Stone Cross

by Marc Cameron

  Birdie set the snow hook and gave it a stomp with her mukluk.

  Cutter scanned for threats. The beam of his headlamp caught nothing but a moving curtain of white snow, white ground, and white sky.

  He moved closer to Birdie, shouting above the blow. The bone-numbing cold gripped his lungs, making him sound like he was out of breath.

  “Why did we stop?”

  She pointed overhead.

  Digger, the wheel dog, barked, upset at the interruption in his run. Smudge threw back his head and gave a long, frustrated howl.

  Then Cutter heard the drone of a distant airplane.

  “I bet it’s the troopers,” Birdie yelled. A smile perked the corners of her lips. “They must have made it out of Bethel.”

  Cutter held on to the bowed handlebar of the sled to stay on his feet. Birdie’s heavy parka acted like a sail, catching the wind and shoving her across the slick ground like a hockey puck. She was much lighter than Cutter and had to work extra hard to keep from blowing over.

  “Afraid they’re not going to be any help to us,” he said.

  Birdie nodded, standing close enough that her parka hood cut the wind for Cutter too, making it so neither of them had to shout. “I know we can’t wait for them, but maybe they could still catch us on snow machines . . .”

  The engine noise grew louder as the plane overflew them, hidden somewhere in the clouds.

  “They’re heading due south,” Cutter said. “Probably weren’t able to land in Stone Cross. I’m no pilot, but I can’t imagine anyone would want to hang around in this mess for long, just waiting for a hole in the weather.”

  “You think they’re going back to Bethel,” Birdie said, resigned. Their foreheads were almost touching now.

  “I imagine they’ll make another attempt to land, but it doesn’t look good.”

  “So it’s just us?”

  “Just us,” Cutter said.

  Birdie took a step back, yelling again as she pulled the snow hook and whistled up the dogs.

  “I guess we better hurry then.”

  * * *

  A scant half mile ahead, Donna Taylor Halcomb had her hands full untangling her dogs from a wreck. The Gordian knot of cables, lines, and snarling dogs would have been daunting in good weather. The blizzard made it impossible. Had she not needed these dogs so badly, she would have just walked away and let them get out of their own mess. She’d just dragged a reluctant dog back to his side of the gang-line when she heard the airplane.

  The wreck had nearly killed them all. The thought of that made her heart stutter. Maybe it had killed them and she just didn’t know it yet. She’d lost control when she hit a patch of overflow—where water had risen above ice that had already formed. This nameless tributary was much narrower than the Kuskokwim and only a few feet deep. It had already frozen solid enough for travel. In fact, she’d been using the edges of the meandering little river as a highway for the past week, going back and forth from Stone Cross to the cabin where her ex-husband was hiding out with Red Kilgore—and David Mead, the man who had murdered her only son.

  Fortunately, the ice beneath the overflow was still relatively solid. Unfortunately, four inches of water left that ice greasy-slick. An unseasoned musher, Donna had lost track of her progress in the blizzard, and hadn’t realized how far along the trail she actually was. She’d taken the team in too fast, hitting the ice in the middle of her turn. The swing dogs, which kept the team in line with the leader, lost traction an instant before the sled careened into the water. Panicking, Donna stomped the brake. Useless. The carbine spikes did nothing but throw up a rooster tail of slush that soaked the front of her bibs.

  Even worse than useless.

  The team went right and the sled continued left. Donna was thrown clear as it whipped around, an arcing pendulum at the end of a knot of tangled dogs. She took the brunt of the fall on her right hip and shoulder, careening to a soaking-wet stop nearly ten feet from the dogs. While not waterproof, most of her clothing was wool or synthetic. It didn’t exactly keep her comfortable when it was wet, but she didn’t think she would freeze to death if she could get this team untangled without getting her face bitten off.

  She estimated she had less than an hour to go until she reached the cabin. She would have been there already, but an earlier patch of open water—one she’d seen—had forced her to make a detour up to another crossing that cost her over a mile. Now she had to deal with the wreck caused by her own carelessness.

