Bone Rattle

by Marc Cameron

  Lola and Van Dyke thanked Elaine and tried to look nonchalant as they hustled out to their vehicle.

  “He turned left,” Lola said, buckling her seatbelt. “Hope he’s not going to the airport.”

  Van Dyke stayed well back, taking an outside lane when the white pickup made a U-turn to head south.

  Lola slid down in her seat as he passed, going the opposite direction. “You think he saw us?”

  “Probably,” Van Dyke said. “I mean, those girls would have called and told him we bolted out the door as soon as he left.”

  “I wonder,” Lola said. “That one chick was too busy with her game to be bothered, and I get the sense that Elaine isn’t a big Dollarhyde fan.”

  “Hope you’re right,” Van Dyke said as she made a U-turn of her own and then punched it to bring the white pickup back into view. It was still going south, past the turn off to Mendenhall Glacier.

  “Not for nothing,” Lola said. “But your sister-in-law seems like she’s trying awfully hard. I have a couple of alcoholics in my family. Staying sober for a year is… well, that ain’t no small deal.”

  Van Dyke clutched the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white.

  “What do you want me to say? That she’s not a piece of trash? I can’t do that. Because she is. She was in Anchorage for over two weeks last year doing God knows what all, while my brother stayed at home with the kid sick with worry because he didn’t know where she was.” Van Dyke turned to look Lola full in the face. “That kind of worry can kill you. Did you know that? It killed my brother. The artery in the side of his head just delaminated. Cut off the blood flow to his brain. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.”

  “And Lori was still in Anchorage?”

  Van Dyke shook her head. “No, she was home. My stupid brother took her back. She boohooed and told him she was getting sober. But the damage was done. Just because you ‘make amends’ with someone after you cut their throat doesn’t make everything all hunky-dory.”

  Lola stared out the window at the dense evergreen forests that lined the road. The white pickup was the only vehicle that she could see, ahead or behind.

  “Shit!” Van Dyke pounded on the wheel. “I should have thought of that.”

  The pickup made a left into Auke Bay.

  Lola craned her head, looking for some hint as to where he was going. “What?”

  “That’s the way to the marina,” Van Dyke said. “He’s going to get on a boat.”

  Chapter 38

  Dallas Childers was a strong man, but he hadn’t focused much on cardio since he’d separated from the Marine Corps. It took him a while to make the hike up to the agreed-upon section of the old Treadwell Ditch, not far off the Mount Jumbo trail and the Treadwell Glory Hole pit, long since flooded when the mine collapsed on itself in the early nineteen hundreds.

  The eighteen-mile ditch was an engineering feat in and of itself, especially when you considered that it was built in the late nineteenth century. Cut horizontally along the side of the mountain, it collected runoff through dams of timber and rock and a series of steel pipes and chutes blasted into the rock. Streams large and small, fed by Juneau’s frequent rain and melting snow, tumbled down from the icefields in the high country above to fill the ditch. This massive amount of hydropower was channeled down the mountain to the Treadwell, Mexican, 700 Foot, and Ready Bullion mines that made up the Treadwell enterprise. There it was harnessed to run the stamp mills used to crush the gold-bearing ore when it came out of the mountain. Treadwell ran over nine hundred such mills, with hammers that looked like organ pipes. The moving water turned a flywheel that turned an offset camshaft, lifting the hammers the size of small telephone poles and letting them fall in turn, smashing the rock to get at the gold, day after day, night after night. Childers was half deaf from the roar of his backhoe, but miners back in those glory days must have gone a little crazy with steel pounding away at tons of rock all day and all night but for Christmas and the Fourth of July. Those two days must have been hell on the miners. The silence after all that constant racket… That would be off-putting as hell.

  Childers’s boot slipped on a piece of rotting wood as he turned off the main trail to cut directly across the mountain. The forest was littered with fallen trees, snot-slick with moss and rain. Broken branches stuck up here and there like mossy punji sticks. Even sidehilling required a lot of up and down. It was a good place to break a leg.

