Read Online Mountain Rampage by Scott Graham - Free Book Online Page B

out.
    Besides, it wasn’t as if the professor’s outburst came as a surprise. His volcanic temper was legendary on the Fort Lewis campus. Chuck remembered Sartore ripping into students for unsatisfactory work two decades ago. The professor hadn’t changed in the years since.
    Chuck took a steadying breath and got out of the truck,heading toward the conference center. The massive log building and the matching lodge next door had been constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression in the 1930s. A banquet room took up most of the first floor of the conference center. Smaller meeting rooms honeycombed the second. Chuck had texted ahead to set up the meeting in Parker’s office, which occupied a front corner of the building’s third floor.
    Chuck climbed the steps to the top story, knocked on Parker’s office door, and entered when the resort manager called out for him to come in.
    Parker’s large office was done up in L.L. Bean chic. A plaid Pendleton blanket lay over the back of a leather sofa against one wall. Lacquered rainbow trout on plaques hung above the couch. A life-size, chain-saw sculpture of a bear hewn from a thick stump of wood filled a corner of the room. The bear stood on its hind legs, paws upraised, mouth open in full roar.
    The resort manager stood behind his desk at a wide picture window overlooking the fields and, across the expanse of grass to the south, additional resort buildings, including scattered rental cabins, rows of condominiums, a snack stand, and, off to one side, horse stables.
    A few hundred yards farther south, two-story brick buildings lined three blocks of Elkhorn Avenue, comprising Estes Park’s compact business district. Beyond, on a hillside facing town, perched the famous, eggshell-white Stanley Hotel with its distinctive red roof.
    In his Durango High School days, Parker had been a slight, fidgety student, prone to biting his nails and obsessing over girls, grades, and his bad acne. Chuck’s former close school friend hadn’t changed much in the intervening years. Parker was still given to quick, nervous gestures and to voicing seemingly every concern that crossed his mind. He was still thin, too,with a long, aquiline nose, darting eyes, and a close-cropped beard that almost hid his acne scars.
    Parker waved Chuck toward one of the horseshoe-shaped club chairs in front of his expansive oak desk. The resort manager wore jeans and a bright blue polo shirt, the Y of the Rockies logo on its breast.
    He turned to look out his office window, his fingers drumming the top of a binocular case on the windowsill, before pivoting back to Chuck. “Jim called me.”
    â€œThe police officer?”
    â€œHe told me about the knife. Said it belongs to your foreman.”
    â€œMy crew leader, Clarence.”
    â€œHe’s your wife’s brother, right?”
    â€œThat’s him. He’s worked for me for a couple years.”
    â€œHe’s not that old, as I recall.”
    â€œTwenty-five. Out of the University of New Mexico School of Anthropology. Says he had nothing to do with it. I believe him.”
    â€œLike you have any choice—your brother-in-law.” Parker dropped into his suede-leather office chair, its arms outlined by brass rivets. “You know I did you a favor, having you stay here this summer, setting you up with your own cabin, letting your students room in Raven House.”
    â€œWe’re paying you good money, and you know it. Besides, you didn’t seem to think this whole thing with the blood was that big a deal last night.”
    â€œThat was before I heard about the knife.”
    Chuck sat forward. “No crime has even been alleged at this point.”
    â€œYou have to understand my position. The owners…” Parker’s voice trailed off.
    â€œThe owners what?”
    â€œThey’re new. A couple of oil-and-gas guys, brothers, out ofTexas. They kept me on as