01 Storm Peak Read Online Free PDF Page B

through the idea. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he was right. He flicked on the lights and reached for the old black phone on the deal table that was the centerpiece of the room. He began dialing the sheriff’s office, then stopped, realizing that it was quarter after three. Lee would have gone home hours ago to her small cottage on Fish Creek Falls Road. He set the phone down again, picked up a battered, leather bound notebook that lay beside it and leafed through it for Lee’s home number. Finding it, he began to dial. He’d dialed three numbers when he paused again. After all, it was a hell of a time to be calling someone. Then he shrugged and continued. Lee was a cop. If you wore the badge, you had to put up with phone calls at inconvenient times. Besides, Jesse wanted to discuss his theory. Wanted to see if she could shoot holes in it. He finished dialing the number.
    He listened to the low, insistent burr that told him the phone was ringing at the other end. It rang eight times, then Lee’s foggy, muffled voice came through the earpiece.
    “She’ff Torrens,” she slurred. “And this had better, by God, be very important.”
    “Lee,” he said impatiently. “It’s me. Wake up.”
    “ ‘Me’?” came the sleepy voice, but now with the faintest thread of venom in it. “ ‘Me’? Who exactly is ‘me’?”
    “C’mon Lee, it’s Jess. Now wake up and get your brain in gear. I’ve had an idea.”
    There was a long pause. An ominous pause, while Lee considered and discarded various unpleasant and painful things she might like to do to Jesse next time she saw him. Finally, she croaked at him, “Christ, Jess! It’s three fifteen!”
    “Three seventeen,” he said, unmoved. “Now wake up.”
    “I’ll kill you for this,” she threatened, but he heard a rustling of movement at the other end of the line that told him she was sitting up in bed. Then she said, “Hang on a minute. It’s freezing here. Let me get a sweater or something.”
    More movement. More rustling of cloth. Then Lee, sounding more awake but no less displeased, was back on the line.
    “All right, what is it?”
    “Tell me, Lee, why do you think our killer dumped the dentist in the trash container?”
    Lee’s temper finally took over. “Jesus suffering Christ on a bicycle, Jesse! Because he didn’t have a coffin handy, I suppose!”
    Jesse refused to rise to her anger. “Come on. Think now.”
    Her voice was heavy with sarcasm when she replied, “Well, let’s see: those trash containers are picked up and taken out to the county dump beyond Hayden, then the contents are dumped and bulldozed over. I guess that he was trying to hide the body, don’t you?”
    “That’s certainly what it looks like,” Jesse agreed. Another flood of sarcasm rushed down the line.
    “Well, I’m glad we agree on that! Now could I please go back—” He interrupted her. “I said that’s what it looks like. And, of course, all the pickups and the dumping are done automatically, aren’t they? Chances are, no one would spot the body during that process, right?”
    She breathed heavily, then said with great control, “Right.”
    “So …” he said, continuing very deliberately. “That’s why the killer left our dentist’s hand hanging out through the hatch. He did it on purpose. He wanted you to find the body!”
    “What? Are you crazy? Why would anyone want the body found if they’d just pulled off a murder?” The anger and the sarcasm were gone now. She was wide awake and listening, although she couldn’t see how he’d reached his theory.
    “Think about it, Lee,” he said eagerly. “You kill a man and dump his body in a trash container, right?” He paused for an answer.
    “Right,” she said. “Go on.”
    “Now, that body was pretty much on the floor of the container, correct? The trash was on top of him.”
    “Pretty much,” she agreed. “There was some trash already in it when he was put in there, but not a