attended, employment and places of origin

 79

in the first five minutes of conversation – Kim turned to

Skippy.

“We were talking about the chairlift accident today. Did

you hear?”

Skippy cocked his head slightly, and the two women to look

at him with bright, expectant smiles.

“I think I did, but not all the details. A couple of

people killed, right?”

It didn’t take long to realize that the lift accident was

the major topic of conversation throughout the room. Jess

was convinced it was another eco-terror attack, while Kim

chalked it up to the cheapskate developer building the

terrain park. When they asked his opinion, Skippy laughed,

then adopted a sober tone.

“It’s terrible, really, that two people were killed. But

you have to remember, I grew up in China, until I started

school here when I was 16. Over there, industrial accidents

like this happen all the time, and they get glossed over.
It’s like, in a country with 1.2 billion people, what’s a

few thousand peasants killed in the service of the country?”

“That’s awful,” Kim said. “No offense, but I’d hate to

live in a country where that kind of shit happens.”

“You don’t think it happens here?” Skippy said.

“Well …” Kim began.

“Don’t answer that,” Skippy said, slipping an arm around

her waist. “It’s the holiday, right? Let’s just chill.”

He turned to include Jess.

 80

“Have either of you ever had a truly great bottle of

Champagne?”

They shook their heads.

As he led them back toward his rooms with the promise of a

’97 Bollinger Blanc de Noire, he nodded to Mike, who gave a

quick thumbs-up.

For Morgan’s bath, Jill always put on some classical music

to calm things down. The girl considered hair washing and

rinsing to be one of the world’s more exquisite form of

torture, but once she got past it, Jill couldn’t get her out

of the tub.

Silently cursing the tiny bathroom in the tiny townhome,

Jill finished Morgan’s hair and sat on the potty to watch

her play. She resisted the urge to grab her notebook and
flip through it and just sat pondering the chairlift

incident while contemplating the things Morgan was doing.

It seemed clear that there was nothing wrong with the lift
when it was last inspected. And that was coming right from

the Tramway Safety Board guy.

“Morgan! Do NOT splash water out of the tub!”

“Sorry.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times, sweetie: The water stays

in the tub.”

“Sorry Mommy.”

Trip Bellmore was no more a suspect, in Jill’s mind, than

Morgan, and Tony Bing … hard to say. She’d finally gotten

 81

him on the phone late in the afternoon and, after chastising

him for not waiting for her at the accident scene, had to

endure 30 minutes of “Poor Tony” — an endless recitation of

all the things conspiring against this “honest Texas

businessman” and the evil ways of the county planning

department – which was attempting to ruin his base village

and subdivision development – and the U.S. Forest Service,

which had more rules than major league baseball.

“I mean, what’s a guy to do who’s just trying to make a

little money around here,” he’d concluded.

Jill, who had almost subconsciously taken on the role of

sympathetic listener, shifted to the hard line.

“Listen Mr. Bing, I appreciate your problems but I’m

investigating two deaths that occurred on your mountain …”

“It’s not my mountain, Detective. My terrain park sits on

National Forest land, owned by the taxpayers of the Yoo-

Nited States and …”

“I’m aware of that, Mr. Bing. But you do have a lease with
the Forest Service, do you not?”

“Yeah, I do, but …”

“And unless I’m mistaken, that means you’re responsible,

and liable, for anything that happens within your permit

area. So let’s forget about the taxpayers for the moment,

shall we, and focus on the questions at hand.”

There was a silence on the line as Tony Bing, Jill

imagined, was forming every version of the word “bitch” in

his mind.
 82

“Which is?”

“Which is looking more and more like a murder

investigation, Mr. Bing.”

“What? Murder!? Who the hell said anything about murder?”

“I just did, Mr. Bing. The early evidence seems to point

to the lift being tampered with, and if you’d stuck around

earlier today I could have shown you what I’m talking about.

I’d like you to meet me around noon tomorrow so I can show

you and ask you some questions.”

“But tomorrow’s the Fourth of July!” Tony said, sounding

very much, Jill thought, like Morgan at bedtime. “It’s

downright unpatriotic to be doing anything but drinking beer

and eating barbecue on the Fourth.”

After assuring him that she wouldn’t cut into his beer and

barbecue-consumption too much, Jill hung up, then looked at

the clock with a start and flew out the door to pick up

Morgan.

She sighed and looked at her little girl in the bath,

oblivious to things like chairlift accidents, late child-

support payments and everything else. The only thing she

knew was that Mommy and Daddy, for whatever reason, no

longer lived in the same house. She split holidays with

Jason, and tomorrow was his. It sucked, but given what she

had to do for work, it was for the best.

“Honey, so tomorrow Daddy is going to pick you up and take

you over to Summit County.”

“No! I want to stay with you.”

 83

“They have a big parade in Frisco and then great big

fireworks over the lake. It’ll be really fun.”

“No. Stay here. Mommy.”

Jill knew better than to argue. She also knew Jason heard

the same thing when she was getting ready to leave his

place. It sucked. God, it sucked. But this was it, life as

they knew it now.

“Time to get out and dry off, honeybunny.”

“No.”

***

“No, Skippy. No way.”

He looked hopefully at the other one, trying to remember

her name. Jen? Janet? Jess, that was it.

She just shook her head, laughed and rolled her eyes as

Kim started getting out of the hot tub. They were both

wearing Skippy’s loaner bikinis, and both were full of some

pretty fucking expensive champagne. They had laughed at his

jokes, acted frisky and given him every indication that that

most blessed event – a ménage a trois – was in the offing.

Now, the wheels were coming off his evening. He stretched

back in the tub and called back into the bathroom.

“Just leave the bikinis on the floor.”

“Oh, we will!”

“And don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way

out!”
 84

There was no reply, but after a pair of toilet flushes,

the door to the bedroom slammed loudly a minute later and he

was alone. It took about 30 seconds for Mike to call on his

cell phone.

“Saw them both leave.”

“Yeah.”

“That was quick.”

“Yep.”

A brief pause.

“So, you nailed ‘em both?”

“Of course.”

“You’re full of shit. Neither of them had that freshly

fucked look. I know that look, Skippy. Women can’t hide it.”

Skippy sighed.

“Mike, I’ll give you a hundred dollars to clear the place

out. I’m tired.”

“Done.”

Skippy slowly climbed out of the hot tub and thought, for
the thousandth time, how stupid a thing a hot tub was.

Little cesspools of bacteria, floating hair and who knows

what else. Always too hot, the jets too rambunctious. And

even though he didn’t financially give a shit, he knew they

were greedy suckers of energy.

But they were also the perfect buffer zone, a sort of

purgatory, between the party in his living room and the one

in his bed. Even if most women in the world (except for the

two who’d just left) took an invitation to the hot tub in

 85

the bedroom area as an invitation to have sex with the

gracious host, it was still an easier thing to agree to for

them.

Sex: It was all rather ridiculous, wasn’t it? Skippy no

more wanted to father a child than he desired a puppy, yet

some part of his reptilian brain was always urging him to

stick his dick in the next available and attractive (and, on

some occasions, not so attractive) female he could find.

Sure, much of it was couched in the game of flirting and

wooing, but at the end of the various exercises the male and

female engaged in, it was all about penis entering vagina.

After that, he supposed, all the commotion about sex boiled

down to an orgasm: a funny feeling and an expulsion of some

rather unsavory liquid.

“Stupid,” Skippy said out loud as he pulled on a robe and

crossed to the window. It was a dark night, no moon, with

occasional bottle rockets whizzing into the sky from

surrounding homes.
What would it be like, he wondered, to swear off sex

completely? Or even for a month, or a week? Even then, could

he resist the urge to masturbate? He recalled reading

somewhere that every ejaculation is a release of qi, and

therefore something that should be more closely metered so

as to avoid giving up that power. Probably a myth made up

by some old Chinese priest who couldn’t get a hard-on

anymore. His father told him his endless quest for women to

sleep with was a weakness, a failing. Again, Skippy chalked

 86

that up to the old man’s lack of ability to get any himself.

Since his wife died three years ago, Skippy had no reason to

believe his father had been with a woman – although

certainly he had the ability to send out for one if he

needed it. Not his father’s style, though.

The last wife wasn’t too bad. Even though she was the

third or fourth since Skippy’s own mother, she’d treated him

well – striking a balance somewhere between friendship and

mothering that he’d appreciated. She was a good deal younger

than his father, probably in her late 30s, and not bad

looking.

There was a knock on the door and Mike entered.

“You’re supposed to wait for the ‘come in,’” Skippy said,

not turning around.

“Well, I figured you’d be too depressed to be in here

polishing your carrot,” Mike said. He sat on the edge of the

bed and stuck a cigarette in his mouth he knew better than

to light.
“Everyone’s gone.”

Skippy turned.

“What’s ‘polishing your carrot?’”

“What? You never heard that one? Means jerking off.”

“Oh.”

“Did you hear me say everyone’s gone?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Off Mike’s outstretched palm, Skippy said, “Oh, almost

forgot.”
 87

From his billfold in the locked night table drawer (a

precaution he always took when he had guests in the

bedroom), Skippy pulled a hundred from his wad and handed it

to Mike.

“Guess I’ll be going.”

“Guess you will.”

“Good night.”

“Night.”

That was it, then. Skippy was giving up sex. There was too

much other crazy shit going on for him to have that

complicating his life. He owed something to Kim and Jess;

maybe he’d send them gift baskets. Sarah, too.

If only he knew where to send them.

 88

Chapter 5

The Fourth of July dawned with a bank of clouds enveloping

the valley and a steady rain beating on Trip’s roof. He lay

there looking at the ceiling thinking it was a little odd to

have rain in the morning at this time of year, but that it’d

help relieve the threat of fire. The forests in Eagle County

and all around the West were filled with red, dead trees –

the victims of the voracious mountain pine beetle. It

amounted to a tinder box of dry fuel, and most locals knew

it was just a matter of time before the valley saw a big

fire that would destroy a lot of multi-million-dollar homes

and leave the resort economy in tatters. Now would be a good

time to cash out and go someplace else. Vermont, maybe.

There, he could start over and …

Dana is dead.

The sudden, waking realization landed on his chest like a

terrible weight. She wasn’t in her apartment, warm in her

bed on this chilly morning. She was in a refrigerator at the

coroner’s office in Eagle. Cold, unmoving, unknowing: Dead.

