Stone Cross

by Marc Cameron

  “You shot my leg off!” Kilgore yowled. “That’s police brutality. You’re not supposed to aim to wound.”

  “Oh, I meant to kill you,” Cutter said, teeth chattering, his voice wobbly with cold. “But I’m cccold, so my aim is a lllittle offff.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Cutter used his belt as a makeshift tourniquet to tie off the rifle wound, then half dragged, half carried a subdued Morgan Kilgore back to the cabin. Shaking so bad he could hardly hold his head still, Cutter shucked off the frozen parka and got Birdie to help him replace the belt with a slightly better piece of cord. It was, in fact, the same cord that Kilgore and Halcomb had used to tie Sarah Mead’s hands.

  They’d tried to bring the dogs in the cabin, but all of them had stood with their noses to the door, waiting to be let back out, where they promptly buried themselves under drifts of snow. The woodstove was cranked up so high that it was just too hot for them inside.

  Cutter wanted to crawl inside the stove, but instead spent a few minutes searching his prisoner and the area around the bunk where they laid him out. He’d seen too many good soldiers and law enforcement officers killed or hurt by people who looked near death.

  Birdie and Sarah had already untied David and laid him out on the bed, nursing his wounds—which were major and many. His face was a bloody mess, but the serious wounds were internal. It seemed Rick Halcomb had gone after each organ one at a time, even going so far as to tie the poor kid backward to the chair to hammer his kidneys with repeated blows, getting tired on one before starting in on the other. Halcomb had taken his time, methodically moving to a new bunch of nerves when he’d overloaded any one spot. The brutality of the beating left a normally stoic Birdie near tears and Cutter sick to his stomach. Sarah, who’d witnessed much of the torture, appeared numb. A blessing, Cutter thought. It would all come crashing down around her soon enough.

  Cutter doubted the kid would have lasted another hour in that chair, let alone another day. But with the lion’s share of the damage internal, there was nothing to be done beyond making him comfortable until they could get him to a hospital. Cutter had seen people die from head trauma half as bad as David Mead’s looked. If he lived, it was even money as to whether he’d have permanent brain damage or not.

  Sarah had broken into tears when she thought she’d been rescued. Her tormentors were dead or in custody, but she and her husband were a far cry from being out of danger. It was a strange reality, with all the advances of the twenty-first century, that they all now had to sit tight in the same cabin where the Meads had spent the last three days in captivity. The radio and satellite phone had gone through the ice with the sled. Kilgore had a cell phone, which was worthless this far out. He told them Donna carried a satellite phone to communicate with the air service that was supposed to pick them up, but they hadn’t used radios for fear that troopers or other people in the area would pick up the transmissions.

  Birdie and Cutter had used much of the spare fuel for the ATV to get the fire going after they’d fallen through the ice. It wouldn’t make it a quarter of the way back to the village. The lodge was closer, but not by much. Sending someone there would just put them in the same situation, but separated from the others.

  The cabin protected them from the weather, but it was also a crime scene that needed to be preserved. Cutter covered Richard Halcomb’s body with an old blanket, knowing the troopers would want to photograph it as it had originally fallen. The gaping wound in the man’s face was a testament to Sarah Mead’s tenacity and bravery. The axe was evidence too, but Cutter elected to pull it out of the bedframe before the troopers arrived. Survival took precedence over evidentiary value. They needed it to split wood so it would fit into the stove.

  Birdie and Sarah spoke in whispers, Kilgore groaned on his bed. Cutter sat in a wooden chair beside the stove, using his grandfather’s Barlow pocketknife to work on his carving while he thought.

  The sheer helplessness made Cutter want to put his fist through a wall. They’d come all this way, braving the ice and mud and tears and blood, only to have to sit and watch David Mead die. The kid’s kidneys would just shut down if he didn’t get help beyond a school principal and an ex-soldier with a pocketknife and a plan. Sarah was ambulatory, but she was in more danger than she realized. Her broken teeth made anything but broth and soft crackers impossible to eat—and even then, she threw up most of what she took in. She was badly dehydrated and she needed nourishment now more than ever. A severely swollen jaw led Cutter to believe she probably had an abscess, something that had killed countless people throughout history and could prove deadly in her weakened condition.

