Degrees of Separation

by Sue Henry

  No response.

  “From what we can tell he was in your lane, riding directly at you, and swerved away just in time to miss and put you in the ditch. Right?”

  Becker indicated that was correct.

  “The receiving end of the seat belt was missing—had been cut off, as you said yesterday,” Jensen told him. “Partly because of that, we think this was planned—done on purpose. Did you notice anyone following you on the way to and through Palmer on your way to the Fenneli woman’s place?”

  He shrugged his left shoulder to indicate that he didn’t know—hadn’t paid attention in that direction.

  “Okay,” Jensen told him. “You take it easy and don’t worry about it. I’m going to find out who the hell was responsible, one way or another. I had a few words with Jeff Malone last night.”

  Becker nodded very slightly and once again spoke through clinched teeth. “Be careful. No chances.”

  “Right. I won’t take any that aren’t necessary. You just concentrate on getting well. I’ll keep you posted, and if you want or need anything, we’ll make sure you get it. Jessie wants to come and see you as soon as you feel better.”

  Hardly moving a muscle, Becker’s concerned expression changed to a smile that involved only the corners of his mouth and a narrowing of the eye that wasn’t swollen shut, so Jenson knew a visit from her would be welcome.

  As he drove back into Palmer from the hospital he was thinking hard of the little that Jeff Malone had told him—and refused to tell him—the night before. Who were these Road Pirates? It was time to find out, especially as one of them, according to Terry Larsen, had been responsible for Becker’s accident. Somehow all of what had transpired in the past couple of days since Jessie had run over Donny Thompson’s body in the trail above her house and dog yard was related. But he could see no reasonable or obvious connection between someone causing Becker to crash miles from where the body was found.

  Could the accident have been caused simply to keep him from locating and questioning Robin Fenneli? How could anyone have known that she was the objective of his drive in that direction? She was supposedly Malone’s girlfriend. Could she have had something to do with Donny’s death? Or did she know something that either Malone or the Road Pirates, whoever they were, did not want exposed? If so, what? That afternoon he would look her up, he told himself.

  Commander Swift was probably right in suspecting that Becker had been followed. It was the only way Jensen could think of that explained how one lone biker could have known where he was headed, waited for him, and run him off the road. But there was also the seat belt that had been rendered unusable. When and where would anyone have had the opportunity to do that? And who had done it? The two things were clearly related and had been done with the intent to injure or kill.

  Malone claimed that he had been in Sutton when the crash took place—that a number of people at the Alpine Inn had seen and could vouch for him. It was a thing that could and should be checked off his list of questions. After that, he decided, it would be time to both track down Robin Fenneli and to ascertain the identity of the Road Pirates—one in particular. How hard could that be if they came and went from the Aces Wild, which seemed probable?

  Straightening in his seat, he sighed and reached to roll down the window a little.

  It felt strange not to have Becker to knock around the bits and pieces of information they usually gathered and shared until the facts of whatever crime they were investigating came together. Being on his own, with no response to his questions, made him feel a little out of balance, but no less determined in his quest for answers that would, hopefully, provide solutions.

  Mind made up on at least the beginnings of a course of action, Jensen drove through the main intersection in Palmer and headed on out the Glenn Highway toward the pub in Sutton. Time to have another talk with Pete the bartender—who supposedly knew everybody there. And best to do it in person. One could learn a lot from the expressions on a person’s face.

  Remembering Jessie’s description of degrees of separation, he smiled. “…around here it’s definitely less than the proverbial six degrees of separation. Everybody knows somebody. If you ask one or two people, you can usually find a connection to number three.”

  Perhaps it was as simple as asking the right questions of the right people in the right order, so one would lead him to the next. In time, with focus and determination, he should be able to get answers that would provide clues enough to solve the conundrum that confronted him and had put his partner in the hospital.

