by Marc Cameron
“I can see that,” Childers whispered, hyperaware of his own breathing. The tiny mic was so close to the corner of his mouth that he was nearly eating it, so a whisper was plenty loud. The door was around the corner from his hide, out of his view, but he could see Tyler through the window now.
Schimmel started jabbering again. “Tall brunette just started your way from the parking lot.”
“A female?” Childers confirmed. Surprised. “Alone?”
“Yes and yes,” Schimmel said.
“Recognize her?”
“I don’t know,” Schimmel said. “Maybe. No. I mean, I never saw her at the mine offices or anything. She’s pretty.”
“I’m gonna need more than that.”
“Tall, dark hair, long legs.”
“Copy,” Childers said, unwilling to waste anymore breath with a guy whose intel was useless. The description didn’t sound familiar to him either.
A female informant. That was interesting. Maybe she worked for one of the senators. Maybe she was one of Grimsson’s old whores. It didn’t matter. Childers’s job wasn’t to figure out her motives, just to keep her from following through with them. She was meeting at a lonely church with a government attorney. That checked the only box he needed in order to move forward.
Eye on the scope, he watched the light change abruptly in the windows, flashing brighter, then getting dim again. She’d opened the front door and gone inside. The attorney stood in the middle of the chapel. He raised his arms, obviously animated about something – as if he were extremely surprised.
Taking both of them from this angle was problematic. Childers would have to wait for the woman to move into view, if she ever did. Following up would be messy – going inside to hunt down the survivor, risking someone else stumbling in on the action. Childers didn’t mind messy, but he preferred something a little cleaner. Moving only his thumb, he pressed a small button on the transmitter he’d taped to the stock of his rifle. Childers still couldn’t see the woman, but inside the building, the attorney’s head snapped up and he began to move toward the stairs that led to a small loft at the back of the sanctuary, and directly into the field of fire. The informant was, no doubt, already spilling her guts, which made Childers’s job clear.
* * *
Van Tyler and Ensley Rogers turned at the same time to look toward the loft. Tyler’s momentary anger when she’d come through the door had quickly turned to relief that he was no longer alone. He’d read that at least one of the priests was buried in a crypt under the podium.
Ensley crouched like a startled bunny, her eyes fixed high on the back wall of the chapel. “What’s that noise?” Clicking static came from somewhere behind the small balcony. Tyler could see the rounded tops of what looked like metal folding chairs over the railing.
“Sounds like a stereo speaker powering off and on,” Tyler said. He cocked his head to one side, squinting to study the exposed beams in the shadows above, the corners of the tiny church – the logical places for a sound system. He half expected to see frowning gargoyles perched on their haunches. There were neither. The loft balcony ran the width of the chapel with a waist-high wall of painted concrete that would allow those seated above to hear the sermon or liturgy or mass or whatever happened to be going on in the front. The top half of a door to what looked like a tiny storage room was visible on the end opposite the stairs. The entry doors were beneath it, as was a table where people could leave donations for bottles of holy water or rosary beads. There was a stone fireplace in the corner, beside two modest-looking confessional cabinets of dark wood.
“You think your informant’s already up there?” Ensley said. She crowded closer, nodding toward the door to the upstairs closet.
“Maybe,” Tyler said, his mind in overdrive. Everything about this seemed wrong. “But the fireplace is directly below. It’s got to be a mechanical room or something.” The clicking grew louder. Less random. He took Ensley by the elbow and nudged her toward the exit doors. “We should go.”
“What?” She gasped, slack-jawed, incredulous. “I can’t even… You go back to the car if you want to. Maybe your informant left you a recording, or a burner phone. That would be cool, right? I’m gonna check it out.”
