Jack Frost: Detective Jack Stratton Mystery Thriller Series Page 11

  “See you back at the ranch,” Leah said, seemingly happier now that taping had resumed.

  Shaking his head, Jack unzipped the equipment bag to put the lot basket inside. When he straightened up, he had just enough time to curse under his breath—Gavin was marching his way.

  “Hey, Gavin, I’m sorry if I overstepped,” Jack said, trying to head off a temper tantrum. “I’m sure you could have dealt with Eric, but you know how fights go, right? Someone gets a lucky punch in, you end up with a broken nose, then what happens to production?”

  The host had been primed for another fight when he walked up, but now his eyes widened in alarm, and Jack was certain that Gavin would have nightmares about rhinoplasty tonight.

  Gavin straightened up like a frightened mouse, scanning the field for signs of danger. “No. You were right to get involved.” He cleared his throat. “For the sake of the production.”

  Jack nodded.

  “But I am going to make sure Ryan gets that hothead off this mountain.” He reached down, lifted the top off the lot basket, dropped something inside, and stomped off. Jack smiled as he watched Gavin hurrying to catch up to Ryan. Turned out the diva host was quite easy to manage. Stoke his fears, stroke his ego.

  Crisis averted. Nothing left to do for now but fetch Vicky’s tile, pack up, and head back to the lodge for lunch and the next production meeting. Joy of joys.

  Gavin had left the top of the lot basket ajar. Gofer. More like Do-everything-fer. His eyes narrowed. There were now five colored tiles inside the basket.

  Including Vicky’s missing blue one.

  17

  Cookies Help

  “Here you go, sweetie. Cookies help.” Mrs. Stevens set a cup of tea and a cookie next to Alice’s mouse pad.

  “Yes, they sure do.” Alice smiled. “How are you doing?”

  “Great.” Mrs. Stevens scooted over to the counter and picked up her own cup of tea and a plate with five or six cookies on it. “I just came out to get a little snack. It’s so much fun going through all this behind-the-scenes footage… Anyway, I’ll let you know if I find something.” She grinned and disappeared back into the bedroom.

  Alice turned back to her computer. So far, she’d pored over the work history, financial statements, and criminal charges against the contestants and crew. Both cameramen had arrests for minor offenses; Ollie had been arrested for public intoxication twice, and Abe had an arrest in Texas for marijuana possession. Gavin had been sued several times, and his credit rating was in the toilet. Divorced twice and taken to the cleaners both times, he was struggling.

  And then there was Eric Sanders, the bad boy on the show—and apparently in real life, too. He’d been dishonorably discharged from the Army and had subsequently been arrested for assault twice, including once against his neighbor. The neighbor had confronted Eric about loud music, and Eric had responded by breaking the man’s jaw.

  Still, so what if these people had issues? Nothing here suggested any connection to Charlie Parker, and there was certainly no indication that any of these people would be likely to commit a premeditated murder.

  Alice sighed. Brian had wanted her to look at Charlie’s death first, so she had. But she had a hunch she might have more luck looking into another accident—the death of Planet Survival’s helicopter pilot, Mack Carson.

  Maybe it was time to listen to her hunch.

  Brian hadn’t included much about Carson in the materials he sent, but a quick internet search brought up a news article about the incident. She clicked the link and began to read:

  An expert American climber was killed Thursday in an avalanche while approaching the summit of the Zugspitze. The victim, 36-year-old Mack Carson of Los Angeles, California, was ascending the south face when the avalanche occurred. The avalanche danger was rated as “low” at the time of the slide. Initial witness statements indicate that the victim impacted with the rocky terrain on his way down. Mr. Carson is believed to have been killed instantly. Search and rescue personnel reported one casualty. The American’s climbing partner was not injured in the slide. The death marks the…

  Alice read the last line again. Climbing partner? She clicked on the link for the article’s author, a reporter named Joel Fischer, then typed a quick email.