Trip couldn’t imagine what that might be like; the only time

he was in that condition, more or less, was in the weeks and

months after he was conceived. He sure as hell didn’t

remember any of that, but at least the promise of birth lay

ahead for the collection of cells that would one day be

Thomas (Trip) Bellmore III.

Lying there, listening to the rain and contemplating Dana,

it suddenly occurred to him why people continued to believe

 89

in what was to him the most ridiculous of superstitions.

That, somehow, those who died lived on in some other place.

It was the ultimate act of human hubris, he thought, to

expect more at the end. More than an ant or a mouse or a dog

or a horse was allowed. And he knew Dana was on the same

page. “Mulch” is how she summed up the afterlife.

But knowing how it felt to have someone close die, yeah,

he could see the appeal in believing in something else. It

seemed childish, though, like the kid who’d just finished a

big ice cream cone demanding another one. And how much of

human life was spent worrying about and “preparing” for the

end of life and the beginning of some wholly theoretical and

undocumented next level? It was like planning for a big

vacation abroad, only you don’t know the destination or how

to get there. The only ticket you have is the non-

refundable, one-way death boarding pass. And that’s vague

and scary and unsatisfactory because there’s got to be a

better ending to this whole mess, right?

No, that’s enough. This was it. You made of it what you

did and now you’re gone and no, you are not floating around

in ‘heaven’ with a harp or even an electric guitar. You are

not surrounded by everything and everyone you love. You are

not ‘looking down on it all’ from some magical realm. The

only thing left is your useless body, which is undergoing a

wild variety of truly disgusting changes. Your once-lovely

face and tender hands are meaningless; your body an empty

shell that will soon become such an offensive thing that we

 90

will be forced to burn or bury deep. Those things you took

such care with on your body are now utterly devoid of

meaning or usefulness: from the laugh lines you applied

cream to nightly to the leaking womb you tended to every

month since you were 13 to the hair you fussed with every

morning to look just so to the nails you trimmed, the

muscles you exercised and the food you ate to keep it all

going. Moot, all of it.

Trip had read a book about death a few years ago, after

9/11. It was entirely morbid and completely fascinating at

the time, and now he wished he could expunge some of the

information from his mind as he thought of his sister’s body

enduring the first stages of decay. She’d made it clear she

wanted to be cremated, and Trip had made sure he got that

taken care of as soon as possible. She’d wanted her ashes

scattered across a mountain top, of course, and Trip figured

he and Carla could go do it next week some time, after

everything calmed down and … got back to normal?

For Trip, “normal” was going to mean trying to find work,

and soon. He didn’t have much in the way of savings after

his last knee operation, and if he was out of a job with

Tony Bing he’d have to crawl back to Vail Resorts and see if

he could get on with something, anything for the rest of the

summer. He made a mental note to call Arn Johnson over at

Vail and see if he had anything. If not, it’d be something

like early October before he could get back on with mountain

 91

operations. Three months – probably about two months too

late.

And Dana was dead. That would be a sort of tagline to

everything that happened from now until … how long? A year,

maybe, at least, until it finally settled in. People used to

kid him about how close he was to his sister, but he chalked

it up mostly to jealousy. Like most resort towns, Vail was

full of people who’d come there from somewhere else. They

had no family in the area, no ties to the community, no

sense of belonging that extended past their recreational

objectives: Ski 200 days, mountain bike every day after work

in summer, summit every Fourteener in the state. Whatever.

The rain sounded like it was starting to slow down, yet

Trip continued to lie on his back looking at the ceiling. He

thought about how odd it was that he was out here in the
first place, in the woods in the middle of the Rocky

Mountains. Envisioning the land where his cabin sat, he

pictured it 150 years previous, when nothing was there at

all except the native animals and the Utes who passed

through in summer to hunt. The Indians were smart enough not

to winter here. He would do the same thing up on the ski

hill: looking at the lifts and the trails cut through the

forest and try to imagine what it looked like before Vail’s

first ski season in 1962. If someone just went in and cut

down a bunch of trees in the National Forest, everyone would

freak out. But if the ski area did it, well … it was part of

what ski-town humans deemed OK.

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Up at Screamin’ Eagle, they hadn’t had to cut many trees –

or at least not many live ones. The pine beetles had done an

excellent job of thinning the forest in the area where they

planned to build the jumps, rails and kickers: the things

the boarders and free skiers could and would spend hours

going off of. Trip, a skier who turned heads on the

chairlift and who competed on the Pro Mogul Tour for two

seasons, simply didn’t get it. The thrill of having boards

on your feet was in speed and vertical, not in sliding

sideways down a piece of metal or going back and forth in a

half-pipe.

He scratched himself, stretched, thought about coffee and

remembered again: Dana was dead. The thought was like a type

of pain that peaked at times and never went away. Now, “Dana

was dead” — or should it be “Dana is dead?” — was a

background. Like a room painted a different color, it would

just always be there. For the rest of his life. The phrase

about time healing all wounds entered his consciousness and

he considered it. No doubt the peaks would level off after

time, and he tried to project forward to that time – a time

when the room was still that different color, but the

difference didn’t reach out and whack you on the head every

few minutes. The other thing to remember was that how he

felt didn’t alter any of the facts, and that, then, must be

the nature of grief: the utter frustration of it all.

Trip read stories in the paper and watched news reports of

trapped miners and lost children and missing POW’s and mused
 93

over the passion and energy that went into it all. If it

seemed pretty clear that your miner was dead and your P.O.W.

fated never to return, he wondered, what then with all the

fuss? People just had a big thing around death and closure.

They couldn’t stand loose ends, whether it be the lack of a

body to bury or a killer still on the loose or any other

kind of question mark.

He was feeling it himself. They had the body, and that of

the other guy, but there was still a big question hanging

over it all. A mystery, he supposed it could be called. And,

like grief, a mystery had its arc as well. And it could

outlive grief, by centuries, in some cases. He was thinking

of those stories of exhumed skeletons, forensic

archaeologists trying to ascertain how some historic figure

actually died.
There were some other species of animal that showed grief

or at least some level of agitation when a mate or offspring

died. Most of them, though, simply walked past or even over

the fallen and went on with their own lives.

Humans, Trip figured, would be better off leaving grief

behind. In fact, it was a good example of an evolutionary

trait that didn’t support survival of the species. How many

people, he wondered, had been so consumed with grief that

they’d forsaken their own lives to indulge it? How many had

died trying to get that closure, whether it was pursuing a

criminal who then turned on them; dragging a fallen comrade

off the battlefield only to take a bullet yourself; or

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simply sacrificing a chunk of your own life, your own

potential, to dwell on a loss?

Thinking again of cold Dana — Dana’s corpse, her remains —

in the morgue drawer, Trip took inventory of his own body.

Toes and feet and ankles, always served him well, nothing

wrong there. Knees, not so good. His right ACL had been

operated on no less than three times, and he’d had the MCL

on the left done once. A pile of bills from the Steadman-

Hawkins clinic in Vail were mixed with insurance forms going

back almost a year. He could be one of those people who had

to declare bankruptcy over medical bills.

Moving north, he thanked the stars that he’d never broken

a femur – a break that can kill you and which he’d seen

happen to both skiers and boarders. Considering his groin,

he could report no problems there other than inaction. The

divorce had just about stripped his libido away, leaving him

wondering what it was that had been so urgent about sex in

the past. Hard-wired, supposedly, but now he listened to

male friends talk about pussy the same way he heard them

discuss golf: It wasn’t something he was interested in. Even

jerking off seemed more an exercise of physiology than

anything he could take pleasure in. Once or twice a week he

came to it, confronted the arc of feigned interest and made

it happen. Maybe 3 minutes all told. Nothing like the past,

when an ejaculation, one shared with a woman, was the gold

ring, the culmination of yet another arc that might have

 95

taken as long as several months or as short as an hour or

two at the bar.

So, no, nothing physical wrong there, but it was certainly

something he was going to have to address on the cerebral

level some day. The rest – heart, lungs, liver, whatever

else was in there – was all good. I’m a healthy guy, for the

most part, Trip thought. But everyone had their expiration

date – what was his? Assuming he didn’t die in an accident

or get killed like Dana. If he was 34 now and say lived to

be 84, that was 50 more years which was, what? 2058. It

sounded downright sci-fi, that date. Comfortably far away in

a future where, who the hell knew, people could have their

heads sliced off and a new cyborg body slid underneath. And

would that be incredibly boring and tedious after a time –

living for centuries? Wouldn’t you just ultimately die of

disgust for everything around you? Or would you get used to

it, this going on and on and on?

And was Dana lucky to be rid of it? She was an atheist

like him, and so just in black. But what if they were wrong

and she was in “heaven?” Either way, what was so bad about

death? It was more of a chore for the ones left behind, the

Trip Bellmores who missed their big sisters or their wives

or mothers or fathers or children who went before them.

People couldn’t stand that, which is why they invented gods

and afterlives. Made sense.

Wishing he could believe it, Trip got out of bed and

started making the motions of the living. The pall of grief

 96

surrounding him felt claustrophobic, suffocating, and when a

shower did nothing to relieve it he wondered what else there

was: pot, alcohol, action movies, a re-reading of Lord of

the Rings, what?

But the room had been painted a different color, and there

was no brush or bucket that could change it. Shuffling from

point A to point B was the only thing he could think of.

And so he did.

It was impossible to keep Morgan out of her bed, so Jill

had given up trying. The fact was she liked having her in

there with her, especially in the morning when she could

wake up and stare uninterrupted at the little girl’s

amazingly beautiful face. Morgan was this extraordinary gift

that kept shining so brightly Jill sometimes felt it would

overwhelm her.

She was to meet Jason at Vail Pass at noon, and she

dreaded the four days she would be without Morgan. They were
times of plodding around the townhome in the evening,

playing the soundtrack of the usual Morgan sounds in her

head. Holding one of her stuffies, smelling her pillow,

coming across evidence of her existence in every nook and

corner of the place. But the vital spirit of her presence

was gone, temporarily suspended, and Jill suspected that a

good part of the anxiety that accompanied the absences was

the suspicion – however unwarranted – that she was never

coming back.
 97

But she was planning to work most of this Fourth of July,

and she tried to be happy about the fact that Morgan would

no doubt have a fun day of it with Jason. Once the exchange

occurred and a little processing time had taken place,

Morgan sort of re-accepted the other parent, adapting, her

little heart wrapping itself once again around their new

reality. That she seemed to have grown accustomed to it so

easily alarmed Jill, and she grilled Morgan about how she

was “really feeling” at every opportunity – usually with the

idea in mind that her questions were to be light, tactful,

in the course of conversation. She’d learned things like how

many beers Jason drank when Morgan was there (very few, it

turned out), what kind of food she was served (they ate

well; Jason being a decent cook) and any new girlfriends to

be curious, jealous and anxious about (just one, a brown-

haired woman whose name Morgan couldn’t remember and who’d

only appeared once).

