Free The Alpine Nemesis by Mary Daheim

replied. “Apparently it happened yesterday. Have you got anybody on the list of people who went up Tonga Ridge?”
    Wes's craggy face, which always looked as if it needed a shave, grew blank. “Just a couple from California. You know how it is—hikers are supposed to sign in at the ranger station this time of year, but often as not, they don't. The locals never do, unless it's dead of winter. Besides, it's early in the season. Some of the lakes up there
    are still snowed in and will be for a couple of weeks at least.”
    I nodded. “How's Barney doing? I really never got a chance to talk to him this morning.” An oversight, certainly, but Spence had monopolized the warehouse owner.
    “He's okay,” Wes responded. “The new doctor checked him out. Barney's had some trouble with high blood pressure, you know.”
    The new doctor was a young man from Hawaii named Elvis Sung. He had studied medicine at UCLA, completed his residency in San Diego, and interned in Santa Barbara. Having declared himself sick of sun, Dr. Sung had accepted a position in Alpine. So far, there had been no complaints, either from his new patients or from him. He seemed very competent, and, for the most part, it had been a damp, cool spring.
    “As I recall, Brian Conley didn't go near the ski lodge,” I remarked.
    “No,” Wes replied. “He took the trail from the Icicle Creek ranger station.”
    “No one in town remembered seeing him,” I said. “His SUV was left in the ranger station's parking lot, but Milo never found anything of interest inside.”
    “I was with the sheriff when he checked it out,” Wes said, standing up and going over to my U.S. Forest Service map on the far wall. “I'd sure like to know where Conley was found. We combed that whole area for him back in March,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his hand.”
    “You're certain he went in by himself?” I asked.
    “He signed in alone,” Wes said. “But you never know. People are darned funny. Sometimes one will register and the other one will say to heck with it.”
    “Especially,” I remarked, “if they don't want anyone to know they've gone with someone else.”
    Wes gave me a wry grin. “You mean like somebody else's wife or girlfriend?” “Like that,” I said. But I was thinking more along the lines of a killer.

G INNY E RLANDSON HAD been so busy out front that she hadn't had a chance to tell me about Spencer Fleetwood's news broadcasts. “You really should turn on the radio,” she urged in her most serious manner. “Spence is doing on-the-spot coverage all over town. He's hardly played any music at all.”
    “Damn,” I breathed, and glared at my little portable radio. I'd received it as a high school graduation gift. It had been a friend to me at night while I was studying for college exams, a comfort while I awaited the birth of Adam, a source of calm enjoyment on warm summer evenings when it brought me baseball games from faraway places such as Cleveland, Chicago, and New York. Though it was often full of static, and sometimes faded in and out, I relied on my little radio for companionship. But lately it had betrayed me. I might not receive the Seattle or Everett stations loud and clear, but I could always get KSKY.
    “I'll listen in,” I said, and thanked Ginny for the suggestion.
    The station was on a commercial break, with Spence using a high-pitched, racketing voice to extol the wonders of the hottest new releases at Platters in the Sky. He did most of the local commercials himself, though occasionally he used Tim Rafferty or a college student to lend some variety.
    Spence came on live, dropping down a few decibels and sounding deadly earnest. “I'm reporting directly from Alpine Memorial Hospital,” he intoned, “where I'm speaking with Debbie Murchison, registered nurse. What's the latest on the autopsy of Brian Conley's body, Nurse Murchison?”
    “Dr. Dewey just finished,” Debbie said in her youthful voice. “He went to