Page 56 of Dead Mountain

And Gold hadn’t surveyed the fire pit: something Nora did before Corrie thought to ask her. And she’d recovered a knife with initials on it. Perhaps not a valuable clue, but still . . . Then there was the ravine. Nobody had surveyed that. An avalanche could not have taken place—she felt Gold had reasonably established that—but what other possibilities had he failed to consider? Some weird weather event? Falling rocks? What else could have crushed those bodies so completely?

She drove another twenty minutes in silence, wheels turning in her head as well as on the road. Then she turned to Sharp. “About those burns on the victims . . . ?”

“Yes?”

She hesitated. “I’m not a winter backpacker, sir, but I think I know how they got burned.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Okay, consider this, sir: You have these nine people, mostly undressed, who’ve fled their tent into a storm. They’ve run in the snow almost a mile, then lit a fire. That must have taken a half hour or more. According to Dr. Kelly’s survey of the fire area, it was a big fire.”

“Go on.”

“So by the time the fire is going, they’re already freezing to death. They’ve got hypothermia. Their feet and hands are badly frostbitten. They’re losing their grip on reality.”

“So you think they stuck their feet, hands, and heads into the fire?”

He made it sound so stupid. But she went on. “Well, yes, in fact. Think about it. That fire, big as it was, couldn’t keep them from freezing. The meteorological report says the winds were forty to fifty miles an hour, temperatures ten below zero. They got too close to the fire in a desperate effort to extract warmth from it.”

“And actually burned their flesh?”

“They couldn’t feel it! The burns were on their feet, shins, forearms, and heads. Those are the very areas that were exposed. Those extremities were frostbitten; they were huddling so close to the fire they were too close to the flames, maybe even in the flames, and they were freezing to death at the same time. The first three died anyway, then the rest cut off their meager clothes and went on northward, realizing the fire couldn’t save them.”

“This is a new wrinkle.”

“It seems obvious.” She abruptly stopped. Maybe she had pushed her point too far.

“Obvious? Yet none of our experts drew this conclusion.”

“Agent Gold knew it wasn’t an avalanche that collapsed the tent. He said he’d called in an expert on winter mountaineering.”

“A local expert.”

“But he didn’t say anything about calling a doctor who specialized in hypothermia. Or a real expert in avalanches.”

“No,” said Sharp slowly, drawing out the word. “But perhaps you should.”

“I will, sir.”

She couldn’t tell from those sleepy eyes what he really thought. But he did authorize her to hire experts. She made a mental note to find the most qualified avalanche expert she could—the case, and the victims, demanded no less.

“Another thing?” she ventured.

The eyelids rose.

“Do you think we could arrange a tour of Kirtland?”

The senior agent was slow to stir himself. “Kirtland?”

“I’d like to ask the military to give us a tour. I don’t mean the typical visitor’s tour, but a tour of the mountainous area in the east.”

“May I ask why?”

“The radiation contamination, the whole classified business Gold talked about. Kirtland stores the nation’s nuclear weapons. That’s an obvious connection.”

“Another ‘obvious.’ Okay. Now, give me an anodyne reason that I can put on paper . . . one which might stand a chance of getting through military bureaucracy.”

Corrie was silent a moment. “Kirtland’s southern border is about five miles north of the cave where Tolland and Wright were found. You were the first one to tell me that the location of the bodies trend in a beeline north: from the tent, to the fire pit, to where the fourth body was found, to the ravine, to the cave. That direction leads to the southern Kirtland border. I’d like to see that portion of its fence.”

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