But she was there today, sitting in the passenger seat of

Jason’s car.

Morgan unbuckled herself, opened the door and ran into her

father’s arms while Jill got out and stood, arms crossed,

awaiting her goodbyes and stung by the evidence that, for

Morgan, she’d just ceased to exist.

But Jason looked up at her.

“Hi Jill. Morgan, go say goodbye to Mommy.”

Reluctantly, or so it seemed, Morgan ran over to Jill and

threw herself into a hug.

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“You have a wonderful time with Daddy at the Fourth of

July. Try to remember some of the fireworks you see so you

can tell Mommy about them.”

Jason had walked a little closer, and Jill looked up at

him. He was still good-looking to her, but his face also

contained all the history of their years together, good and

bad, as well as the memory of how he had looked sitting

there opposite her in the courtroom. His face contained more

meaning in it than any other human’s on the planet, yet she

couldn’t look at it for long without having to turn away. He

had gotten to be a person who could and would say the most

awful and surprising things. Like the time early in their

relationship when, during lovemaking, he’d told her that her

breasts were slightly different sizes (they weren’t). He

wasn’t done yet, either.

“Hello Jason.” She nodded toward his car. “Who’s she?”

“Jill, believe it or not.” A beat. “Fiance.”

“What’s a fee-on-say?” Morgan asked.

“It’s a joke, I’m sure,” Jill said. Employing the stern

whisper she’d grown accustomed to using with Jason while

Morgan was present, she said:

“Six months, Jason. Are you kidding me?”

He shrugged and put his hands on Morgan’s shoulders.

“Go hop in the car Sweet Pea. Daddy’ll be right there. Say

hi to Jill.”

Jill stooped for one more hug.

“I think he means say goodbye to Mommy.”

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“Goodbye Mommy. I love you.”

“I love you too, Morgan. Very very much.”

And she was gone. In the car with The Woman while Jill

looked again into that consequence-ridden face.

“So six months, and you’re getting remarried? Have you

even thought for a second about what Morgan will think of

all this?”

“Of course I have. But Morgan and Jill get along great and

…”

“What? She’s barely mentioned her, and please don’t tell

me her name is Jill.”

“Unfortunately, it is. I’ve asked her to change it but she

says no way.”

Off Jill’s furious look he added: “That was a joke,

Jilly.”
“Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that any

more.”

“OK, Jesus Christ. But listen Jill, I can understand how

you feel …”

“No you can’t!”

“… but the fact is if I want to get remarried, I mean,

there’s nothing you can do about it. We can talk about how

all this will work, and we can even talk about it nicely,

like civilized people. It’s not going to help much if you

just act all psycho about it.”

Jill swallowed the comment on her lips that would probably

have fallen under Jason’s definition of “psycho” and, waving

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her hand dismissively at him, turned while saying, “We’ll

just have to talk about it later. Not now. Too much.”

With a look that said he’s taking the high road with a

nutbag, Jason said “OK” and turned back to his car.

“Jason!” Jill was standing next to her car holding the

door handle. He turned. “Safe around the fireworks, OK?”

“OK, absolutely.”

“And Jason …?”

She was going to regret saying it, but here it came.

“No sex noises. For god’s sake, don’t let her hear you two

… going at it.”

His face went blank and he turned and got into his car and

drove away, Morgan forgetting to wave as Jill sat in her own

car paralyzed and weeping. Somehow, the sound of another

heavy door between what she’d had a year ago and what she
had now …

She stayed in the parking lot for another few minutes,

alternately crying and trying to stop crying, to compose

herself for god’s sakes this was bound to happen life goes

on what the hell? Then she recalled the broken bodies of

Dana Monroe Bellmore and Thomas Kurt Welter and wiped her

tears away and started the car.

“Fuck it, Jill. Let’s go find a murderer.”

After returning from the hike with Scout, Carla closed all

the doors and windows against any errant fireworks, turned

off her cell phone and went to bed early. On the Fourth, the
 101

calls started right around 10 a.m., and she took them all

with a pot of coffee and Scout sleeping by her side.

The Vail Daily reporter kept her on the longest, since she

was working on an overview obit of Dana’s life and work. But

she also heard from the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and

the Denver television channels. A producer from CNN called

and said they were trying to get a crew out, but that it

might be Monday before they got there. Later in the morning,

after the story hit the wire, she got calls from the New

York Times, the L.A. Times, Washington Post and even the

Times of London.

“Everyone’s curious about a chairlift death, I guess,”

Carla told Scout. She’d only been a little girl when it

happened, but Carla still remembered when the gondolas in

Vail crashed in 1976. Other than that, though, chairlift

deaths due to lift malfunction were uncommon – except for

rare occasions when people simply slipped out of the chair

out of sheer stupidity. Or kids – kids sometimes fell out.

Carla figured it’d be a story reported on pretty widely,

but she was surprised at the extent of it already. The part

of her that spent most of her waking hours raising money for

her organization and raising awareness of its missions

couldn’t help but consider the many references to the Eagle

Valley Resource Coalition as a good thing. And she knew

Dana, in glass-half-full mode, would say the same thing.

Donors full of sympathy were also much more likely to show

it with larger contributions. Again, she knew she’d have

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Dana’s blessing to think such thoughts; otherwise she’d

banish them outright – at least until budget season and she

was once again trying to figure out how to do a lot of stuff

with little money.

The rest of the callers were friends of her’s and Dana’s,

friends of the Coalition, volunteers, a mayor, two of the

three county commissioners and the head of the Vail Valley

Foundation.

Carla still had plenty of her own grief to go through, but

she’d been through the initial shock, worked out a lot of

her feelings on the previous evening’s hike and had steeled

herself for the barrage of calls she was now enduring. She

was the kind of person who could shift mental gears with

great effectiveness, compartmentalizing her own feelings for

the time being to cope with the needs of others. The ability
had given her the nickname “Carla the Cold” in high school,

and her friends identified her ability to achieve emotional

remove as a main reason boyfriends didn’t last long.

“I get it,” Dana had told her once, after watching Carla

dress-down a male volunteer for borrowing tools without

asking.

“Get what?”

“Why people think you’re Cold Carla.”

“It’s ‘Carla the Cold.’”

“Whatever. They both sound stupid.”

Carla looked at Dana, waiting for one of her famous

concise summaries of a person or situation. She would

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deliver a truism that both made sense and would make Carla

feel vindicated. She did it all the time.

“So explain it to me, Dana, why I’m Carla the Chilly

Bitch.”

“You don’t mix emotion with business, you separate them.

Most people can’t.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, you can totally partition things, and it’s what

makes you so effective running this whole thing. But it’s

going to keep you single until you figure out how to fake it

when you need to.”

“Fake it?”

“You’d make a better lesbian, but if you’re going to be

with guys, you need to let those partitions cross over. Not

everything a guy needs is a problem that needs to be solved

by Carla the Smartass.”

Carla sensed the emerging truism but smiled and said:

“What the hell do you know, Dana the Dyke?”

She’d shrugged.

“Trip is my guy, the one I know best, and I guess some of

what we have together mirrors any couple. I may be gay, but

I know guys as well as any other woman. Maybe better, since

I don’t have my vision fucked up by sleeping with them.”

Carla hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to practice Dana’s

“partition crossover” advice, but she kept it in mind as she

spoke on the phone to the people calling about Dana’s death.

She also thought she’d done OK with Trip the day before,
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showing plenty of genuine emotion while also taking care of

what needed to be taken care of. What the hell else was she

supposed to do – dissolve into a puddle of estrogen-fueled

inaction while things fell apart around her? Is that really

what guys wanted?

She was arguing with Dana again, in her head, and hearing

herself exaggerating what Dana had said to defend herself.

She’d been right – she was so often right – that Carla had

to strike a balance between the no-nonsense executive

director and a woman – a potential mate, partner, wife,

mother – who had needs she couldn’t fulfill on her own. Men,

a lot of them, anyway, wanted to take care of her, and

ultimately that’s what drove them away. Carla felt fine

taking care of herself. Yet she still wanted that person in

her life.
So, yeah, crossover, whatever you wanted to call it,

that’s what she needed to figure out. Maybe she could

practice a little with Trip. They would both have “emotional

needs” during this “difficult time,” wouldn’t they? Carla

could let her guard down some, Trip would see her deal and

maybe forget a little about his own grief seeing after

Carla.

“Shit!” she said, looking at Scout. “Do you hear me,

Scout? I’m like trying to pre-manage this whole thing, and

that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

Scout gave her a concerned look.

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“It’s supposed to just happen, unfold organically. Normal

people don’t think like this. God, no wonder people think

I’m cold and calculating. I am!”

Her cell phone rang; it was Trip.

“Hey Carla. Can you meet me in the parking lot at Home

Depot in like 20 minutes?”

“Sure Trip. What’s up?”

“Tell you when I see you.”

Trip was sitting on a stack of fertilizer bags in front of

the store when Carla pulled up. She thought he looked OK,

considering, but the sunglasses he wore hid whatever his

eyes were saying.

“Hi Trip. So … are we doing a home improvement project or

what?”
He hopped down and gave her a quick hug.

“I’m in the market for a metal detector.”

Off Carla’s quizzical look, he went on.

“The detective told me they didn’t find Dana’s cell phone

up there. The found the other guy’s, nothing on it of any

use. But you know Dana’s phone …”

Yes, Dana’s phone. A fervent text messager and caller,

Dana also kept a top-of-the-line camera phone on her at all

times. Trip and Carla had, at times, forced her to either

hand the phone over or turn it off, since she couldn’t

resist its constant allure in her pocket.

 106

“Sure,” Carla said, walking in the automatic doors with

Trip. “They’ll definitely want that for clues or whatever

but …”

Trip stopped. “But what?”

“Trip, it’s just Thursday. Dana died Wednesday, yesterday.

