Cold Company

by Sue Henry

  What could be better after a hard day’s work? she thought, glad to have the place by herself for the time being and nothing but the music to replace the sound of construction outside.

  With the music playing, she didn’t hear tires on her driveway or the crunch of footsteps approaching her door. The fist that hammered on it startled her into spilling a drop or two of whiskey from the glass she was just raising to her mouth.

  “Hey!” someone shouted outside. “Anyone home?”

  “Dammit,” Jessie swore under her breath, as Tank sat up from where he was lying at her feet and turned to face the door. “Who the hell?”

  Setting down the snifter, she unwillingly got up, wiped the whiskey from her hand with a towel, and, frowning, went to answer the summons, as whoever it was pounded again—loudly.

  “Jessie! Jessie Arnold! Are you in there?”

  She did not recognize the voice or the face that confronted her when she opened the door to look out. But she had no trouble identifying the television van that was parked between her dog yard and the excavation for her new basement.

  “Hey! Understand you found a body out here last night. What’s the story?”

  A camera crew had already climbed down into the excavation and was making tracks in and around the ready-for-concrete forms the construction gang had worked so hard on that afternoon. As Jessie watched, speechless, a tall gangly young man with a heavy camera on his shoulder tripped over a stake at one corner, knocking it out of the ground and loosening the form. Not bothering to replace it, he moved on, continuing a concerted visual search of the dirt walls and floor of the pit.

  Jamming her feet into the muddy boots she had left on a piece of newspaper near the door, Jessie didn’t bother to answer the question she had been asked but jumped from the motor home, slammed the door, and hurried to the edge of the excavation.

  “Get out of there!” she angrily told the two men and a woman, who were in the process of examining the hole for evidence of the location of the body they had heard about. “You’re wrecking the foundation forms. Out! Right now!”

  “Aw, come on, Jessie. We just want the story. Where was the corpse? The report said you found it. What’s it like to find a body? Any idea who it might be?”

  The door-pounder had followed along to bombard her with questions. One of the three in the hole glanced up, but in their attempt to find something to video they all ignored her demand.

  “Hey, Jim,” the door-pounder called. “Come up here with the camera and interview Jessie. You can get shots of the site after she shows us where to look. Where’d you find it, Jessie? I need a story for the Daily News.”

  So it was both print and video news people. Though it usually took a lot to make Jessie lose her temper, fatigue and the interruption of her relaxation with such a blatant, inconsiderate intrusion was suddenly more than she could take. Whirling to face her questioner and taking a long look at his eager, almost voracious expression and the microphone he was shoving in her face, she was inspired to tell him off, had opened her mouth to loose the indignant, angry words that flooded her mind—including several of the four-letter variety—when she thought better of it.

  Experience with print and television reporters is a large part of the sled dog racing game, and Jessie had long ago learned the hard way to think before she spoke; to assume that anything and everything she uttered would be grist for the media mill; that it would appear, often misquoted, to fit the slant of whatever story the reporter dreamed up. For a long moment, she stared at him resentfully, then turned once again to the crew in the pit.

  “If you don’t come up out of there immediately, I’m calling the police. You’re trespassing on private property, and I am telling you all to leave. I have nothing to say and I’m going inside now—to the phone.”

  She swung around, walked swiftly past the avid reporter as if he didn’t exist, climbed back into the motor home, and closed and locked the door. Turning up the music until it drowned out the sound of the discussion that ensued outside, and ignoring the repeated knocking that had started again on her door, she gave the stew a stir, sat back down at the table, and sipped at the Jameson’s until it and they were gone.

  DEAD BODY DISCOVERED IN LOCAL MUSHER’S BASEMENT the headline screamed from the front page of next morning’s newspaper, carried in from the box at the road by Hank Peterson, arriving for work. Though not the lead, Jessie found she had hit the front page in an article that followed the headline, which had been placed above the fold, where it would attract the attention of anyone who saw the paper. She was immediately torn between outrage and regret that she had not given the reporter the information he was seeking, for her refusal had clearly not only sparked his anger, but speculation in print about her connection to the bones Timmons had disinterred. Without actual accusation, the article and its headline were cleverly slanted in a manner to throw suspicion and allegation in her direction.

  Jessie Arnold, local Iditarod musher, angrily refused comment yesterday on the remains of an unidentified body discovered on her Knik Road property during excavation of a basement for a new cabin. Unreasonably upset, Arnold, who was involved in a series of murders and arsons that included her own residence earlier this spring, locked herself inside her motor home and refused to answer questions concerning the remains unearthed earlier in the day by state troopers and investigators from the crime lab.

  Leaning against the side of the Winnebago, Jessie sighed in frustration. “Damned if I do—damned if I don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “They were tramping around, knocking down forms and demanding information I thought they should get somewhere else. I told them to get out. They’ve made this sound like—”

  “You don’t have to explain to me,” Peterson interrupted with a grin. “I was here yesterday, remember? Ignore them, Jessie. What can they do, take away your birthday? They’ll sell a few papers, and it’ll blow over in a couple of days.”

