KS13.5 - Wreck Rights

by Dana Stabenow

  Wreck Rights

  Dana Stabenow

  Author’s Note

  I can trace the inspiration for “Wreck Rights” directly to both its sources.

  One, there was a story in the Anchorage Daily News about a wicked dogleg on the Glenn Highway that kept putting semis into the ditch.

  Two, while I’ve never been able to make it past the first chapter of Rebecca, I read and loved Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn when I was very young.

  Q.E.D.

  And it sure was fun to revisit Kate’s long seduction of Jim. But then, he was always toast, and we always knew it.

  A TWENTY-FOUR YEAR OLD woman in 1991 Ford supercab pickup had been driving back from the liquor store which pretty much justified the existence of Crosswind Creek. She was there because she’d run out of whiskey, and not because she’d been serving it to guests.

  Her drinking was no longer a problem. Sergeant Jim Chopin of the Alaska State Troopers wouldn’t have minded so much except that on her way out of the liquor store’s parking lot she’d T-boned a 1994 Dodge Stratus four-door sedan with a mother, two children and a set of grandparents inside. The grandfather was DOA. The thirteen-year old had a chance if the medivac chopper made it to the hospital in Ahtna in time.

  The rest of the living were on their way to the hospital via ground transportation and the dead were in body bags when the second call came in. Another accident, this one about halfway between Tok and the Ahtna turnoff to the Park. A 43-year old man driving a 1995 Toyota 4Runner had collided with a 19-year old man driving a 2001 Ski-Doo snowmachine. The snowmachine driver had been on his way to visit his girlfriend in Glenallen, and from the tracks at the scene had been operating his vehicle along the side of the road as he was supposed to, until he came to the Eagle Creek Bridge. Eagle Creek was narrow and deep and fast and never froze up enough in winter to take the weight of a snowmachine, so the driver had come up off the trail next to the road to use the bridge. Demonstrating a totally ungenerational care for his hearing he’d been wearing earplugs, which was probably why he’d missed the sound of the oncoming pickup, which, again according to the tracks, had seen the snowmachine only at the last minute, when it had been too late to swerve and there wasn’t any room to swerve anyway. The weather hadn’t helped, a day of wet snow followed by a night of freezing rain, resulting in a road surface suitable only for hockey pucks.

  The 4Runner driver was dead drunk, with three prior DWIs to his credit, not to mention a suspended license. The snowmachiner was just dead.

  Jim had barely contained that scene when a third call came in, this one from just south of the Park turnoff. Kenny Hazen, Ahtna’s police chief, was already there when Jim’s Blazer slipped and slid to a stop. Hazen, a big, square man, hard of eye and deliberate of speech, met Jim halfway, ice crunching beneath the grippers pulled over his boots. “The Ford Escort was making a left on the Glenn when the asshole in the Chevy pickup T-boned her. Near as I can figure he was doing about ninety-five. And you know that curve, there’s that hill and you can’t see a damn thing around it, especially on a winter night.”

  Jim knew the curve. “Alcohol involved?”

  “Smells like it.”

  Jim sighed. “My night for drunks in pickups.”

  “Every night’s a night for drunks in pickups,” Hazen said. “The woman driving the Ford Escort is dead. So’s the eleven-year old riding in back of her. The teenager riding next to her has at least a broken arm. The baby was in a carseat in the back, for a miracle buckled in correctly; it seems okay. The pickup driver’s stuck, can’t get either door open. The fire truck and the ambulance are coming from Ahtna, I—”

  The rest of what he had been about to say was drowned out by the sound of shrieking brakes and skidding chains coming at them fast from up the hill and around the curve. Jim didn’t wait, he dove for the ditch, and he’d barely hit snow when Hazen’s massive figure hurtled over him and landed two feet west with a solid thud and a grunt. Jim had maybe a second to admire Hazen’s 10.0 form before the semi currently screeching sideways down the hill slammed into the snow berm above their heads. For another very long second it seemed as if the berm would hold, but no. The double trailer, already jackknifing, broke apart. The rear trailer rolled right over the berm and the tops of their heads, the ditch providing the minimum required amount of shelter. It rolled downhill twice more until a grove of pines slammed it to a halt. Its sides tore like paper and pallets broke open and cases of canned goods went everywhere, a box of mandarin oranges nearly braining Jim when he stuck his head up to take a look.