You’re her brother, her closest friend. I mean, what the

hell are you doing out here today, the Fourth of July? You

should be …”

Trip kept walking and Carla hurried to keep up.

“That’s exactly it, Carla. I don’t know what I ‘should be’

doing either. There’s nothing going on today other than

barbecues and fireworks. Our parents won’t be here now until

Sunday, turns out, because they couldn’t get a flight. And I

just don’t want to sit up there in McCoy twiddling my

thumbs. I’m pissed off, really pissed off, and I’d like to
do something, anything. If I can find that cell phone, maybe

it’ll help find whoever did this.”

They were both walking briskly up and down the enormous

aisles, scanning for anything that looked like “metal

detector department.”

“But Trip, I understand all that, but aren’t there rules

about, like, interfering with a police investigation? And

did you say they told you to stay away from there since

you’re a suspect?”

“Hey, I’m a ‘person of interest,’ not a suspect,” Trip

said. “And specifically I’m supposed to stay away from the

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motor room, I think. We’ll be looking for the cell phone

along the lift line and at the bottom terminal.”

Trip had stopped again and picked up an enormous bolt and

its matching nut.

“I love a big-ass bolt like this. Look at this fucker.”

Carla smile up at him and shook her head.

“Trip, OK, A, I don’t think they have metal detectors

here; B, if we’re going on a hike I need to get some lunch;

and C, I adore that about you – you and your big-ass bolts.

So did Dana.”

He gave her a quick look she couldn’t quite interpret and

set the bolt down.

“Alright Carla. A, I agree with you: no metal detectors at

Home Depot. B, yes, we should get some lunch at Zaccaza

immediately, if they’re open; and C, yeah, for a lesbian,

Dana had a fascination with the things guys are fascinated

with. The less she understood it, the more it intrigued her.

She’d actually be great with this kind of thing, looking for

clues, trying to figure something out.”

Over pizza, Carla picked up on the theme of wishing Dana

was there to help.

“It’s what she did best, and she did it all the time you

know.”

“Did what?”

“She was like a detective, always piecing together things

to paint a picture. That’s what someone with a degree in

wildlife biology does. You’re out there, studying scat and

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tracks and nests and habitats, trying to figure out who’s

there, what they’re doing, what they’re eating, if they’re

reproducing, if they’re in trouble. And you don’t see them

most of the time, the critters, so you have to work off a

lot of other evidence.”

“So what was she working on, Carla? What evidence was she

gathering yesterday? In the past few weeks? And where would

she keep it?”

Trip loved Zacazza pizza, but talking about Dana had

killed his appetite and turned his mushroom-garlic slice to

cardboard in his mouth.

“And why didn’t you or I know what she was doing, Trip? I

mean, between me and you, I didn’t think Dana had any

secrets.”

“Unless she was afraid something she knew was too

dangerous to share. She was protecting us? From what?”

Carla sipped at her iced tea. “Lynx?”

“No. They already did the whole EIS for the area, there
was nothing. Or at least nothing cute enough to slow down

construction.”

Carla knew about the Environmental Impact Statement, but

she wasn’t convinced it was the final word.

“I don’t know, Trip. If lynx were found up there, it might

not stop the whole thing, but it sure as hell could slow it

down – delay it a whole season.”

“Yeah, but Carla, we’re talking about Tony Bing then,

right? There was nothing he wanted more than to get these

 109

two lifts in for this coming season. If he was afraid of

lynx and wanted to whack Dana for finding them, he sure as

hell wouldn’t have used his precious, crappy old chair to

kill her. And Tony’s a dickhead, but he’s a putz, not a

killer. It’s gotta be something else.”

He stood up and tossed his napkin on the table.

“Let’s go.”

Mandelbaum didn’t like Colorado. It was cold too much of

the time, even in summer, and devoid of the kind of leafy

trees and dense foliage the developer associated with true

relaxation. The Rockies were full of just what the name

implied: sharp rocks, lots of brown dirt, severe ridgelines

and coarse terrain unrefined by the couple of extra millions

of years a place like Vermont had going for it. It was

colder up there, sure, but in summer the Green Mountains

were quintessentially verdant, rounded off nicely and packed

with many different trees. In Vail, you had aspen, which

were nice enough, but half the pine trees had been killed

off by beetles. They stood forlornly on the hillsides,

turning red and later gray, destined to fall over within a

decade or so and, consequently, impacting real estate

values. Mandelbaum had already heard from several investors

reluctant to fund his project because of the stands of ugly,

dead trees lined up in the “view corridor.”

All because of some stupid fucking bug.

 110

But there was nothing Mandelbaum could do about the pine

beetles. People would either buy and assume the trees would

grow back, or they wouldn’t. The real concern was this

leaching mine pollution, which was apparently worse than

he’d originally been told by his own engineers. They were

here now, two of them at least, and not too happy about

being called up from Denver on the Fourth of July.

The lead engineer was named Steven Bright. Mandelbaum

couldn’t remember the other one’s name; he didn’t care. The

two were sitting in his study sipping Fiji water out of

square bottles and looking nervous and pissed off.

Fine.

“Tell me a story, boys.”

Bright started, outlining the recent developments

Mandelbaum already knew about. He waved his hand at the

engineer.

“I know all that shit. Tell me something I don’t know.

Like how we fix it.”

“It’s a longer story … sir,” Bright said. He hated saying

“sir,” but “Mandelbaum” seemed an odd thing to call someone.

Mandelbaum had also made it clear he did not like to be

addressed as “Mr. Mandelbaum,” and he’d never provided a

first name. “If you have a little time, it might help to

know some of the background.”

“Well,” Mandelbaum said, leaning back in his chair, “I

hate the fucking Fourth of July, so I’ve got all day. I’m
 111

assuming, however, that you two want to get back to the

festivities wherever, so you can give me the Cliff Notes.”

It all started back in the 1860s, Bright said, when miners

flooded into Colorado. Most of them were looking for gold

and silver, but others found mining some of the less-exotic

minerals could be just as profitable – more so, in many

cases. The Eagle Mine near Minturn had been one of those

operations. Actually, there were several zinc mines in the

area, but the Eagle was the largest – a mishmash of smaller

mines consolidate by the New Jersey Zinc Company. It

operated into the 1900s and through the boom years of World

War II, after which it fell into disuse.

“The problem with these mines is that they created huge

piles of waste in the process,” Bright said. “They took out

most of the zinc, but there was all kinds of other nasty
shit left behind: cadmium, mercury, and the zinc itself.”

At some point, Bright explained, the mine was purchased by

Gulf & Western Companies, which later became Paramount and,

more recently, Viacom. Then a speculator named Miller

purchased the mine with the grand idea to sift through all

the mine waste and get more stuff out.

“But he went bankrupt,” Bright said. “He couldn’t pay his

utility bills, and the power to the mine got shut off, which

was a disaster.”

“Why?” Mandelbaum said.

 112

“Because there were pumps keeping water out of all those

shafts, so once the power was gone and the pumps stopped

pumping, the whole mountain filled up with water.”

The other engineer chimed in.

“The state health department actually did do an emergency

removal of some of the more toxic materials, but then they

sealed up the entrances to the mine and let it flood.”

Bright continued: “They thought the water would actually

help by stopping some of the natural processes caused by

air. But it was a terrible idea because the water rose up to

where there was all this fractured rock filled with bad

stuff, and it all oozed out.”

“It turned the Eagle River orange, freaked everyone out

pretty good,” the other man said. “And that’s what triggered

the Superfund designation and the clean up.”

Mandelbaum knew some parts of the rest of the story: How

Viacom, as a previous owner of the mine, got a big chunk of

the cleanup expense hung around its neck. Somewhere in the

story, the lawyers who were representing Miller got control

of the land and had big plans to develop it into a ski area.

Rumors had it they originally wanted to partner with Vail

Resorts to link the smaller resort to Blue Sky Basin, but

Vail backed out of the deal and the lawyers, as lawyers do,

sued – and got a settlement in their favor.

Bobby Ginn came in after the dust settled and purchased

much of the land around the site – although he was smart

 113

enough to keep his hands off anything within the Superfund

designated area.

“So when I bought this 43 acres next door, my assumption —

and I will state again here for the record, gentlemen, that

it was an assumption based upon your recommendations – was

that 90% of the cleanup work was done and that any more

leaching of zinc or any other shit was history.”

“That was our belief,” Bright said.

But it had been an unusually rainy summer, and while rain

in the High Country is great for rafting, keeping down fire

danger and filling the reservoirs that fed the Front Range,

it was also a great mechanism for washing mine waste into

the local rivers.

“The sculpin are taking it on the chin,” said the other

guy.
Slowly and evenly, Mandelbaum said “What the fuck are

sculpin?”

“Native fish,” Bright said. “Ugly, undesirable to

fishermen but they’re the local indicator species, and when

they start turning up dead, the TU guys take notice.”

Off Mandelbaum’s venomous look, Bright continued.

“That’s Trout Unlimited, national organization that tries

to protect trout streams. There’s a local guy here named Ken

Arbuckle, and he and that Dana Bellmore from the Resource

Coalition sounded the alarm. So now the EPA and the U.S.

Fish & Wildlife Service and the Colorado Division of

Wildlife are involved.”

 114

“Don’t forget the guy from Eagle County and the Minturn

town government,” said the other engineer, to which Bright

nodded.

Mandelbaum could feel his insides starting to loosen up as

the fate of the Eagle River sculpin roiled his intestines

and put a vice around his chest while initiating the first

stirrings of a migraine. This was supposed to be an easy

development, or so he’d told himself and his Number One,

Steven Wray.

But Wray was in Florida putting out some other fire having

to do with some faulty foundations, and so here was

Mandelbaum, in fucking Colorado on the fucking Fourth of

July having to spend brainpower worrying about a stupid

fucking fish no one even wants to catch and eat.

Calm thyself.
It was a phrase his father used to say to him when the

young Mandelbaum got worked up over a kid at school, a “B”

on a test or anything else beyond what he considered to be

normal parameters. All the yoga, meditation, Xanax and

therapy had done little to help him cope with his body’s

natural propensity to dump fight or flight chemicals into

his bloodstream whenever adversity loomed. But his father’s

advice worked better than most, when he could remember to

say it.

Calm thyself.

“So …” Mandelbaum began, settling back into his chair once

again. “We have the cute little sculpin, god rest their
 115

souls. We have various officials from government agencies

and we have a couple of no doubt well-meaning local tree-

hugger types worried about the fishies. My first question is

“Just a quick fyi, sir: The one local, Dana Bellmore from

the Resource Coalition, she died yesterday in a chairlift

accident.”