  At that thought the smile vanished and he pounded a fist on the steering wheel in anger at Becker’s accident and current condition. It must be something someone thought pretty important to risk getting away with possibly killing a state trooper.

  Only two vehicles were parked in front of the Alpine Inn when Jensen reached it and pulled in next to a battered orange pickup that was at least twenty years old and showed hard use. Next to it sat a motorcycle—black, with green pinstriping—the same bike he had seen the night before in front of the Aces Wild and believed to be Malone’s. Was he here again? If so, why?

  Trying the door, he found it locked, but peering in through its small window he saw a light at the far end of the long bar and the silhouette of someone moving in front of it. Probably it was Pete the bartender. His hard knock was rewarded by the man himself coming to open the door when he saw who was waiting outside.

  “Hey,” he said with a smile. “Johnson, isn’t it?”

  “Jensen.”

  “Oh, sorry. But I was close at least. Come on in.”

  Alex stepped inside and watched as Pete relocked the door, talking as he did so. “As you can see, the place isn’t open yet. Not for another half hour. I’m just restocking the coolers.”

  Turning with the keys in his hand, he led the way across to the bar and quickly stepped behind it to stand facing Jensen. “Sit down,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you some coffee? There’s a fresh pot. Maybe a Killian’s?”

  “No, thanks,” Alex told him, wondering if the man was always so gregariously talkative. “I just have a few questions.”

  “Sure—sure. How can I help?”

  As he started to ask Pete about Jeff Malone’s claim to have been at the Alpine Inn the evening before, from somewhere out of sight beyond the bar in what he judged to be a storage area came the sudden sounds of hurried footsteps and the sharp clap of a door closing.

  Frowning, Pete glanced over his shoulder toward the open doorway between the two rooms.

  “Who was that?” Jensen asked, remembering the motorcycle he had seen parked in front of the building and beginning to suspect that the bartender’s flow of words had been a nervous attempt at cover for whoever he had just heard leaving.

  Pete shrugged, but before he could answer, they both heard the engine of the motorcycle growl to life in the front parking lot. Knowing Pete had relocked the front door, Jensen sprinted to look out a window as the bike roared onto the highway, headed fast in the direction of Palmer, giving him just a glimpse of its black-leather-clad rider, unrecognizable in a correspondingly black helmet.

  He turned and walked back to the bar, where the two men stared at each other in silence for a long moment before Jensen asked the obvious question: “Malone? Here to make sure you covered him for last night?”

  Alex Jensen wasn’t the only person that Tuesday morning who was interested in soliciting information from people who might know something that, whether they realized it or not, could relate to Donny Thompson’s death. From past time spent in the Aces Wild, Hank Peterson knew several bikers who wore black leather jackets with the green Road Pirate patch. He also knew that others who frequented the bar would be familiar with the identity of those he didn’t know.

  When he arrived there at shortly before eleven there were only four other customers at the bar, none at the tables.

  Swinging himself onto a bar stool next to Hardy Larsen, he was pre
pared to ask a few questions, hopefully without being nosy enough to elicit notice from members of the Pirate gang, though, as he had hoped, none were present at that time of the day.

  “Hey, Hardy. How’s it going?”

  “’Bout as usual, I guess,” Larsen answered with a grin. “You’re in early.”

  “Yeah, well, I gotta see a man about a job, so I thought I’d see what was happening first. A beer, please, Mike,” he requested of the substitute bartender, who was quick to set it up.

  “Hear your boy, Terry, almost tangled with that accident out by the bridge that put Jensen’s trooper partner, Becker, into the hospital. He know who the guy on the bike was?”

  “Naw. But the guy, whoever it was, passed him headed into town. He called 911 and waited for the law and paramedics to arrive.”

  “Smart kid.”

  “He’ll do. Jensen was in here for a few minutes and said he’d seen Terry, but he kept mum about the accident. Just asked about Jeff Malone, then went out the back door after him when he showed up. Could it have been Malone, do you think?”

