Bone Rattle Page 9

  “Maybe so.” Phillips gave a little shrug, unconvinced. “I’m telling you this woman-to-woman, not chief to deputy’s sister-in-law. That guy is…”

  “What?” Mim prodded, slightly dizzy to hear someone else speak of her and Arliss in the same sentence.

  “Let me put it like this,” Phillips said. “After your husband died, prayers and faith – your religion – saw you through the toughest times…”

  “That’s right,” Mim whispered.

  “Well, my dear.” Phillips put a hand on Mim’s shoulder. “You have your church, but you are Arliss Cutter’s religion – and I think you have been for a very long time.”

  * * *

  Cutter’s preferred seat – other than when he was lucky enough to be upgraded to first class – was 8C, an aisle, toward the front, on the left side of the airplane. This gave him a little room for his knees, put his gun hand on the outside, and kept the Colt from digging into another passenger’s ribs. The aisle location also allowed Cutter to get up quickly if the need arose during the flight. Federal Air Marshals – a completely different agency than man-hunting US Marshals – handled law enforcement incidents aboard aircraft, but they didn’t have people aboard every flight. Crews knew who was armed and where they were seated, and usually weren’t shy about asking for help if a passenger got out of hand. Post 9/11, everyone seemed happy for the extra layer of security. In addition to Cutter and Lola, this flight carried two other deputies from the ops side of the Marshals Service in Anchorage, a special agent with National Marine Fisheries, an Alaska State Trooper major, and two US Forest Service LEOs. There were so many gun-toters on board that Cutter almost wished someone would try something.

  Mim sat across the aisle in 8D, wanting to keep a tight rein on the twins. She’d reasoned that if they absent-mindedly kicked the seats ahead of them and that passenger got angry and said anything, then Arliss would have to beat that person down… It was funny the way her mind worked. True, but still funny.

  Two Filipino women had the window and middle seats beside Cutter. Both were blessedly small in stature, so he didn’t have to jockey for a place to put his shoulders, as often happened with him on commercial aircraft.

  Lola Teariki sat directly behind him, always close by to perform her self-appointed duties as his Jiminy Cricket. Cutter didn’t want to break it to her, but he already had a huge conscience. That’s why he was always on the verge of slapping some jackass who was in need of a slapping.

  He thumbed through a copy of the Economist as the jet lumbered down the runway, pausing on an article about breast cancer and hair dye. He closed his eyes and thought of his fourth wife. The charm, she called herself, as in fourth time was the charm. Barbara hadn’t ever dyed her hair – so it hadn’t been that…

  Cutter’s stomach fell away as they lifted off. The twins squealed a little. Mim hushed them. The landing gear clunked as it folded inward. The twins squealed again, but quieter this time.

  Cutter looked out the window, past his two seatmates, and watched Anchorage fall away as the plane climbed out to the north. They made a slow arc, passing back over the south end of the runway. The craggy mountains behind Anchorage were still blanketed with snow. Some of it was old, and cracked, and beginning to sluff off, but from the air, it looked smooth as marshmallow cream. Patches of ice still floated in the shadowed ponds and streams. Dark trees speckled the river bottoms that ran along each valley floor. Lola must have been looking out the window as well, because she kicked the back of his seat as the wing passed almost directly over Point Woronzof, the place where the torso had washed ashore. Some areas across Cook Inlet – Point MacKenzie, Knik Goose Bay Road – were plenty developed, though still awfully remote. But the oxbow lakes and swamps above the Susitna River mudflats were nothing but old duck-hunting shacks and the odd cabin tucked in among scrubby trees. Any of it would be a great place for a killer – but then, Cutter had known more than a few of those who’d hidden in cities like Dallas, Detroit, or Denver. A soundproof basement and disinterested neighbors provided all the isolation anyone needed. But somewhere down there, in the bowels of Anchorage or in some remote cabin, someone was chopping women into pieces and throwing them into the sea. Cutter didn’t blame Lola for wanting to find the guy. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have been going to Juneau. He would have been on the ground, hunting.

