Alaskan Showdown

by Sarah Varland

“You guys will work it out. Families do that.” TV made it seem like that, anyway. Her family fought and threatened and stormed out. Her parents had divorced when she was two. Her siblings had more drama in their lives than a daytime TV show. So she didn’t know from experience. But deep down, Judah and Levi both seemed to care too much about each other not to want to patch up their differences. She suspected faith made an impact on that. She was the only Christian in her own family, and while it certainly didn’t make her perfect, it did make her want to live her life a certain way, to be at peace with other people.

  “We’ll see. He’s gone outside to keep an eye on the scene until more officers get here. Right now I’m more worried about who blew up my car.”

  His voice was more gruff than usual, a low, gravelly growl. He was taking this personally and she understood and didn’t blame him.

  Someone had crossed a line today. Several lines.

  “What now?” she asked him, watching his expression as he thought about her question.

  His facial muscles relaxed, and Adriana felt relieved that she’d said the right thing.

  “When they finish looking at my car, we’re going to look at the list of known victims in this case and try to figure out why the killer feels like he or she is justified.”

  Not what she’d expected. “What?”

  “Whoever is after me seems to think he is doing some kind of service. It’s a mission to rid the world of people doing something wrong.”

  “That sweet woman you looked up on social media, that we heard her parents talk about for hours?” Adriana shook her head.

  Levi shrugged. “Listen, I’m not judging any of the victims. Obviously, no one actually deserved to die and our killer is absolutely crazy. But people aren’t what they seem. You get used to that, especially working in the job that I do.”

  Maybe that explained his cynicism. Still, Adriana felt like it must have more to do with a past relationship than just cases Levi had worked. He held on to his hesitation to trust too tightly for it to be just work related.

  At least she thought so. Would she ever have the chance to ask him about it?

  The memory of his hand on her flitted across her brain, entirely inappropriate to the situation, and she swatted it away.

  “Are we going to talk to Nathan Hall, the man who was having coffee with Raina?” Adriana asked because she felt like they were jumping around. In SAR work, she didn’t just leave the search grid and run off to someone else’s unless she had an exceptionally concrete reason to do so.

  Nothing the caller had said to Levi sounded like that kind of reason to her. No, it felt like they should stay focused on what they had been doing before.

  He stared at her for a minute, and the hard planes of his jaw showed no hint of softening into a smile. For a second, she wished she hadn’t offered her thoughts at all. After all, as she kept reminding herself, she wasn’t an equal partner in this. She was a K9 handler, a small aspect of the case, and for Levi to involve her in any more than that was giving her a glimpse into a world and a case where she didn’t fully belong. He was the one who had the training and knew what he was doing. She needed to trust him to do it.

  “You’re right.” He nodded once. “Let’s eat some food and go talk to that guy. You’re right, that’s where we should have started.”

  Their sandwiches were still in the bags on the front deck, but going outside to retrieve them would have done nothing for Adriana’s appetite, so she remade them, offering Levi one and biting into the other.

  “I’ll let you buy me ice cream for dessert after we talk to him,” she said around bites, still uneasy with how serious Levi was being. She had truly misjudged him. If anything, he was too focused when working a case. He didn’t take anything lightly at all.

  Why did she insist on assuming things about people she didn’t know? It was a bad habit she needed to break.

  “That sounds like a good plan.”

  There, she’d almost gotten a smile from him. It was enough for now. She finished her sandwich. Levi had finished before her and was already getting ready to leave.

  “Would you mind if we took your car?” he asked her.

  Adriana smiled. “I had assumed.”

  “Someone is dropping off another patrol car for me later. But they’re not here yet, clearly. Before we go anywhere—” his voice had no hint of humor and neither did his face “—I want the crime scene team to check your car for us and make sure there’s nothing...wrong.”

  Interesting, roundabout way to say that he wanted them to make sure there wasn’t a bomb inside it anywhere, but in some ways she could appreciate him not wanting to say that out loud.

  She didn’t particularly want to articulate those thoughts, either.

  More officers arrived soon, including the crime-scene team Levi had mentioned. Their check of her car revealed that it was fine. Adriana hesitated before they left, trying to decide whether it was safer for the dogs to stay or come with them, but in the end she decided that law enforcement would probably have a presence outside her house for most of the time they were gone.

  “Smart choice,” Levi told her when they were finally driving away. The shell of his car still sat in the driveway. “They’ll be safe there.”

  Adriana hoped so. While it was no secret to anyone who knew her how much she loved her dogs, she doubted her friends fully realized that the animals were all she had left.

  Yes, technically her mother was still alive. But her being in prison didn’t exactly lend itself to a close relationship. Adriana thought she might have a sister in there, too, at this point.

  If anyone understood her family situation, they’d know multiple things about her. First, why she’d so willingly followed Robert up to Alaska. Second, why her dogs meant the world to her.

  That was what happened when the people you should have been able to count on in life couldn’t be counted on for anything.

  “So did you get Nathan Hall’s address?”

