01 Storm Peak Read Free Page B

looked at her curiously. “Up under the chin, you say?”
    She nodded, demonstrating with the forefinger of her right hand, pressing it into the soft flesh on the underside of her chin.
    “Right about here,” she said. “Went straight in here and continued right up into the brain. Doc says death would have been almost instantaneous.” Jesse was nodding to himself, looking thoughtful. She continued. “Painful as all hell, but just about instantaneous.” She shook her head, baffled. “That’s another thing, Jess. Would have taken some considerable force to get that spike up through all that tissue and into the brain.”
    “That’s true enough,” Jesse agreed.
    “So how does someone make sure they can swing up under the chin hard enough and fast enough and be that accurate? Tell me that.”
    “I don’t follow you,” Jesse replied. Lee made a small gesture with her hands palm up.
    “Well, think about it: you want to ram a spike up under someone’s chin, right through their mouth and into their brain, you’ve got to take quite a swing to do it, haven’t you?”
    She was interrupted as the waitress leaned between them to set down the plate of wings and Lee’s beer. Absently, Jesse took one of the wings and began gnawing on it. The subject matter of the discussion didn’t seem to affect his appetite. But he’d spent eight years as a homicide detective in Denver and he’d heard and seen plenty worse things in his life. Lee turned to the waitress before she could make her high speed escape.
    “Paper towels?” she asked. The waitress slapped her thigh in annoyance.
    “Forgot ’em. Be right back, Sheriff.” She darted away into the crowd and the smoke haze that filled the Tugboat. Jesse finished his wing, reached for the single paper napkin that had come with Lee’s cutlery. Her look forestalled him.
    “That one’s mine,” she said. He shrugged and licked the extra sauce and juice from the ends of his fingers. Lee picked up a wing and went to work on it herself.
    “You were saying?” Jesse prompted her.
    “Oh, yeah. Well, as I say, it’d take some force to do that, but the killer got it right first time. There was just one wound. One puncture. That’s it. Now you’d expect, with a violent movement like that, it could take two or maybe three attempts to get it right on the spot, and on line. I mean, this guy must have been really swinging that spike, you know?”
    Jesse nodded again. “Could be first time lucky?” he suggested. Lee gave him a pained look and he continued, “Or it could be something else entirely.”
    Her expression changed quickly to one of interest. “You got an idea on this at all?” she asked.
    Jesse nodded. “Could be. Any chance I can get a look at the body?”
    “Got it down at the Public Safety Building,” she said. “In the morgue there.” She started to push her seat back but Jesse laid a restraining hand on her arm.
    “Finish your wings first,” he said. “He isn’t going anywhere.”

THREE
    T he Public Safety Building was on the corner of Eighth and Yampa, almost opposite the Steamboat Yacht Club. On the drive in, in Lee’s Renegade, Jesse remained silent. She glanced across at him once or twice, seeing the line of his jaw highlighted in the passing lights of other cars. She still wondered about Jesse. He hadn’t been the same since he’d come back from Denver two years ago. When you caught him in an unguarded moment, like now, there was still a residue of pain in his eyes, like you’d find in the eyes of an animal caught in a trap.
    There was some considerable history between Jesse and Lee. They’d grown up together, mostly on her father’s spread west of Hayden. It had been in the Torrens family for four generations and it was one of the best ranches in the county.
    By contrast, Jesse’s pa had a small spread on poor hardscrabble land twenty miles away. He ran a few head of cattle and his wife tried to grow crops for sale. But the land could barely