  Chapter 11

  Lori Sovoroff Maycomb looked skyward, toward the wispy white waterfalls high on Mount Juneau, and banged the back of her head softly against a pillar outside the federal building. Midday sun, a welcome gift in Southeast Alaska, warmed her face. Shoulder-length black hair blended with the dark marble façade of the pillar. She was thirty-one, going on sixty. Some days she felt even older. Her husband had often told her she was pretty, but she knew her nose was a little too crooked and her cheeks a little too high for that to be so.

  A gaunt twentysomething lady and an older blue-haired woman, both not smart enough to get out of jury duty, stood soaking up the sun by the bronze pelican sculpture. Another juror, this one with a pointy beard, tried to impress the women with the urban legend that there had been some mix-up with the artwork and a federal courthouse in Florida got the bald eagle sculpture meant for Alaska. Sounded cool, but Lori Maycomb knew the truth was much more mundane. The guy who ordered the art for Juneau just liked the pelican sculpture.

  Maycomb thought of correcting him, but remembered the edict from Judge Forsberg barring anyone from speaking to a juror. The guy wouldn’t believe her anyway. He’d read it on the Internet and he wanted to believe – so, done deal.

  Sitting on truth made Maycomb jumpy. It always had.

  She hoped the unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of her lips might calm her, trick her body into thinking she was getting a little nicotine. It did not. Waiting for a source to call was murder on her nerves. It made her itchy, like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.

  The Skeletor-looking creeper slouching in the pickup across Ninth Street didn’t help either. He was gawking at her again, thinking the bill of his baseball cap hid his stares. He’d been there when she left for a sandwich, waiting for somebody, and had spent the last ten minutes since she returned stealing glances. She thought about flipping him off, but, judging from his stares, he’d probably like that.

  She was surprised the downtown parking Nazis hadn’t run him off already.

  Her cigarette drew side-eyed glares from the yoga pants and Patagucci-wearing hipsters trotting up and down the steps on their lunchtime mail runs. None of them actually challenged her. If they had, she would have pointed out that the sign on the wall said no smoking not no holding an unlit marlboro in your mouth.

  She checked her phone, cursed to herself at how undependable most people were, and did a mental count of how many cigarettes she had left in her self-imposed daily allowance. Not enough, not when she had to put up with this kind of tension. Sitting in court gave her too much time to think. And now it was almost time to go back upstairs for another unbearable half day of listening to lawyers tell the portions of truth that were convenient to their narrative.

  She’d ducked out of the trial fifteen minutes before the noon recess, expecting a call from her source. The call was supposed to blow things wide open. But it hadn’t come. Maycomb had walked down Willoughby to beat the lunch rush and grab a venison burger at The Sandpiper, thinking the call might come while she ate.

  Nope.

  So back to court she’d come, stalling as long as she dared before heading back up where she’d have to turn off her phone. Maybe she’d chance an evil eye from one of the marshals and leave the phone on vibrate. It might piss off the judge, but at least a contempt charge would liven up her day.

  This trial was a big deal for Juneau. Conspiracy to distribute heroin – black tar, which was still just heroin, but sounded far more evil in a news story than China White or Mexican Cinnamon. The trial should have been interesting, but legal rules and lawyer brinksmanship kept getting in the way
of the narrative. Van Tyler, the hotshot assistant US attorney, was making his case with boat manifests and chains of evidence. He’d yet to produce anything close to a smoking gun. She hoped something would break soon, or she’d have a whole load of “This is Lori Maycomb reporting on absolutely nothing from the Juneau Federal Court. Back to you, Matt.”

  Oh, the Hernandez brothers were guilty as hell, but that didn’t make them interesting people. Van Tyler would never have brought this case to trial if he didn’t know he could win it. It wasn’t a fluke that the federal government had something like a ninety-two percent conviction rate. But those pesky juries were always a wild card – and Tyler just wasn’t winning their hearts. He wasn’t from Juneau, or even Alaska. He came from somewhere back east and gave off the definite air that he thought himself just a tad smarter than everyone else in the courtroom. Even Judge Forsberg was obviously put off by his demeanor, which wasn’t doing him any favors.