  The front trailer teetered on the edge of the road about fifty feet down the hill from where the rear one went over. Jim thought it might have had a chance if the snow berm had been higher. As it was, inertia and momentum took charge and over it went, rolling at least half a dozen times, the doors bursting open and more pallets breaking apart and more boxes flying everywhere to explode upon impact. Cans of soup and green beans and tomato paste, bags of pasta and popcorn and potato chips, sacks of rice and sugar and flour, six-packs of juice and pop, bottles of vanilla and soy sauce and red wine vinegar, boxes of Ziploc bags and Equal, packages of toilet paper and paper towels, it all tumbled down in a runaway landslide of commercial goods.

  Jim, watching from the safety of the ditch, said in an awed voice, “I’ve never really appreciated the phrase ‘bombs bursting in air’ before.”

  “It is kinda like Da Nang,” Hazen agreed.

  When it appeared certain that the semi tractor was going to stay on the road, Jim and Hazen climbed out of the ditch and over the berm. The tractor was jammed against the side of the hill out of which the road had been cut. The motor was still running, the headlights still on. Hazen climbed up and opened the passenger side door. “Hey, you all right in there?”

  A low moan was his reply. Hazen climbed inside the cab. “She smacked her head pretty good,” he said, “but I think the rest of her’s okay. Get on the horn, why don’t you?”

  On suddenly shaking legs Jim walked to his vehicle and raised the Ahtna emergency response team, who didn’t sound thrilled about a fourth callout in as many hours, especially one in which no bodies were involved.

  At dawn, Jim was even less happy to be able to supply them with one.

  · · ·

  As usual the news hadn’t taken long to get around and by the time the sky lightened to a pale gray the hillside was swarming with Park rats picking over the detritus.

  “They’re like seagulls,” Jim said.

  Hazen yawned, resettling his cap against the steady drizzle. Traffic swished by on the damp pavement behind them, vehicles slowing down when they saw the police vehicles pulled to the side of the road. The semi was long gone, towed to Ahtna. Hazen had taken the driver to the hospital there, along with the victims of the previous accident, and returned to the scene before daylight.

  Hazen grunted. “Except they don’t shit all over everything. You talked to the shipper?”

  Jim nodded. “Yeah, I called Anchorage. They called the store in Tok. I think they’re trying to decide whose insurance company is liable for damages.”

  Hazen jerked his chin at the swarm on the hillside. “Think we should stop them?”

  “Think we could?” Jim said.

  “Probably not.”

  “Not wading around in hip-deep snow that’s mostly ice by now anyway,” Jim said. “They’d be gone before we got down there. Besides, the shipping guy said not to bother.”

  “Not like it hasn’t happened before,” Hazen said, nodding.

  “They’re performing a public service. Cleaning up the mess so the shipper or the state don’t have to.”

  “What about the trailers?”

  Haz
en snorted. “What about them? Couple of Budds, straight haul, look about thirty years old. You could pick up a couple more just like ‘em off the Internet for seventeen, eighteen hundred dollars.” He saw Jim’s look. “I did some driving, back when. Anyway, the tires might be worth something, but like you were saying, you’d have to be willing to climb down and wade around to get them. Not to mention haul them back up. Easier just to buy ‘em new and already on the trailer. Hitch up and go. No missed deadlines that way, and believe you me, truckers are all about deadlines.”

  “Yeah.” Jim frowned. “Did you hear that?”

  Hazen’s brows drew together. “Yeah, sounded like a scream. Look.” He pointed. “Somebody’s waving at you. I think they want you down there.”

  Jim regarded the waving and screaming at the bottom of the hill with distinct disfavor. “Why me and not you?”

  “This is a state highway,” Hazen said virtuously, and grinned when he saw Jim’s expression. “I wouldn’t dream of overstepping my authority, which after all stops at the Ahtna city limits.”

