Stone Cross Read online

  Also by Marc Cameron

  The Arliss Cutter Series

  STONE CROSS

  OPEN CARRY

  The Jericho Quinn Series

  ACTIVE MEASURES

  THE TRIPLE FRONTIER

  DEAD DROP

  FIELD OF FIRE

  BRUTE FORCE

  DAY ZERO

  TIME OF ATTACK

  STATE OF EMERGENCY

  ACT OF TERROR

  NATIONAL SECURITY

  The Jack Ryan Series

  TOM CLANCY: POWER AND EMPIRE

  TOM CLANCY: OATH OF OFFICE

  TOM CLANCY: CODE OF HONOR

  STONE CROSS

  MARC CAMERON

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHARACTERS

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  DAY TWO

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  DAY THREE

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grumpy Cutter’s Cowboy Chili Pie

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or events, is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Marc Cameron

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2019953554

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2732-9

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: April 2020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2733-6 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2733-9 (e-book)

  For

  Anchorage Police Department K9 Midas;

  his partner, Officer Brandon Otts,

  and the K9 teams at APD

  CHARACTERS

  Arliss Cutter—Supervisory Deputy US Marshal, Alaska

  Mim Cutter—Arliss’s widowed sister-in-law

  Michael Cutter—Arliss’s nephew

  Matthew Cutter—Arliss’s nephew

  Constance Cutter—Arliss’s niece

  Lola Teariki—Deputy US Marshal, Alaska Fugitive Task Force

  Nicky Ranucci—heroin addict and Cutter’s informant

  Sean Blodgett—Deputy US Marshal, Alaska Fugitive Task Force

  Nancy Alvarez—Anchorage PD Officer on Alaska Fugitive Task Force

  Scott Keen—Judicial Security Inspector, US Marshals Service

  Jill Phillips—Chief Deputy US Marshal/AK

  J. Anthony Markham—US District Judge, Alaska

  Gayle Jackson—Markham’s administrative assistant

  Brett Grinder—Markham’s law clerk

  Kenneth Ewing—Native corporation attorney

  Tina Paisley—attorney for the village of Stone Cross

  Sarah and David Mead—caretakers at Chaga Lodge

  Rolf Hagen—Chaga Lodge handyman

  Tim Warr—Lieutenant, Alaska State Troopers, Bethel Post

  Earl Battles—Alaska State Trooper, pilot

  Ned Jasper—Village Public Safety Officer, Stone Cross, AK

  Lillian Jasper—Stone Cross school counselor

  Daisy Aguthluk—Stone Cross resident

  Cecilia Aguthluk—former Stone Cross resident

  Bertha “Birdie” Pingayak—principal, Stone Cross K-12 school

  Jolene Pingayak—Birdie’s teenage daughter

  Marlene Swanson—Rolf Hagen’s girlfriend in Stone Cross

  James Johnny—Marlene’s ex-boyfriend

  Vitus Paul—Stone Cross K-12 maintenance man

  Sascha Green—Jolene Pingayak’s biological father

  Natalie Beck—Stone Cross special ed teacher

  Abe Richards—Stone Cross shop teacher

  Aften Brooks—Stone Cross science/math teacher

  Bobby Brooks—Stone Cross language arts teacher

  Donna Taylor—third grade teacher, substitute

  Rick Halcomb—man in the woods

  Morgan Kilgore—man in the woods

  “There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in a storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

  —Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

  PROLOGUE

  Sarah Mead pictured her husband’s face on the log she was about to split. She wasn’t the murderous sort, not really, but the spot between his vaporous eyes made the perfect target for her axe.

  She was mid-swing when the terrible cry suddenly rose again from across the river. It had plagued her all afternoon, but was louder now, and caused her concentration to wobble. Out of habit, her axe fell true, splitting the upright log perfectly in half. She scanned the dark line of spruce trees across the river, ignoring the newly split pieces of wood as they clattered, marimba-like, to the pile at her feet. The cry made the tiny hairs on her arms stand up. At first, she thought it might be a wolf—low and long, and so incredibly sad.

  The sun had just dropped into the muskeg to the west, leaving the gurgle and slurp of the freezing river sounding even colder than it had just moments before. It would be dark soon. Dusk didn’t stick around long this time of year. Vapor blossomed around Sarah’s oval face with each panting breath, but it was quickly ripped away by the wind. Apart from a few pockets of trees, there was little but open tundra and a few caribou to stop the bitter blow that was kicking up out on the Bering Sea—a scant hundred and fifty miles away.

