Ridley Pearson - Killer Weekend

s she stood in her small closet undressing for bed, Elizabeth Shaler was annoyed to find some mud left behind by a running shoe that she now put away. About the size of a dollar bill, the mud covered the carpet and spanned the crack of the trapdoor that led down into the three-foot-high crawl space beneath the house. Liz pulled on a cool cotton nightgown. At her feet, cracks appeared in the mud, then widened and spread. These cracks had nothing to do with where she stood, but were instead the result of upward pressure from beneath the trapdoor.

Liz, just shy of six feet tall and athletically fit, placed her dirty laun dry into the wicker hamper and tidied up. Her hanging clothes were organized by color and type, her shoes neatly ordered on the shelves. Had she glanced down she might have noticed the widening cracks in the mud, might have noticed the hatch coming open.

She looked around the bedroom for the biography she was currently reading, only to realize shed left it in the kitchen.

As she headed down a narrow hallway lined with her familys photographic history, behind her the crawl space hatch popped open an inch. From within the darkness there appeared the top of a knitted ski mask, followed by a pair of skittish eyes.

RIDLEY PEARSON

The kitchen and the adjoining living room afforded Liz a spectacular view of the horizon dominated by Sun Valleys rugged mountain skyline, still aglow at 10:10 p.m. She loved this place, her second home, so far from New York and the political life shed chosen.

She poured herself a glass of water, grabbed the book from the counter, and headed back down the hallway, both hands occupied.

{

Patrolman Walt Fleming groaned.

Earlier in the summer the town had adopted a free bike campaign. Thirty bright yellow bikes had been spread around town as community property, with the understanding no one would steal them. They were used by anyone wanting to pedal from one place to the next. But the instructions on the bikes clearly stated they were to be well cared for and left in any of the many bike stands around town, a policy prone to abuse. Walton a bike himself, one of four officers assigned to pedal patrolspotted one of the bikes dumped into some bushes a half block up the hill from the community library.

He inspected it for flats or damage and, finding none, decided to walk it down the hill to a bike stand in front of the library. He was on his way downhillwalking awkwardly between the two bikeswhen he spotted a crawl space screen vent ajar on a house foundation. He might not have noticed, but the framed wooden screen was bent and splintered on one cornersuggesting it had been pried open. Worse, he knew this house: It was on the KPD watch list, the residence of Elizabeth Shaler, New Yorks young attorney general, a woman whose politics and guts he admired. The Shaler family had been coming to Sun Valley for fifty years. Her parents were featured in photographs with Ernest Hemingway on the walls of the Sun Valley Lodge.

He continued walking a few more yardsthe click, click, click of the bike gears the only sound on the street. But the appearance of that screen nagged at him. A rookie cop, he was always looking for trouble. Right or wrong, he connected the jimmied screen to the ditched bike, and he decided that together they gave him reason enough to investigate. He laid the bikes down on the curb and worked his way back quietlyto take a closer look.

{

Her hands occupied, Liz bumped the bedroom door shut with a throw of her hip. She headed straight for the end table with the glass of water and the book.

The overhead light went off.

She smelled somethingsomeonesour. And she turned around defensively.

But as she did, a hand clapped over her mouth. Before she had a chance to react, her arm was twisted up behind her back and she was driven down to her knees.

It happened fast: One second the glass of water was tumbling to the carpet, where it shattered against the end table; the next, her hands were clamped behind her and her wrists and mouth were bound with duct tape. The intruder dragged her painfully by the hair to a chair in front of the vanity and sat her down. More duct tape secured her to the padded chair. Tears streamed down her face.

The only light in the room was street light seeping in through the blinds, and a rose-colored hue from the digital clock by the bed. He wore a ski mask and a black T-shirt, but the blue hiking shorts seemed out of place. This was no Ted Bundy. He had a small scar on his left knee. He smelled sharply of sweat. She faced the mirror. He moved nervously behind her.