Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

“Forget it,” I said and pushed off toward the lift. When I reached it, there were only a few skiers gathered there and they weren’t going back up — the lift had been shut down because of the weather on top — they were taking a break before continuing down. But the lift operator was sitting in his shack, and I yelled to him to telephone to the bottom for the ski patrol with a sled; someone was seriously hurt above. He put down his magazine, picked up the phone, and asked me how seriously hurt. I let his question sink in and told him he’d better telephone for the cops too.

Two hours later I was sitting in the town police station. There were three others in the office: the police chief, another cop, and my buddy Joe Scully, with whom I’d driven out to Colorado for five days’ vacation. That made four cops in all. Joe and I work in the Missing Persons Division back home.

The chief, named Hewitt, was an old cop who spent most of his time worrying about drunken kids tearing up the local bars. Maybe he had an occasional incident of wife beating or a traffic accident, but I didn’t think he’d seen many homicides.

We were all drinking coffee.

“Quite a coincidence, your being a cop,” the chief said.

“Cops ski too,” I said.

“How come your buddy wasn’t up there with you?”

“I quit early,” Joe said. “I get cold.”

“He prefers to do most of his skiing at the lodge bar,” I explained.

The chief lit another cigarette. He smoked a lot of cigarettes. “Did you hear anything like shots?” he asked. “That guy hadn’t been dead long when you found him.”

“I didn’t hear any shots,” I said. “The wind might have carried the sound in another direction.”

“You may have been too far up the mountain,” the chief said. “There was nobody around the body at all?”

“No. Everybody was scooting down. There was no visibility whatsoever near the top.”

“Funny place to shoot somebody,” the chief said.

“I’d say it was a damned near perfect place,” Joe offered.

“You guys ever worked a homicide?” asked Hewitt.

“I was in Homicide three years,” I said.

“Not me,” Joe said.

“Maybe you’ll be able to give me a few pointers, Timothy,” the chief said to me. “I’ve only been on three killings — all family stuff, no mystery about them. This one will take some work.”

“What have you got so far?” I asked.

He slurped a cup of coffee. “His name is Claude Wingfield, age thirty-seven, lawyer, comes from Des Moines. He drives a ’79 Honda Accord — my boys located it in the parking lot. Seems he was out here alone, which is unusual. I don’t know if he’s married — we’re checking on that. Waiting on the autopsy for more information. But we found three spent .32 automatic cases near the body.”

“Where was he staying?”

“At Green Pine Lodge. We found the key in his pocket. I sent someone down there.”

The door opened and another cop appeared. “The victim’s married, chief. I talked to his wife on the phone. She’s flying out. She’ll get here sometime this evening.”

The chief looked satisfied. “When were you two planning on leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” Joe said.

“Well, keep in touch until then, will you? You might be able to help us out.”

“Sure,” I said. I wrote down our hotel and room number and slid it across the desk to him. “We’ll check back here after dinner,” I said.

“Good.”

Joe and I went down the street to the first bar we saw and had a couple of beers. The bartender, a big red-faced Scandinavian type, asked us if we’d heard about the murder on the mountain. We said we had. At six o’clock we walked back to our hotel, showered, and then went out to dinner at a place called the Top Sirloin, with a phony Old West decor. By the time we finished eating it was almost eight. We returned to the police station. Chief Hewitt was sitting behind his desk drinking coffee.

“Sit down.” He motioned us toward two empty chairs. “We have the results of the autopsy.”

“Is Mrs. Wingfield here yet?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She has to change planes at Denver. It’ll take a while.”

“What does the autopsy say?”

“Three in the lower chest from a .32. Very close range, a yard or so at the most. One pierced the heart. Death was almost instantaneous. What do you think? It sounds to me like it might be a woman: a small-caliber gun at such close range. The guy was married; he came out here skiing without his wife, wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.”

“Men also carry .32 automatics,” I said.

“I think he was hustling,” the chief said. “The hotel says he arrived alone, rented a single room.”

“How long had he been in town?”

“Three days.”

“Did he bring any girls to his room?”

“Who knows? The place is too big to notice that sort of thing.”

“There’s not much you can do until you talk to his wife,” I suggested.

He grunted assent. “She should be here in a couple of hours.”

“Where’s an interesting place to have a drink in the meantime?”

“Try the Red Lantern. Nice atmosphere — like a club. It doesn’t get too many kids.” He gave us directions.