Bone Rattle

by Marc Cameron

  “You need to take that up with your attorneys,” Lola said, giving the pat answer to ninety percent of any prisoner’s questions.

  “We already did that shit,” Raul said. The brothers looked quickly at each other, drawing strength. So often, the toughest gang banger cried like a scared little kid after he got inside the joint. “They say we should talk to the prosecutor, turn snitch, tell him what we know.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Lola said.

  “Sounds like you’re trying to get us killed,” Reggie said. “That’s what it sounds like.”

  “Okay,” Cutter said. “Humor me. Hypothetically, if you were going to hit a guy in your shoes, how would you do it?”

  Reggie scrunched his nose, squinting like it hurt to think that hard. At length, he said, “I’d hire somebody to shiv me in prison. Some lifer who gots nothin’ to lose since Alaska don’t have the death penalty. Hypothetically, I could get somebody whacked for a couple cases of ramen noodles.”

  Cutter turned to Raul. “How about you? Let’s have your plan.”

  “Easy,” the elder Hernandez said. “I’d hit the prisoner transport as you come out of the federal garage. You guys are sittin’ ducks out there.”

  The smug look on his face said he’d obviously thought about this very thing.

  Scott Keen entered the well of the courtroom through the waist-high swinging doors from the gallery, checking to see what the holdup was with transport.

  “Let’s get these guys some vests,” Cutter said.

  Keen’s brow shot up. “Seriously? Since when do we let prisoners dictate the level of security on a jail run?”

  “Come here a minute,” Cutter said, motioning toward the end of the table again. “I want to run something by you—”

  “Finally,” Raul Hernandez muttered with a smirk. “A deputy with half a brain.” He raised his voice a hair. “Tune that one up like you did the last one, boss—”

  Cutter wheeled, nose to nose with the elder brother. The intensity of his whisper could have peeled paint. “Let me make sure you understand something. I don’t like you. I don’t hate you. Fact is, I don’t give a pinch of shit about you one way or another.” He waved an open hand around the courtroom, causing the outlaw to flinch. “My friends and I protect this institution, which means you enjoy the benefits of our protection along the way. Respect us, and we’ll show you respect.”

  “Okay, okay—”

  “But you piss me off and I give you my word that I will march back there to the judge’s chambers and get an order to duct tape your mouth shut. Are we clear?”

  “Honestly,” Lola offered, giving the prisoners a sad shake of her head. “Duct taping your mouth shut would probably be safer for everyone. My partner doesn’t take much in the way of guff before he completely loses it. You get murdered, he gets fired. We’re all stuffed. No one wins. Well, society wins, I guess…”

  “That’ll do, deputy,” Cutter said. His prayer meeting finished, he went to the end of the table to join an astonished Scott Keen and lay out his plan.

  Chapter 14

  Across the courtroom, Van Tyler, the dark, pompadoured AUSA who looked like he could be on the cover of GQ magazine, chatted with the goateed case agent from the DEA as they stacked papers into a cardboard file box. His female assistant came in through a side door, walking quickly, head up, phone in hand, obviously bearing news. She had long legs and the propensity to wear form-fitting wool sweaters, which drew leering looks from both prisoners until Lola gave them a low growl. Out of breath, she leaned in and whispered something to Tyler, before handing him the phone. The attorney’s face lit up as he read. He gave the DEA agent a quick fist bump and then rushed out the side door with his assistant, leaving the agent to take care of the file box.

  * * *

  Lori Maycomb had arrived in court a hair late from lunch. She didn’t learn until she tried to get through the security checkpoint that the judge had suddenly banned all telephones, instead of just ordering them turned off, and didn’t have time to run it out to her car. The court security officers working the front post were both retired JPD and knew her from the public radio station. They agreed to hold her phone in the Marshals’ Office so long as she didn’t tell anyone else they were being so accommodating.

  Now, with court over, she couldn’t get the phone back fast enough. A sequestered jury was big news and her bosses would want to know. Greta Nguyen from the Juneau Empire newspaper had been in the courtroom too. She was probably already down at her car phoning in a story so her editors could get something up on the online edition.