  Levi had left her alone before they’d left her house and had gone outside to talk to his fellow officers.

  “Yes, we were able to call the station and they looked it up for me.”

  “Was he in your system?”

  “He had a parking ticket a couple of years ago. But mostly they know how to research online.” He smiled at her, the first real smile she’d seen of his in what felt like hours.

  How long had it been since they’d been at the coffee shop? This day would not end.

  “What did they find out?”

  “He’s twenty-nine, works on the north slope with an oil company two weeks on, two weeks off. Has a dating profile on at least one website,” Levi said.

  “Does he know we are coming?” She wasn’t sure how cops did it in real life. Did they show up unannounced, hoping to surprise people?

  “He knows someone wants to talk to him, but not that we are coming now.”

  She nodded, trying to take it in. She hadn’t had nearly enough time to think before they were pulling into a driveway of a nice house on Blueberry Street, one of the residential areas of Raven Pass, with twisty, narrow neighborhood roads and a lot of houses close together.

  It wasn’t the kind of place she pictured a serial killer living. But that didn’t make Nathan Hall innocent.

  “I should have brought Blue to sniff out the area, to see if Raina was ever here,” she said, mostly thinking out loud. She climbed out of the car once Levi had parked and followed him to the front door.

  “She wasn’t here. Really. I think you’re going to agree with me that he’s not part of the equation at all when we are talking about the disappearance.”

  “So why are we talking to him?”

  “He was likely the last person besides the killer to see her alive. That counts for something. And a guy she was meeting for coffee—whether they met onl
ine like we wonder, or in some other way—might have some different kinds of insights than her parents had. I still want to figure out what the killer was saying on the phone when he said they ‘deserved it,’ or however he phrased it.”

  The words still gave Adriana chills, as did the fact that Levi had really talked to him in person at all.

  “Okay, makes sense.” She stood beside him at the door, waiting for him to ring the bell.

  She wondered if the next half hour or so was going to give them another lead. And how close they’d be to a killer before this was all over.

  * * *

  Levi had beaten himself up all the way to Nathan Hall’s house, even as he’d talked to Adriana and tried to seem relatively calm. He’d lost it, back there at the house. Something about seeing his car incinerated in Adriana’s driveway and getting a threatening call inside her house...both had messed up his head.

  Of course he needed to talk to Hall. This whole case had him so messed up, so out of order, that more than once he’d broken procedure and rather than go in a logical order, bounced around.

  His panicked investigation wasn’t going to help anyone. It could hurt. He needed to make this less personal, and fast.

  Adriana was...

  They were...

  Yes, he wanted her to be safe. But he had to get her out of his head, had to get rid of this sense of urgency.

  Deep breaths, solve the case. One logical step at a time. Like his brother would.

  “Can I help you?”

  The man who answered the door was a few inches taller than Levi. Average build, nice enough looking, he would guess, though he didn’t really know what women considered attractive these days. In any case, there was nothing glaringly wrong with him that disproved their working theory about Raina having met him on an online-dating website.

  “Officer Wicks, Raven Pass Police Department.” Levi flashed his badge. “We have some questions for you about Raina Marston.”

  The man’s face went pale.

  “She never texted me back. Is she...okay?”

  If he was acting, he deserved an award because Levi was familiar with the genuine signs of shock and he could see them all on this guy’s features.

  “Can I ask how you met her?” Levi ignored the question.

  He named a popular online-dating site, not the one Levi’s coworkers had found his profile on. Apparently he was a member of more than one.

  Levi nodded, made a note to call the police department and have someone confirm his story later, that Raina had an account on that site.

  “Is she okay?” Hall asked again.

  This time Levi didn’t ignore him. “I’m sorry, no. She was murdered and we need to ask you some questions. You may have been one of the last to see her alive.”

  His eyes widened and he nodded, stepping out of the doorway and back into the house just enough to motion them in. “Come inside, I’m happy to talk to you.”

  They stepped in.

  “Have a seat.” Nathan Hall motioned to the dining room table. They followed him and sat.

  The first thing Levi noticed was the mess everywhere. Not a serious mess, like he’d seen in some child-abuse or drug cases he’d worked, but clutter. The house itself was nicely decorated.

  Levi waited. “Is anyone else here we should talk to?”

  “No, not right now... She’s not... I don’t...” Nathan Hall pulled at the collar of his shirt.

  And bingo. He’d found what the man was hiding.

  Adriana was looking around also, but the slight frown on her face said she wasn’t quite where he was yet in his thinking.

  “So, to clarify, you have a...girlfriend who lives here also?”

  Hall shook his head. “She doesn’t... No one else lives here.”

  “No girlfriend?”

  Maybe he’d pushed it one question too far, but the embarrassed man finally squared his shoulders and glared back at Levi.

  “The decor is my wife’s, okay? She isn’t here because she left me. She isn’t coming back.”

  And yet, the place mats on the table said the breakup must have been recent enough that the man probably shouldn’t have been on an online dating site.