Tyler’s grip tightened on her elbow. “Listen to me. Raul and Reggie Hernandez are extremely dangerous people. The kind of guys who saw off heads on their home turf. Nothing’s to say their people didn’t bring their saws to Juneau.” The words sounded pitifully maudlin when they left his mouth, but only that morning he’d reviewed a file about the brothers’ cartel affiliations. Something about empty churches had always scared him, and standing in the chapel he couldn’t get the bloody photographs out of his mind. He whispered, “They are bad. I mean, really bad.”
“I know,” Ensley said, her voice soothing. Certain. “That’s why I’m so proud of you. Somebody has to fight them.” Instead of yanking away, she reached across and took his hand, pulling him with her toward the steps.
“Okay, okay.” He took a deep breath. “But I’ll go first. You shouldn’t even be here.”
* * *
Childers had yet to get a clear shot of the woman until they started up the stairs. From that point, both she and Tyler were in view all the way to the top, so he decided to wait. The balcony offered the perfect sight picture, the perfect line of fire. Easy. The rifle’s optic pulled them close enough that he could see the woman’s chest tremble with each breath.
Working like a cricket, the tiny electronic noisemaker projected a maddening click that was almost impossible to locate. It gave the target something to focus on, while Childers lined up his shot – like whistling at a mule deer to get it to stop midflight.
Childers found himself wishing he’d planted a listening device. Dollarhyde and the old man would be highly interested in the conversation that was surely going on right now. The girl had probably spent the last five minutes venting her spleen to the Mr. GQ US Attorney. It would have been nice to know – but in the long run, it wouldn’t matter, so long as Childers did his job. The attorney surely knew too much by now. He couldn’t be allowed to walk out of this church.
Childers held a small sand bag under the butt of the rifle with his left fist, tucked in next to the pocket of his shoulder. He squeezed it slightly, adjusting his point of aim so the scope’s crosshairs rested at the base of the brunette’s ear. He’d take her first, at once stunning the attorney with the sudden carnage and blocking his retreat down the stairs with her body.
Childers wondered idly if her diamond earrings were real as his finger tightened against the trigger.
* * *
Van Tyler coughed, spattering blood on the concrete wall. Behind him, Ensley’s lifeless body pinned his legs to the floor. He’d tried to catch her, thought she’d tripped or something. But… he shuddered at the thought of her beautiful face. It was just… gone.
Had there been an explosion? No. Somebody had shot them. Breaking glass… Ensley’s last word… He struggled to make sense of it all – needing air, losing blood. Her death had been mercifully quick. She’d teetered there, standing, one minute chattering about how scared she was—
Tyler felt a meteoric pain in his jaw, like he’d been struck with a hammer. Then, everything went quiet. He lost all sense of time.
They were on the floor now, behind the concrete balcony wall. He knew he was wounded, bad, but didn’t want to touch his head for fear of what he’d find. His left ear was on fire. The light inside the quiet church, already dim, began to fade. He felt himself drifting above his own body. Nothing made sense. Why had they even come here? And why was his secretary with him? All that had been crucially important just seconds before was suddenly so meaningless.
His eyes drooped, his head too heavy for his neck to keep it upright.
The informant… That’s right. An informant was going to meet him on this little mound of rock… He chuckled softly, struck with a moment of sudden clarity as darkness enveloped him. A pained half smile crossed his lips
and then fell away.
“Tombolo.” That was the word he’d been trying to remember…
Chapter 21
Cutter raised a wary brow as Lola’s cell phone began to play “We Know the Way” from Disney’s Moana. He didn’t particularly care for ringtones that sounded like anything other than a normal phone, but this one suited Lola Tuakana Teariki. Mim had gathered up the twins and invited the Native woman and her son to the campfire so they didn’t have to listen to the two sullen men and a very angry woman continue to curse. Cutter had them sitting cross-legged on the ground for now. The men’s hands were secured behind their backs with cuffs, the woman’s with a pair of disposable, shoelace-like restraints Cutter habitually carried in his pocket when he was armed – meaning almost always. The other two women slouched in their camp chairs, splitting their attention between the playing children and their friends. The Alaska State Troopers were on their way.