  Maycomb took a right outside security and hustled down the hall. The marshals would bring prisoners out of the courtroom soon. They would lock down the hallway and their office until they got everyone ready for transport to the basement via freight elevator. Her phone would be trapped until they were done. She made a left past the elevators and found the Marshals’ Office still open. A CSO named Dale Winslow was inside with his back to the door. His dark blue blazer hung over the back of a chair and he stood in white shirt and gray slacks, staring out the window through a pair of binoculars at the misty-green slopes of Mount Juneau, which loomed above the city. Five years ago, before he’d retired, he’d stopped Maycomb on suspicion of driving under the influence. He’d let her go with a warning since she was less than a block from home. He was white, but married to a Tlingit woman, and was known to be less of a hard ass than some.

  The office was stuffy and dark, with industrial carpet that had probably been on the floor since shortly after statehood. The obligatory photo of the president and the attorney general hung inside the entry, though a little crooked since few bosses ever came here to check. Otherwise, the only decoration on the drab green walls was a large poster of the US Marshals Top Fifteen most wanted fugitives and an OSHA poster about blood-borne pathogens.

  Lori cleared her throat. “Whatcha looking at up there, Dale?”

  “Mountain goats,” Winslow said, excited. He motioned her forward, like a grandpa wanting to show her something cool.

  “Just here to pick up my phone,” she said.

  Winslow sighed. “Suit yourself. But they’re pretty neat goats.”

  He opened the lap drawer of the desk in the cramped front office. He shuffled through a pile of rubber bands, boxes of staples, and a half-dozen staple pullers, until he found her iPhone, then slid it to her.

  “Looks like you missed a call or two.”

  She gasped when she checked her call log, unable to contain her disappointment. “Nine. I missed nine—”

  “Sorry, kiddo,” Winslow said. “Maybe they left messages.”

  Lori was already on her way out the door, hitting redial. Her source wasn’t the type to leave messages. Her heart sank when she got no answer. Any source sitting on a story with as much potential as this one wouldn’t keep calling forever. At some point, they would go looking for someone else to talk to. Someone who was available. Someone who answered the phone. Maycomb sent a text via Signal, supposedly secure, but it was still crickets by the time she reached the street. She pulled up short when she saw the skinny guy in the pickup was back, watching. Half panicked, half pissed, she lit a cigarette and strode up the street toward her car.

  * * *

  “Hey!” Dean Schimmel’s timid voice came across Dallas Childers’s earpiece as soon as he answered.

  “‘Hey’ doesn’t tell me shit about what’s going on, numbnuts,” Childers said. His hide in the willows gave him a perfect line of fire to the road, but he’d forgotten his mosquito dope and the toothy little bastards were eating him alive. “Give me details.”

  “O… okay,” Schimmel stuttered. “You’re not gonna like it, though.”

  Childers wanted to rip his head off. “I’m not gonna like what? Just tell me when they leave the building.”

  “They’re leaving now,” Schimmel said. “But it’s not just them. There’s a Juneau PD car in the lead. A big guy and a Polynesian lady in the p
risoner car. Two more marshals in another sedan following.”

  “What?” Childers slapped a mosquito that was drilling straight into his forehead. “They’re running a full-blown motorcade? Did you spook them?”

  “I… no,” Schimmel said. “Nobody’s said a word to me. That reporter from the radio was here, but she left already.”

  “Okay,” Childers said, wondering what Dollarhyde would say about this. The guy wasn’t much on failure. “I’ll call the boss. You stay with them.”

  The phone rang just once, as if Dollarhyde was waiting, ready to snatch it up, hungry for news. Childers gave him all he knew, which wasn’t much.

  “That’s fine,” Dollarhyde said, surprisingly chipper. “I was about to call you anyway. Another matter has come up that needs your attention. It’s tricky, and last-minute, but I’m sure you’re up to the task. You got a pen?”