  “No idea, but I doubt it. Doesn’t seem like his kind of thing. That’s not to say it couldn’t have been one of those hard-core types he runs with sometimes—those Road Pirates.”

  “Well, he wears one of their green patches.”

  “Yeah, but I’d say it’s more bravado than commitment. He and Donny both liked to seem tough.”

  “Never saw Donny with one of those patches.”

  “I have. But he never wore it in here where Carl would see it and carry that bad news home to his dad. Bill Thompson would never put up with that kind of gang thing.”

  Hardy frowned. “Good for Bill,” he said. “Neither would I. Thank God Terry’s never been inclined in the direction of anything on two wheels but bicycles. Got him his first one when he was just a little tyke—had training wheels and he went from—”

  He broke off what he was saying as there was a sudden rumble, like a passing truck. It grew louder and the room started to shake with another earthquake. At first it was minor, but it didn’t stop, as they usually did, in just a few seconds. It grew and things began to rattle, then fall. Two unoccupied stools tipped over after a rattling walk away from their places at the bar.

  The barmaid, with no one to serve at the tables, was sitting on another of the tall stools with a cup of coffee in front of her and a cigarette in her hand. She shrieked and dropped it into the coffee cup as she scrambled down and stood clinging to the padded edge of the bar.

  Mike, the bartender, tried at first to catch the glasses and liquor bottles that were dancing off the shelves and crashing into shards on the floor. But, as the shaking continued and grew stronger, he gave it up and got out of the confined space into the open area. As he passed the glass-fronted cooler door it opened and dumped out a shelf or two of unopened beer bottles, which exploded into fragments as they hit the tile below.

  “Best get out of here,” he suggested, grabbing a bar towel to wrap around a bleeding cut on one hand from the flying glass, and headed for the front door, setting an example for his customers. The warning wasn’t necessary. They were all close behind him in exiting the Aces as quickly as possible.

  Hank grabbed the girl, who was still shrieking and clinging to the bar, and pulled her with him to the door, where they were the last to make it to the sidewalk outside. Once there, she clung tenaciously to him, hysterically crying for someone to “make it stop. Please, make it stop.”

  Instead the shaking grew worse. With a whine of stressed metal and a crash, the sign from La Fiesta, the Mexican restaurant on the corner, fell onto the sidewalk. Luckily it hit no one on its way down to splinter on the concrete, for along the street people were pouring out of other businesses, many yelling or screaming as they staggered, alone or together, across the street to get away from the buildings into open space next to the railroad track, where there was nothing to fall. Some lost their balance and went down, then struggled to regain their feet, or stayed where they were on hands and knees. Others helped one another, or crawled.

  As the street rolled, a car and a pickup collided in the intersection of Evergreen and Alaska streets, piling up traffic in both directions. Another car ran off the pavement that crossed the railroad tracks and now sat astride them, empty, both doors flapping back and forth in rhythm with the heaving of the ground. Some people simply left their vehicles in the street to bounce erratically on their tires like bumper cars at a carnival, crushing fenders and side panels against one another as the quake continued. Some drivers evidently felt safer inside and remained seat belted as they were agitated in place. The pavement cracked, making a jigsaw of the road, and pieces of blacktop were shoved onto one another.

  It was chaos as people screamed and shouted. Bricks began to fall from the cornices of an older building on the corner across the street, scattering people still trying to get out and sending some back inside. An older woman clung to the door frame, too terrified to move or even attempt to escape. Farther along that block, Hank saw two clerks from the Fireside Bookstore carrying out the limp form of the owner, blood running down the side of his face, probably from something falling, a shelf tipping over, or some heavy book.

  In the distance he could hear the sirens of police cars or ambulances, their drivers already trying to make it to wherever, whoever needed them.

  With a couple of hard jolts for emphasis, the rocking and rolling continued for perhaps another minute before the trembling slowly died away, leaving what seemed like a dead silence.