  Dear Mr. Fischer,

  I read your article about the fatal avalanche last month on the south face of the Zugspitze with great interest. I am researching an unrelated avalanche death here in the United States and believe that additional information on the accident you covered would help me in my efforts. I would greatly appreciate it if you would please provide me with the following: (1) a contact name and email for the leader of the search and rescue crew that responded to the accident, and (2) the identity of Mack Carson’s climbing partner that day. Thank you in advance for your kind assistance.

  Sincerely,

  Alice Campbell

  She hit send and pushed back in her chair, musing about the person who was with Mack and somehow escaped the avalanche, and probably saw Mack get swallowed under. Alice had been through enough in her life to know that surviving something so tragic changes a person. Forever.

  18

  Missing Madman

  “Is Ollie back yet?” Leah called out as she walked into the lodge’s drab dining room.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Jack said. He was seated between Abe and Bree around the wobbly dining table.

  Harvey sat across from him, shoveling food into his mouth. “You want me to go put eyes on him?” he asked through a mouthful of microwaved mac and cheese.

  “When you’re done,” Leah said.

  A piece of macaroni dropped from the side of Harvey’s mouth onto his plate.

  “Harvey,” Bree whispered, “maybe a little less caveman?”

  Harvey wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve. “Sorry.”

  Leah pretended she didn’t notice. Harvey’s table manners weren’t on her agenda. “I have a meeting with Ryan. We’ll reconvene in the great room in twenty minutes.”

  Harvey nodded and finished off his can of soda.

  “‘Caveman,’” Abe said after Leah left. “I like that nickname. It suits you.”

  “Shut up,” was Harvey’s witty retort, topped off with a burp.

  “Well, you didn’t like ‘Doc,’” Abe said.

  What kind of doctor? Vet?

  “After the cutbacks, you’re the closest thing to a medical professional we’ve got!” Abe laughed.

  “I never should have told them I used to be an EMT,” Harvey grumbled. “It didn’t get me a raise, just more responsibility.” His hands flew as he spoke. “Besides, this show is high risk for serious injuries. Season one, we had a doctor and two nurses on staff. The next season, just the nurses, and now it is just me. It doesn’t make any sense that the higher the ratings go, the more they slash the budget.”

  Abe waggled his eyebrows. “Look on the bright side. Maybe you can practice CPR on Vicky!”

  “Come on, guys.” Bree shook her head. “Can you try to keep things the tiniest bit civilized around here? You do need to reenter society when this show is done.”

  “And I’m looking forward to that,” said Abe. He pulled out his wallet and flashed a picture at Jack like a badge.

  Harvey groaned. “Here it comes.”

  “What?” The image was of Abe hugging a little girl missing three teeth, but with a grin so wide her eyes were reduced to slits. “This is my little Annabelle.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Jack said.

  “Isn’t she? She stays with my parents while I’m on location. Her mother—” Abe cleared his throat. “Sorry, still kills me. On drugs, she was no mother at all.” Abe shook his head, looking both sad and embarrassed.

  Abe’s words hit Jack like physical blows. The same was true of his birth mother, a prostitute. “She’s blessed to have such great grandparents and a hardworking dad.”

  Abe smiled. “Her birthday’s next month, and she really wants one of those kid-s
ized Jeeps. I’ve got a bunch more pictures.” An accordion of photos tumbled down. “Lemme show you.”

  Bree leaned behind Abe’s back and waved her hands at Jack in warning, but Abe saw her and frowned.

  Bree laughed. “I’m just kidding. But you’re going to have to wait to tell Jack all about Princess Annabelle. Leah asked me to check the remote pics, and I need your help.”

  “You can show me those photos later,” Jack said.

  Abe grinned. “I was planning to.”

  As they pushed away from the table, Harvey said to Jack, “We’ve got a few minutes before the meeting. You want to see the control center?”

  “Sure.”

  Abe pushed Harvey’s keys across the table. “Don’t forget your keys, Caveman. You might need to feed the beast.”

  “What’s the beast?”