  They would be found, eventually, but David had hours, not days. Kilgore would go next, then Sarah, if the storm raged on more than two days. Birdie didn’t say it to anyone but Cutter, but she’d seen these blizzards last the better part of a week.

  At some point, the blizzard would let up and a search party would come out. Kilgore would certainly lose his leg if he didn’t get to a doctor before too long, but that couldn’t be helped. The first medical treatment available was going to David Mead—triage by how much you deserved it.

  Three hours in, Birdie decided she was tired of nibbling on pilot bread.

  Kilgore dozed on the bottom bunk, probably lapsing into shock. Birdie shook him awake and gestured to the door.

  “Where’s the caribou shoulder you took from the meat house? You got it hanging outside somewhere?”

  Kilgore coughed, eyes heavy now. “What caribou shoulder?”

  Cutter looked up from his carving. “The meat house at the lodge where you kidnapped the Meads.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Nice try,” Birdie said. “We caught you here with them—”

  Kilgore swallowed hard, grunting as he came up on one elbow. “I’m not denying I was at the lodge. Hell, I’ll even admit to giving the girl a whack in the head after Rick shot that big guy with that humongous rifle of his. But I’m telling you we didn’t take any caribou shoulder. Why would I lie about that?”

  Birdie motioned Cutter to the door. “The Meads need some soup,” she whispered, nodding toward the ATV outside. “I was hoping I could find some meat I didn’t have to chop with the same axe that killed that guy on the floor.”

  She’d insisted on cutting off another backstrap and a large chunk of back fat from James Jimmy’s caribou before they left the campsite. It was now an icy block tied to the back of the four-wheeler.

  “I’ll go get it,” Cutter said, dreading another second in that biting wind. He wondered if hypothermia was like heat stroke—when you got it once, you were more prone to the effects of it a second time.

  Birdie put a hand on his arm, her voice still hushed. “If they didn’t take the shoulder when they kidnapped the Meads, then who took it?”

  Cutter rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. This was on the low end of the scale of mysteries he had the energy to solve. “Birdie—”

  “Remember those tracks Vitus Paul told us about?” She gave a little I-told-you-so nod. “Maybe that was the Hairy Man and he took the shoulder.”

  Cutter chuckled, exhausted. “Maybe it was that old lady with the long toenails.”

  “Now you’re just being crazy.” Birdie grinned. “You gotta admit it’s weird, though.”

  “I’m sure there’s a more plausible explanation,” he said, going out the door. Though when he watched the storm whip through the shadowed forest beyond the ATV, he half expected to see the Hairy Man.

  Ten minutes later, Birdie had a caribou soup heating in a dented pot on top of the woodstove. She found salt and pepper in Halcomb and Kilgore’s meager larder, along with a couple of ramen noodle mixes, which she added to the broth along with a good quarter of the backstrap and a handful of creamy white fat. There was some hair in it too, but Birdie said that was not out of the norm in bush soup. Cutter didn’t care. He was so hungry he would have eaten more eyeball fat.
/>   Cutter went back to carving on his wolf-dog cottonwood root while he waited for the soup to boil. Birdie sat at the little table preparing the rest of the backstrap for later use, in case they ended up being here for more than a few days.

  She looked up suddenly, her knife in one hand, a chunk of bloody caribou in the other.

  “What about that thing in the meat house?”

  Across the room beside her husband, Sarah Mead gave an audible shudder. “Are you talking about that design on the concrete?”

  “Yeah.” Birdie glared at Kilgore again. “The blood circle. What was that all about, anyway? Something to throw us off the trail? Make us think it was a cult or something.”

  Kilgore tried to roll onto his side, but much of his lower leg stayed in place on the mattress, putting it at an unnatural angle and bringing a grimace to the man’s face. “You’re talking out your ass, lady,” he said through gritted teeth. “I got no earthly idea about any blood circle.”

  “I might,” Cutter said, looking up from his carving.