Lola answered the phone, keeping an eye on Cutter and the prisoners while she listened intently.
At length, she ended the call and stared at the screen. “Nobody’s coming,” she said.
The woman who took the video shot to her feet. “What do you mean nobody’s coming. You people should be the ones in handcuffs. That Indian bitch is the one who started it.”
Cutter ignored the woman, cocking his head, waiting for Lola to tell him as much as she could in front of the others.
“That was AST dispatch,” Lola said. “They said we can either take them to jail ourselves, or get their names and fill out a report.” She motioned Cutter a few steps away from the group and then leaned in close so she didn’t have to whisper. “There’s been an incident a couple of miles up the road. Troopers are asking for our help.”
The whispered words “Van Tyler” and “murdered” were all the explanation Cutter needed for the moment. He took photos of the prisoners’ IDs, gave them the main number to the Marshals’ Office in Anchorage, and then kicked them loose. The tallest of the two men rubbed his wrists where the cuffs had been and glared, muttering something about the “equalizer” in his truck.
“You know,” Cutter said, giving him a contemplative nod, “if I see you again today, I’d be afraid for my life – and I get twitchy when I’m afraid for my life.”
The woman in short shorts may as well have grabbed the man by the ear the way she dragged him off the beach.
Lola called Inspector Scott Keen to make sure he was up to speed on the situation, and that he was setting up a protective detail on Judge Forsberg. Any murder was a big deal, especially during a trial, but the murder of a government attorney was a tripwire event that kicked a load of protective measures into motion. More than that, it was a megaphone for the killer – letting all those involved with the trial know that no one was safe.
The Native woman and her son were nowhere to be seen when Cutter and Lola made it back to the campfire.
“She leave already?” Cutter asked.
“She got a phone call that really spun her up,” Mim said. “Just said thank you and then rushed away.” Mim nodded down the beach. “You let them go?”
Lola shrugged. “Guessing we got the same phone call she did.”
* * *
Mim hardly said a word from the time Cutter told her about the murder to when she dropped him and Lola off in the wooded parking lot at the Shrine of St. Therese.
She sat in the parking lot with her window down, looking at him like she was just seeing him for the first time.
“You’ll get a ride?”
He nodded. “Sorry about this.”
She gazed through the trees, toward the direction of the church, keeping her voice low. “So they’re asking you to hunt the killer.”
“I don’t know,” Cutter said. “This is an FBI case, but both resident agents are out of town at the moment. I’m sure they’re sending an army of them from Anchorage and Seattle.”
He patted the van door to get Mim on her way. “I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on.” He could tell from the look in her eye that she was already seeing Juneau as murder-town USA and didn’t want her kids anywhere near it.
Apart from the political intrigue of a state capital or the hubbub of ten thousand tourists disgorged from the cruise ships each day during the summer, Juneau was a sleepy little town. Murders didn’t happen every day, or even every year. Virtually every law enforcement officer in the area responded to see how they could assist.
Three Alaska State Trooper SUVs, two Juneau police cars, and a US Forest Service Suburban already occupied the parking lot.
Cutter unclipped the circle-star badge from his belt and fished out the metal chain hidden in the leather backing so he could hang it around his neck. Lola followed suit as they walked.
“You know,” she observed, holding up the silver star at the end of her chain as they walked along the packed gravel path in the mottled shadows of towering trees, “I was so happy to get this after graduating the Academy that I used to prop it up on the steering wheel of my G-car so I could look at it on the way in to work.”
Cutter chuckled, but didn’t admit that he’d done the same thing.
A thirtysomething woman with frizzy red hair and a stern look met them at the base of the hill on the little island. She had the rushed look of someone on a serious mission. Her green rain jacket and brown Xtratuf rubber boots made Cutter think she might be Forest Service, but as she got closer, he saw the Juneau Police Department badge around her neck.