  “That’s what we call the generator,” Harvey said, leading the way up the stairs. “It’s one of those new propane ones. It’s gigantic. Total overkill for a lodge this size. They must have plans for expanding.”

  On the second floor, orange electric cables ran down the hallway from both directions and into a room on the right.

  “The monitors draw a lot of power,” Harvey said. “That’s usually the hardest part of these remote shoots.” He stepped over the cables and into the control room. “The equipment puts out a lot of heat. This is the warmest room in the whole place.”

  The old meeting room had no windows and there were no lights on, but it was as bright as day from the glow of giant computer monitors along the back wall. Jack counted twelve, in three separate banks. In front of the monitors was a long desk with a multitude of switches, keyboards, and other equipment.

  Harvey slid into a high-backed chair that looked like it belonged on the bridge of the starship Enterprise. “Welcome to the control center.” He fanned his hands out to the monitors. “From here, I can display a single image…” He pressed two buttons, and a blue-and-red tent filled all twelve screens, making it look like they were one giant TV. “Or, if I don’t mind a bug’s-eye view…” He pressed more buttons, and the monitors all switched to split-screen views, a dozen shots on each TV, for a total of one hundred and forty-four different shots—though some of them were black. “I could show up to two hundred and eighty-eight different shots at once, but we only have a hundred and twenty-four functional units.”

  “You have that many cameras?”

  Harvey grinned. “Well, some are no better than nanny cams, but we’ve got some cams that are really sweet.”

  “Was it the same setup last season?”

  “No, we had more cameras then.” Harvey frowned. “They cut us back again. It’s stupid. I mean, this year is going to be a ratings bonanza. At least, I hope. Who knows? If something else goes wrong...”

  He let the thought trail off, so Jack finished it. “Your ratings would tank?”

  “Tank?” Harvey laughed. “If something else goes wrong, we’d probably go back to being the number one show on television! It’s human nature to want to watch scary things play out in front of you. Think of drivers passing an accident scene, folks rubbernecking just to get a glimpse of the damage. And for TV, that rubbernecking means dollars. Excitement is entertainment—even if it’s chaos for those of us behind the scenes.” He raised a hand defensively. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wishing anything bad to happen to anyone. But boring is bad for viewership, and I need this job. I just bought a condo in Florida.” He gave a wheezy chuckle, assuming Jack—and everyone else in the world—understood and shared his jaded, money-grubbing worldview.

  Jack tried not to scowl. Harvey was no better than a sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyer, taking advantage of misery just to make a buck. Jack didn’t know what he disliked more, that kind of attitude or the fact that there were so many people in the world who regarded other people’s real-life tragedies as thrilling entertainment.

  Make some more popcorn, honey; he’s really up the creek now!

  “Let me show you what else I can do,” Harvey said.

  Jack was tempted to say he’d seen quite enough already, but instead cultivated his best poker face while Harvey pressed buttons and bustled about between a few keyboards. The TV in front of him switched to a single shot inside a large tent.

  “The contestants’ tents are special,” Harvey explained. “They’re much bigger than your standard mountaineering tent so we can get shots like this.”

  Harvey pressed more buttons and the camera panned down to a shot of Frida lying on top of her sleeping bag. She was reading a book and absentmindedly twirling her hair.

  Harvey laughed. “Is this job great or what? They actually pay me to be a peeping Tom.” Harvey wiped the corners of his mouth with his index finger and thumb.

  Great, the guy’s a perv, too.

  Harvey switched the camera again, this time to Vicky’s tent. The redhead was writing something in a book. Harvey rotated the camera, and it must have made a noise, because Vicky looked straight into the lens and waved. Harvey waggled the camera back and forth, and Vicky stuck her tongue out.

  “I keep asking Leah to get two-way microphones, but for now we can only hear them. They can’t hear us.” He pressed a button and Vicky’s voice came over the speakers in the control room.

  “Hey, Harvey. Miss me?” She pouted her full lips toward the camera.

  “Do you have any idea how badly I want to reply right now?” Harvey leaned back in the chair.