  “You were just on a casual kind of date with Raina, right?” Adriana asked in a calm voice.

  Levi almost cut her off. First of all, they didn’t need to lead him to any kind of answer. Second, he couldn’t believe the way she was talking to the guy. Like he was worth any kind of compassion. The guy had cheated on his wife. Levi had no sympathy for anyone who would do that.

  No, it wasn’t that. Everyone needed compassion. Years in law enforcement had convinced Levi of that and he was used to showing it to people who didn’t seem to deserve it.

  It was the fact that she seemed to have some sympathy toward him. Like she understood?

  The only reason Levi was able to keep his own voice calm was that he knew that would put the suspect at ease, make him more likely to give them more information. It was basic police knowledge. Surely Adriana’s casual lack of reaction was the same thing. She couldn’t really understand that kind of thing. At least he hoped not. Sure, it was his business as a friend to hope she had better moral standards—at least that’s what he told himself.

  “Yes. Casual.” Nathan’s shoulders fell. “I didn’t mean for her to get hurt.”

  His wife, or Raina?

  Levi didn’t say anything but Nathan met his eyes. “Either of them,” he said and answered the question like it had been asked aloud.

  “So did one of them find out about the other?” Again, Adriana’s voice was soft. But now that Levi had calmed down he could hear the probing quality in it. She was trying to get information. The least he could do was be quiet and thank her later for doing his job for him.

  Nathan shook his head. “Not as far as I know.” He blew out a breath. “Yeah, well, maybe. I mean, my wife suspects—that’s why she left—but...” He caught himself quickly. “She wouldn’t. You don’t think...?”

  That his wife had tried to punish his sorry self by killing the woman he admitted to having one date in a coffee shop with? No. Besides, they were chasing a serial killer.

  Adriana looked to Levi. He shook his head.

  “Listen, ask me whatever you need to, okay? But I want to get that part of my life over with and keep trying to work things out with my wife.”

  Considering it had been less than a week since Raina’s disappearance, it seemed an awfully quick about-face of that lifestyle, but Levi reminded himself that deciding that really wasn’t his problem.

  “Did you know her before you saw one another at the coffee shop?”

  Nathan shook his head. Then paused. “Well, sort of, yes. We met online. We had been text messaging back and forth for about a week. She’d asked if we could meet, but I was still deciding. The day we met for coffee, I had decided last-minute that I did want to meet. I sent her a text and she agreed to meet and suggested Raven’s Rest.”

  It seemed consistent with her parents’ story. If she’d been planning to get coffee that afternoon, anyway, then using that as a meeting place made sense also. Still. “Can we see the messages?”

  The man reached in his pocket for his phone, punched the screen a few times and handed it to Levi.

  He read through them. Fairly standard. They felt closer than they were because they were talking online, they’d decided to finally meet...

  Reading the messages sent chills up his spine. Not because there was anything strange about the messages, although it still bothered him to know that Nathan had sent them when he’d been married. It wasn’t that he felt like he was perfect and got to sit on a throne and judge other people. But trust and faithfulness mattered to Levi. It hurt to know not everyone felt that way.

  “Thanks.” He handed the phone back to Nathan. It supported the
story as he had told it.

  The man wasn’t full of integrity. But Levi doubted he was a killer. They’d keep him on a person-of-interest list out of an abundance of caution, warn him they might need to talk to him again, but he hadn’t been an adult long enough to have been the one who’d committed the crimes decades ago.

  It might not be someone from Raven Pass at all.

  It might be time to pull in some guys from other agencies, maybe talk to the FBI in Anchorage about the situation. The last thing Levi wanted was to turn the case over to anyone else, but he also didn’t want his pride and determination to get in the way of it being solved.

  “Thanks for your time,” he said as he stood. Adriana looked surprised but she stood as well. “We’ll be back in touch. Don’t leave the state without talking to someone.”

  His eyes widened. “I’m not like a suspect, right?”

  “You’re still part of the investigation.”

  Nathan’s face fell but he nodded. “Okay, I hope you find out what happened. She seemed really sweet.”

  He’d been planning to see her again, hadn’t he? Levi had to shake his head.

  Levi opened the front door and held it open for Adriana, who walked out in front of him.

  They both eyed the car suspiciously, but what were they going to do? They had to drive it. Levi climbed underneath and gave the undercarriage a cursory once-over. Same with under the hood.

  “You don’t think...?” Adriana trailed off.

  “We would have seen someone mess with it, the short amount of time we were in there.”

  At least he hoped so.

  “It’s fine.” He paused. “You wait until I turn it on before you climb in, though, okay?”

  She stepped back onto the front deck.

  He started the car. Nothing happened.

  She hurried and climbed in beside him. “I never should have let you do that. I didn’t like that at all, thank you.” Her voice was tight and tense.

  “I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

  She didn’t comment, just stared at him, like maybe she didn’t love the idea of him being in peril, either. Something was thick in the air between them and Levi waited, but Adriana didn’t say anything. The look in her eyes, though...