Murder on the Mountain

Her trained gaze had gone to the rows of medals on this fallen soldier’s chest. At that moment, she realized that the general had not committed suicide. The medals were not in proper order.

A Marine would never be so careless. When her brother was laid out in his coffin, she had studied the Marine Corps Manual to make sure his ribbons and medals were in correct alignment. The general would never make such a mistake. Therefore, she could assume that someone else had pinned those medals to his chest. This wasn’t a suicide.

However, if the general was murdered, it meant a prolonged investigation by local authorities. A simple suicide would be an open-and-shut case. She could carefully escort the local lawmen through their duties without revealing the real business of the safehouse.

And so, she had decided to change the medals, putting them in proper order. As if this tampering with the crime scene wasn’t bad enough, she’d done more.

Under the sink in the general’s bathroom, she found a pair of latex gloves, slipped them on and returned to the body.

The general’s shoes had been scuffed. A true Marine would never consider himself to be fully in uniform with dirty shoes. She’d removed the shoes from the general’s feet, polished them and put them back on.

Guilt coursed through her veins like poison. How could she have done such a thing? Her life was dedicated to fighting crime, and she was no better than any other criminal, hiding evidence. How could she allow the general’s family to believe that he’d killed himself?

She watched as Paul prowled around the bedroom, being careful not to touch anything. He leaned over the general’s body for a closer look. “This is strange.”

“What?” She halfway hoped that he’d see through her tampering and confront her. “What’s strange?”

“He’s wearing his hearing aid,” Paul said. “If I was going to shoot myself in the head, that would be the first thing to go.”

Her lips pinched together, holding back an urge to confess to him. Not only was she guilty of rearrang-ing a crime scene but she was also betraying Paul, deliberately misleading him.

He asked, “Was his bedroom door locked?”

“Yes.” That much was true. “And we have a security camera in the hallway. I’ve already checked the tape. There was no one who came into or out of his room.”

“A security camera?” He turned toward her. “Why?”

“Security,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Julia knew that most people in nearby Redding didn’t even bother locking their doors. “There was already a lot of security equipment when I moved here.”

“And you still keep it running?” he said. “Have you been bothered by theft? Vandalism?”

There wasn’t much likelihood of anyone sneaking up on the safehouse. If they came within a hundred feet of the property, they’d be met by armed agents.

“I’ve never had any problems,” she said, trying to shrug off his questioning gaze. “The camera came in handy this time, right?”

Paul circled the bed, went to the window and glanced out at the eaves. Julia knew it was possible for the murderer to have come across the roof and entered the general’s room through this window. Such an action would require the expert skill of a rock climber who was accustomed to clinging to tiny ledges. She’d immediately thought of Gil Bradley, the former Navy SEAL who had the look and the manner of an assassin.

If Gil had murdered the general, she didn’t want to shield him from justice. But she had to keep her secret; she couldn’t let people know this was an FBI safehouse.

Paul inspected the double-paned window. The lower half was designed to be pulled up over the upper half in summer to let in the fresh air. “This window doesn’t have a lock.”

“There’s no way to open it from the outside without prying it loose.”

“After the sheriff gets here, I’ll need to check it out.”

“Surely, you don’t think someone crept in here during the night and murdered the general.”

She held her breath, waiting for his response.

“I doubt it,” he said. “There are no signs of a struggle. It appears that the general was shot where he lies because there aren’t blood spatters in the rest of the room.”

“So it’s suicide,” she said.

“Apparent suicide,” Paul corrected her. “We still need to go through the drill. Taking fingerprints. Checking the room for fibers, hairs and tiny spots of blood. I’ll need to interview your guests to see if any of them heard or saw anything unusual.”

“I’d really appreciate if this could be handled with as little fuss as possible. It’s bad for business and—” She paused midsentence. Her gaze turned to the dead man. How could she be scheming in his presence? “God, I sound cold. I shouldn’t be thinking about business.”

“I understand,” Paul said.

“My other guests knew the general. I don’t want to upset them any more than necessary.”

“They’ll probably call off their meeting,” Paul said.

That was what she had expected. But the senator had been adamant about moving forward with their mission; he had no other free time in his schedule. “They’ve decided to carry on.”

Clearly taken aback, Paul said, “Doesn’t sound like your other guests are concerned about the general’s suicide.”

“They’re task-oriented people from Washington. It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove of their decision.”

Her job was to keep them safe. And she’d failed miserably. As she glanced at the lifeless body stretched out on the bed, her heart ached with the weight of her guilty secrets. I’m sorry, General. So horribly sorry. He deserved to have his death investigated. Suicide was looked upon as the coward’s way out. A Marine deserved better.