  He grabbed the nearest branch to keep from falling. It happened to be devil’s club. He let a muffled curse through clenched teeth, brushing the stickered leaves and stalk out of the way with the forearm of his raingear. The thorns were small, hairlike, just enough to piss him off. He hiked on, keeping his body upright on the angle so his feet didn’t squirt out from under him. He wanted to get well off the established trail. Too many people down there for what he had in mind.

  Hikers were like rain in Juneau. They didn’t come along every day, but they could show up anytime. You had to figure them into every plan when you went into the backcountry. The Treadwell Ditch Trail was nearby, as were the Mount Jumbo and some smaller trails near Paris Creek, the stream that fell over the rocky cliffs and into the flooded Treadwell Glory Hole, hundreds of feet below. The trails were well groomed, far too apt to draw a crowd for any kind of clandestine meeting, even early in the morning. Hell, especially early in the morning. That’s when all the algae-juice-swilling health nuts got a few miles in before plopping down in front of their computers. A random encounter wouldn’t pose much of a problem. Most of them looked to be clueless when they ran, buds jammed into their ears, staring at their feet. Childers would be able to walk up and clobber most runners with a rock before they ever knew he was there. Still, he might as well avoid it if he could. That way, he could focus his efforts on Schimmel. He stopped picking his way over the mossy deadfall long enough to laugh at that thought. What a joke. Like Dean Schimmel would take any effort.

  The moist earth and lush vegetation of an old growth forest had a way of eating sounds. It was even worse in the fog. Ravens croaked here and there in the treetops, a porcupine snuffled by. And water. There was always water trickling or dripping somewhere. If you didn’t stop to listen, you might think the mountain was as quiet as a tomb.

  Schimmel sat on the edge of an old timber dam, head down, swinging his legs like a bored schoolkid. Childers was tempted to sneak up just to scare the shit out of him and see if he keeled over like a fainting goat. Childers made it to within ten feet before he even looked up.

  Schimmel brightened and slid off the old logs to land on his feet.

  “Thanks for coming, man,” Schimmel gushed, looking like he might cry with joy. Clueless little prick.

  “Yeah,” Childers said. “What the hell happened to you in town? That thing with the kid…”

  “I know, right?” Schimmel said. “I had to do something.” He lifted his shirt. “Look what that sadistic bastard Dollarhyde did to me.”

  Childers gave a low whistle, admiring the outcome of his work. The flaky little puke looked like a redneck Frankenstein. Childers counted three long slashes and two shorter ones crisscrossing his chest from armpit to armpit. Blood oozed from under each arm, coating the otherwise ghostly pale skin of his ribs. His left side was worse than his right, which made sense, Childers thought. Short pieces of duct tape ran the length of each wound like oversized butterfly bandages. The tape did a decent job of keeping the deep gashes closed, not necessarily a good thing since it trapped the infection that already turned Schimmel’s chest into a swollen mass of pink tissue.

  “Damn,” Childers whispered, sounding sympathetic despite how humorous this was. “You need help. Can you walk?”

  Schimmel nodded. He dropped the tail of his shirt, wincing like a baby again. “Hurts like hell, but I made it all the way up here.”

  “Follow me,” Childers said. “I know a quicker way down. You can tell me what happened on the way.”

  “I can’t figure
it out,” Schimmel said, staying close as the two men picked their way over, under, and around deadfall and devil’s club. They weren’t going far, but Childers took the hardest route, just for the fun of it. Schimmel followed like a dutiful puppy.

  “Why would Dollarhyde cut you up?”

  “No idea,” Schimmel said. “He’d kill me if he wanted me dead, but this is just sick, man. Razor blades in somebody’s soap, I mean, that takes somebody twisted beyond belief to do that. I coulda sliced my nuts off.”

  “You didn’t?” Childers asked, hiding his disappointment.

  “No!” Schimmel’s face pulled back into a grimace as the thought settled in on him again. “Something is seriously wrong with that dude.”

  Says the guy who tossed a baby into the drink to save his own ass, Childers thought.

  They reached a relatively flat spot on the mountainside. The undergrowth had thinned. A misty breeze was blowing away the fog, and Gastineau Channel was visible through a gap in the trees. Paris Creek waterfall chattered and hissed as it fell over the sheer drop just a few feet away.

