Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) by Patrick F. McManus Page A

us the cause of death pretty quick. Probably won’t get much info on time of death. Then I want to get Lurch working on his computer. He knows how to do some seriously illegal things. Maybe we can’t exactly use them in court, but we can get some leads.”
    “I take it you don’t think Mike fell in the river and drowned.”
    “Bodies don’t float upstream, Dave, and this body was upstream of the tracks.”
    “Maybe the tracks aren’t his. Maybe he fell in upstream of where he was found. How about that?”
    “Try not to be a nuisance, Dave.”
    Mrs. Wilson came down to the dock. She had a green wool cape wrapped around her. The cape and her hair were speckled with snowflakes.
    Tully pulled back the tarp so Mrs. Wilson could see the face of the body. She slumped as if about to faint. Dave caught her. She put her hand to her mouth.
    “That’s Mike,” she whispered
    Tully covered the body back up. “Death face-to-face is always a shock. Even if you don’t know the person.”
    “You okay, Mrs. Wilson?” Dave said.
    “Yes, thank you.” She stepped forward, looking at Tully. “Is there anything else, Bo?”
    “Yes, there is. I don’t know if this is the time to tell you but I will anyway. I think your husband was murdered. I don’t know why or how, but maybe I will soon.”
    “Murdered?” she said in a soft voice.
    Tully nodded. “Yeah, I’m shipping the body out of here tonight by helicopter. Our medical examiner will be able to determine cause of death, I hope.”
    “You don’t think he drowned?” she asked.
    “That’s certainly a possibility. We’ll know soon enough.”
    As soon as Dave had walked Mrs. Wilson back to the lodge, Tully and Pap wrapped the blue plastic tarp around the stretcher and fastened the package with bungee cords.
    The two of them then carried the body up to the utility shed.
    “That Mike?” Grady asked, wiping his hands with an oily cloth.
    “Yep,” Tully said. “Mrs. Wilson identified him as such.”
    “She’ll have her hands full running this place now,” Grady said. “Mike could be a real pain, but he did a lot of work around here, stuff Blanche can’t do.”
    “I hate to tell you this, Grady, but I need you to run me up to the top of the ridge in Bessie, so I can make a phone call.”
    “Yes sir, I figured as much. Guess the dog teams didn’t work out so good.”
    “You got that right.”
    Tully wouldn’t mention it to Janice, but the Sno-Cat was a lot more comfortable than the dogsled. Tully thought maybe the Sheriff’s Department had serious need of such a vehicle. Sure, several of the commissioners would drop dead when he presented the idea, but new technology always results in casualties. The commissioners were only politicians anyway and easily replaced.
    He called the number on the National Guard pilot’s card. A female voice at the guard station told him that at that moment Stolz and his helicopter were out on a rescue mission. She would get Ron up to the lodge, she said, as soon as he returned. “Can I give you a heads-up call when he gets back?”
    “Can we wait up here a bit?” Tully asked Grady.
    “My time is your time,” the handyman said.
    “We’ll await your call,” he told the woman. He gave her his cell phone number.
    Tully stared out at the falling snow while they waited. After a bit he said, “Where are Cabins One and Two?”
    “Farther up the mountain past Cabin Three. You want to run up there?”
    “Might as well.”
    The groomed trail wound up considerably higher on the north side of the mountain, with one ridge branching off to a higher ridge and that ridge branching off to yet another. They at last arrived at Cabin Two, which was almost buried in snow.
    “Nobody stays at Cabins One and Two this time of year,” Grady said. “From here the trail levels out and runs north for about five miles. Cabin One is right at the end. I haul skiers up here with the Sno-Cat and they can ski out to the end and then ski downhill all the