Mandelbaum closed his eyes, repeated his mantra and

continued.

“… my first question is how they are pegging this issue,

this problem, to my property if it’s non-point-source

pollution. Couldn’t it be coming from Ginn’s place?”

No, it couldn’t Bright explained, because the area

contained in the Superfund site that bordered Ginn’s

property had been so thoroughly investigated and managed

over the years that they knew exactly where anything toxic

was coming from, and they had an on-site leach field that

trapped any crap before it went into the river. There seemed
to be little doubt, based on the tests done by the fish

people, that the zinc was coming from Alpen Cliff Meadows.

“We did a few quick hydrology tests too,” Bright said.

“There’s no question in our minds that this is our problem.”

“And I assume there’s a dollar amount attached to this

little problem?” Calm thyself.

“It’s hard to say for sure, but our initial estimate would

be $1 million to $3 million for the cleanup necessary,” said

the other engineer.

 116

“Even though the zinc is coming from a lot of different

places, we believe the main source is this area right here,”

Bright said, pointing at the map on the coffee table. “These

are what’s called ‘cribbings,’ wood structures that are

holding up a bunch of old mine waste. It’s a concentrated

bunch of stuff in one place, plus the wood is rotting, so if

it’s not addressed, the whole thing could come down into …

the Eagle River.”

“Which would be bad,” Mandelbaum said, almost to himself.

“Much more expensive than cleaning it up now.”

“Absolutely,” Bright said.

Mandelbaum had one more question, and it was delivered in

his quietest voice, so low that the two engineers had to

lean forward to catch his words. It was asked as

Mandelbaum’s migraine was kicking into high gear, his vision

getting distorted while the pain started to crescendo. He

had, he knew, only a few minutes before he could do nothing

more than take his pills and lie down in a dark room.
Why didn’t you tell me about these fucking cribbings you

stupid motherfuckers?

Although he wasn’t sure why he was doing so, Bright

delivered the answer in a whisper:

Because this area was not included in the original

purchase and environmental survey. You, sir, bought the 13

acres the cribbings are on after you hired us to do the work

on the original 30 acres.”

The other guy didn’t bother whispering.

 117

“Mandelbaum, you didn’t even tell us you’d purchased these

other 13 acres with the cribbings on them. We sure as hell

would have told you to run the other way. All you have to do

is take one look at these things to know they’re a disaster

waiting to happen and …”

Mandelbaum held up his hand, stood up and walked slowly

from the room. The two engineers looked at one another, then

waited about 15 minutes before they got up and left.

Most of Mandelbaum’s brain was devoted to his pain, but he

had about 3% left to contemplate what he’d just been told

and how this had come to be. It was that little bitch – that

little dead bitch now – Dana Bellmore who’d told him about

this additional piece of land, right along the river. The

old rancher who owned it, now willing to sell after all

these years – but he had to act fast before the guy died and
he’d be faced with dealing with the estate. It was a good

price, a fair price, and Mandelbaum saw it as a Phase II or

III parcel he could do all kinds of things with.

As the remaining 3% of his brain transitioned to pain

awareness, Mandelbaum allowed one more thought to occupy

that small space.

If she weren’t dead already, I’d fucking kill her.

 118

Chapter 6

The morning’s rain had made the ground muddy, but the sun

was out in full force, drying the ground as Trip and Carla

walked the lift line. The smell of sage and pine was

powerful, reminding both of them of Dana.

“She lived for this smell,” Carla said, stopping and

taking a deep breath through her nose.

“Yep, that she did,” Trip said.

They’d brought Scout as well, although the retriever’s

nose was probably no better than theirs at finding a piece

of metal and plastic. On the assumption that maybe some of

Dana’s scent could have translated to her cell phone, they

had the dog sniff a fleece vest Dana had left at Carla’s. So

while Scout zigzagged up the line, nose to the ground, Trip

and Carla walked a methodical 30 feet apart, each trying to

keep within about 15 feet of the lift towers.

Apart from the occasional bolt or candy wrapper from the

crew that put the towers in, there was little to see since

the lift had never been used by the public. If that had been

the case, they would have found a trove of dropped junk,

from lip balm containers and trail maps to sunscreen bottles

and lost gloves, hats and sunglasses.

Trip and Carla knew with certainty that the phone was out

here somewhere, since it wasn’t on Carla’s body and the

woman was never without it.

“If it wasn’t in her pocket, that means she must have had

it out, trying to call someone during the rollback,” Trip

 119

said. “Which means that it’s probably not at the bottom but

somewhere higher up.”

So far as Trip could tell, there was no way to determine

which chair Dana and Tom had been on or where it was on the

line when the rollback happened. But it was a relatively

short lift – only 67 chairs covering some 500 yards. There

was one particularly steep section, though, where the lift

line dropped precipitously over a modest cliff. It was the

hardest tower to install, since it had a super compression –

a series of 10 sheaves on each side instead of the typical

one or two wheels most towers had.

“That’s where they’d get the biggest bump and be hanging

on for their lives,” Trip said.

“Well, let’s focus on that area, but leave no other stone

unturned,” Carla said.

Trip winced when he saw what was left of the super

compression. Most of the sheaves were lying on the ground,

and the tower itself – which would have taken a lot of the
torque the twisted haul rope was producing – was bent at an

unpleasant angle.

After half an hour of searching, Carla sat on a rock and

pulled out her water bottle. Trip soon joined her. They sat

in quiet for a moment, pondering the unhappy task they were

about.

“The thing that’s weird to me is that there’s not a bunch

of cops out here doing what we’re doing,” Carla said

finally.
 120

Trip shrugged.

“Fourth of July I guess. They’re busy riding around in

parades, herding drunks or whatever.”

“But isn’t there some kind of ‘trail goes cold’ thing?

Like the longer you wait, the better chance evidence is

going to disappear or something?”

“I think that’s true,” Trip said. “At least according to

the TV show’s I’ve watched. Seems like they’re always right

out there as soon as someone gets whacked, asking questions,

looking for stuff.”

Carla laughed.

“I know. I love when they find the incriminating whatever,

and hold it up with a pencil; put it in a baggy. And there

it is, the whole case solved. Makes me wonder if there’s

something like that on Dana’s cell.”

“Like a photo of Mr. Evil Developer pouring something in

the Eagle …”

“From a bottle with a skull-and-crossbones,” Carla said.

“Perfect. That’s what we need.”

They listened to the almost-silent hillside for a moment.

There were a couple of marmot chattering at each other

somewhere higher up, and a few birds making noise. The only

other sound was the wind shaking the aspen leaves. From

where they sat, they could see the wreckage of the lower

terminal; Trip could even pick out the tree where he’d found

Dana.

Dana’s body, you mean.

 121

“Death is the weirdest thing,” he said. “The person just

disappears, and they leave behind this worthless shell.”

Carla put a tentative arm around his shoulder.

“Babies are the same way, in reverse. One minute they’re

just here.”

“And it evens out, I guess. Someone dies, someone’s born.”

Carla could have gone into some statistics about the

world’s population and how extraordinarily out of balance it

was. But instead she said, “That’s pretty much the way of

it. But it’s supposed to be … you’re supposed to be older

when you check out and create that room.”

“Yeah,” Trip said. “Everyone’s different ages when they

die, no one knows when. But everyone’s the same age when

they’re born. There’s some mystery there as well, but

usually you know within a week or two when a baby’s going to

show up, right?”

“Right. Unless you have a C-section. You can actually

schedule an appointment for that.”

“I guess if you’re getting executed, you know about when

death will happen. Or if you’re a suicide bomber.”

Carla took her arm from around his shoulder, effecting

some business with her water bottle.

“I don’t want to know,” she said. “I don’t think anyone

does.”

“No. Me neither.”

Now, Trip put his arm around Carla and gave her a squeeze.

He looked into her face.

 122

“Thanks Carla, for being here. You … you’re awesome.”

She thought he was going to kiss her for a fleeting

moment, but then he stood up abruptly.

“Time to get moving. We’ve still got one more knoll above

here and then the top staging area. I don’t think they got

up this high, but when you’re looking for something, if it’s

not in the place it ought to be, it’s time to start

searching in more unlikely places.”

Carla stood up and swept pine needles from her pants. She

tried to simply clear her mind of some of the thoughts

bouncing around inside her head. She was helping to find

some clues to help in finding the guy who murdered one of

her best friends, and she was doing it with the brother of

the friend in question. Any other considerations – such as

thoughts of something happening romantically with Trip –

were moot, irrelevant, to be banished.

So she mentally measured another 15 feet from the lift

line and began scanning the ground, walking slowly uphill

parallel to trip. Neither of them spoke.

When Jill arrived at the lower terminal, neither of the

two deputies that were supposed to meet here there had

arrived yet. A couple of calls on the radio confirmed what

she’d already suspected: The sheriff had them reassigned to

parade duty in Eagle. She thought about calling the

undersheriff but concluded it would be pointless. They’d

 123

tell her to calm down, that it was the Fourth of July and

none of the evidence was going anywhere.

Never mind that it had rained this morning, already

compromising what little hope she might have of lifting a

fingerprint from somewhere or finding a useful shoe

impression.

Mostly what Jill was looking for was the cell phone that

belonged to Dana. It was funny, she thought, how so many

investigations started – and sometimes ended – with the cell

phone. For something few people even owned as little as 10

or 15 years ago, they’d become key evidence in so many

cases. And people had a blind spot when it came to

understanding how much of themselves they revealed with

their phone.

In the case of Dana Bellmore, Jill had already started the

paperwork to subpoena the record of her account from

Verizon. But even if that told her about calls coming in and

going out from Dana’s phone, it was the phone itself that
would contain any interesting text messages, voice mails or

photos. It simply had to be found, and if Jill had to start

the search herself, so be it.

She ran into Trip and Carla halfway up the hill.

“Well, hello!” she called when they were still a hundred

feet apart.

“Hello, um, detective sheriff lady,” Trip said as they

drew closer.

“It’s ‘detective sergeant,’” Jill said.

 124

“That’s got a nicer ring to it,” Carla said. “More

professional.”

“Thanks. You’ve got no idea what it took to get that title

in front of my name.”

Carla said, “Oh, I think I might.”

