“My God,” Dowd breathed.
They searched the house methodically, one room after the other. In the downstairs room, Keegan spotted a bloody towel in a trash can in the bathroom. There was a half-filled glass of water and an empty packet of B-C powder on the night table near the bed. Keegan wrapped the glass and empty B-C packet in the towel and stuffed them in the pocket of his coat. When he went back outside, Dowd and Hoganberry were standing on the front porch.
“Kind of blows up your theory about him killing Soapie to set himself an alibi, don’t it?” Dowd said, lighting a cigar. “He must’ve known we’d pin this on him sooner or later.”
“Not at all. I told you, he’s resourceful. All he has to do is get out of these mountains and he’ll vanish. He made it this
“Why? We all know what he looks like.”
“To give himself time, Sheriff. He probably figured it would be four, five days before anybody found the Trammels. By that time he planned to be long gone.”
Keegan stared out across the rugged landscape, its hidden dangers buried beneath two feet of snow.
“My guess is he skied down into Pitkin. Probably before that second snowstorm. There’re no tracks around.”
“Well, if he did he’s still there.”
“Let’s check it out.”
“I can tell you right now, they ain’t been any strangers down in Pitkin, sir,” Hoganberry said, stuffing a pinch of tobacco into his cheek. “I live there. If you fart at dinner everybody knows it before you finish dessert.”
“Then he went south, down through that forest.”
“He must be one hell of a skier,” Hoganberry said.
“He got here from Aspen,” said Keegan. “Thirty-some miles—in a blizzard. What’s south?”
“Salida. Over the shelf there, maybe twenty miles. He’d have to go southeast to get around Antero Peak. It’s fourteen thousand feet. By road, close to forty miles.”
“How big’s Salida?”
“Well, it’s a pretty fair-size town for these parts,” Dowd said. “Three, four thousand people maybe. Even got themselves a little airport there, ‘bout the size of Jesse Manners’s place.”
Keegan stared at the sheriff.
“They’ve got an airport there?” he said. “Any planes down there?”
“Why, that’s what an airport’s all about, Mr. Keegan,” the sheriff said with a smile.
“I mean, could he charter somebody to fly him up to, say, Denver?”
“That’s Billy Wisdom’s outfit,” said Hoganberry. “Hell, for the price he’d fly you to the moon. Used to be a barnstormer.”
“Phone lines working between here and there?” Keegan asked.
“Let’s talk to Mr. Wisdom.”
Hoganberry drove them back out to the strip at Gunnison. Dowd had made arrangements for one of his deputies to drive down from Aspen and get him. He’d had enough flying for one day. Keegan and Dryman were flying on south to Albuquerque.
“Well, I got to admit, John Trexler had us all fooled,” Dowd said. “Skis thirty-five, forty miles through a blizzard, murders a whole family, skis another fifteen miles and hires crazy Billy Wisdom to fly him down to New Mexico.”
“And disappears like a drop of water on a summer sidewalk,” said Keegan.
“Wouldn’t you know he’d fly three hundred miles south instead of doing the obvious and going to Denver,” said Dry- man.
“I should have figured it,” said Keegan. “He’s never done anything obvious yet.”
“If I were a bettin’ man I’d put my money on you, Mr. Keegan,” said Dowd. “You hang on like a damn pit dog.”
They pulled into the small airport. As Keegan and Dryman were about to get out of the car, the sheriff turned to them.
“Mr. Keegan?” he said. “It’s been a pleasure, although an exhausting one.”
“Thank you, sir. The pleasure was ours. You’ve been a lot of help.”
“One other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll make you a deal.”
“A deal?” Keegan asked, curiously.
“If you’ll send me copies of the blood report from that towel and the fingerprints off the glass, I won’t arrest you for stealing my evidence,” the portly sheriff said. “We don’t have any heat in the jail right now, be awful damn uncomfortable. Besides, I don’t know anybody south of Denver would know what to do with a fingerprint if they found one.”
