Killer View by Ridley Pearson

Author:Ridley Pearson [Pearson, Ridley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

34

“WALT, YOU MAY WANT A PART OF THIS.”

Walt was in the middle of a bite of pizza at Smokey’s on Sun Valley Road, his children and their sitter, Lisa, at the table with him. He put down the pizza.

“Part of what, Chuck?” He’d recognized the smoker’s voice on the phone immediately: Chuck Webb, director of the Sun Valley Lodge’s security.

“Front desk got an anonymous call that one of our guests might be in need of medical assistance. Gave us a room number. I responded. It was Danny Cutter, stoned out of his mind. I’ve called SVPD just now. A requirement. But I know the history of you and Mr. Cutter, his probation and all, and so I’m also calling you.”

“You’re holding Cutter?”

“I’m in the room with him.”

“Can I speak to him?”

“He’s way out of it, Walt. In and out of consciousness.”

“Any drugs?”

“Found what looks like an ounce of a white powder taped under the sink.”

“An ounce?” If it tested positive, it would carry twenty years for Cutter, given his current probation. Walt felt a pit in his stomach. “The call to the front desk? Was it recorded?”

“No.”

“Anonymous.”

“Yeah.”

“Afraid for Cutter, was that it?”

“That was the claim. But it’s not right. He’s more than just stoned. He’s out of it.” He paused. “What’s Danny Cutter doing in my hotel when he lives here in town?”

“Who’s it booked to?”

“A John Greydon. Paid cash. We cleared the card for five hundred in incidentals. I can start a trace on the card.”

“What’s the condition of the room?”

“Bed’s made. That’s the stink of it. I know he has a history of drugs, Walt, but this doesn’t feel right.”

“Yeah . . . Okay.” Walt looked into the curiously sad eyes of his children, who understood his tone of voice well enough to know what this call meant to them. “I’ll be right there,” he said into the phone, trying to think of some new way to say what he’d said to his kids too many times before.

INVESTIGATIONS COULD spiral out of control. Walt did his best to keep things simple. But the more threads that were added, the more tangled they became. Randy Aker had been darted and had died, possibly because he was mistaken for Mark. Mark had run away, been found, and then abducted. A test tube had been left on his own back porch—a water sample that tested positive for low-level radiation. A CDC investigation had looked into Danny Cutter’s bottled-water company. Now, after two years of being clean, Danny Cutter was embroiled in a drug bust.

And, in the middle of it all, he’d been invited to a conference twenty-five hundred miles away.

Walt found himself giving Danny the benefit of the doubt as he approached room 223, on the second floor of the lodge. The plush carpet absorbed his footfalls. Framed black-and-white photographs of Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Clint Eastwood lined both walls.

Sight of the celebrity photographs reminded him of the two worlds he served: the obscenely affluent residents of Ketchum/Sun Valley and the locals that provided services for them.

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