Jill and Carla had met the previous day when the detective

had stopped by her office. When it became clear that Carla

didn’t know much about what, exactly, Dana was doing on the

mountain when she was killed, she’d flagged her for a

follow-up interview and gone to see Trip.

Now, she had both of them in one place, which was

interesting. And it was the murder scene, also interesting.

And they were apparently looking for something.

“Did you find it?” she said, looking first at Trip, then

at Carla.
Trip instinctively said “Find what?” while Carla said

“No.”

Jill smiled.
“Are we out compromising a crime scene looking for random

clues, or did we have something particular in mind?”

“We didn’t cross the tape,” Trip said, referring to the

yellow police tape that surrounded both lift terminals.

“That’s good,” Jill said. “But you still really shouldn’t

be up here, Mr. Bellmore.”

“Trip, please.”

“Is he still a suspect?” Carla said.

“Person of interest is what I am.”

 125

Jill looked at the two of them, trying to decide whether

it was time for hard-ass cop or understanding confidante.

“Listen, guys, it’s the Fourth of July. Trip, you just

lost your sister, Carla you lost one of your best friends

and employees. Go … somewhere else, OK? Go to a barbecue, a

walk in the woods far from here. Take care of your family or

whatever you need to do. Leave this stuff to me.”

Trip gave her a penetrating look that reminded Jill of how

Morgan’s face looked when she was angry.

“Where are the rest of them?” he said.

“The rest of who?”

“The cops. Why aren’t there like 20 cops out here scouring

the hill for evidence. You still don’t have Dana’s cell

phone, do you? I mean, it’s already rained. If you keep

waiting to get this shit, there won’t be anything left.”

“Trip …” Carla said, putting a hand on his arm.

“It’s alright Carla,” Jill said. “He’s right. There should

be more guys out here, but the timing is … bad.”

“She means everyone’s down in the valley for parades and

shit. Can’t cut into that for a couple of little ol’

murders.”

“Well, Jill is here,” Carla said.

“Yes,” Trip said, nodding. “Detective sergeant Jill is

here and we’re here and we’re all looking for Dana’s cell

phone, right? Right. And we couldn’t find it in three hours

of looking. Be nice to have more guys, more people up here

 126

to scour the area, but doesn’t look like that’s going to

happen today so …”

“Did you try calling it,” Jill said.

Trip and Carla looked at each other and laughed.

“Duh,” he said, pulling out his own phone and punching the

speed dial for Dana’s phone.

Faintly, they heard Dana’s ring – the song “Raining Men,”

her own little joke at the world and its lack of suitable

mates for herself.

“It’s down there, near the bottom,” Trip said.

They took off at a fast walk, picking their way through

rocks and logs and the occasional twisted lift chair.

Dana’s phone was lying in some tall grass about 10 feet

from the tree where she’d landed. It was just outside the

police tape line.

“See?” said Trip. “We didn’t go in there. But dang it if I

didn’t look all around this spot.”

“I just can’t believe we didn’t think to call it,” Carla

said. “We’re retarded.”

“Totally,” Trip said.

“No,” said Jill, picking up the phone with a handkerchief.

“You’re upset. Give yourselves a break. When someone close

to you dies, you’re in this like weird ether of existence.

Nothing seems quite real because you just can’t believe

Dana, in this case, is gone. You can’t think straight, which

is why …”

She aimed a pointed look at the both of them.

 127

“… we let our friendly neighborhood police do this kind of

thing. Really, only a professional could see ‘Raining Men’

for the clue it turned out to be.”

They laughed, standing there under the tree where, only

about 24 hours previously, Dana had come to rest. As Jill

put the phone into an evidence bag and then into her

backpack, Trip looked at her.

“Aren’t you going to check it out now?”

“Not until I get it examined for finger prints,” Jill

said. “Probably just Dana’s, but it’d be, as you said,

Carla, retarded not to check first. Cell phones are little

treasure troves of fingerprints, and I’ve already …”

She was about to say she’d had the coroner lift some from

Dana’s corpse already.

“… got the guys at CBI – that’s Colorado Bureau of

Investigation – on standby for this case. They’ll give this

a good going-over, and then we’ll see what else is on it.”

“Well, look for lynx,” Trip said. “Photos or whatever.”

“Or even boreal toad,” Carla added.

“I’ve heard of lynx, the little cats, but what kind of

toad?”

“Boreal,” Carla said. “Endangered indicator species.”

“Find those little fuckers on your land and your

development is doomed,” Trip said. “Excuse my French.”

“And Jill, any connection to any developments, I mean,

that’s where it makes sense for someone to have … gone after

her. Even though Tony Bing doesn’t make sense and that
 128

Mandelbaum guy, I mean she was set to testify at a hearing

at the EPA next month about the mine pollution on his

property.”

“Too obvious you think?” Jill said, getting into her

sheriff’s SUV.

Trip shrugged.

“Maybe he’s dumber than his money lets on. I’ve seen it

happen here.”

“Well, my dad used to say money doesn’t make anyone

smarter – or give them better taste. I’ll be in touch.”

They stood and watched her vehicle bump slowly down the

rutted road until it was out of sight. Trip looked up at the

tree where he’d found Dana, and Carla’s gaze followed his.

Neither of them said anything about the smears of blood that

were still plain to see on the trunk and branches about 10

feet off the ground.

“It’s just a hell of a way to go,” Trip said finally. “But

somehow, I dunno, kind of fitting. Like if you’d asked her,

‘Dana, if you had a choice would you die in your sleep when

you’re 100, or would you rather be slammed into a tree off

an out-of-control chairlift, murdered because someone wanted

to shut you up ….”

“She’d pick that, yeah,” Carla said as she felt tears

streaming down her face again and Trip’s arm around her

waist.
 129

“So, should we get some kind of plaque to stick here:

‘Here died Dana Bellmore, July Third Two Thousand and Eight.

Killed by evil fuckers because she knew too much.’”

“She hated memorials like that being placed in the woods,

on trees, whatever.”

“I know.”

“It’ll just have to be her tree, and some people will know

about it – the people who care — and you don’t need a stupid

sign to tell the people who don’t.”

“Makes sense. Blood’ll wash off eventually. It’ll just be

another tree, so far as anyone else knows. Couple-a broken

branches. From a storm, maybe.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, turning to fold herself into

Trip’s body and to hell with worrying about consequences. He

gave her a long squeeze and rested his chin on the top of
her head, and they stayed like that for a very long time.

It was only about 1 o’clock, but Tony Bing was already

fairly drunk. It felt good, after the couple of days he’d

had, to let it melt away in a fog of draft beer. It was

flowing from one of the two kegs he’d gotten for an employee

Fourth of July party his secretary had suggested. Putty Du

had been opposed to the idea, envisioning himself having to

handle loutish blue-collar employees pickled by too much sun

and Fat Tire beer.

But there he was, flipping burgers and hot dogs at the

grill and wearing an old apron of Tony’s that said “Back

 130

Off: I’m the Cook!” There was that old cartoon image of

Yosemite Sam with his two pistols, laughable on the effete

Asian. If someone actually pointed a weapon at Putty Du,

Tony mused, the guy would probably start crying.

They were holding the barbecue at the clubhouse of some

placed called “Potato Patch” in West Vail. Tony had never

seen all of the people involved with Screamin’ Eagle Terrain

Park in one place, and he was surprised at the number. Some

of them must be spouses, and there were a couple of kids

running around as well. But overall Tony was glad he’d

agreed to it; it’d only cost about 300 bucks, and it made

him feel like he was The Man.

He tried not to think about the twisted, wrecked

chairlift, because it most certainly tempered that feeling.

But it kept crowding back in, like an obnoxious kid who

keeps popping up from under the table where you’re trying to

eat dinner.

And they kept asking where Trip was, and Tony would claim
ignorance. He didn’t want to dampen the mood, for one thing.

The other was that, despite canning Trip to appease both

himself and the old chink, he couldn’t help think that it

would be plain stupid not to re-hire him. The guy knew more

about the lifts and the whole area better than anyone, and

it seemed unlikely from what he’d heard so far that it was

his fault the thing crashed.

Anyone watching Tony – who had switched to Glenlivet and

was nursing a Macanudo from a padded chair on the deck –

 131

would have noticed a quiet, pleased grin cross his face as

he contemplated this supreme act of employer benevolence. He

tried to imagine the look on Trip’s face, the words of

thanks that would tumble from his lips. Hell, he might even

try to give Tony a hug. But Tony would say “No, no, it’s

alright” and dismiss trip with a wave and, perhaps, a joking

exhortation just to not crash any more lifts. Or, in view of

what happened to his sister, maybe he should skip that part.

Someone was waving a hand in front of his face.

“Hello? Earth to Tony Bing? Can I speak with you a

moment?”

It was the lady detective. The not-bad-looking lady

detective who was leaning over enough for Tony’s instinctive

cleavage radar to register a hit. Black bra; smattering of

freckles. Jill caught it, straightened up and crossed her

arms over her chest.

“Mind if I sit down?”

Tony waved to the seat next to him and sighed. He was

drunk, which he hadn’t really realized. But nothing shines a

light on your level of sobriety more than a presence of a

cop. He suddenly felt guilty, and a little nervous. The

deaths on his mountain loomed large in front of him and he

looked at the detective, who’d taken out a little book. Or

was it a tape recorder?

Jill wasn’t wearing a uniform, but she did have her badge

on her belt and that was enough to cause Tony’s party to

dissipate like leaves before a stiff breeze. About three-

 132

quarters of the crew were fake-I.D. Hispanics who, in twos

and threes, glided off the deck without a sound. The

remaining workers, mostly whites, maintained a 10-foot

buffer zone between themselves, their boss and the cop, and

they spoke in low voices.

The detective lady watched her effect on the party with a

thin smile.

“Guess I’m Officer Buzzkill, huh Tony?”

“Wanna beer, officer? That’ll lighten you up.”

“No thanks. I wouldn’t like a cigar, either,” she said,

waving her hand at the fumes coming off Tony’s Macanudo.

“Well then what can I do for you, Officer Detective

Buzzkill?”

There was a part of Tony’s brain urging him that this was

one of those times when he had to be smart, sharp, business-

guy-like. But the Glenlivet protested, maintaining a wet wad

of cotton around such higher functions and leaving Tony with

his only obvious default: playing dumb.

“For one, you can tell me where this guy Airlane is. And

maybe even if he has a last name?”

