The Sky Is Falling

"Thank you very much."

Hanger on the Wharf was a large restaurant crowded with noontime diners.

The hostess said to Dana, "I'm sorry, we don't have a table right now. There will be a twenty-minute wait if - "

"I'm looking for Mr. Bruce Bowler. Do you - ?"

The hostess nodded. "Bruce? He's over at that table."

Dana looked. There was a pleasant-faced, rugged-looking man in his early forties, seated alone.

"Thank you." Dana made her way to the table. "Mr. Bowler?"

He looked up. "Yes."

"I'm Dana Evans. I need your help."

He smiled. "You're in luck. We have one room available. I'll call Judy."

Dana looked at him, puzzled. "I beg your pardon?"

"Aren't you asking about Cozy Log, our bed-and-breakfast inn?"

"No. I wanted to talk to you about Julie Winthrop."

"Oh." He was embarrassed. "Sorry. Please sit down. Judy and I own a small inn outside of town. I thought you were looking for a room. Have you had lunch?"

"No, I - "

"Join me." He had a nice smile.

"Thank you," Dana said.

When Dana had ordered, Bruce Bowler said, "What do you want to know about Julie Winthrop?"

"It's about her death. Was there any chance that it was not an accident?"

Bruce Bowler frowned. "Are you asking if she could have committed suicide?"

"No. I'm asking if...if someone could have murdered her."

He blinked. "Murdered Julie? Not a chance. It was an accident."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"Sure." Bruce Bowler was thoughtful for a moment, wondering where to begin. "We have three different sets of slopes here. There's the beginners' slopes, the Muskeg, Dolly Varden, and Sourdough...There's the more difficult ones, Sluice Box, Mother Lode, and Sundance...There's the really tough ones, Insane, Spruce Chute, Hang Ten...And then there's Steep Chutes. That's the toughest."

"And Julie Winthrop was skiing...?"

"Steep Chutes."

"So she was an expert skier?"

"She sure was," Bruce Bowler said. He hesitated. "That's what was so unusual."

"What was?"

"Well, we have night skiing every Thursday from fourP. M . to nineP. M . There were a lot of skiers out there that night. They were all back by nine o'clock except Julie. We went looking for her. We found her body at the bottom of Steep Chutes. She had slammed into a tree. Had to have killed her instantly."

Dana closed her eyes for an instant, feeling the horror and pain of it. "So - so she was alone when the accident happened?"

"Yeah. Skiers usually travel together, but sometimes the best ones like to hotdog it by themselves. We have an area boundary marked here, and anyone who skis outside it does so at his own risk. Julie Winthrop was skiing outside that boundary, on a closed trail. Took us a good while to find her body."

"Mr. Bowler, what is the procedure when a skier is lost?"

"As soon as someone's reported missing, we start with a bastard search."

"A bastard search?"

"We telephone friends to see if the skier is with them. We'll call a few bars. It's a quick-and-dirty search. That's to save our crews the trouble of conducting an all-out search for some drunk who's sitting stoned in a bar."

"And if someone is really lost?" Dana asked.

"We get a physical description of the missing skier, his or her skiing ability, and the last-seen location. We always ask if they had a camera."

"Why?"

"If they did, it gives us a clue to the scenic areas they might have gone to. We check to see what plans the skier might have had for transportation back to town. If our sweep doesn't turn anything up, then we assume that the missing skier is located outside the ski-area boundary. We notify the Alaska state troopers for search and rescue and they put a helicopter in the air. There are four people in each search party, and the civil air patrol joins in."

"That's a lot of manpower."

"Sure is. But remember, we have six hundred and thirty acres of skiing area around here, and we average forty searches a year. Most of them are successful." Bruce Bowler looked out the window at the cold slate sky. "I sure wish this one had been." He turned back to Dana. "Anyway, the ski patrol does a sweep every day after the lifts close."

Dana said, "I was told that Julie Winthrop was used to skiing the top of Eaglecrest."

He nodded. "That's right. But that's still no guarantee. Clouds can come in, you can get disoriented, or you can get plain unlucky. Poor Miss Winthrop got unlucky."

"How did you find her body?"

"Mayday found her."

"Mayday?"

"That's our top dog. The ski patrol works with black Labradors and shepherds. The dogs are pretty incredible. They work downwind, pick up a human scent, go up to the edge of the scent zone, and work the grid up and back. We sent up a bombardier to the scene of the accident, and when - "

"A bombardier?"

"Our snow machine. We brought Julie Winthrop's body back on a Stokes litter. The three-man ambulance crew checked her out with an EKG monitor and then took photographs and called a mortician. They took her body to Bartlett Regional Hospital."

"And no one knows how the accident happened?"

He shrugged. "All we know is she met an unfriendly giant spruce. I saw it. It wasn't a pretty sight."

Dana looked at Bruce Bowler a moment. "Would it be possible for me to see the top of Eaglecrest?"