  Maycomb checked her watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, then glanced at the guy in the pickup. Her auntie had taught her early on that an animal could tell if you were looking at it from far away, by the whites of your eyes. It worked with people too, and the bag of bones across Ninth Street was definitely locked in on her.

  He pretended to look down at something in the seat. Tapped his hand on the steering wheel, trying to be nonchalant. He was too far away to hear, but she imagined him whistling what he thought would be an inconspicuous tune.

  Her source had warned her that the Hernandez brothers were nowhere near the most dangerous people involved with this trial. There were elements that would do anything to keep information from seeing the light of day – people who would “grind your body into crab food and dump it into the Gastineau Channel.”

  Maycomb shuddered, then took a deep breath, getting control of herself. She’d been through far too much to be frightened by a scarecrow who wouldn’t even get out of his truck.

  Still no call from her source. Dammit. She’d have to go up soon, pass through the humiliating layers of security screening and all the guys with guns. She was a reporter, paid to be observant. Might as well have one more cigarette while she observed the guy in the pickup, see what he was up to.

  She found a spot by the wall, out of the way, to minimize being hassled by any of the chai latte crowd, and pretended to look at her phone while she watched. The longer she looked at him, the more she realized this guy was more of a worm than a snake. She began to doubt herself. He probably had nothing to do with the Hernandez trial – if he was even watching her. Maybe he was just attracted to women with crooked noses and overly high cheekbones.

  So far, her source was coming off as more than a little maudlin, promising a tale of danger and corruption.

  Maycomb tried to ignore the creeper while she finished her Marlboro. She thought about the book she was writing, or to be more precise, the book she was going to start writing. Any day now. If it were true that every shitty thing that happened to a novelist could be chalked up to research, then Maycomb had enough material to win a Pulitzer. Some people whined that they didn’t deserve all the shit they got in life. Lori Maycomb had earned every heartache and inflamed joint. All of it. The argument could have been made – and her sister-in-law made it all the time – that she had it far better than she deserved.

  She pondered the taste of a whiskey, pushed the thought away, and savored the last of her cigarette. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, making her jump, but rescuing her from her pity party.

  About damn time.

  Instead of her source, it was her news director. He wanted an update.

  “Nothing yet.”

  She studied the guy across the street. Maybe he did have a little bit of snake in him. She caught his eye this time and didn’t look away, staring at him hard instead, letting him know she’d seen him. Knew his face.

  He started the truck and drove away. His leaving should have made her feel better, but it didn’t. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d simply moved to stare at her from a different vantage point.

  Shuddering again, she turned to hustle through the front doors, suddenly glad for the layers of security and all the guys with guns.

  Chapter 12

  Dallas Childers leaned into a gradual curve on the little Yamaha XT250 dual-sport, turning off Glacier Way onto Vanderbilt Hill Road, tracing the route from Lemon Creek Correctional to the federal courthouse. He’d watched the transport go by that morning from the parking lot of the Dragon Inn. They were making it easy – two prisoners, two marshals, one car. A dedicated kid with a cap gun could take them all out.

  Childers had learned about choke points in the Marine Corps. This interchange in front of him now was perfect. A death funnel, perfect for what he had in mind. Egress might be tricky after he took the shots. Getting his ass outta there was nine-tenths of his strategic plan – but surprise was on his side. Shit like this just didn’t go down in a sleepy little town like Juneau. The shock of shattered glass and quarts of blood would lock the attention of any passersby onto the marshals’ sedan. Childers wouldn’t need to look. His Nemesis Vanquish would be dead on target. And he knew from experience what a .308 round would do to a car window or a human brain pan.