  She knew he was probably right but was offended anyway. Laying the paper aside, she went to meet Vic Prentice, who was arriving just ahead of the concrete truck, with its large spinning barrel. As they got to work, directing the flow of concrete into the footing forms, leveling and working it to ensure that there were no air bubbles trapped in the mix, she found herself taking deep breaths and trying to ease the tension in her back and shoulders and let go of her frustration. Hank’s advice was good. The only thing to do was forget it, but she found that difficult.

  There was more than just the current situation involving her emotions. It had been a crazy spring, full of confusion and anxiety, sometimes terror, with people dying one way or another. In February, during the Yukon Quest race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, there had been a murder and the kidnapping of a rookie racer. Then an old acquaintance had unexpectedly appeared, along with murder and arson, including the destruction of Jessie’s beloved cabin that the newspaper article had mentioned. A trip for Vic Prentice, to ferry the Winnebago from Idaho to its current location in her yard, had involved her in more killings, when she had longed for it to be a vacation from the stress of the spring. Now, with the discovery of the body in the basement, she had begun to feel claustrophobic, as if death were dogging her heels with an hourglass and scythe.

  To complicate everything further, a relationship in which she had felt confident had ended, suddenly and without real warning, leaving her emotionally drained, wondering if her decisions had been the right ones and suddenly unsure of herself and others. Now she found another death and its mysterious overtones depressing. Hesitating, halfway across the yard to her storage shed to retrieve a pair of gloves she had unconsciously put down and forgotten, she looked around at the jumble of construction as if it belonged to someone else.

  What the hell am I doing? she asked herself. Am I just trying to replace the past?

  The idea of rebuilding the cabin she had lost in the fire had given her focus and pleasure. Now she wondered if it was an exercise in bad judgment. Was she making another
mistake?

  As she focused on her indecision, the construction sounds faded to a dull sort of background music. She didn’t notice the roar of the truck, now empty of concrete and turning to leave the yard, as it lumbered toward her and the driver hammered the horn to attract her attention. Startled, she leaped out of its way, yanked back to the reality of what was going on around her.

  Prentice came trotting across the yard to lay a hand on her arm. “Hey, Jessie. You okay?”

  His concerned expression and the slight southern drawl that softened his words suddenly made her want to cry, but she caught herself just in time to turn to him with a smile, which, though forced, erased the concern from his face.

  “I’m fine, Vic. Just woolgathering.”

  What a year! she thought, and went to work, grateful to have something to take her mind away from her problems and determined to maintain a positive attitude. Of course rebuilding the cabin was a good idea. Moving into a new cabin would be wonderful and give her back an important part of her precious independence. For now, she would bury herself in the construction process and keep busy. The body she had found this time had nothing to do with her, did it?

  5

  AT SIXTY-ONE DEGREES FIFTEEN MINUTES LATITUDE north, Anchorage near summer solstice had over nineteen hours of daylight, and the sun did not set until ten-thirty. When it rose again at half past three, the four-plus hours between were more a darker and extended twilight than an actual night.

  The deep evening blue of midnight made street and traffic lights glow like jewels and enriched the garish colors of neon advertisements on taverns and bars along Fourth Avenue. What darkness there was settled in deep shadows between the downtown buildings of Alaska’s largest city, creating pockets of near invisibility for those who stumbled through them on their way from one drink to another. The hum of vehicle tires on pavement provided a background for the voices of the pedestrians passing along the sidewalks: an angry shout, a burst of inebriated laughter, a greeting called out to someone driving by.

  Two city blocks—one a large parking structure, the other a vacant lot—separated the Bottoms Up bar from the rest of the watering holes scattered farther west along the street in the more crowded section of downtown Anchorage. The exterior of Bottoms, a nondescript concrete-block structure with a single sign in startling red neon, was architecturally insignificant, but its patrons, more interested in the topless gyrations of the exotic dancers on the runway inside, hardly noticed. At just after midnight, canned music of a bump-and-grind nature spilled into the street as the front door swung open and two men and a woman walked out and turned right into the shadows of the parking lot.

  The three crossed the lot together and stopped beside a white car. While the owner unlocked the driver’s door, the woman turned to entice the second man. Tossing her long blond hair and holding her shoulders back to exhibit large breasts barely contained by a tight yellow tank top, she made him an offer.

  With a grin, he shook his head at the price she had named. “Naw. Too rich for me.”

  His companion made a quick counteroffer, but the woman, refusing to lower her price, swung away with a shrug and strolled off across the lot on her three-inch heels, swinging her hips suggestively in black skin-tight pants. The men watched her progress with amused appreciation until she teetered out of sight around the corner of the building; then they climbed into the car and pulled out of the lot. What they did not see was the expression of resigned frustration on her face. Knowing she had a pimp and rent to pay, she was already regretting that she had not lowered her price a little. It had not been a good week. A nagging cough, left over from a bad cold, had plagued her all evening in the smoke-filled bar, and she knew she looked less than her best, with dark circles under her eyes, residue of three days sick in bed.