  “Is it over?” the barmaid sobbed, finally letting go of Hank’s arms.

  “I hope so,” he told her. “There’ll be aftershocks, but they won’t be anywhere near as bad.”

  “Well!” Hardy Larsen, who Hank noticed was sill holding the beer he had carried out with him, heaved a great sigh of relief, then grinned before draining the bottle. “Didn’t equal the one in sixty-four,” he assessed what they had just been through. “I’d estimate it was about a six-point-five. You think?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE MATANUSKA RIVER WINDS NORTHWEST IN A DEEP, BEAUTIFUL valley between the soaring slopes of the Talkeetna and Chugach mountains. The highway from Sutton to Palmer runs high above the river like the coils of a snake along the Talkeetna side, following the curvatures of its ridges.

  Alex, having radioed in a request for a trooper on duty to stop the motorcycle rider he knew could be between himself and Palmer, was headed west on its loops and turns in a hurry when the earthquake began. At first, concentrating on apprehending the suspect, he didn’t notice the shaking, simply wondering in a distracted way at the unevenness of the highway. Soon, however, he could actually see that the road ahead of him was moving in waves and cracking. Small dirt and rock falls were beginning to litter the highway. Dodging a few boulders, he pulled over onto a wide spot off the pavement on the inside of a curve, could then feel the ground shaking the truck, and sat watching the road move for a long moment.

  Suddenly, ahead of him a large crack appeared in the pavement between the centerline and the far side of the road, where the hill fell away toward the valley. The fissure widened, separated from the rest of the road, and he could see that the ground had opened to a depth of perhaps eight or ten feet. Climbing out of the cab, he watched it slowly grow wider.

  There was a sharp jolt, then another, and with a roar that side of the road split completely open and the outer section collapsed, sliding down out of sight, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. What had been a perfectly good two-lane highway abruptly became adequate for one-lane travel only.

  Thank God there was no one on it, Alex thought, and, as he had that thought, around the curve came a green station wagon. Traveling at normal speed, it was heading straight for the section of the highway that was no longer where the driver would expect it to be.

  Anxiously, Alex stepped forward, yelling and waving his arms, trying to warn the traveler of the danger into which he was heading.
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  The vehicle slowed slightly; then, at the last minute the driver applied the brakes hard, swung to his left, and came to a screeching halt on the remaining side of the road.

  The two men stared at each other through the windshield of the car for a few long seconds as the shaking of the earthquake slowly subsided.

  Then the driver opened the door, got out, stepped to the side of the road that had fallen away and looked down at the distance it had fallen, bent over with his hands on his knees, and threw up as he realized just how close he had come to disaster.

  Two hours later Alex finally made it back to his office in Palmer.

  The man he had kept from driving off the road, one Harold Spenser, had wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and come across to give pale-faced thanks to his benefactor.

  “You saved my life,” he said.

  “No, you saved it with quick thinking and reactions,” Alex told him. “We’d better do something about this to warn other drivers before someone does go over the edge though.”

  Together they had used sticks broken from the brush on the uphill side of the road and thrust into the earth to support the yellow tape that was part of the kit Jensen carried in a lockable metal box in the bed of his pickup for use at crime scenes and emergencies. Hanging the tape on the sticks along the edge of the cave-in, they then took cans of yellow spray paint from the same kit and walked in opposite directions from the slide to paint warnings on the surface of the road: SLOW! SLOW! SLOW! ONE-LANE ROAD! APPROACH WITH CAUTION!

  That much accomplished, he left Spenser giving him more thanks for his rescue and drove on toward Palmer, watching the road carefully for more cracks and slides, seeing several.

  Three curves later, on an inward curve of the road, he found a group of people standing near three cars and a truck, looking down over the edge of the road. Pulling up behind a black Subaru wagon, he joined them and identified himself.

  “Some car go off the road?” he asked.

  “Not a car,” a woman told him. “A motorcycle.”