  “Do you need some more shots of me ‘getting over’ Eric losing?” Vicky started dancing around the tent, a huge grin on her face. “It couldn’t have happened to a bigger jerk. Now I’ve got a one-in-four shot at five million big ones.” She held up her hand with all five fingers splayed out. “The money’s as good as mine, baby!” As she pranced for the camera, she took off her bulky sweater. When she pulled it over her head, it lifted her shirt high enough to reveal her toned stomach.

  “She’s such a flirt for the camera,” Harvey said. “Ryan eats up these shots.”

  And so do you, apparently, Jack thought. He was anxious to curb Harvey’s enthusiasm, and besides, seeing Vicky reminded him of something a lot more interesting to him. “So, from here can you check that Eric left the mountain?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Harvey said absently, his eyes fixed on the screen. Vicky was now spinning the sweater over her head, and she tossed it into the corner. She strutted toward the camera, running both hands through her hair and swaying her hips like an eighties’ music-video vixen.

  “Switch it to Eric’s tent now, please,” Jack said.

  “Are you crazy? She just got started!”

  “I’d listen to him, Harvey,” Leah snapped.

  With the speakers so loud, they hadn’t heard her come in. Beside her was Ollie, his jacket still wet with snow.

  “I-I was just about to,” Harvey stammered, fumbling with the buttons. “I was just, uh… showing Jack the setup. What’s this all about?” The shot on-screen changed to another tent, completely empty. “That’s Eric’s tent,” Harvey said.

  Ollie leaned toward Leah and poked his chest with his thumb. “I waited for that idiot at the gondola for an hour and he never showed. So I went to his tent. It was empty, and his gear was gone. I hiked all the way back to the gondola again thinking I missed him, and still never saw him.”

  “Switch to the motion-activated camera,” Leah snapped.

  “Okay, boss.”

  As Harvey worked the control panel, Leah explained to Jack, “There are several cameras at each site. Some are always on, some only turn on when they’re activated by motion. We can go right to when the action starts, which reduces editing time—”

  Jack liked where this was going and couldn’t resist finishing for her. “By reviewing the footage on the motion camera in Eric’s tent, we can see him coming and going, and the times.”

  “I’ve got Ollie,” Harvey said.

  The monitor showed Ollie opening Eric’s tent flap, looking around the empty t
ent, and leaving.

  “Yeah, that was about an hour ago,” Ollie said.

  “How far back can you rewind?” Jack asked.

  Harvey pointed to a computer rack that contained dozens of hard drives. “I can go back to the first snowflake that fell when we resumed the season.”

  “Just roll it back to the previous motion,” Leah said impatiently.

  “All right, here’s Eric. About two hours ago.”

  They watched Eric rip open his tent flap and kick a box. He swore nonstop while he stuffed several items into his backpack and stormed back out.

  “Well, he packed up. That’s a good sign—it shows he intended to leave. Pull up the gondola camera,” Leah said.

  Harvey shook his head. “What gondola camera? You had me use it to replace the one we lost outside Chiri’s tent.”

  Leah sighed. “I forgot about that. Do we have any camera between Eric’s camp and the gondola that might have picked up Eric?”

  Harvey shrugged. “Sorry. Nothing between his tent and the gondola.”

  Leah turned to Ollie. “How long did you wait for Eric at the gondola the second time?”

  “I didn’t. I wasn’t gonna wait again. It’s getting dark.”

  Leah turned to Jack. “Get your jacket. We’re taking a walk.”

  The snow was coming down steadily by the time Jack and Leah reached the gondola, and Ollie’s boot prints were already disappearing. They’d been calling Eric’s name as they went along, and Jack yelled again now. Leah stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly.

  They both stopped and listened. The gondola cables creaked in the wind, but other than that, the mountain was quiet.

  Leah opened the gondola door and checked the console.

  Jack followed her inside. “Who has the key?”

  “Ollie has one. I have the spare.” She tapped her ring against the metal bar. “What a jerk.”