  Childers raised his open hand. “Hold up a minute. Catch your breath. You sure it was Dollarhyde?”

  “Who else?” Schimmel said. “I mean, an old girlfriend maybe, but I haven’t had a girlfriend in over a year.” He gulped, started to breathe harder, even though they’d stopped. “Listen… I gotta tell you something.” His lips pursed like he was about to pop with important news.

  Childers’s mood darkened. He didn’t like surprises, and this sounded like a big one. “What is it?”

  “You remember when we hit that Indian grave?”

  Childers groaned. This was so painful.

  “I remember it like it was two days ago.” He snapped his fingers. “Spit it out. Just say what you’re trying to say.”

  “Well… you didn’t see it, but there was a rattle down there in the rocks.”

  “A what?”

  “Like an Indian witch doctor’s rattle. Spooky as hell. A raven or something carved on it.” Schimmel sniffed, his chest heaving like he was on the verge of breaking into tears. “You were busy talking to Dollarhyde. I woulda tossed it back, but that kid, Merculief, said rattles like this one could go for half a million bucks.”

  Half a million. So, that’s why he’d gone into town.

  “How much did you get for it?”

  “I’m sure this one is cursed,” Schimmel said. “Everything in my life just turned to shit as soon as I picked it up.”

  That didn’t start with some Indian rattle, Childers thought. He resisted the urge to throat-punch the pathetic turd. “How much?”

  “I didn’t sell it yet.”

  Schimmel reached under his rain jacket and pulled out a bundle wrapped in a flimsy plastic grocery store bag. He pushed it to Childers like it was on fire.

  The rattle did look old. The bent horn body was chipped and still flecked with bits of dried mud from the dig. A long, white bone was fixed to the horn to form a handle. Something was carved on the horn, a face maybe, or a bird, but Childers didn’t care. He didn’t know a damned thing about archeology or Indian treasures, but he knew that this bone rattle would be worth some serious coin.

  Schimmel winced, dabbing at one of the wounds on his chest where blood seeped through his shirt.

  Childers stifled a grin. Got him good there.

  Schimmel gulped back another sob. His rheumy eyes flicked from tree to tree in the shadows above, the clearing below. He stopped his whimpering long enough to orient himself. “Hey, are… are we above the Glory Hole?”

  Childers looked toward the sea, as if that location hadn’t occurred to him. “It’s down there somewhere.”

  In truth, the mountain fell away over a near-vertical rock wall – just a few yards through the trees. The open pit entry into the Treadwell Mine – flooded to form an eerie, crystalline lake when the mine collapsed in 1917, lay some two hundred feet below.

  “Thought that’s where we were.” Schimmel licked cracked lips, consoling himself. His eyes continued to flit herky-jerky through the trees. “I mean, I just want to get rid of the thing. I guess I don’t know for sure if it’s cursed, but I don’t want to take any chances either. Half a million is way too much to expect. I know that. But that bitch at the gallery would only do a couple of thousand…” He brightened. “Hey, maybe you know somebody. We’ll split the money. Hell, I only want a cut. Sixty-forty’s fine by me.”

  “Sixty-forty?” Childers shook the rattle as if he was testing it. It seemed awfully sturdy for something that had been in the ground for a couple hundred years. The dirt or seeds or whatever it was inside made an earie whooshing sound.

  “Sixty-forty,” Schimmel said again. Hugging himself, he leaned against a rotting log, rocking back and forth like a junkie who needed a fix. “I mean, seventy-thirty is good too, if you know a place to sell it. I just don’t want to be the one to hold on to it anymore. I mean, I think it might be why Dollarhyde put razor blades in my soap.”

  “I’ll hold on to it.” Childers gave the rattle another shake, if only to watch the shudder run up Schimmel’s broken body each time he did it. The chilly mist was making him hungry. Time to speed things along. “Wanna know a little secret?”

  Schimmel leaned closer, ready to hear it.

  “Dollarhyde didn’t put the blades in your soap.”

  Schimmel blinked and gave a nervous laugh. “What do you mean? Then who?”

  Childers took a threatening step toward him, crowding his wounds, forcing him to backpedal or be run over. Schimmel fell, scrambled to his feet. Tears of betrayal and pain ran down his face.

