Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson Page A

protection.
    Walt used a master card key to crack open the door. The ram took out the inside chain as the door flew open. The three deputies swarmed the suite ahead of Walt, calling out loudly, “Clear!,” as they quickly determined the status of the bathroom, closet, and bedroom. Walt followed inside, annoyed by his bad luck. Then he looked down and saw wet footprints on the carpet.
    He called out a radio code into the room that meant: “Suspect in hiding.” It proved a second too late.
    A door on the bedroom armoire came open, and a naked woman streaked across the small room, dragging a shirt behind her. She grabbed something off the desk, rushed out the open door to the balcony—left open by Brandon—and jumped.
    Brandon was a split second behind her. He leaped over the rail and fell straight down through a canvas patio awning that had supported her weight but failed to support his.
    “I’m okay!” Brandon shouted.
    Walt watched the woman’s bare backside flee across the parking lot. She pulled on the shirt midstride.
    By the time the other two deputies took off, she was long gone. An escape route had been planned. Walt was betting she’d grabbed a cell phone off the desk.
    No one had seen her face, but Walt thought he had a vague idea what she looked like. It was the woman with the baby stroller.

15
    O n a manicured lawn, nestled behind the Sun Valley Lodge and cast against a backdrop of rugged, summer-snowcapped mountains, loomed an enormous white tent. In a darkening sky, fiery pink clouds began to melt and dissolve. Vintners put last-minute touches on their tables in preparation for the wine tasting, a preview of the following night’s auction items.
    The presenters, smartly dressed and deeply tanned, knew one another well. With the preview being as important to them as the rehearsal dinner was to the bride, nerves were on display. It was a matter of honor and company pride to fetch higher bids than the competition, even at a fund-raiser. A few lots would sell with reserves. The most famous of these was the John Adams.
    Walt, Brandon, and a deputy named Blompier delivered the attaché case without incident. The search for the female suspect had failed, adding to Walt’s unease. Although the motel was being watched, Walt didn’t expect anyone to return.
    With the temperature in the low seventies and expected to drop ten degrees every hour for the next three, the Adams bottles had been transferred to a temperature-controlled Plexiglas viewing case. Brandon stood guard immediately behind the case despite Remy having requested something low-profile.
    Guests began arriving.
    Seeing the reverence in the faces of the onlookers as they approached the Adams display, Walt understood how rare such a viewing had to be. To him, they were three scratched old bottles of wine, but he overheard the discussions: the story of Remy’s discovery of the bottles in Paris, the lengthy authentication, marred by some kind of myth straining to be legend . . . the controversy . . . and always the astronomical reserve price.
    Walt had posted several deputies: four in uniform outside, two in plainclothes inside. He had the Mobile Command vehicle, the MC, parked nearby, a thirty-foot RV tricked out with all sorts of communications equipment, all of it donated.
    Walt spotted Remy, crossed the tent, and politely ushered him into the grand dining tent, where a sea of bare round tables and a massive stage awaited the following night’s festivities. He handed Remy a stack of nine photographs that Branson Risk had e-mailed to him.
    “Do you recognize this man?”
    The photos were dark, the faces distorted by movement. The man in question had been wrestling with the attaché case, which was locked to the Taurus’s seat frame. Two of the nine caught a piece of his face in focus.
    “No,” said Remy.
    “You have to wonder how these people knew what they knew,” Walt said. “They went to a lot of trouble trying to steal that