But my father wasn’t inexperienced. He lived in New Orleans for the second half of his life, but he was born and raised in Colorado. A ski junkie who spent winters for much of his youth and early twenties in the mountains. He was a good driver. Solid.
Their SUV had gone off the road at a hairpin turn coming down the mountain just five minutes from the chalet where the guardrail was already damaged. It had been slated to be repaired the following week. By the time the police got there, snow was coming down hard. Any evidence on the road like skid marks or animal prints or anything that would give a reason as to why it happened were gone. They blamed icy conditions, but it wasn’t icy. It was snow and my father could handle snow.
The car itself had exploded upon impact once it had gone over the cliff causing a minor avalanche. There was nothing left of driver or passenger but charred bones.
The thought turns my stomach.
My father wasn’t a good man. I know that. He was abusive toward our mother. Toward us sometimes—more Zeke than me. But he was my father.
I make a point to drive past the chalet we sold after the accident. It looks the same, just older. I park outside and look at it. The place holds no memories for me. We never came here. Only our parents, mostly our father. I don’t think he brought mom more than a handful of times.
A light goes on inside and someone pulls the curtain back to look out onto the road. It’s a quiet road. No reason to be here unless you’re going to the restaurant at the top of the mountain and the restaurant is closed in the off season.
I put the SUV into drive and make a three-point turn to head back to the hotel. I don’t drive the five minutes it would take me to see the place where their car went over the guardrail. Maybe I will after. But I have an appointment with the manager of Hotel Petterhof.
The hotel is large with over five hundred rooms. It’s just one step above a hostel. A place for someone to get lost in. To be overlooked. I park the SUV in the lot—no valet here—and walk inside. It’s run down with fixtures and furniture that are cheap knock offs that needed to be updated about thirty years ago. It’s very different to the usual sort of place Zeke would stay.
There’s a pit in my stomach as I make my way to the front desk where a young woman looks up and smiles as I approach.
“Good evening, sir. How can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Spencer. Mitch Spencer.”
I don’t give her my name.
“Yes, he said he was expecting someone. I’ll call him. Just have a seat.”
“Thank you.”
I’ve sent a sizable deposit to Mr. Spencer for the work he’s done. I expect discretion in return. Discretion and information. Because I found something in Santiago’s files. Something he may not have intended for me to see.
The guest list from this hotel contained a name I recognized. Jack J. Z. Wilder. He was my brother’s best friend when we were in high school. It’s too coincidental that his name would be on the overnight guest list.
Santiago had gone so far as to gather the names of all the guests in the nearby hotels and chalets. The out-of-town renters. The locals. He was thorough. And Jack’s name caught my eye. It was the middle initials. That’s what Jack went by in school.
When I contacted Mr. Spencer, who has been working here for fifteen years, he was kind enough, after some financial encouragement, to share with me that there is a camera recording the comings and goings of the lobby, the front entrance, the side doors, and the staff entrances and exits. Normal security measures. But Hotel Petterhof never got rid of any of the old recordings. He was able to find the one from the week of my father’s death. The week Jack J. Z. Wilder supposedly spent skiing in Austria.
Except, Jack had been killed in a motorcycle accident the summer after graduation. I attended his funeral.
The camera footage, although grainy, shows a clear enough image of the tall, dark-haired man posing as Jack.
My brother.
My brother was in Austria the night my father’s car went off the road.
My brother was in a hotel room not half an hour away.
And I had no idea he’d even left the country.
“Mr. St. James. It’s good to meet you. I’m Mitch Spencer.”
I blink, clear my head, and drag myself out of my reverie to meet Mitch Spencer. He’s a short, thickly built man in his late fifties. He extends a hand and I notice how his suit is worn at the wrist.
“Mr. Spencer,” I say, shaking his hand. “Thank you for making time for me on such short notice.”
“This way.” We walk in silence down a corridor where the carpet is frayed, and the smells of food, stale cigarettes and weed permeate the walls. Zeke would hate this place.
I walk behind Spencer into a small office overcrowded by large ledgers and books, stacks of videotapes, a desk that’s seen better days, and a chair behind it that tilts to one side.
The one thing it has going for it is the view from the window behind the desk. It is spectacular.
“The office isn’t much but watching the sun set nightly is something else,” Spencer says, as if reading my mind.
“I bet.”
He gestures to a seat. I take it while he slips into the chair behind the desk. He turns the laptop around and without preamble, hits play. I watch the footage. I saw screenshots of it just days ago. I watch Zeke enter the lobby, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. He also wears a heavy, bulky coat zipped up to his neck, and walks to the elevator. I check the date of the footage. The night of my father’s accident.
I bite back any emotion, any thought.
Spencer pushes a few keys to play another scene. Zeke again, this time dressed in a suit and wool coat not for skiing.
“He checked out early. His reservation was for two nights but he left after one.”
I look at the date and time stamp. “Just an hour after he came in. Play them again.”
He does. And I watch Zeke come into the lobby in the cap and oversized coat. Spencer kindly pauses to expand the image and although grainy, I can make out his expression. At least a little. It’s determined. Hurried.
But when he checks out his hair is wet. He must have showered and changed.
“There’s one more,” Spencer says. “A curious one.”
He turns the laptop around, punches some keys then angles it so I can see the screen. Zeke, walking out of the hotel, dumps his full duffel bag into a trash can near the entrance before climbing into a taxi and leaving the property.
“You’ve made a copy?” I ask, wanting to give nothing away.
“Of course.” He opens the drawer, takes out a flash drive and hands it to me.
“Thank you.” I take out my cell phone, log into my banking app and make a second transfer. I stand as his phone dings with a message. He looks at it, then up at me, and smiles.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” Spencer says.
“Discretion, Mr. Spencer. I’ll expect that footage to disappear.”
He pushes a button on his laptop. “Already done.”
“Goodnight.”
I walk out of the cheap hotel on wooden legs. I climb into my rented SUV and drive back to the small, private airport from where I’ll fly home tonight. No one the wiser about my trip halfway across the world.
5