“You’re the marshals,” she said, extending her hand to Lola first. “Detective Rochelle Van Dyke, JPD. Everybody calls me Rockie.”
“Detective,” Cutter noted, introducing himself.
“I heard on the radio you had some issues with Lori Maycomb at the Auke Village picnic area. Hope she didn’t give you too much trouble.”
“No worries,” Lola said. “Wasn’t her fault she ran into those assholes.”
Detective Van Dyke shrugged. “Yeah, well, you’d be surprised. The girl attracts trouble.”
“You’ve dealt with her before?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. The detective took a deep breath, changing the subject. “Anyway, you got a lot of friends in the Anchorage FBI office?”
“We get along well enough,” Cutter said.
“I guess,” Lola said.
“They don’t want us to touch anything,” Van Dyke said. “Guess they’re afraid we’ll get local PD cooties on it or something. The agent on the phone seemed especially animated when the trooper told him we had marshals on the scene.” She leaned in. “To be honest with you, I think he’s afraid we might arrest the bad guy before they get here.”
“We’re here to help,” Cutter said. “We can work perimeter if you need us out here.”
“Oh, hell no,” the detective said. “I guess the trooper major in Anchorage is buddy-buddy with your chief deputy. She tells him you’re a hell of a tracker.”
“I do some tracking,” Cutter said.
“Interesting. I didn’t know that was even a thing anymore, but the major wants you to take a look. This is a Trooper deal until the Feebs get here. JPD is just here to help as well.”
An older man who looked like he was someone’s favorite uncle met them at the door to the stone chapel. A silver comb-over matted to his pink scalp with stress sweat. Canvas suspenders bracketed the ponderous belly of a rumpled buffalo-plaid shirt.
The detective gave him a little nod like they knew each other well. “These are the marshals,” she said. “And this is Roy. He’s the caretaker here at the shrine. He found the bodies.”
That explained the stress sweat.
Roy dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a wadded red bandana.
“I was taking care of the crocus beds up by the retreat building,” he said. “Heard some odd pops, so I came out here to check. Thought it might be the furnace, if you want to know the truth. Then there was all that blood on the wall as soon as I looked up at the loft. I didn’t see any shell ca
sings, so I figure the killer must have used a revolver. I mean, a semiauto would have left casings on the floor, right?” He shook his head, dabbing at his mouth with the bandana again. “I never saw anything like it. The poor girl… I… I figure they were shot at close range—”
“Thank you,” Cutter said. “We’re here in a supporting role. I’m sure the FBI will want to ask you some follow-up questions. Please excuse us while we check in with the troopers.”
“Mind if I wait out here,” Roy whispered. “I could use some fresh air.”
“The FBI would likely prefer it,” Lola said.
“He means well,” Detective Van Dyke said as soon as they were inside and the heavy timber door shut behind them.
Cutter paused, turning a complete three-sixty in place.
Van Dyke pointed toward the raised dais at the far end of the sanctuary, beyond the two rows of simple wooden pews. A wooden crucifix hung in front of three tall windows.
“Fist-size hole in the glass on that window on the right,” she said.
“So much for Roy’s revolver-at-close-range theory,” Lola said.
Van Dyke gave a tired sigh. “He watches a lot of CSI. Any tracks will be outside, but the major figured you’d want to see the victims first.” She pointed to the stairs at the far back corner opposite the entry door. “They’re up here.”
Lola started that way, but Cutter tapped her elbow.
“I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies,” he said. “No need to look at two more if it doesn’t serve a purpose. I doubt we’d find much sign up there anyway except for possibly some of Roy’s vomit.”
“Someone knew what they were doing,” Cutter said five minutes later, after they’d gone outside to look at the area beyond the window with the hole in it. He stood well back, unwilling to disturb any possible evidence FBI techs might be able to find in the forest duff. People almost always left something behind – a bit of thread, urine, even an eyelash could tell a story. Cutter had once spent two days sifting a gravel driveway for a piece of a broken tooth – and found it.