“I’m sure he does, but I don’t know it. An’ I don’t know

where he is. Ask Trip, or no, ask Petey Moore.”

Jill had already spent a useless hour with Petey Moore. He

was the quintessence of ski-country local, a wholly

incurious boy-man who cared only about the amount of snow on

the ground and the beer in his happy-hour glass. He knew a

few things about chairlifts, apparently, but he was plainly

 133

a worker bee who took his cues from Trip and others more

knowledgeable than he.

“Why not Trip?” she asked, suspecting the answer.

“Let him go. Sad to do, with his sister an’ all but … had

to do it.”

“I see. So, let me get this right: You had an incident on

your property involving the deaths of two people yesterday,

and you fired your manager in charge, don’t know where

anyone else is, and are sitting here drunk in Vail having a

party?”

Tony shrugged. “It’s the Fourth of July. What the hell?

What am I supposed to be doing?”

Jill wasn’t sure how to answer that. But she also had a

hard time believing this dumb-ass developer had anything to

do with the murders – if that’s what they were. She couldn’t

rule him out as the guy who ordered the hit, though; and she

made a mental note to tell her mom she was now investigating

a “hit.” It would both scare and impress the woman who still
made strong suggestions that Jill rethink her decision of 12

years ago not to go to beauty school.

“You could be making 50 grand a year chatting with ladies

and cutting hair instead of chasing drunks around the

mountains,” her mother had said as recently as last Sunday.

Jill kicked herself back into the present, thankful that

the inebriated subject of her current questioning was too

loaded to notice that she’d momentarily checked out. For his

part, Tony was no longer looking in her direction. There was

 134

a young woman in a sport bra walking a dog past on the

street, and the sight had Tony doing a mental calculation

regarding the last time he’d had sex of any kind. All the

work he’d been doing relating to the development of the

base-area real estate had made such pursuits secondary,

although he imagined he still felt the absence; it was

cutting into his edge. Build-up inside of him, no release,

makes Tony a dull boy, why he’s drinking. And it had been …

six weeks. He mouthed the two words with a bit more volume

than he’d meant to.

“Excuse me?” Jill said. “Six weeks? What’s that?”

Tony lolled his head in her direction.

“Last time I got laid.”

“Oh, well, that’s about 10 times more information than I

needed to hear about your sex life, Mr. Bing.”

“What about you, Detective Sugar Tits, how long’s it been

for you? I don’t see a ring, so you’re obviously on the

market.”
Jill could feel the color rising to her cheeks and the

words 13 months rose like flotsam in her mind. It was after

the separation, the day they’d closed on the sale of the

home that had been theirs together. Jason had come to the

near-empty house to collect some of his things and it had

just happened. A joyless fuck, Jill bent over a chair and

Jason coming after just a few hard thrusts. He’d zipped

himself up, grabbed a box and walked out to his truck

without saying a word. Like he’d somehow had the last word,
 135

leaving her there to pull her panties back up and drip with

shame and regret.

And now here was this asshole. She ran some law through

her mind, wondering if there was some obscure portion of the

Colorado Revised Statutes that prohibited people from

questioning officers of the law about their sex lives – or

from making comments about their sugary tits.

Even if there were, the last thing she needed right now

was a Mel Gibson moment reported in the Vail Daily’s police

blotter. She cast a disgusted glance at Tony and stood up.

“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Bing. Enjoy your party.”

Tony waved his cigar in her direction and closed his eyes.

When he opened them a few minutes later, all the Mexicans

were back and the volume of the party was growing again.

Someone topped off his glass and put a paper plate with a
cheeseburger, pickle and potato salad on the table next to

him.

Sure, there was some work to do, some rebuilding and

patchwork. But in general he felt good enough to try Trip on

his cell phone: no answer. He didn’t leave a message, but

Trip would see he called. He’d be eager to call back as soon

as he saw Tony’s number. Then he’d get them working again,

find another old lift they could install … get this thing

going.

Tony set his drink down and closed his eyes. After a few

moments, Putty Du turned his spatula and apron over to one

of the Mexicans and pulled out his cell phone. There was a
 136

text message:

COME NOW
 137

Chapter 7

“So I have an idea.”

Trip and Carla were sitting on her deck, each drinking

from a can of Tecate. Scout was between them, dozing

fitfully and trembling every time another firework went off.

“What’s that,” Carla said, guessing that whatever Trip had

in mind it was going to make her uncomfortable in some way.

“I’m a bad guy, I kill someone. And maybe the whole thing

turns out a little messier than I thought. I might need some

clean up. Right?

“Um, OK.”

“So I go out to the place where it happened and I do some

clean up. Or maybe it’s not me, it’s some schmuck I hired to

do this kind of thing.”

“I follow you so far. What’s the idea?”

“Well, if I’m a bad guy I don’t go out in the daytime when

I can be seen. I probably didn’t go out there last night

because of the rain. Also, the one thing I might be looking

for we found today.”

“The cell phone.”

“Right, the cell phone. So I’m needing to go out there

tonight, and it’s a perfect time because everyone –

including all the cops, as we’ve seen – are going to be

doing the Fourth of July thing.”

Carla felt something clutch at her chest.

“No, Trip, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun.”

 138

“Fun, right.”

“Sure, we’ll go up and camp like a quarter-mile from the

base area and keep an eye out. Someone will come, but we

won’t like go after them or anything. We’ll just get the

license plate number. We’ll be far away, binoculars. If it’s

still kind of light out, we might even see a face.”

“Trip, we’re talking about, maybe, the people who killed

Dana. They see us, they’ll kill us too.”

“They’ll have to get us on the chairlift first.”

“Not funny.”

A moment passed and they listened as a whistling bottle

rocket did its thing not too far away.

“Know what they called those when I was a kid on Long

Island?”

“What?”
“Now I can’t say it.”

“No way, Carla. You have to tell me now.”

“It’s a bad word.”

“I can handle it.”

She hesitated, then: “A nigger chaser.”

Trip thought about that a moment, then tipped his head

back and let out a howl of laughter.

“It’s terrible,” Carla said, also starting to laugh.

“I know, that’s what makes it so funny. Just the idea that

someone thought to call it that. The image of these wide-

eyed cartoon blacks with scared expressions running away

from these stupid fucking bottle rockets.”

 139

“Well, Long Island was full of that kind of stuff. All

kinds of people living next to each other, all kinds of

prejudices and slurs going on all the time. The poor Jews,

especially.”

“Maybe it actually helps, instead of all this PC shit,”

Trip said, taking a sip of his beer and reaching down to

stroke Scout’s head.

Carla shrugged. “Maybe. It was certainly all out there. I

mean, if you had anything to be made fun of, they told it to

your face.”

“Did the blacks and whites mix it up, like in your high

school?”

Carla laughed. “Trip, we didn’t have blacks in our high

school. I don’t know what it’s like now, but when I was

growing up in the 70s, Long Island was a chess board: white

town, black town, white town, black town. Not a lot of

mixing.”

“Nice.”
“Yes.”

“So you’ll come camping with me tonight? I promise I’ll

keep you safe.”

Carla leveled a look at him, one Trip hadn’t seen before

but, he guessed, was known to others.

“No hero shit. Just watching.”

“Yep, just watching.”

“And running, running fast, if anyone sees us or comes

after us.”
 140

“Sure. We’ll wear our track shoes.”

Carla sighed and stood up. “I better pull some things

together. It’ll be like an all-nighter, huh?”

“Guess we’d better assume that, yeah.”

Carla stopped at the doorway, Scout right on her heels.

Her voice caught slightly in her throat as she looked at

Trip, who was gazing into the forest.

“One tent or two?”

He turned slowly and gave her a curious look.

“Well? A girl needs to know these things.”

“You really think we need to lug two tents out there, put

up two tents, take down two tents? So that the fucking

raccoons don’t accuse us of impropriety?”

Carla laughed and, Trip saw, wiggled like a teenager being

asked on a date. She disappeared, leaving behind a cheery

“OK!”

Trip stood up and cleared his throat. “I’ll be back in an

hour!”
“OK! Drive safe!”

That was nice, he thought, backing out of her driveway:

someone telling him to take care of himself.

Hadn’t heard that in a while.

Sian Dang stood by the window of an unused but elaborately

furnished and decorated study in the Zhangdown home and

watched Putty Du pull up in his Hyundai. It was one of those

crossover cars – not an SUV, not a station wagon. Putty’s

 141

was a muted gold color, like an autumn leaf that had been on

the ground a couple of days.

The fact that he had driven here in his own vehicle,

alone, told Sian most of what she needed – or at least

wanted – to know about Putty’s reason for coming here. She

continued to watch him as he methodically released his seat

belt, emerged from the Hyundai and gave it a look, like he

was checking to make sure it was still quite clean and

scratch-free. Atop khaki chinos he was wearing a tight-

fitting navy blue Polo shirt, which, she thought, could have

been a slight nod to the holiday or a complete coincidence.

She figured the latter. One of the things she admired most

about Putty Du was his apparent lack of fealty to any one

country, person or enterprise. That he was an Asian of some

kind there was no question, but unlike your typical full-

blood Korean, Chinese or Japanese, Putty Du didn’t talk

ceaselessly about the home land, the home language, the ways

of home or how much life in America paled in comparison.

She’d always avoided Asian boyfriends for this reason,

preferring American men who kept their minds uncluttered

from too much ethnic worry. And compared to some of the ones

she’d known after two years in Manhattan, Colorado men were

even less concerned about such things. They might have a

favorite ski mountain or football team, but they didn’t care

– and often didn’t know – much about what ethnic varieties

ran in their blood.

 142

A man like that, Sian thought, could focus on other

things, like keeping his wife or girlfriend happy.

A half-minute after Putty Du disappeared into the house,

Skippy pulled up in his Porsche Cayenne, stopped and got out

of the car in almost one movement. He was inside the house

before Sian had a moment to start collecting all her

negative thoughts about him.

Ardently Chinese, yet possessed of all manner of American

bad manners, habits and predilections. A drunk, a whore, a

lazy spendthrift. A liar, at least to her. She shuddered

when she thought of the month a few years back when they’d

done something that resembled dating. Ridiculous

conversations about a future together traveling the world

had ended in a pregnancy scare and, she was pretty sure, a

directive from the old man to steer clear of the help.

The request that morning to summon Putty and Skippy

together — combined with the old man’s orders to prepare for

a trip to China — had Sian’s already keen ears pricked to

their highest level of observation.

