Free Death in the Dolomites by David P Wagner

year.”
    â€œRiccardo, you must promise me that you will listen more carefully to your uncle when he advises you to go into police work.”

Chapter Five
    On the steep northern mountainside above Campiglio, four teenage boys on snowboards went from one small clearing in the trees to another. They were dressed in the standard uniform of the shredder: baggy pants, jackets that looked at least two sizes too large, and stretched knit caps that could have come from a charity shop. Each time they stopped, they looked down at the town before deciding on the next opening to continue their descent. There was little agreement over the best route.
    â€œWe never should have gotten off the trail. We’ll never find our way back to it now. And it’s starting to get dark.” The boy’s voice held a slight edge of fear. Through the waving trees, far below, they could make out the first few lights that had come on in the town.
    â€œRelax. As long as we keep going down, we get there. So just don’t go up.”
    The other two found that funny, laughing as they flipped their boards over with a loud flop and started to cut between the trees again. After twenty minutes and numerous pauses they could see one of the towers of the funivia , rising from the trees like a giant steel insect. Its thick cables were so high above them to be invisible in the darkening sky. There was a slight hum coming from the wires, as if messages were being transmitted along them.
    â€œThere may be some clearings under the cabine ,” said one of the boys, “let’s get over there under the cables and we should be able to get down faster.”
    â€œI hope so. If I get home much after dark my mother will kill me.”
    Ten minutes later the foursome broke into a strip of clearing underneath the cables, its trees cut down years earlier when the towers had been erected and the cables strung in place. New trees were starting to sprout up, and there were uneven sections where boulders jutted from the snow, but the relative open area would be considerably faster going than the thick forest. A light snow, which had been falling all afternoon, swirled in the gusts in the center of the clearing. As the boys slid down the hill, they cut through the deep drifts built by winds crossing from one valley to the next, the same winds which had cut bare spots around boulders. They moved deftly to stay on the snow, threading between the obstacles.
    â€œThis is way better than the main trail, and—Lando, are you okay? Did you catch a rock?”
    Behind him the second boy in the line had fallen hard. He pushed himself to his feet with a groan, snapped his boots out of the board and rubbed his leg. “After I fell I hit this rock, but it wasn’t a rock that made me fall. I ran over something.” He trudged back to where he had taken his spill and scraped his boot over the snow. A piece of dirty white canvas appeared. “There’s something under here.”
    â€œForget it, let’s keep moving.” It was the boy who had worried of his mother’s tendency toward infanticide. The other boy bent down and pushed away the snow with his gloves, revealing more of the thick materials, and then a zipper.
    â€œIt looks like a sack.” He looked up at the others. “It could be full of Nazi gold, hidden here by the Mafia.” Two of the others laughed, kicked off their boards, and joined in the dig until the top of the bag was completely uncovered. One of them pulled off his glove and reached for the zipper.
    â€œWait a minute, shouldn’t we tell the police or the ski patrol?”
    â€œThen they’ll pull our ski passes for being fuori pista . Let’s just look to see what’s inside, then we can decide what to do.” He reached over an pulled on the zipper. It was either frozen or rusted from being under the snow, but after some harder tugs it finally opened with a low growl.
    â€œ Cazzo