  Her eyes were still glued to the trees; her brain worked in overdrive trying to pinpoint where the mournful sound was coming from. She’d grown up in Alaska, but in all her twenty-seven years had never even seen a wolf except in the Anchorage zoo, not until she came out here. They were big things, wolves, monsters really. No, that wasn’t right. If Sarah had learned anything in the month she and her husband had been at the lodge, it was that wolves were neither good nor bad. Internet memes notwithstanding, they did not possess human emotions. They were beautiful and efficient, but they were not monsters any more than they were angels. They were just wolves doing what wolves did without thinking abo
ut it. They ran and raised their young and hunted and killed—sometimes even each other.

  Sarah told herself she was being stupid for fixating on some phantom noise. She placed a new log on the stump and raised the axe over her head. As if on cue, another baleful moan, thick, almost visible against the gathering darkness, rose from the trees across the churning river. The noise made her flinch, causing the axe to ping off the upright spruce log. She prided herself on her aim, her uniform pieces. It was a Zen-like practice, splitting stove wood—at least it could be without this god-awful sound.

  No. That was definitely not a wolf. At this point, a wolf would have been welcome.

  Whatever this was, it was less than a hundred yards away. Thankfully, most of that hundred yards was across a river. Silver ice laced the rocks along the shore. The whole thing would soon freeze up completely. It offered Sarah no small measure of calm that for now at least, the water was too cold and deep to cross without a boat.

  A tiny drop of moisture hung at the tip of her red nose. She dabbed at it with the forearm of her long sleeve T-shirt, still holding the axe with both hands. It was getting too dark to see anyway. The screened meat-shack was already little more than a black blob just a few dozen yards from the main lodge to her right. Below her, two aluminum skiffs lay tilted on the bank. The river was freezing too fast to leave them tied up in the water for even one more day.

  Sarah toed the split wood to one side with her rubber boot, making a path to the main lodge behind her in case she had to run. Running. That was a joke. The stuff that killed you out here only killed you more quickly if you ran. The rational portion of her brain told her she was being foolish, but it was easy to be foolish when you were alone in a place like this.

  The last paying fishermen had gone back downriver a week before. That left Sarah, her husband, and the handyman, Rolf Hagen, the only human beings for miles. Nighttime temperatures dipped into the teens now. Each morning there was more ice on the river, inching out farther and farther from the bank. They were losing five minutes of light each day. Winter was still a couple of months away according to the calendar, but the ice on the river said it would blow in any day.

  Sarah looked—and some would say acted—older than she was. She was attractive enough, but she habitually slouched broad shoulders to mitigate the fact that at six feet she was two inches taller than her husband. Biggish ears peeked out from beneath a head of mousy hair. Her sophomore year at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, she’d overheard three guys in her sociology class describe her as the most desirable of her female classmates to take to a desert island. She was, they said, not exactly ugly, and would probably be a “solid six” after a few weeks on the island if there was no one else to look at. Her best quality, according to the boys, was her “big bones.” She’d prove handy, they said, for chores like chopping wood.

  The observation had been asinine and sexist; however, it had been honest, and if Sarah’s mother—also a big-boned woman—had taught her anything, it was the value of honesty. And here she was, ready to spend four months alone with her new husband—the only man who’d ever gotten serious with her—but instead of a sunny desert island, she got a winter smack in the middle of the Alaska bush.

  And she was chopping wood.

  She preferred the axe over the heavier splitting maul, but even swinging the axe raised a sweat, and Sarah had hung her ratty green fleece jacket on a sawhorse while she worked. She’d bought the fleece new from Sportsman’s Warehouse off Old Seward Highway in Anchorage just six weeks before. A month of constant contact with fish guts, spruce resin, and river silt made it look like something she’d found in a dumpster. She wore it like a badge of honor.

  The moan in the treeline started up again, louder now. That was enough. Sarah sank the blade of her axe into the stump and shrugged on the fleece while she kept one eye across the river.

  A load of split wood in her arms, she turned toward the log lodge, almost, but not quite, running up the hill. David was inside, hopefully putting the finishing touches on some caribou stew.

  Sarah had made it clear as soon as they signed on as winter caretakers, that there would be no “pink and blue” division of labor. David still mildly bitched about it, even after a month, but tonight was his turn to cook—and anyway, she was better with the axe.

  Her arms full, Sarah kicked at the varnished pine door with the toe of her Muck boot, rattling the wooden sign bearing the image of birch—and the name of the lodge, Chaga, after the medicinal fungus that grew on the nearby trees.

  The door swung open to reveal her husband of seven months wearing a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. A blast of warm air rolled out around him, hitting her in the face. All the lights were off and he was silhouetted against the fire in the open woodstove, a flashlight shining up under his chin like a schoolboy telling a ghost story.

  “Bwhahahaha!”

  She glared at him. “David, please move. I’m about to drop this on your feet.”

