Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

set her in the backseat. Tully turned and looked back, just as the cabin disappeared into the surging river.
    After his breathing slowed down, he told Pap, “I thought I was going to drop dead.”
    Tully got into the Explorer and rested his head on the steering wheel.
    “I’m freezing back here!” the boy said, his teeth chattering.
    Tully told Pap there were two sleeping bags in the back section of the Explorer. “Open them up and spread them over our two victims, okay?”
    Pap got the sleeping bags and spread them out over the couple. Then he settled himself in the front seat and sat there in silence, not even bothering to roll himself a cigarette.
    “What’s wrong, Pap?” Tully said. “You’re not talking.” He started the Explorer and began driving.
    “I’m just trying to fix an image in my mind.”
    “You’re a dirty old man!” the girl said from the backseat. She had stopped crying.
    Tully laughed. “You’ve just met and already she’s got you figured out, Pap.”
    Tully glanced at his passengers in his rearview mirror. The boy was skinny, with a mop of dark hair that concealed his ears. He was only a few inches taller than the girl. In Tully’s opinion, he didn’t amount to much. The girl was pretty but, even better, cute, with short, curly, dark red hair, large eyes, and full pouty lips. Neither of them could have been older than eighteen.
    “I guess you two probably aren’t married,” he said.
    The boy caught his eye in the mirror and shook his head. The girl snapped, “No way!”
    “Good,” Tully said. “So what brings you up here, other than the obvious?”
    “We came up Friday,” the girl said. “We have a little break before the next semester starts.”
    The boy went on. “We were cross-country skiing at the lodge and Lindsay took a spill and hurt her foot. I took her into the emergency room at Blight City Hospital and they put a cast on it. Then we came back up to stay at the cabin.”
    “That was your idea,” Lindsay snapped. “Taking a girl camping in the middle of winter! I’m a math major. You’d think I’d be smart enough not to get involved with this idiot. I should have gone back to the dorm.”
    “Idiots are a dime a dozen these days,” Tully said. “And what dorm is that?”
    “At Washington State.”
    “You’re both students there I take it.”
    “Yeah,” the boy said. “I’m Marcus Tripp and she’s Lindsay Blair. We’re both freshmen. I’m in pre-law.”
    Tully glanced at them in the rearview mirror. They both had finally stopped shaking. He could feel something warm leaking down both of his legs. He hoped it was blood.
    “Figures,” Tully said.
    “You really think my car is ruined?”
    “It’s history, Marcus. I saw it disappear.”
    “My old man will kill me,” Marcus said.
    “My old man will kill you!” Lindsay said.
    Tully looked at the boy in the mirror. “You’ll get to live a few days longer, Marcus. We’re all trapped up here by the avalanche. It blocked the road behind us, as well as the river.”
    “Oh, that is just great!” Lindsay said. “So I’m stuck up here!”
    “Afraid so,” Tully said. “I suspect the avalanche also took out the power poles and probably the telephones lines, too. We’ll find out when we get to the lodge.”

6
    THE LODGE SUDDENLY APPEARED, DARK and massive above them. It was four stories high, with sections of logs holding up the roof of a vast covered veranda that swept around the main building. Several windows had dim yellowish lights illuminating them. There were similar lights in the portion of the building Tully knew to be the dining room.
    The parking lot was crammed with vehicles, most of them SUVs. As they pulled into the lot, they drove over a packed section of the new snow. The headlights picked up a red spray. He stopped and backed up. Both he and Pap leaned forward to study the trampled snow.
    Tully said, “Looks like blood to me.”
    Pap said, “From my vast experience with blood,