Killer Mountain

still alive, and I’ve made a mess of my clothes with ketchup from Wally’s kitchen making it look like blood, at least in candlelight. What do you have to say to that, Frank?”

“We’ll get you new ones,” promised Hudson, taking off his ski mask.

Chapter 46

There was a moment no one said anything

“Jesus, it’s Hudson!” burst out Bob Gold, the first to recover. “God, I’m sorry! I gave you quite a clout.”

“Yeah,” said the former Frank, his arm around Cilla. “You can buy the Ben Gay.”

“Well, sit down, sit down,” said the doctor. “You’ve had a terrible fight.”

“I will,” said Hudson. “Give a husband back from a business trip a little time with his wife.”

“You can have that later,” barked Wally. “I want to know how you pulled this off, And why the hell you didn’t let us know you were okay, instead of having us wander all over the damn country looking for you.”

“I was a bit busy,” said Hudson. He and Cilla sat on the couch, not letting go of each other.

Chief Solomon, waiting for backup to lug away Cabral’s body, and having finished tying up the rest of the gang, broke in to announce the storm was letting up, and he was optimistic he’d have the house clear soon.

“I’ve got a few questions too, Hudson,” said Cilla. “Back at the ski area, how could you have believed I’d ever leave you?”

“Never did,” said Hudson, stroking her hair. “You’d had a blow to your head; I was just passing time until you came to your senses.”

She sat up to look at him. “That’s what you did! You stroked my hair when you cut me loose in the Yankee Building. Why didn’t you let me know it was you? We could have worked together!”

“Didn’t know you were right in the head yet,” said Hudson with a grin. “I still hadn’t found the tanks, and I couldn’t risk the commotion of you reading me the riot act with the whole gang listening in. What were you doing there anyway?”

“Todd, Kurt and I were looking for the dispersal area. I remembered what Cabral said back in the library about ‘three bearing gifts to a field in Bethlehem’, changing one little word. That word was ‘to.’

“The three were coming from a field, Mt. Field in the town of Bethlehem, New Hampshire, bearing gifts of the poisonous pods. And the ‘three’ doing the bearing are the Ammonoosuc, which goes into the Connecticut River, the Pemigewasset that joins with the Merrimac and the Saco River, which flows to the Maine coast. I looked at maps of the Presidential Range in the Haystack office and, from what I could tell, it seemed obvious that only Mt. Washington would drain into all three rivers, which in turn flow through nearly all of New England. But I just had a look at a map at AMC and I don’t believe Washington does. I think only Mt. Field, in the entire White Mountains, drains into all three. So just one dispersal area needed. Pods seeded in the snows of Mt. Field, come spring, would float down these waterways through populated areas, wiping out hundreds of thousands as they melted.” She turned to Todd, who was sitting closer to Loni than seemed necessary. “You said Kurt was okay. How bad is okay?”

“He’s in Memorial Hospital, but sitting up and hasn’t gotten off the phone to Haystack.”

“Why did they let you live, Cilla?” asked Todd. “You’d put some hurt on them. They couldn’t have felt good about you.”

“I wondered about that too, Todd,” she replied. “I think I was to be the hostage to silence you and Kurt if they didn’t catch you.”

“Hey Hudson,” growled Wally, impatiently. “Back in Arizona, how the hell did you get away from Frank and change places with him.”

Hudson smiled thoughtfully, remembering. “Frank got careless. He felt since he’d tied my hands that I was no danger to him. Problem was, he’d tied them in front of me. When he turned to get out his knife, I looped them over his head, and squeezed. That kind of took the wind out of him, and made my plans for me. Frank was full of himself in the ambulance on the way to the desert; boasted it was his brother’s plan to extort the money, and Frank’s bugs that would be the weapon. He was going to meet up with the gang his brother had assembled after our little business was finished. I found plane tickets on his body and the name Grecco Cabral. So if I couldn’t find them, let them find me. Frank’s sombrero was enough identification when they met me at Logan Airport.”

“You could at least have let your wife know you were alive,” said Loni. “She really worried about you, right Cilla?”

“He couldn’t, Loni. He was doing what he had to.”

“But when he took you upstairs as Frank,” said Wally, “you didn’t even resist!”

“Oh, I knew then. He stared at me when they came in and, when he got my attention, winked.”

“But the screams,” cried Loni. “We thought he was murdering you!”

“Good acting,” said Hudson. “Even scared me.”

“And the ‘blood’?”

“Picked up a ketchup bottle in Wally’s kitchen when we came in. I knew what they expected Frank to do with Cilla.”

Bob Gold was still bemused. “I can’t get over Andre. I’ve known him for years.” He shook his head. “To think, I had the Nutcracker everyone was looking for right in my house.”

“Cilla and Hudson,” said Wally gruffly, as though forcing it from his throat. “Seems they’re the ones did the nut cracking.”

Cilla raised her eyebrows; Hudson grinned.

###

PETER PINKHAM

Peter Pinkham is the author of The Hidden Mountain (MFDC Press 1998). Killer Mountain is the long-awaited sequel to The Hidden Mountain. Pinkham has written musical comedies, children’s plays and books, and is currently working on a novel O verkill and a book of short stories. He lives with his wife in North Conway, NH.