Tahoe Deathfall - 1 by Todd Borg

Author:Todd Borg [Borg, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thriller Press
Published: 2001-08-01T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

I knew that Smithson would be long occupied with the police while they performed their investigation. I remembered guys like him from my crime scene days in San Francisco. He would insist that the police dust everything in the garage for fingerprints and then inspect the grounds for clues. If the police weren’t sufficiently fastidious, Smithson would threaten to call his lawyers, the chief and the mayor. I felt sorry for the officers on the scene. While I was confident that Smithson didn’t see my face, he might have guessed at my identity based on my height. If so, he’d fuss about it to the cops and that would use up more time.

I decided it would be a good moment to time the drive up to Mount Rose. I could take up surveillance of Smithson later.

I turned north on the Mount Rose Highway. The road winds up and over the shoulder of Mount Rose, cresting at 9000 feet before it plunges nearly a mile down to Reno. As I gained altitude I could see lights sprinkling the far shoreline of Tahoe. The gibbous moon was low in the southern sky, hanging over the lake like a big Jack-o’-lantern. It glinted off the snowy mountains and its reflection in the water was a swath of light twenty miles long. The road climbed up into forest and then onto the big snow-covered meadow under Mount Rose. I pulled over where the trailhead starts up to the summit and noted the time. I turned off the headlights and got out into the full glare of the moon on the snow. The air was cold, with a brisk breeze out of the north. Cross-country ski tracks criss-crossed the meadow, looking in the moonlight like strange giant calligraphy.

The summit loomed above, dark and foreboding. I knew roughly where the trail went, but I decided that nighttime on an icy mountain was not a safe time to go up, even though night was when I suspected Smithson had done the climb with his wife’s body over his shoulders. But he would have gone in August when the snow was gone.

I now knew how long it would take to make the boat trip and the car trip. Because of the snow I realized it would be easiest to estimate the time it would take for the hikes on both ends. Then I would know if the trip could be done in one night. From my knowledge of the area around Emerald Bay, I figured he could hike from the water up to the rock slide and back in less than two hours. As I thought about it, I realized that I could probably get an accurate idea of the time it would take to make the climb on Mount Rose by studying my topographic maps. I also wanted to get back down to his house and follow him for the next few days.

I pulled back onto the highway and had just run the Jeep up to fifty when flashing lights appeared behind me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.