Tough Cookie

The next article stated: QUESTIONS LINGER IN TWO KILLDEER DEATHS. Mysteriously, this writer claimed, both Bullock and Wakefield had not been alone. When the ski patrol had found Jack Gilkey, his skull had been bloodied and he’d been dazed. The patrol had discovered his wife one hundred feet below him, over the cliff. Dead. Gilkey had claimed he and his wife had been attacked by a strong-built, ski-masked person. The three of them had struggled; Jack had been knocked unconscious; Fiona had gone over the cliff edge. In trying to rescue Fiona and Jack, the ski patrol had obliterated any sign of other prints in the snow.

In the case of Nate Bullock, the patrol, Forest Service, and Sheriff’s department had found a set of boot prints beside Nate’s, going into the out-of-bounds area. This I already knew from patrolwoman Gail. But only Nate’s body had been found in the search. No one else had been reported missing.

The third article screamed: SNOWBOARD TRACKS ON ELK RIDGE VANISHED INTO AVALANCHE ZONE. It was possible, the writer hypothesized, that Nate Bullock had hiked partway up the mountain with a snowboarder. The two had then parted ways, Nate tracking in the valley, the snowboarder ascending the ridge. Had the snowboarder triggered the avalanche that killed Nate?

WAKEFIELD WIDOWER QUESTIONED focused on Jack Gilkey’s account of the circumstances surrounding his wife Fiona’s tragic death. More details of Fiona’s last day had emerged: Fiona had had too much to drink at lunch, she’d boasted she could beat her husband to the Bighorn Overlook, a roped-off area just off one of Killdeer’s advanced slopes. The overlook faces the out-of-bounds area that includes Elk Ridge, the writer added parenthetically, and skiers occasionally ducked the boundary line to take in the view. Those pristine mountain forests of Elk Ridge, the article reported, were now earmarked for ski-area expansion. According to Jack Gilkey, Fiona had skied ahead of him and ducked the rope. Fiona and Jack arrived at the overlook, then were attacked by someone bursting from the trees. Jack tried to help his wife and was knocked out himself.

QUESTIONS PERSIST IN DEATH OF HEIRESS cited the postmortem drug screen, which showed a blood-alcohol level in Fiona’s body that made her legally drunk. GILKEY CONVICTED OF CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE added that a mitten belonging to Jack had been found clutched in Fiona’s hand. He had let her drink too much; he had let her go down a run she wasn’t qualified to ski. The nail in Jack’s coffin had been the fact that the ski patrol had apprehended him at the overlook the day before Fiona died. They’d yanked his ticket and warned him away from that spot. But the next day, he and Fiona had raced to the same out-of-bounds overlook.…

Since by law a person who in any way causes another person’s death cannot benefit from it, the article concluded, Jack Gilkey was not inheriting Fiona’s millions. Neither was her son Arthur, however. If Jack for any reason did not inherit, Fiona had specified that her money should go to charity: the Public Broadcasting System.

Finally, WAKEFIELD HEIR FILES COMPLAINT recapitulated Arthur’s furious claim that Jack Gilkey had exerted “undue influence” on Fiona Wakefield in the making of her will. Before Fiona’s remarriage, Arthur had been the sole beneficiary of a twenty-million-dollar estate. Suddenly, Arthur had become, instead of the heir to an immense fortune, the recipient of a paltry million-dollar trust fund. But nineteen million was not going to PBS if Arthur Wakefield had anything to say about it. The article added that ski patrol had verified that it had been Arthur Wakefield who had sent the patrol to the overlook, to try to find his missing mother. They’d found her all right, but she was already dead. Her neck had broken in her fall.

I stared at the silent television. Mile-High Stadium was a mute chaos of orange and blue. The Broncos scored a field goal; the crowd went wild; the station cut to commercial.

Who had left these articles for me? Why? What connection did Fiona have to Doug Portman? Could it have anything to do with my discovery of Doug’s body? But what? Portman had granted parole to Jack Gilkey; Portman had also been despised and vilified by Arthur Wakefield. What did that have to do with the avalanche that snuffed out Nate Bullock’s life?

I shuffled through the material again. The Stool Pigeon Murders had nothing to do with anyone or anything I knew about. Had someone been a stool pigeon? Who?

And then there was the avalanche book. I flipped through it: Always test the snow in a slide area before traversing it. If you are caught near an avalanche, grab a tree, rock, or anything solid. Carry an avalanche beacon in all wilderness areas. Great.