The meeting lasted less than five minutes and culminated

with Skippy striding quickly back to his car and taking off

in a squeal of rubber. Putty Du, she knew, would linger as

long as he could by the blurping fountain.

Waiting for her.

“Hello, Sian.” He stood with his hand behind his back and

gave her a respectful bow of the head. She couldn’t help

notice he had one eye on the fountain: no way this man was
 143

going to allow an errant blast of water compromise his

neatly pressed chinos. “May I say that you look lovelier

than ever today?”

Sian shrugged and moved toward him, keeping close to the

circular wall of the room just out of range of the fountain.

Her movement had the effect of making Putty Du feel he was

being stalked by a rare and dangerous cat. He found himself

slowly, involuntarily backing away from her.

“Most of what men say isn’t true, in my experience,” she

said.

“Mine as well.”

“Especially when spoken in old-fashioned-sounding words.

Like you read it from a book, an old book.”

Putty Du laughed and made a conscious effort to stop

moving as she continued closer.

“OK then, Sian, you’re hot. A mega-babe bombshell smokin’

Betty.” A beat. “As an American might say.”

“I liked the first better.”

She was now within about three or four feet of him. He

smiled and held out his hands, palms up. “Who can know what

the right thing is to say to a woman such as you?”

“Better answer,” she said, just as a jet of water erupted

from the fountain and shot between them to hit the wall with

a splash.

Making an effort to keep his eyes fixed on hers, Putty Du

said, “I didn’t think it could reach the wall.”

“Things happen we don’t expect.”

 144

“All the time, yes.”

Sian was now just six inches from Putty Du. She was tall

for a Chinese and he was of about normal height, so their

eyes met almost perfectly. They both smelled pleasant, and

both noticed the other’s scent. Their proximity was causing

multiple reactions inside each of their bodies: an increase

of blood to crotches, quickened heartbeats and a dump of

dopamine into the bloodstream that was causing them, quickly

and suddenly, to feel they needed to take immediate steps

toward reproducing.

No one truly believes it when you tell them love is really

all about chemicals.

“I want to go with you,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“Sian,” he said, starting to reach for her. She stepped

back a few inches.

“No. Cameras.” Then: “Later.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going back to fucking China.”

Putty blinked at the word. He’d never heard anything like

that from Sian’s lips before.

“He’s leaving?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

Putty Du nodded. “OK.”

“You know why?”

“Pretty much.”
 145

“I know what he wants you to do. I want to help.”

“No.”

“It’s not your choice. I’ll either be with you or I’ll

follow you.”

She punctuated that statement by running a long nail

against Putty Du’s turgid penis, which was straining against

his pants. He knew the gesture was hidden from the camera by

the fountain and admired both her caution and her boldness.

He struggled not to react.

Then something clicked and her hand wrapped around all of

him, and she used his cock to pull him against her. She

whispered fiercely in his ear.

“I’m with you now. Let’s get out of here.”

With a final squeeze full of promise, she let him go and

strode to the door to the hallway that led to her room.

“I’ll meet you in one hour. At your place.”

The door closed and the sound reverberated in the marble

room. He thought for a moment to go after her, thought

better of it and left wondering if she knew where he lived.

She probably did.

The Fourth of July crowds made it slow going through Vail

Village. Skippy finally parked on the Frontage Road and

pulled his mountain bike out of the back of the Cayenne.

Mandelbaum’s house was up on Chalet Road, and it took him 10

minutes of hard pumping to get up there.

 146

It took a long time for someone to come to the door. It

was a tiny Hispanic woman who appeared terrified to see the

Chinese man before her.

“Hello, um, senora,” Skippy said. “I’m looking for Mr.

Mandelbaum.”

“Sick,” she said, starting to close the door. Skippy stuck

his foot in the way.

“It’s urgent. Please tell him. Just say ‘land deal.’

Please.”

“Will try,” the woman said, closing the door with a

finality that suggested she would not return.

Skippy sat on a low bench on the deck and looked at the

neighborhood. It was a rich, white man’s paradise of $10

million homes set right against the ski hill and steps from

Vail Village. This was Old Vail, the Vail created by the
resort’s founders when their imagination didn’t run any

farther than re-creating a Bavarian village. Most of the

homes, Skippy knew, were occupied less than three or four

weeks a year.

At least that was one thing he could say about himself, he

thought. He may be one of the rich bastards sucking all the

air out of the housing market, but he lived here full-time,

more or less. This Mandelbaum guy, this home he had – which

looked to be about the biggest on the whole block – was

probably just an item on his portfolio, not much different

than a hotel room to the guy. Just a place to stay. And the

woman he’d just met, she lived there year-round to take care
 147

of the place, probably dying of boredom but happy to have a

place to live. She probably moved her whole family in after

the lord of the manor flew back to Palm Beach or wherever.

After 10 minutes, Skippy was trying to think of a Plan B

when the door finally opened and shattered-looking white guy

appeared. He looked balefully at Skippy and, without a

sound, turned and disappeared into the interior of the home,

leaving the front door open behind him.

Skippy took this as an invitation and followed the man –

who he could only assume was Mandelbaum – into a study.

There was a brushed chrome and glass desk with a silver Mac

laptop, an Aeron chair, a laser printer on a low, wheeled

table, and nothing else. It looked like the office of

someone who’d just moved in and was waiting for the rest of

his boxes to arrive.

Mandelbaum sat at the chair and Skippy stood in front of

the desk: the supplicant. What a setup this guy had – not

even a place for a visitor to sit.

“Well, Mr. Mandelbaum …”

A pale palm rose from the man’s lap: “Just Mandelbaum,

please.”

“OK, sure, Mandelbaum. Mandelbaum it is.” Then, almost to

himself, Skippy said it again: “Mandelbaum.”

A pair of watery brown eyes looked up.

“Problem?”

“Nope, no problem. Just um, Chinese you know. Guess I’m

not used to a name like ‘Mandelbaum.’”

 148

“Not that unusual if you grew up in a place like L.A., or

New York.”

“No, I guess probably not.”

“But you grew up in China.”

“Yes. Until I was about 14.”

“And Daddy sent you to America to learn … whatever it is

there is to learn here.”

“Something like that.”

“Would you like a seat?”

“Yeah, sure! That’d be great. Thanks.”

“Well, tough shit, I ain’t got one. Stand there,

awkwardly, and tell me what the fuck you want.”

“Your land, the 30 acres near Edwards.” Skippy put his

hand on the glass desk for a moment, thinking he might sort

of lean on it in a commanding way. But Mandelbaum looked at

the hand as if a leech had just landed on his desk, and

Skippy withdrew it.

You just never realize how valuable chair can be until

you’re in a situation like this, he thought, sidling towards

a wall for cover.

Mandelbaum started shaking gently, and from the soft

sounds coming from him, Skippy concluded that he was

laughing. He then put his hands on his head and lowered his

forehead to the glass desk.

“You OK, Mandelbaum?”

“Migraine.”

“Oh, shit, those suck. I’ve had them.”

 149

“Not like this you haven’t.”

“About the land …”

“It’s 43 acres. I’ve got plans for it. Fuck off.”

“I represent Zhengwu Sports, the largest retailer of

sporting goods in mainland China. We are prepared to make a

very generous offer for the land. We …”

He stopped when Mandelbaum put his forehead to the desk

again. After a moment, a small voice came from the crossed

arms: “Go away.”

“Can I use your bathroom?”

“Down the hall to your right. Let yourself out. I can’t

fucking move.”

Skippy bowed slightly and left without another word.

Dana Bellmore’s Nokia sat on the seat of Jill’s car

calling out, it seemed, to be handled, to reveal whatever

information it had. It was in a Ziplock baggie sitting atop

Jill’s case folder – a woefully thin case folder at this

point.

Jill toyed with the idea of trying to push the buttons

through the plastic, but dismissed it as too risky. One

smudge and any fingerprint information would be useless. Not

that she expected there to be anything of value on there. It

would just be Dana’s, the last fingerprints of a dying

person … like footsteps in the sand leading into the ocean.

 150

“What should I do now?” she asked herself aloud, zipping

west along I-70 on a route to take her either home or to the

sheriff’s office. “What would Mason do?”

Mason Flick, her forensics instructor at the academy, was

an analyst at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in Denver

and, in her mind, the last word on crime-scene evidence.

She’d planned to call him first thing in the morning and

have the phone sent down to his office.

“Oh, what the hell?” Jill said, taking the Edwards exit

and getting back on the interstate heading east. She grabbed

her own phone and dialed Mason.

He listened to her explanation and sighed.

“Jeez Jilly, it is the Fourth of July you know.”

“Yeah, I know Mason. Everyone’s been telling me. I can see

the parades, the traffic, the fireworks and I’d love to be

with my little girl eating cotton candy and funnel cakes but

… I just don’t want to see this one go cold.”

He sighed again. “Well, shit, OK. Cell phones don’t take

that long to go over anyway. I’ll meet you at the office in

two hours. Go around the back and I’ll let you in.”

Trip went through his usual camping checklist quickly,

stuffing a bag with essentials and keeping in mind it was

for just one night – if that. Still, his hands fumbled and

he repeatedly dropped things as he tried to get them in the

bag.
 151

“What the hell?” he said, jamming a half-roll of toilet

paper into the bag for the third time. He was back in his

truck with the key in the ignition when he hit the steering

wheel with both hands, stomped out of the truck and went

back inside.

In the back of his closet he found the little .22 pistol

he sometimes used to shoot cans with in the backyard. There

was a box of shells about half full, and he took those and

shoved them in his pocket. At his nightstand, he hesitated

for a moment, then grabbed two condoms, also stuffing them

in his pocket.
About the author
T. Alex Miller is a graduate of the University of
Colorado-Boulder creative writing program. His
writing career has been spent mostly in commu-
nity newspapers, although he also worked for a
year in Hollywood (in development at the Sci-Fi
Channel) and edited a magazine in Los Angeles
(LA Family). He is currently the editor of the
Summit Daily News, a newspaper in Frisco, CO.

In addition to his career in journalism, Miller has

been active in theatre as an actor, director and
playwright. His plays have been produced locally
as well as in conjunction with the state theatre festival. They include 5 Gears in
Reverse, The Adjudicators, Velociraptors and Outrageous Claims.

Miller lives in Frisco, Colorado with his wife, Jen, and their many children.

Reach him at talex10@gmail.com.