A Wee Dose of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

retiring wouldn’t slow him down. He might not have access to the university’s lab after he retired, but he still had his mind. Last year, an article about him in
Science
Magazine
had declared that his mind was incisive. He liked that.
Incisive.
Like a surgical tool.
    *   *   *
    Mac lay there with snow drifting gently onto his face, stunned by the agony that tore through him. Of all the stupid things that might have happened, this took the prize. Nobody knew where he was. Even if someone had seen him, he went out skiing so often, nobody would think anything about it. He didn’t have to be back at the station until Thursday. A little vacation, he’d told them, although he’d planned to return home before nightfall and spend the next three days watching TV. Nobody would miss him. He knew these woods. He’d never been lost. He’d never been hurt. At least not until now.
    He was less than an hour outside Hamelin, but the trail he was on—the Perth trail—wasn’t a very popular one. It had a killer steep gradient once you got beyond that little cabin halfway up the trail. But surely someone crazy enough to ski the Perth would come along soon. Maybe the people who’d made the cross-country tracks he’d been following would turn around and come back this way. There were two of them. That much he could tell from the tracks. One of them must have been lagging behind the other, because one set was always on top.
    Mac raised his head enough to peer back down the trail through a haze of pain, hoping against hope that someonemight be skiing up the trail behind him. He dimly realized that his tracks had pretty much obliterated those he’d been following. It looked like only one—at most two—people had skied here.
    Mac might have congratulated himself on his tracking skills, but jolts of pain prevented any positive thoughts. His right leg. This wasn’t good. It felt like a badly torn muscle at the top of his leg, but the waves of fire coursing up from the vicinity of his shin were what had him really worried.
    He did a quick survey of the rest of him. Head, fine. Arms, check. Heart, still beating. Left leg, workable. How could he have fallen so badly? He’d been thinking about the double sweeping block, and maybe his mind might possibly have wandered, but that wasn’t the problem. No, the problem was Peggy Winn. If she’d behaved the way a civilian was supposed to behave and let the police apprehend the killer last summer, then Mac wouldn’t have been distracted while he was skiing and he never would have fallen.
    The other problem was those people ahead of him—they hadn’t tested the path well enough. They shouldn’t have led him into such a trap. What was a big rock doing in the middle of a ski trail? Those people ahead of him should have moved it. How could anyone get in a good day’s skiing with idiots like that in front of him?
    He’d fallen onto his left side. He pushed himself up an inch at a time, every slight movement an exercise in agony, until he could slip off his backpack. Despite the pain, he hauled the pack forward and flipped open one of the side pockets. Empty. Mac swore vehemently. He always put his cell phone in there. Without much hope, he searched the other pockets.
    He had enough food and cigarettes for two days, even though he’d planned to be home by nightfall. It always paid to pack extra. He had two bottles of water. He had waterproofmatches, so he could melt snow for drinking. He didn’t have a sleeping bag, but he’d brought a compact emergency tent, more to conserve heat and protect from the wind than anything else. Here, deep in the woods, he wouldn’t have to worry about wind. The rock escarpment rising on the right-hand side of the trail might be a good place to hunker against, if he could get there. He could cover himself with the tent, but without a sleeping bag, he might