  Childers took a tattered notebook and pencil stub from his shirt pocket and lay it in the grass beside the stock of his Nemesis .308.

  “Tell me what you need me to do.”

  Childers took in the instructions, made a few notes that no one but he would understand if the book fell into wrong hands, and then ended the call. He began to disassemble the rifle while he called Schimmel back. He slapped another mosquito on his face.

  Schimmel picked up, still breathless with nerves. Childers cut him off before he could puke more nonsense into the phone.

  “Shut up and listen to me,” Childers snapped, unscrewing the Vanquish’s removable barrel from the action and slipping both pieces into his backpack. “I’ll explain the rest of it when we’re not on the phone. First, I need you to get a boat – something fast – and meet me in Auke Bay.”

  “At the marina?”

  “No, dumbass,” Childers said. “The roundabout in the middle of town. It’s a boat. Of course I want you to meet me at the marina.”

  “Got it,” Schimmel said. “Auke Bay.”

  Chapter 15

  Levi Fawsey sat at the desk in his father’s study, staring down in disbelief. A tear plopped on the first page in the open folder.

  His chest tightened, his throat convulsed, making it impossible to do anything but whisper. “What have you done?”

  He’d sent Donita into the other room. Away from this, before his father came home.

  Levi’s dark looks and athletic prowess meant he never had to try very hard to be popular. It didn’t hurt that his father was a state senator. Of course, that job paid shit wages in Alaska, but his dad also ran successful car dealerships in Juneau and Anchorage – and spent much of that money on bail and attorney fees for his only son.

  Levi’s superman curl had gotten him dates with every single cheerleader on the squad. He’d started for the varsity basketball team since he’d been a sophomore, driven a new Mustang from his dad’s inventory every year, and never had to sling pizza dough or drop French fries like the other guys he knew. With good looks and a healthy allowance, he’d never really had to be particularly nice to anyone.

  Oxycontin found him when he was nineteen after a knee injury heli-skiing with friends behind Mount Juneau. He’d met Donita when she was picking up her mom from rehab. She wasn’t like the other girls. He actually had to put in effort with her. She didn’t see his superman curl or his uncanny ability to shoot three-pointers all day long. Unlike everyone else, she saw him for the junkie he was. But she also saw promise.

  He pushed away from the desk, trying to figure out what he had to do.

  The folder had been open when he came in. He closed it and slid it back into the lap drawer, where he thought it belonged. It was going to be up to him to take care of this. His father wouldn’t do it, but the men he worked with might. And they would be brutal.

  His stomach did flips. For the first time in months he craved a hit. Something to dull the fireworks flashing in his brain. Something to help him relax.

  But Donita was on the other side of the door. No. She deserved better than that.

  He leaned forward, rubbing his eyes with the heels of both hands.

  “Oh, Dad,” he whispered, lip quivering, wanting to spit. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  Chapter 16

  Van Tyler slipped on a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses to protect his baby blues against the glare coming off the Gastineau Channel. The tortoise-shell frames matched his dark hair, which was important, especially with Ensley in the car.

  He turned right off Tenth Street onto Egan Drive, heading northwest toward the airport.

  “We’re supposed to meet in three hours,” he said, loosening his tie, glancing sideways at his leggy assistant. He hoped he looked cool, nonchalant. He was a damned good lawyer, but not much of a playboy. In truth, long hours at the US Attorney’s office kept him so underwater as far as a social life was concerned that he hadn’t been on a date for over six months. He would never have dreamed Ensley Rogers would be interested in him at all. They were both single, so there was no problem there, but he was also her boss – and that was definitely a problem. Grant Henry, the US Attorney, took a dim view of workplace romance. He’d made it clear from the day he was appointed that any dalliance by one of his assistants with administrative staff would be viewed as sexual harassment. It made no difference to him if the staffer said he or she was a willing participant in the affair. They could get another job and date all the assistant US attorneys they wished, but so long as they were employed by the Department of Justice, subordinates could not give consent to their bosses. It was a smart rule, one that Tyler himself would likely have enacted had he gotten the nod for US Attorney – but those legs… those tight wool sweaters… Ensley Rogers didn’t just say yes, she screamed it.