  “Come on, Smoke,” Donna said to one of her leads. “We are so close, girl.” She tried to sound earnest, like she cared, but dogs could see through a lie. Gordon had told her that. If you don’t want to run, they won’t want to run. If you’re excited, they’ll be excited.

  The lead dog whimpered, soaked to the bone, hunched up like she was in pain. She lifted a foreleg, then yelped when Donna touched her shoulder. One of the swing dogs must have slammed into her trying to escape the oncoming sled when they hit the ice. Gordon had told her that too. It was easy for an inexperienced musher to make the dogs afraid of being run over by the sled. Her stupidity had done just that.

  Shit happened. Donna didn’t hate the dogs, but she didn’t love them either, not like Gordon did anyway. They were part of his family. To Donna, they were a means to an end, a method of conveyance. She loved them no more than she loved her pickup truck. If she were honest with herself, she loved that Toyota far more than any bunch of mangy dogs. The truck she’d take to the shop if it broke down. This was the end of the road for Smoke. The rest of the team would get her to the cabin and then she didn’t care what happened to them.

  Stone Cross was a write-off since that idiot VPSO had gotten in her way. In hindsight, she should never have shot him. The fool didn’t even carry a pistol. He was still a cop though, so there was that. There was no going back from this, not to the village, not anywhere. It didn’t matter, as long as the kid who had watched her son die confessed his crimes. He would tell her the truth. Rick would make sure of that.

  And now there was a damned plane. No one would be out here in this except the troopers. They’d probably already found Ned Jasper’s body. She hadn’t seen any witnesses when she’d shot, but Jasper was dead in front of where she’d been staying, and she’d fled the scene with the dogs. Even the troopers were smart enough to put those clues together. That noise above her would be them now, out searching for their killer. There was a small unmarked runway half a mile from the old cabin. She’d planned to get picked up there—after they did what they had to do.

  She doubted that would happen now. The troopers would land there and arrest everyone . . . or try to. Rick had already assured her he wasn’t going back to jail.

  The noise of the airplane faded quickly, swallowed up by the gale as she untangled the last dog and stretched seven of them out on the gang line. She left Smoke unhitched, not bothering to remove her harness. The dog could follow along or freeze, that was up to her. The troopers would eventually find a hole in the weather, and then it was only a matter of time before they zeroed in with their search. Donna couldn’t let that happen before she got what she came for. She stomped her foot, shooing the cowering Smoke out of her way as she retrieved the claw snow hook, and then stepped on the runners. Tail down, the former lead dog skulked toward her, shivering, not understanding what was going on. She squinted into the storm, amber eyes crusted with ice and snow.

  Donna whistled, getting the team’s attention. Smoke’s ears came up, hopeful. The arctic blast was already turning her wet fur into a coat of solid ice.

  “Hike! Hike!” Donna shouted, ignoring the cowering animal. She couldn’t wait around and play nursemaid. She needed to get to the cabin. It was time to end this thing.

  CHAPTER 38

  Lola Teariki resigned herself to the fact that the troopers were not coming to Stone Cross, no time soon anyway. Markham, his law clerk, and Ewing were all in the library drinking instant coffee Ewing had scrounged from the teachers’ break
room. It was the first useful thing she’d seen the man do on this trip.

  He’d found sugar, but no creamer, so Jolene had gone to get some from the other end of the school, in a storage closet off the gym where she said her mom kept popcorn, syrups for the slushy machine, and other sundries she used for school fundraisers. Lola had promised to watch over Jolene since Sascha was lurking around the village, and it made her a little sick to her stomach to let the girl out of her sight. She’d already started a timer on her phone, resolving to go and check if Jolene wasn’t back in six minutes.

  One of the great things about Cutter was that he trusted her to handle things in his absence. One of the crappy things about Cutter was that he trusted her so much it gave her plenty of room to screw up. When it came to Judge Markham, there was no way she was going to make everyone happy.

