01 Storm Peak Read Free

boots added another inch and a half. She was long legged, with the muscles smooth and sculpted from a lifetime of riding, hiking and skiing, slim-waisted and with breasts that were shapely and large enough to put a just noticeable strain on the buttons of her green uniform shirt.
    No one would ever call Lee Torrens pretty. Her features were too strong for that. But she was a decidedly handsome woman, with high cheekbones, a firm jaw and deep-set gray eyes that had a slight tilt to them-maybe the result of an Arapaho ancestor sometime in the past. Her hair was sandy blond and now, in her thirty-ninth year, it had a few streaks of gray in it. Not that Lee was the sort of woman to give much of a damn about that.
    She was the sort of woman you could describe as statuesque. The people of Routt County would describe her, and they often did, as a fine type of woman. And a damn good sheriff into the bargain.
    She picked carefully through the billfold now, easing a Minnesota driver’s license out of one of the card slots.
    “Name’s Howell. Alexander Howell,” she said. She peered into the section where notes were kept, pushing the mixed twenties, ones and fives to one side to reveal a credit card receipt. “And there’s a receipt here from the Overlook Lodge. Better get on to them and see if he has anyone down there looking for him.”
    Tom turned away, heading for the phone in the gondola office. Carruthers caught Lee’s eye and tilted his head in a question.
    “Need us any further, Sheriff?” he asked, adding a little apologetically, “We’re a little shorthanded this weekend.”
    Lee shook her head, smiled wearily.
    “Aren’t we all?” she said, rising from her position beside Alexander Howell’s body. “No. You can leave it to us, boys. Just drop in your write-up in the morning if you will.”
    “Can do,” said Carruthers.
    Lee turned to the small group of lift attendants staring at the dead body.
    “Nobody here seen this guy before?” she asked. They all shook their heads, looking at the chalk-white face on the floor as if, by looking again, they might suddenly remember that he was known to them.
    “Hundreds of people through here in a day,” said Hostetler, unnecessarily. Lee nodded agreement.
    “Yeah, I know, John. It was just a long shot that someone might have noticed him earlier.” She looked at the body critically. “Not that there’s anything about him you might remember,” she added.
    Nor was there. Alexander Howell, in life, looked to have been a most unremarkable person. Average height. Thinning brown hair. Average clothing—Levis, a plaid shirt and a now blood-soaked parka. He wore steel-rimmed glasses and Nike sneakers. You could see thousands of Alexander Howells in a day and not remember one of them.
    Not until he turned up dead, of course. That gave him a certain individuality. A celebrity that he’d never known in life.
    She crouched once more and resumed her study of Alexander Howell. The sightless, surprised eyes still told her nothing.
    She’d heard once that if you looked hard enough into the eyes of a murdered man, you’d see the image of the murderer reflected there forever. Not once in the four times she’d inspected a body had she found it to be true.
    Gently she turned the head to one side, allowing the light to fall on the wound under the chin. Hostetler stooped beside her.
    “Knife maybe, Sheriff?” he ventured. Lee shook her head uncertainly.
    “Mighty narrow blade if it was. More like an ice pick. Something like that,” she replied. Hostetler frowned as if, somehow, the idea of being killed by an ice pick was more unsavory than if the deed were done with a knife.
    “Ice pick, you say?” he said, shaking his head.
    Her deputy, Tom Legros, sauntered back from the phone in the office. “They’ve got him booked in there at the Overlook sure enough, Sheriff,” he reported.
    Lee turned the face again, looking for signs of any other injuries. There were none that she