  He used his toe to downshift, smiling behind his helmet visor. They’d be talking about this ambush down at the Viking Bar for years, and everywhere else too. No one would ever figure out who pulled it off, but they’d talk about it, and that was good enough for Dallas Childers. He was too slick to get caught, too careful. The Yamaha was stolen. He’d burn it after, just to be sure he hadn’t left any DNA behind. It was crazy how often you got cut running through the brush and didn’t realize it until later. He didn’t want to get caught because some twig scratched his face and a drop of his blood or sweat got on the handlebars. Being a shooter was about paying attention to details – wind direction, humidity, angle of the sun. Now that he was no longer putting warheads on foreheads for Uncle Sam, he had to watch his own DNA as well. Hell, he’d heard the CSI suits could get markers from the condensation of your breath. He’d burn everything after the hit – bike, helmet, clothes, all of it. The beloved .308 Vanquish would go over the side too, deep into the water of Stephens Passage. The entire setup was a piece of expensive art – ten grand including the bolt action rifle, suppressor, and optic – but it was still just a machine. Dollarhyde had already bought him another one.

  Childers rolled on the throttle, staying just under the speed limit as he passed the tidal flats of the Gastineau Channel and the crumbling concrete “stumps,” bases of long-gone antennas for the FAA. A stiff wind shoved the bike right, thankfully pushing back the stench of the landfill. A copse of tangled willow and birch trees ran along the road on his left, just before the junction with Egan, the main thoroughfare between Mendenhall Valley and Juneau proper.

  The little Yamaha was light, a street-legal dirt bike. He’d stash it in the willows and set up well before the marshals got there. This didn’t require a ghillie – one of those shaggy suits worn by snipers to blend into their surroundings. The grass was thick, and the scrub willows exploded with spring foliage. The entire thicket off the side of the road was one big ghillie suit. He just needed to wear neutral colors – urban camouflage that wouldn’t draw second looks while he was on the bike – and then disappear into the mottled shadows of the trees.

  This morning would have been better, when the driver was nearest his side of the road, but these guys were US marshals. He wanted to get a look at how they did things first.

  He’d stayed in the Marine Corps long enough to deploy twice, the last as a scout sniper where he learned the value of surveillance. He was meant for that kind of life and would have still been in the thick of it too, but for that bitch in Okinawa. She completely lost her shit after she sent him the wrong signals and he tried to help himself to a little Japanese squeeze. Her brother had tried to defend her honor and got his ass beat for the trouble. The fight had not only been enjoyable, it had
saved Childers from the brig. The brother turned out to be a low-level enforcer for the yakuza, so Childers was able to claim self-defense. It wasn’t his fault he was a better fighter than the Japanese thug. In the end, the Marine Corps decided that they wouldn’t send Childers to prison, but they didn’t want him around either.

  He’d returned home to northern Idaho and practiced his shooting, working the odd backhoe job until he got on full time at a silver mine in Wallace. The foreman identified him immediately as someone who could help “sort things out.” Childers ended up bloodying his knuckles for management by the end of the first month. Higher-ups at the mine eventually learned that their new backhoe operator had skills far beyond the bucket. Soon, he was sorting out a few of their most sensitive issues. Most of the time he just tuned up troublemakers. Once in a while, though, some hard case ended at the bottom of an abandoned shaft or flooded gravel pit deep in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains. Unfortunately, one of those hard cases Childers helped disappear turned out to be a shirttail relative of the Shoshone County Sheriff.

  The boss started tying up loose ends, and Childers figured he might end up at the bottom of a mine shaft himself. He abandoned the stuff in his apartment and drove all night to Seattle, where he caught a boat to Alaska. People like Grimsson and Dollarhyde were magnets to bent men like Childers. It didn’t take long for them to find one another. The job at the Valkyrie mine was a perfect fit. Equipment work was steady, and there was just enough sorting out to hold his interest. He’d never taken out a fed before – or any kind of cop – but they didn’t have magical tactical powers. Hell, these marshals drove with their heads so far up their asses that he’d be able to pop everyone in the car and then ride away without breaking a sweat. Sure, he could get the needle in Terre Haute – if he got caught. Which he would not.