Dead Aim Read Free Page A

should give it a few hours."
    "It's been too long already." Her lips tightened. "Ken would be alive now if I hadn't asked him to take me over that gorge and pick me up. I want those bastards caught. I can't let them--" She inhaled sharply as a thought occurred to her. "If they set off that landslide, couldn't they have started the other one that buried the entire town?"
    Sarah nodded grimly. "A very nasty possibility. But no one's found traces of any sabotage. I hope to hell you're wrong."
    "I do too. Why would anyone . . ." She shook her head. "I can't think. Nothing makes sense."
    "Rest. You're still pretty woozy. Just tell the police what happened and let them put the pieces together."
    She didn't know if she could do anything else, Alex thought wearily. Her head was pounding and all she could see was Ken's helicopter exploding. . . . "Thanks for coming, Sarah."
    "Hey, we're friends. You'd have been here for me. May I do anything else for you?"
    "Camera . . . Lost my camera . . . Could you get me a replacement and special lenses until I'm able to choose one for myself?"
    "Sure. I know what you use. And I may do such a good job of choosing one for you that you'll decide to keep it." Sarah moved toward the door. "Now I've got to go collect Monty from the security guard in the gift shop downstairs before he's spoiled rotten. Everyone in the gift shop was giving him belly rubs." She glanced back over her shoulder. "I'll be back tomorrow morning. If you need me, call me on my cell phone."
    "I know what kind of pressure you're under. You don't have to come back here."
    Sarah grinned. "I don't have to do anything. I'll see you tomorrow."
    "It's quite a story," Detective Dan Leopold said. "Is that all, Ms. Graham?"
    "Isn't it enough?" The detective had been polite but totally noncommittal as Alex told him what had happened at the dam. "For God's sake, they murdered Ken Nader. They may have been responsible for that landslide that buried the town. Don't you believe me?"
    "Easy. I didn't mean to upset you." He added earnestly, "And I think there's every chance there's substance to your story. You're a photojournalist who's been in some rough spots, and you're used to accurately reporting what you see. It's just that we'll have a few problems verifying."
    "What problems?"
    "First, no one saw a second helicopter in the area."
    "I told you, there were no lights."
    "Two, Nader's helicopter crashed in the glade, and if there was any evidence of a second helicopter being there, the resulting fire must have destroyed it. Three, we haven't found a conclusive cause for the explosion." He paused. "No bullet was found."
    "Were you looking for one?"
    "No, good point. But our forensic team isn't stupid. They look for everything. Naturally, I'll tell them to go back and see if they can find anything that would corroborate what you've told me."
    "Dammit, I saw it."
    He nodded. "You also thought the same perpetrators started the landslides. Why would they do that?"
    "How the hell do I know?"
    "We've been told by the experts that the slide was probably caused by an aftershock to an area that was already unstable."
    "What? They just issued a report that there was a ninety percent chance the area was stable."
    "But not a hundred percent chance. They said they could have been wrong. We found no trace of explosive devices."
    "Look again. And look at Arapahoe Junction."
    "We will. I'm just telling you how it is." His lips tightened grimly. "There's no way we wouldn't delve as deep as we can when it concerns a tragedy of that magnitude. Since the World Trade Center catastrophe, everyone is being damn careful. But there have been FBI, politicians, engineers, and scientists by the carload all over that site, trying to find out what happened to cause that dam break and the ensuing landslide. No one found any signs of sabotage. There were readings on the seismograph machines in San Francisco indicating a possible four-point-two earthquake in this area the