  He found a piece of twine about a foot long and tied it to the bloodiest piece of caribou from Birdie’s pile. Even Kilgore craned his head to watch as Cutter suspended meat at the end of the twine over a relatively clean portion of the table, about a foot from Birdie’s face.

  “The meat shed had screened windows,” he said.

  “Right,” Sarah said. “To allow for air flow.”

  Cutter nodded to the caribou pendulum and winked at Birdie. “Blow on it. Softly, but enough to make it move.”

  She leaned across the table and blew a puff of air on the swinging chunk of meat. A drop of blood plopped to the table. Cutter held the end of the string steady in the same spot, while the meat swung slowly ahead of Birdie’s breath, spinning and unspinning, as it made slow arcs. Drop after drop of bright red blood fell to the table, creating an almost perfect design of concentric dots and circles.

  “It was the wind,” Birdie said, wide-eyed, obviously impressed. She took the chunk of meat and returned it to her pile. “So you know what caused the blood circle. But what happened to the meat?”

  “Sorry.” Cutter grinned. “I got nothin’.”

  Birdie wiped her hands on an old rag that was hanging on a peg by the window, then pointed at the carving with her chin.

  “Looks sorta like Smudge,” she said.

  Cutter held the piece of cottonwood out at arm’s length. “You think?”

  “Is that what you were going for?”

  He stuffed the carving back in his pocket and gave a halfhearted shrug. “I go for whatever the wood gives me.”

  “You sure you’re not Yup’ik?”

  Cutter folded the little Barlow.

  “This belonged to my grandfather,” he said, pushing the knife toward her. “I’d like you to have it.”

  “I . . . I couldn’t.”

  “It’s something we do,” Cutter said, “give something of value to our family and loved ones—like your nose kisses.”

  “Kunik,” Birdie said. She took the pocketknife and touched it to her nose. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Cutter said. “I’m carrying around a few secrets of my own. Getting to know you taught me that people can get past some truly horrible events—”

  “Ha,” Birdie scoffed. “I’m not past anything.”

  “But you’re moving in that direction.” He winked at her again, like Grumpy would have. “You’re fighting on . . .”

  The storm didn’t calm enough to see the sky until a little after noon. Birdie fed the woodstove a steady diet of green spruce boughs along with the dry wood, giving any trooper pilots plenty of smoke to home in on with their search.

  Five and a half hours after they’d arrived at the cabin, Cutter heard a plane fly overhead. An hour later the brap of snow machine engines echoed through the trees. Three Alaska State Troopers and one very worried Polynesian deputy US Marshal approached the house slowly on foot, bringing their machines in only when Cutter went outside and waved, letting them know it was safe.

  Lola stayed behind with Cutter and Birdie while the troopers used sleds to transport both the Meads and Morgan Kilgore to an airstrip a quarter mile away for pickup.

  Cutter was glad to hear that the judge had gone back to Bethel on the return flight with Ned Jasper and a traveling doctor.

  “Jolene?” Birdie asked, twisting the dirty red cloth in her hands.

  “She’s great,” Lola said. “Sascha Green won’t be giving you any more trouble for at least ten years, probably a lot longer since he qualifies for career criminal status now. He’s had his three strikes, so he could very well go away for good.”

  Lola recounted the arrest like she was calling play-by-play at a ball game. Birdie Pingayak hung on every word.

  CHAPTER 47

  Lieutenant Warr allowed Birdie and her daughter to accompany the deputies and remaining attorneys on the troopers’ Caravan back to Bethel. They arrived in time to catch the evening Alaska Airlines flight back to Anchorage. There would be statements to be given, but those could wait until the following day, when everyone had had a hot shower and a good meal.

  Aften Brooks was at the airport too, having gotten permission from Birdie to miss a couple days of school so she could fly to Anchorage and visit Sarah Mead in the hospital.

  Judge Markham shook hands with Lieutenant Warr at the airport before going through security, thanking him for the most interesting trip he’d had in . . . well, ever. The arbitration was rescheduled for mid-January so as not to interfere with Eastern Orthodox Christmas. Lola about spewed Diet Coke out her nose when the judge promised Jolene that he was going to request Deputies Teariki and Cutter as his security team on his next visit.