  Lola no longer believed Daisy Aguthluk was a direct threat. Still, as Cutter pointed out, once the Marshals Service went up on a protection detail, they got blamed for every hangnail or sunburn that happened to the protectee. It was their responsibility to protect their charges not only from harm but from embarrassment as well. If Daisy Aguthluk or anyone else so much as threw a pie, a tub of seal oil, or whatever the hell they threw out here—the marshals had failed in their mission.

  Lola had hoped to get Markham on the return trip to Bethel along with Ned Jasper—but the troopers weren’t able to land. The judge was packed, grudgingly sitting on his bag now in front of one of the book stacks. Nobody liked to be told they were too fragile to hang around—least of all someone with a level-ten ego like the judge. Still, Lola felt sorry for him. She’d been sent to the rear of plenty of warrant services as a baby deputy—and it sucked. Markham held his ceramic mug in both hands, hunched over slightly, staring into the coffee as if it could tell him his future. Lola had seen her dad do just that many times when she was growing up. He called it brooding with his brew.

  She looked at her phone. Three minutes gone. How long did it take to unlock a door and grab a handful of creamer packets?

  This standing around was about to make her climb the walls. She’d wanted to stay and help with Ned Jasper’s medical care, but the judge had a tendency to offer nonstop advice. Some of it was even good. In the end, Lola decided the cabin was too small for everyone and took the judge back to the school before he got on Daisy Aguthluk’s last nerve and she made good on her threatening letter. Aguthluk, her daughter, and Tina Paisley were still there, along with Melvin Red Fox and a stoic Mrs. Jasper. Ned was stable, but in dire need of a surgeon in order to save his leg. There were a lot of arguments about the use of tourniquets—tissue damage and limb loss—but the truth was simple. If Cutter hadn’t applied the RATS when he did, Jasper wouldn’t be alive long enough to argue about any of them.

  Lola checked her phone again. Two minutes left. Stuff that, she thought. “I’m going to go check on Jolene,” she said on the way out the door.

  “Stir sticks if you find them!” she heard Ewing say, demonstrating his priorities.

  Lola reached the gym in half a minute, groaning inside when she found the storage room door wide-open—and no Jolene. She stopped and listened. Whispered voices came from somewhere, but it was difficult to tell in the echoing gym. There were two exits other than the double doors from the interior hall. One was at the northeast corner under the scoreboard, the other, hidden from view, was at the far end of the bleachers. The voices had to be coming from there.

  Lola inched sideways a half step at a time, bringing the area behind the bleachers slowly into view. Cutting the pie, they called it. If she did it right, she would see danger before it saw her.

  She caught a glimpse of black hair—the back of Jolene’s head. She was just standing there talking to someone in the shadows and didn’t appear to be under duress. Lola continued to move, bringing Sascha Green into view. He looked older than she’d expected, tall but slightly stooped, a considerable amount of gray at the temples of his short, military-style haircut. Prison could do that to you.

  “Hey!” Lola barked. She’d inherited her father’s command voice and it carried easily across the gym. At half-court now, she was still over fifty feet away from the doors.

  Sascha’s head snapped up at the intrusion, his face a twisted mixture of surprise and disdain. He took one look at Lola and bolted, flipping her off over his shoulder as he hit the doors.

  Lola sprinted to catch him, reaching the doors before the hydraulic closer pulled them shut. She pulled Jolene behind her, then leaned out slightly, pistol in her hand. “Sascha Green!” she shouted over the storm, fighting the wind for control of the door. Driven snow stung her face. “I know you’re hiding out there in the dark. Next time I see you, you’re going to jail.”

  She pulled the door closed and turned to Jolene, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her eyes.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” the girl snapped, scowling. “He only wants to talk to me. I don’t understand why everyone is so cruel to him. I’m his daughter.”

  “It’s not my place to explain that to you.”