  She’d been the one to bring up the fifty-mile rule. An FBI agent had once flirtingly told her that the normal rules did not apply when you were more than fifty miles away from your house. His ring, he said, could stay in the nightstand drawer until the end of the assignment. That agent had taken up cigars, which his wife hated, saying he would blame the odor on other agents when he returned home.

  “You’re not wearing a ring,” said Ensley, who was eleven years Tyler’s junior at somewhere around twenty-six. “And I’m not trying to get you to take up cigars. I’m just saying the US Attorney and his stupid rules are five hundred miles away. What we do on our own time is none of his business, and anyway, no one here cares if I sneak into your room at night.”

  She was a GS 7, knocking down somewhere around thirty-eight grand a year. Maybe she wanted to marry a lawyer. Or maybe she just liked him. Ensley was a solid nine on the Richter scale of smoking-hot women, but it’s not like he was an ugly bastard. He was reasonably fit. Ambitious enough that he’d probably be criminal chief if he won this trial. So what if she just wanted to marry a lawyer – so long as he was that lawyer, it seemed like a pretty good deal for both of them.

  Given such rock-solid reasoning, Van Tyler had crumbled like cheap concrete, throwing caution and his career to the winds. It was heady stuff hanging out with a younger woman. He liked it, and did everything in his power to keep it rolling, going so far as to confide far too much about things that should have remained confidential, and even bringing her along for a meeting with a confidential source. He should have brought Anthony Hale with him, the case agent from the DEA, but Ensley’s legs won out. Tyler decided not to tell Hale about the meeting until it was about to go down.

  Ensley checked her Fitbit. “Three hours, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Tyler replied, contemplating the bombshell this informant would throw into the trial – though he had another bombshell in his passenger seat. “I need to go back to the hotel and get out of this monkey suit.”

  “The hotel sounds like a good idea,” Ensley said. She took his hand as he drove out onto Egan, guiding it to the hem of her dress, which was conveniently above her knee.

  They were staying at the Super 8, way out by the airport. Her idea. It was quieter, with fewer scrutinizing eyes than the Sheraton or Baro
nof, more upscale hotels, but both downtown.

  “I guess we have a minute,” he said, his mouth going suddenly dry.

  Ensley wasn’t one to pout. She was too aggressive for that. Instead, she pushed his hand off her thigh and folded her arms as if it was all the same to her.

  “It takes twenty minutes to get there,” Tyler said, working through the timeline in his mind. “Even from the hotel. And we need to get there early.”

  Ensley brightened. “I get to come to the meeting?”

  “Sure,” Tyler said, regretting it as soon as he said the words. “But you have to stay in the car.”

  “Okay,” Ensley said. “So where is it?”

  “Some kind of remote chapel. The Shrine of St. Therese.” He took a chance and put his hand back on her thigh, letting his little finger sneak under the hem of her skirt. She didn’t push it away. “I’d never heard of it.”

  Ensley shuddered. “I’ve been there,” she said. “It’s a little stone church surrounded by humongous trees. Out on this quaint little peninsula. Quiet. Kinda spooky, really.”

  She was so beautiful.

  Tyler nodded to himself. “Good place to meet a secret informant then.”

  “I suppose,” she said. “Only one way in and one way out, unless you have a boat. It’s a ways out past Auke Bay.”

  Chapter 17

  The guy at the corner market where Mim bought firewood suggested Auke Bay was a good place for a picnic.

  The twins were going spastic with unbridled energy by the time Arliss picked them up. Lola came with him, which was great because she always played with the boys. Arliss wasn’t one to download much after a day at work, but he told Mim enough she got the gist of what was going on. The sequestration sounded like it was going to be a hassle, but the judge had recessed court early, and Arliss didn’t have to be back until the following morning.