  “My ass,” Jim said.

  He heard Hazen chuckle when he began the slippery descent of the hillside below the highway. It was one long wet slide punctuated by tree trunks that had an uncanny habit of leaping out in front of him just when he’d achieved too much momentum to stop. It didn’t help that the spruces among them were beginning to ooze sap. He was covered with it by the time he reached the small knot of people clustered around a tiny hollow, all staring down at something, which accounted for the ill-humor in his voice when he said, “All right, what’s the problem?”

  They turned as one and stared at him out of white faces. Some he knew, a few were unfamiliar. Marty and Dickie Grayling were regulars at the Roadhouse. A girl had her face tucked into Marty’s armpit; all Jim could see of her was a lot of black hair. Her shoulders were shaking. A heavyset man with a permanent scowl turned that scowl on Jim, like the girl crying was Jim’s fault.

  Jim didn’t take it personally, having a lot of experience with shock in all its various forms. More gently this time he said, “What’s the problem?”

  Another woman, this one older and thicker through the middle, her ruddy cheeks leeched of color, motioned with her hands. The circle parted, to reveal the body of a man, mostly white, maybe some Native if the straight black hair was an indication, the fleshy nose of the drinker beneath eyebrows so stingy they looked moth-eaten. A slack mouth sat over a receding chin with a faint down of ragged beard that looked more like neglect than fashion. He was probably in his late thirties, wearing jeans, blue plaid flannel shirt, thin nylon windbreaker, hightop tennis shoes over thick socks.

  No hat, and no gloves, either, although Jim had to turn him over to tell because his hands had been tied behind his back with the same kind of rope that bound his ankles.

  · · ·

  “So whaddya think, suicide?” Hazen said, after they’d put the victim in a body bag, tied it off to a length of polypro and hauled it to the road.

  “What was your first clue,” Jim said, “the bullet hole in the back of his head?”

  They stooped to examine the entry wound. “Twenty-two?” Jim said.

  “Handgun,” Hazen said, nodding. He turned the body face up. “And no exit wound. We got mob in Alaska?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice,” Jim said. He looked back at the body. “Up till now.”

  Hazen jerked his head. “Took a look at the skid marks.”

  “Oh yeah? Anything left?”

  “Enough. There was no reason for her to slam on the brakes the way she did. Some black ice, sure, here and there, but she had her chains on, moderate rate of speed, fair visibility. I checked her driving record. She’s clean. Got a good rep with her outfit, I talked to her boss and he’s ready to take her back on as soon as she gets out of the hospital.”

  “Let’s go talk to her,” Jim said.

  · · ·

  The semi driver was laying in a bed in the Ahtna hospital, brow bandaged, both eyes black and swollen. “When the fuck do I get outta this place?” she said when Jim entered the room.

  “Beats me,” he said, removing his cap. “I’m Sergeant Jim Chopin, with the Alaska state troopers.”

  “I know who you are,” she said malevolently, “the so-called Father of the goddamn Park. I want my goddamn pants.”

  Hazen nudged him in the back and said in a stage whisper, “That’s got to be the first time you’ve heard a woman say that.”

  Jim moved into the room. “If I find you your pants, will you answer some questions?”

  She glowered at him. She was short-limbed and thickset with pale, freckled skin and fine orange hair cut like a Marine’s. “Find me the pants first.”

  There were the usual objections from the hospital staff, but in the end the nurse wilted beneath one of Jim’s lethal smiles and produced the clothes, black jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt advertising Hulk Hogan and the WWF. Nobody had washed them, and the dried blood did not add to the semi driver’s manifest charms. They turned their backs without being asked as she dressed. When they turned back, she said, “Got a smoke?” Hazen produced a pack of unfiltered Camels and she lit one and expelled smoke with a voluptuous sigh.

  Her name was Bertha, Bertha O’Shaugnnessy. “Call me Bert,” she said, the flame eating halfway down the cigarette on the next inhale.

  “Okay, Bert,” Jim said. “Why’d you hit the brakes?”