  Birdie and Cutter had said most of their goodbyes at the cabin, both knowing things would be moving a million miles an hour once they returned to civilization.

  She waved as Cutter and Lola were ushered past security and out a side door, since they were both armed. Jolene stood close, hand on Birdie’s shoulder, the way she used to do before she’d grown too cool to hang out with her mom.

  “Lola told me all about Sascha,” Jolene said out of the blue.

  Birdie swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry,” she managed to say.

  Jolene scoffed. “You got nothing to be sorry for, Mom. She didn’t tell me exactly what happened. Just that it was really bad, and it wasn’t your fault.”

  Birdie released a slow breath, bracing herself. “Do you want to know what happened?”

  “I can guess,” Jolene said. “I mean, I’m here, right. And I remember seeing all the scars when you took me swimming at that hotel in Fairbanks when I was little.”

  “I can tell you if you want,” Birdie said.

  “Tell me if you want,” Jolene said. “Someday. I’m sorry it happened to you. But I’m glad you’re my mom.”

  “Me too,” Birdie said. “Me too.”

  “Lola also talked to me about sex.”

  Birdie laughed at the suddenness of that. “She did, did she?”

  “She had to, so I’d understand what happened with Sascha. I mean, I already know the basics—”

  “You do?”

  “Mom! Of course I do. You’ve told me the basics. The point is, you don’t have to worry about Sascha. Lola told me he’s just the liquid you used to make my soup.”

  “That sounds like an interesting conversation.”

  “It really was.” Jolene chuckled. “She’s like talking to a big sister or something. You know she’s Maori? They’re the ones who do that haka war dance I showed you on YouTube. She asked me about your tattoo.”

  “Why?”

  Jolene shrugged. “Just interested, I guess. She has a Maori tattoo on her shoulder. It’s a really cool design of a shark. She had it cut in on the island her family comes from—the old way. Said it hurt ‘like a bitch.’ I told her your tavlugun was stitched in with a needle and thread. She said you were badass.”

  “Is that right?” Bird
ie said. Her face flushed.

  “I told her I was thinking of getting one like yours, skin-stitched on my chin—like you and Great-Grandma.”

  Everything Birdie thought to say sounded hollow, silly, trite. She wanted to scoop up her little girl, to laugh out loud. Instead, she stood quietly, stoically, in the terminal and watched out the window as Cutter and Lola walked across the tarmac toward the Alaska Airlines jet.

  Jolene gave her a soft nudge with an elbow. “You are, you know, Mom.”

  Birdie looked over at her. “I am what?”

  “A badass,” Jolene said, smiling softly.

  Tears welling in her eyes, Birdie Pingayak pressed her forehead and nose against her daughter’s cheek and breathed.

  EPILOGUE

  Two days after Cutter and the others returned from Bethel, Anchorage Police Canine Zeus was buried on a small plot of land belonging to Theron Jensen’s father in Chugiak, a few miles north of Anchorage proper. The procession of marked police cruisers and other law enforcement vehicles was a half mile long.

  Mim brought the kids and met Cutter there, standing beside him as the rest of the procession parked and the officers made their way to the mound of dark earth in a field otherwise white with new snow.

  Chief Phillips had come as well, and stood with Lola Teariki a few rows back in the crowd of almost two hundred people. Both Jensen and Zeus were extremely well loved and everyone there had had some kind of interaction with the team, working a canine track on a runner, searching a building, or just saying hello at the station.

  “I’m glad you came, Chief,” Lola whispered.

  “Sad deal,” Phillips said. “I’ll deny it if you tell anyone, but I’m damned glad Cutter wasn’t too gentle when he took down that son of a bitch Twig Ripley.”

  “Twig fought him,” Lola said. “Cutter used the force necessary to—”

  “I told you I am glad,” Phillips said. She gave a somber nod. “Your report on Sascha Green was interesting. Sounds like you’re no stranger to using the appropriate amount of force yourself.”