01 Storm Peak by John Flanagan Page B

was supported by a middle rail that accepted a wheeled carriage when it was taken out of service, as it was now. “Got a flashlight?” he asked, before she could answer.
    Lee handed him her Maglite, then found a driver’s license among the cards. She turned it to catch the light.
    “Arizona driving license,” she told him.
    Jesse grunted. “Long way from home.”
    “Name of Andrew Barret,” she said, reading the license. “From Flagstaff, Arizona.”
    “Nice town,” said Jesse. He reached under the cabin to retrieve something that had shown up in the beam of the flashlight. Lee saw the movement and dropped to her knees again to watch.
    “Got something?” she asked.
    Jesse grunted again as he crawled out from under the cabin. “Could be.” He held out his hand and shone the flashlight beam on his finger and thumb. There were a few fibers held between them. Lee leaned closer to examine them.
    “What do you think they are?” she asked.
    “Dunno. Could be nothing. Got a plastic envelope there?”
    She nodded and fished a plastic evidence envelope out of her shirt pocket. Jesse carefully deposited the fibers in it and closed the press seal top. He handed the small bag back to her.
    “We’ll see what your friends from Denver have to say about it,” he said.
    Dusting himself off, he straightened and walked around the cabin, shaking his head. He turned back to face her.
    “So tell me, Lee, how does a body get itself into the gondola without anyone noticing at the top?” He raised his hands helplessly, then let them fall back again to his sides. “I mean, the trash container I can understand. The killer had all day to plant the body in there. I’m not saying it was simple, but it was possible. But this?” he laughed humorlessly.
    Lee had taken her Maglite back from him. She shone it around the interior of the cabin, leaning past the body to do so, being careful not to disturb it any further. Doc Jorgensen got touchy about things like that when he had to give a coroner’s report.
    “Maybe he was alive when he got in the cabin?” she suggested. “Leastways, that’s the theory I’m working on.”
    Jesse shook his head dismissively. “And the killer got in with him, stuck him with the jigger and then flew away, right? Doesn’t make sense, Lee.”
    She shrugged. “Makes more sense than having the killer lug a dead body into the gondola past two attendants and God knows how many other passengers waiting there and have nobody notice.”
    “No stoppages on the gondola just before John found the body, were there?” he asked.
    Lee shook her head. “I checked the log. The last stoppage was forty minutes before. The run down from the top takes twelve and a half minutes, give or take maybe a minute, depending on wind conditions, so that couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”
    Jesse was pacing again. “The doors shut automatically. The gondola doesn’t stop. Yet somehow, someone gets in here, kills our friend from Flagstaff, opens the closed doors, steps out into thin air—remembering to close the doors behind him …” He paused suddenly, turned to her quickly. “The doors were closed when the cabin came in, weren’t they?”
    She nodded confirmation. “Yeah. John said he heard them open, then saw the body in there, only he didn’t know it was a body at the time,” she added.
    “Right … so somehow, he leaves a dead body behind in a locked cabin.”
    “You could force these doors, of course,” she suggested. As she said it, a thought struck him and he moved quickly to the cabin again.
    “Have you got that flashlight again?” he asked, peering at the doorjamb and holding a hand out for the Maglite. When she handed it to him, he twisted the switch on and focused it on the edge of one of the automatic doors.
    “Maybe you’re right, Lee,” he said carefully. “Look here. I noticed these before but I didn’t think too much of them.”
    She looked at the beam playing on the doorjamb. There