  She narrowed her eyes against the smoke. “So I wouldn’t hit her.”

  “Hit who?”

  “Whaddya mean, who? A woman ran out in front of the tractor, I hit the brakes so I wouldn’t hit her.” She looked from Jim to Hazen. “What, you haven’t talked to her?”

  “This is the first we’ve heard of her, Bert,” Jim said.

  Bert stiffened. “She was like inches off the goddam front bumper. I hit the brakes and jacked the wheel around. There’s no shoulder on that sonofabitchin’ hill or I might have saved the cargo.” She saw their expressions and her voice rose. “There fucking was a fucking woman, goddammit!”

  “What did she look like?” Jim said.

  Bert shrugged. “Shit, who could tell at that speed?” She sucked in smoke. “Skinny, dark clothes, why I didn’t see her until the last minute.”

  “You sure it was a woman?”

  “Long hair flying out behind her like a goddamn kite. Don’t know many men with hair that long.” Bert shook her head. “She was a woman. She moved like one.”

  “Did you hit her?”

  “No, goddammit, I didn’t hit her, I put the cargo over the side of that fucking hill so I wouldn’t hit her.”

  “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

  She shook her head. “It was too dark and everything happened too fast.” The cigarette burned down to the end. Bert tossed the butt on the floor and ground it out beneath her heel. She looked at Hazen and tapped two fingers against her mouth. Hazen tossed her the pack and the matches. “Keep them,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Bert lit up again. The fingernails of her stubby hands were stained yellow. She walked to the door and they parted so she could get to it. Halfway through, she paused. “Funny thing.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t look scared.”

  “You didn’t see her long enough to recognize her again,” Hazen said, “but you saw her long enough to see she didn’t look scared?”

  Bert frowned, not rising to the bait. “She didn’t move scared, I guess is what I mean. Something sort of, I don’t know. Deliberate? When she showed up in the headlights.” She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and dropped her arms to her sides, bending her elbows into right angles and clenching her hands into fists. “Like she was in a goddam race instead of getting the hell out of my way.” She shook her head, ash dropping off the end of the cigarette clamped in a corner of her mouth. “Crazy fucking story. I don’t believe it myself. Probably losing it. Thanks for the smokes.”

  · · ·


  He heard her footsteps long before she appeared and his mouth went dry. His breath shortened and his heart might even have skipped a beat. Was that any way for a grown trooper to act? Thank god Hazen was back in his office making some calls. It certainly wasn’t any way for a grown trooper to be observed to be behaving by a fellow law enforcement professional.

  The door swung inward and there she was, all five feet nothing of her. A short, sleek cap of hair as black as night framed a face with tilted hazel eyes, high flat cheekbones and a full, firm mouth. She wore a dark green parka with a wolf ruff around the hood open over a white T-shirt and a navy blue fleece vest, and faded blue jeans tucked into Sorels.

  She had to be the only woman alive capable of looking sexy in a morgue. Somehow the scar that bisected the otherwise smooth, golden skin of her throat literally from ear to ear, faded from its original ugly red gash to today’s thin white rope, only added to the effect.

  There was a scrabble of toenails on linoleum and a gray furry torpedo launched itself at him. “Okay, Mutt,” he said, fending off the attentions of the 140-pound half-husky half-wolf. A long pink tongue got in several swipes before she was satisfied and dropped back down to all fours. Her big yellow eyes were filled with love and her tail was wagging hard.

  He looked up and swallowed, trying to work up some saliva. “Kate,” he said, and hoped it didn’t sound like the croak he was sure it did.

  She gave a short nod. “Jim.” Her voice was a low husk of sound, the effect of the scar. She nodded at the body beneath the sheet. “That him?”

  He took a deep and he hoped unobtrusive breath. “That’s him.”

  She walked to the table. He followed, coming to stand opposite to her. He raised his hand to lift the sheet, and paused. She met his eyes. “It’s all right,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  He raised the sheet. She didn’t flinch. She did sigh, and shake her head. Mutt curled her lip and went to sit down next to the door, her back pointedly to them. “Put it back.”