She felt Paul’s arm encircle her shoulders. Gently, he guided her toward the bedroom door. “Don’t worry, Julia. I’ll take care of everything. We’ll be as discreet as possible.”

Standing in the hallway outside the bedroom, she allowed herself to accept his comforting embrace, leaning her head into the crook of his neck. Her arms wrapped around his huge torso. He was so big and solid.

Though his touch was in no way inappropriate and he patted her shoulders in an almost impersonal manner, she felt a surge of erotic tension. Her breasts rubbed against his chest. She inhaled his masculine scent. Gazing up, she noticed that his chin was marked with morning stubble. Though he was in his deputy uniform, he had to have come here immediately without even stopping to shave.

He was anxious to help, and she repaid him with lies, using him for her own purposes. Julia stepped away from his embrace. There was a depth of meaning in her voice when she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“No need for you to be sorry. This isn’t your fault.”

If only he knew what she’d done. In his warm brown eyes, she saw the glow of kindness. She didn’t merit his friendship. “What happens next?”

“I’ll call the sheriff. He’s not going to be happy. Two fatalities in two days.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Not for a city,” Paul said. “But we’re a fairly quiet little county.”

“I hate to bring this up,” she said, “but there will be media attention. General Naylor was well known. He did commentary on a lot of news programs.”

“Which means the sheriff is going to be talking to the press,” Paul said. “He can handle it.”

She envisioned television trucks with satellite dishes and reporters with microphones. A nightmare! “I really don’t want my lodge to be the backdrop for those interviews.”

“No problem. We’ll evacuate the body to the hos-pital before autopsy. The sheriff can make his statement to the press from that location.”

For that, she was endlessly grateful. The last thing she needed was a mob of curious interviewers crawling all over the safehouse.

“Yesterday,” Paul said, “the general reacted strangely when you mentioned his television commentaries. What did he say? Something about not believing everything you hear. It was like he thought he was being unfairly criticized.”

“Paranoid,” she said. “That fits with suicide, doesn’t it?”

“Did you notice anything else unusual about his state of mind?”

“Other than shooting at rabbits off the deck behind the lodge?”

“Strange behavior,” he said.

“But not typical. The general kept to himself. He got here a day ahead of the others and spent most of that time in his room.”

Paul glanced down at his boots, then looked up at her again. “How much do you know about makeup? You know, lipstick and stuff.”

That question came out of the blue. “On occasion, I’ve been known to use cosmetics.”

“You don’t need that stuff,” he said quickly. “I like the way you look. Healthy. And your eyes…well, your blue eyes are beautiful.”

His gruff compliment took her off guard. Had he really said that she was beautiful? Her eyes were beautiful? Self-consciously, she glanced away. “Thank you.”

“This is about my two daughters. They have an ice-skating performance tonight at the rink near Vail, and they need to put on makeup. That happens to be a topic I don’t know much about.”

She peeked up at him. Though he was trying to scowl, the dimples in his cheeks deepened. Adorable. “I’d like to help you, Paul.”

He waved his hand back and forth as if to erase his words. “Forget it. You have enough to worry about.”

“Tell you what. I’ll put together a little makeup kit for you to take with you.”

“Thanks a lot, Julia.”

His gratitude was utterly sincere. The sheepish expression on his face almost brought her to tears. For the first time in her life, Julia had purposely done wrong. She was lying to this terrific guy, and it was tearing her apart.

Unable to look in Paul’s trusting eyes for one more second, she pivoted and headed down the staircase.

In the kitchen, they found Craig Lennox, the other FBI agent who worked with her at the safehouse. Craig, a computer expert, was nearly as concerned as Julia about the true purpose of the safehouse being discovered. The office on the basement floor—filled with high-tech surveillance and computer equip-ment—was his domain, and he didn’t want anybody touching anything.

His dark eyes darted nervously in his thin face. He nodded to Paul, who he’d met yesterday. “Is there anything I should be doing?”

“Sit tight,” Julia said. “The police will be here soon.”

He held up a videocassette. “I made copies of the surveillance tapes that show the hallway outside the general’s room.”

“For all night?” Paul asked.

“From eleven o’clock when the general went to bed until this morning when Julia opened his door.”

“Nobody entered the room?”

“Nobody,” Craig said. “These tapes are time coded on the bottom. There’s not one second missing.”

Paul took a cell phone from his utility belt and punched in a number on his cell phone. “Jurisdiction can be complicated up here, but your resort is well outside Vail’s city limits so the Eagle County sheriff will be handling this incident. There’s no need to call in the state investigators for a suicide.”

A suicide. Paul seemed convinced. She could only hope that the other county officials would also be satisfied by that explanation.

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