Chương 4
Claire looked at them.
“You’re keeping the spiders here?”
“For now.”
“Where?”
Lena pointed at the stainless tray.
Claire moved another step away from it.
Owen leaned sideways to see.
His mother caught the back of his sweater.
“No.”
“I’m just looking.”
“You have looked enough.”
“How do we know there aren’t more?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Owen noticed.
His eyes moved to the boot.
Marcus did too.
The opened black shell sat on a disposable pad at the end of the bed. The cracked white plaster had been removed entirely, but the liner was still partly attached.
Marcus pointed.
“Lena, large biohazard bag. Don’t seal it yet.”
Claire stared.
“Biohazard?”
“It’s just the container we have that’s large enough and closes securely.”
“Oh.”
“This is not suddenly a plague situation.”
“Thank you.”
“That was not intended as reassurance.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
Lena slid the boot into the heavy bag, then sealed that bag inside a lidded specimen transport bin.
The brass fireplace poker remained where Owen had dropped it.
Nobody had touched it.
For some reason Claire kept noticing that.
Ten minutes later the immediate emergency had changed shape.
Charles’s fracture still required hospital imaging and orthopedic care, but his circulation remained good. His blood pressure had settled. His oxygen level was normal. He had no chest pain, no muscle cramping, no spreading redness, no unusual sweating, no nausea beyond what the medication had already caused.
Marcus fitted a temporary padded splint that could stabilize the leg without enclosing it completely.
The spiders sat inside separate containers.
The road remained closed.
The storm did not care about any of them.
At 11:42 p.m., resort security knocked on the clinic door.
The man who entered was named Wes Garland, late fifties, broad-shouldered, wearing a navy resort parka over a white dress shirt because he had been pulled from a management dinner when the blizzard closed the upper access road.
He looked first at Charles.
Then at Claire.
Then at the cracked plaster pieces in the waste tray.
Then, finally, at the specimen containers.
His face tightened.
“Those came out of the boot?”
Marcus said, “They did.”
Wes did not ask whether Marcus was sure.
That interested Claire.
“What?” she said.
Wes looked at her.
“Sorry?”
“You made a face.”
“I think most people would make a face.”
“No. You made a different face.”
“Claire.”
Charles’s warning was quiet.
She ignored it.
“The boot came from your ski patrol.”
Wes glanced toward Marcus.
“Was it one of ours?”
Marcus answered carefully.
“It was applied by patrol staff before the patient arrived here.”
“That doesn’t mean the boot belongs to the resort.”
Claire folded her arms.
“Does it?”
Wes rubbed two fingers across the bridge of his nose.
“I need to check the inventory record.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“Because, Ms. Mercer, we have more than one medical boot.”
“You’d think you’d remember the spider model.”
“Claire.”
This time Charles’s voice had more weight.
She stopped.
Not because she was calm.
Because Owen was listening.
Wes noticed him then.
“You’re the boy who—”
“Yes,” Claire said.
Wes reconsidered whatever he had been about to say.
“Okay.”
Owen stared at him.
“Did you put spiders in the boot?”
“Owen.”
“What?”
Wes blinked.
“No. I did not.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
The question was not hostile.
That made Wes answer honestly.
“Because something happened on resort property that could have hurt your grandfather, and it’s my job to figure out what happened.”
Owen considered that.
“Are you police?”
“No.”
“Then what happens if it was somebody’s fault?”
Wes glanced at Claire before answering.
“We still figure it out.”
Owen looked unimpressed.
Adults used sentences like that when they wanted children to stop asking.
He knew the category.
Marcus turned to Wes.
“Where are those boots stored?”
“Patrol clinic at Summit House. Backup equipment in the lower maintenance medical cage.”
“Which one did this come from?”
“I’ll find out.”
“The liner has a serial label.”
Wes looked at the transport bin.
“You photographed it?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see?”
Marcus hesitated.
“The boot is part of a medical incident. I’m preserving it until we know whether county public health wants it.”
“Understood. A photograph is enough.”
Marcus showed him the image on the clinic tablet.
Wes enlarged it.
His face changed again.
Claire saw it.
“So you do recognize it.”
“I recognize the inventory format.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Wes looked at her.
“No. I don’t recognize this specific boot.”
“Then why did you look like that?”
“Because the label says it was inspected today.”
Silence.
Marcus took the tablet back.
He had seen the sticker but not studied it.
A small printed inspection label sat on the side of the boot.
DATE: DEC 21.
INITIALS: JT.
Charles turned his head.
“What day is it?”
“December twenty-first,” Claire said.
Owen looked at the spiders.
“So somebody checked it today.”
Wes nodded reluctantly.
“That’s what the tag indicates.”
“And missed them?”
No one had a good answer.
The county road department estimated another three hours before the ambulance route might reopen.
Marcus called the regional hospital and discussed Charles’s fracture with the on-call orthopedic physician. They agreed that, given stable circulation and pain control, waiting for safe ground transport was preferable to requesting a helicopter in near-zero visibility.
Claire stood beside the window during the call, watching red emergency reflections move over blowing snow.
Her phone had thirty-four percent battery.
She had missed four calls from her older sister, Laura.
She did not call back immediately.
She wanted five minutes.
The thought almost made her laugh.
Five minutes had caused enough trouble tonight.
Owen sat in the leather chair with both feet pulled beneath him. Someone had given him a paper cup of hot chocolate from the staff break room. He held it but had not taken a sip.
Charles noticed.
“You planning to drink that or interrogate it?”
May you like
Owen looked at the cup.
“I’m not thirsty.”