  “Bwahahahah,” he said again, flashlight casting a ghoulish shadow over his red beard. “The Hairy Man comes from across the river!”

  The Hairy Man was a local bigfoot creature Yup’ik Natives in western Alaska apparently saw all over the place. Even the pilot who flew gear and mail out to the lodge—an otherwise rational human being—claimed to have observed the creature from the air many times.

  David craned an ear toward the river. “Arulataq! He Who Makes a Bellowing Sound!”

  “You need to shut up.”

  “I heard some hunters from Stone Cross spotted one three miles upriver just last week.” Firelight gave more depth to his beard, making it seem longer and fuller than it was. His green eyes sparkled, full of mischief—and a hint of cruelty. Sarah’s mother had warned her about that look, but she’d never noticed until after they were married.

  “I’m telling you, David.” Sarah let the armload of wood clatter to the tile floor beside the stove. “If you ever want to see me naked again . . .”

  David flipped on the living room lights immediately at that and lowered the flashlight. He gave a nonchalant shrug. “It was probably just the wind.”

  “Probably,” she said, hands to the fire, soaking up the heat. “It sounds just awful though.”

  “Could be a brown bear,” David said, “going for the caribou shoulder in the meat shed. Whatever it was, you should stick close to me tonight.”

  The idea of marauding grizzly bears didn’t calm Sarah much more than a lurking Hairy Man.

  She glared at David, seized with a sudden thought.

  “What caribou shoulder? All the meat I know of is in the freezer. Since when do we have caribou in the shed?”

  “Bobby stopped by this afternoon on his way back downriver.“

  This was a gut-punch. “Where was I?”

  David shrugged. “Beats me . . .”

  Sarah hit him in the shoulder. “Was Aften with him?”

  Bobby and Aften Brooks were from outside Chicago. They taught high school in Stone Cross, a Yup’ik village eight miles downriver. Eight miles might as well have been fifty out here on the marshy tundra, so they didn’t get together often. Still, Aften was about Sarah’s age and was the closest thing she had to a friend for five hundred miles.

  A mixture of anger and despair clogged her throat. “I can’t . . . I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  “Relax,” David scoffed. That spark of cruelty flickered in his eyes again. “It was just Bobby and one of his teacher buddies. They only stayed a minute. Bobby left us a fresh shoulder and I gave him some salmon.”

  Sarah shot a look at her husband as she picked up the poker from beside the stove, wondering how deep into the winter it would be before she smashed him in the face with it. For now she used it to stir the coals, making room for a couple more pieces of spruce. Resin popped like gunshots. Flames curled out the open door, throwing more light on the varnished log walls. But more light brought more shadows.

  Another croakin
g moan pulled David’s attention to the large picture window that faced the river. His own scary stories about bigfoot and bears had gotten the better of him. He sat back on the overstuffed couch in the center of the great room.

  “It really is just the wind, you know,” he said, trying to convince himself. “Branches rubbing together.”

  Sarah sank into the cushions beside him, still holding the iron poker. The couch was old and soft, but in relatively good shape as far as bush furniture went. There were no roads here, so everything had to be brought in by boat or aircraft, which meant things got used until they were completely worn out. This couch smelled just a little bit like old fishing gear, which provided the lodge with good ambience.

  Sitting there on the fishy-smelling couch, she leaned back, letting her head fall sideways as she gave David a halfhearted smile. He was handsome enough, in a vaporous way, but no one would have described him as solid. Sarah’s mother said he was either conniving or vapid, depending on her mood. Sarah’s older brother called him a “popped-collar Thad” and said he looked like he should be back East at a prep school instead of living in Chugiak, Alaska.

  When Sarah had let it slip that she and David got a gig managing a remote lodge in the Alaska bush for the winter, her mother had mistakenly thought she was asking permission. They’d fought, the way they always did, sullenly. There was no yelling, not even a raised voice. Sarah’s mother was an expert at flaying skin with quiet words. Looking back, the only reason she’d married David at all was because her mother had been against it.

  Another moan came in on a gust of wind, this one lower, a plaintive croaking that rattled the windows.

  Sarah shot to her feet and clomped quickly across the room. She was still in her Muck boots—verboten when clients were there—but she’d clean up the bits of mud in the morning. She double-checked the deadbolt on the front door—as if that little piece of metal would stop anything. There were just too many other ways inside. The main room was not very big as lodges went, just over twenty feet square, but it was high, with floor-to-ceiling windows that made her feel cold and exposed. No one had to defeat a lock. There were a million rocks along the river to smash through the glass. David had joked when they got there that at least she’d hear whatever it was that killed her. She’d nearly strangled him then. She returned to her spot in front of the fire, staring into the flames, trying to settle her thoughts, defiantly turning her back to the windows and her husband.