  “But… why?”

  Everyone Childers had ever killed up close asked something like that. Why? He continued to advance, chasing Schimmel around a tree. Arching his neck, he loomed above the terrified man, making sure to put Schimmel’s back to the drop. Childers shook the rattle again, terrorizing the sobbing little pussy. Forcing him backward without ever laying a hand on him.

  “Why?” Schimmel begged again, falling over his own feet as much as the deadfall. Fresh blood soaked the front of his shirt.

  “I mean, I thought… I thought we were friends.”

  “Not even close,” Childers said, swooshing the rattle.

  Schimmel began to hyperventilate, mewling like a baby. He stopped when his heels reached the lip of the cliff, teetering there. Jagged rocks and the flooded pit waited below. His head fell sideways, bewildered, like a puppy after you kicked it. “I mean, I never did shit to you…”

  “You pissed me off,” Childers said, smug. “And you made me look bad by marking the wrong girl when we were set up at the shrine.”

  “What?” His voice a stunned whisper. “I… I made you look bad? You hid razors in my soap because I made the same call anyone would have made?”

  “About the size of it,” Childers said. He moved forward, lifting the bone rattle like a club – careful of his own footing.

  Schimmel stepped back a hair, somehow catching himself, swimming in the air with his hands.

  Childers gave a tired sigh. He was getting bored.

  He took another step forward, holding the bone rattle out in front of him.

  “Kill me if you’re pissed.” Schimmel stared at him, mouth open, eyes like dinner plates. “But razors?”

  “I always wanted to see what would happen.” He shook the rattle again.

  “But—”

  “Ssshhhh,” Childers said, mimicking the whooshing sound, and gave Schimmel a little push.

  Chapter 39

  Levi Fawsey woke to the smell of frying bacon. His eyes felt as if they might pop out of his head from the hard-cry hangover. The bedroom was unfamiliar, with Hopi Indian dolls on the dresser and paintings of cactus on the walls. It took a minute for the haze in his brain to clear enough that he remembered where he was.

  It came back to him in a rush. He’d gotten away.

  He looked at the clock. He couldn’t believe he’d slept s
o late. Fear and the long run to the Jepsons’ house had used up his last ounce of energy. Still – he was here, safe and warm – and Donita was not.

  He was lucky to be alive.

  Levi had never met a mob lawyer until the chunky guy with the bald head and a fancy suit got him out of JPD custody. Well, maybe he wasn’t a mob lawyer, but a cartel lawyer. And wasn’t that the same thing? Levi knew this attorney sure wasn’t there to represent him. His father’s man – or more likely Harold Grimsson’s. Levi had seen more than his fair share of lawyers, DUIs, a couple of drug busts, but nothing since he’d gotten serious with Donita. He knew most of them in Juneau: the law-and-order ones who chided you for misbehaving; the flakes who came to court rumpled and unprepared like they’d been the ones who spent the night in the drunk tank. They always told you everything was going to be okay, though they seemed not to believe it themselves. And then there were the slick, cufflink-wearing big-money guys in silk suits and thousand-dollar shoes who would sell you to the wolves for a paycheck.

  The guy who got him out of JPD’s mitts was one of those wolf-feeders. “There are things we need to discuss, Mr. Fawsey,” he’d said as they walked out the back door of the PD.

  Levi was sure this was mob-lawyer talk for “somebody will be along in a minute to yank out your fingernails while they ask you some questions.”

  Levi ran the other way before the door shut behind them, leaving Fancy Suit with an agitated frown on his fat face and a cell phone glued to his ear. He was calling out the cavalry.

  Levi made it over six miles, spurred on by worry and guilt over Donita. His dad’s friends, the Jepsons, kept a summer house off Mendenhall Road. They spent every winter in Scottsdale and usually didn’t come back until April. Levi knew where the key was. His dad would eventually look for him here, but it would take time, hopefully long enough that Levi could come up with a plan. Donita had wanted to go to the police, but Levi had talked her out of it. If his dad was dirty – and he was dirty as hell – then there was no way to know who else was in on it – the cops, judges, prosecutors.