  “I’ve heard the stories,” Jolene said. “He and my mom made a mistake, but he’s the only one who had to pay for—”

  “Hang on,” Lola said. “You think your mom made some kind of mistake with Sascha Green?”

  Jolene crossed her arms. “There are two sides to every story.”

  “No offense,” Lola said, “but that is bullshit. I had a teacher once who used to say ‘No matter how thin you slice the cheese, there are always two sides.’ That, my friend, is also bullshit. Sometimes what you have is thinly sliced cheese—and a victim. Look, Jolene, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. But you appear to be a bright young woman, no matter the crappy circumstances that brought you into this world. I’m not going to go into all the details of the awful things that happened to your mom. It’s a matter of court record though. You might want to look it up one day. It’s horrible, but it’ll give you some context about your mom’s actions.”

  “Sascha told me he paid for his crimes,” Jolene whispered.

  Lola put a hand on her shoulder. “Life’s not long enough to pay for what that guy did to your mom.”

  “He said she led him on, flirted with him and it got out of hand.”

  Lola closed her eyes, groaning softly inside. No, it wasn’t her place, but she charged forward anyway.

  “Rape isn’t about sex,” she said. “It’s about control, anger, showing a woman who’s boss.”

  “But . . . he’s still my father . . .”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “I see you got a few love bites on your neck. Have you and your special guy . . . you know . . . ?”

  Jolene blushed, eyes locked on her shoes. “I haven’t had sex, if that’s what you’re asking. A lot of my friends have, but my mom hardly lets me out of her sight.”

  “Good for her,” Lola said. “Not for nothin’, but a hickey that’s been planned is just a guy planting his brand on you. You’ll find the best ones come as a surprise when you look in the mirror the next morning . . . But it’s not my place to tell you that.”

  “You tell a lot for it not being your place.”

  “That’s what my mom always says,” Lola chuckled. “Keeps me in hot water all the time. Anyway, back to sex. You’re fifteen, so you’re old enough that you know all about it, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Jolene stammered. “Of course I do.”

  Lola gave a sad shake of her head. “No. You don’t. You only imagine that you do. I thought I knew it all until the first time. Even then, I only learned enough to know that I didn’t know a damned thing.”

  “Okaaaay,” Jolene said, wagging her head like the teenager that she was, agreeing with Lola just to end this excruciating conversation.

  “But you do know the nitty gritty, the ins and outs, so to speak, of how it all works?”

  “Oh, my gosh,” Jolene said, adamant
now. “I told you I do.”

  Lola looked at her, clicking her front teeth together the way her favorite auntie did when she was thinking. At length she said, “I know you don’t like me very much—”

  “That’s not true,” Jolene gasped, shaking her head. “You’re the first person who’s even talked to me about what happened. The first person to be honest.”

  “Well, here’s my honest opinion then. Somehow, the genetics gods made sure you ended up with your mother’s attitudes about right and wrong. You are obviously nothing like Sascha Green. He is an egg. He’s rotten. You should get rid of any idea that he’s your dad.”

  “What else could he be?”

  “You like soup?”

  Jolene laughed out loud. “You’re the weirdest person I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m serious,” Lola said. “Do you like soup?”

  “Yes,” Jolene said, wagging her head again. “I like soup.”

  “It takes water to make soup, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “The water is a necessary ingredient, but it isn’t the soup. The carrots, onions, potatoes, pasta, rice, green beans, meat, whatever you put in it, those are what makes it soup. Not the water.” Lola put her hand on the girl’s shoulder again. “Look, Jolene, your mother got you as a result of some extremely shitty minutes of anger and violence. And you know what? She deserved a blessing like you, because she didn’t do anything wrong. None of it was her fault. Zero percent. Anyone would be proud to have you for a daughter. She’s happy to be your mom. I can tell. Excuse me for being so blunt, but Sascha Green will never be your father. He provided nothing but the water. Your mom made the soup.”

  Jolene drew a deep breath. “That is blunt.”

  “And the truth.”