  Stopping in the doorway of Bottoms, she lit a cigarette, which brought on another fit of coughing, so she did not look up when the driver of the car honked as they passed on the street. She ignored them, her interest caught by a dark brown pickup that swung in toward the curb and stopped in front of her. Reaching up with both hands to lean against the cab in a position that would give the driver a good look at her cleavage through the open window, she licked her dry lips, summoned enough energy to look perkily in his direction, and asked her usual question.

  “Wanna party, darlin’?”

  In the half dark, she could see almost nothing of his face. He was mostly a silhouette against the street’s lighting.

  “Sure. I’ll give you three hundred if you’ll come to my place and let me take a couple of pictures.”

  Automatically starting to shake her head, she hesitated. It was an unwritten rule: Never leave the area with a customer. Still, three hundred was a significant temptation—more than she would make in a couple of nights at the rate she was going. It meant she could go home and climb in bed afterward and get the rest she needed to be back on her feet tomorrow night.

  “Come on,” he wheedled. She saw his teeth in the reflected light as he grinned. “I’m harmless—just don’t like doing it in the truck. I’ll bring you right back here when we’re done. Even give you the three hundred now. Okay?”

  He shifted to tug his wallet out of a right hip pocket, took out three hundred-dollar bills, and held them in her direction.

  “Here. Get in.”

  The sight of the money was enough to silence her concerns. Opening the door of the pickup, she climbed in and took the bills, stuffing them into a pocket of her tight pants as he pulled away from the curb and headed east on Fourth.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “Not far. You’ll like it. I got a good place. What’s your name?”

  “Teri. Yours?”

  “John.”

  “Sure.”

  He drove in silence for a couple of blocks, then turned south on Gamble, headed for the New Seward Highway. Before they reached it, he pulled off into the almost empty parking lot of an all-night liquor store and stopped at the end farthest from the door, with the truck facing the street.

  “What kind of booze do you like, Teri?”

  “Ah—oh, I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

  “Bourbon?”

  “Sure.”

  “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere without me, now.” He grinned at her playfully, shut off the engine, and took the key with him across the short space to the store. He was a big man, but had a nice smile and friendly eyes behind a pair of dark-rimmed glasses. She felt better, having had a good look at him, and relaxed a bit while she waited. At least he had a sense of humor.

  In just a few minutes he was climbing back in with a bottle in a brown paper bag in his right hand, the left reaching to slam shut the door behind him.

  “Here. You hold the booze.”

  As she reached to take the bottle, his left hand came up toward her. In it was a handgun, dark, threatening, the metal gleaming in the half-light of the cab. He had it pointed at the middle of her body.

  “Hey—”

  “Shut it, bitch. Don’t scream, just sit still, or I can make you very, very sorry.” His voice was rough, but the words came slow and quiet, almost a drawl. The friendly grin was gone, replaced by a grimace that exposed his teeth, wolfish and predatory.

  With the terror that flooded through her, she probably couldn’t have moved anyway, wouldn’t have tried to, but one hand went instinctively to the handle of the passenger door.

  “Don’t try it,” he warned, switching the gun to his right hand and shaking a finger of the left at her as if she were a disobedient child.

  She felt as if she were smothering, could scarcely breathe.

  “What—do you want?”

  “I want you to put that bottle on the seat and keep your hands in sight, both of them.”

  She laid the bottle down and watched her hands shake as she placed them on her knees, not wanting to look at him again or at the gun he was holding.

  He reached under his side of the seat. There was a gleam of
metal, and she could see he had a pair of handcuffs. He held them out to her.

  “Put ’em on. Now!” he told her, satisfaction in his voice, and—when her wrists were securely fastened together—“Turn around and get down on your knees on the floor, facing the seat.”

  “Please,” she begged him. “Please. Don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want. Anything, really. Please. I won’t tell anyone.” She could hear the high, thin quality of her pleading. Knowing how scared she was made it worse.

  “Show me,” he commanded. “Get down there—now. Maybe I won’t hurt you, if you’re a very good girl.”

  When she had knelt on the floor, as directed, head on her hands on the seat, he started the pickup and drove across Gamble to another one-way street heading in the opposite direction, back the way they had come. A few blocks farther, he turned right, away from downtown Anchorage, heading east on what would become the Glenn Highway that led to Eagle River and the MatSu Valley beyond. All she could see were the streetlights as they passed, casting light in through the passenger window, but she knew where they were so far.

  Where was he taking her? she wondered, so frightened now that she could hardly think straight. There seemed to be nothing she could do that would not result in his using the handgun that lay in his lap as he drove. No one knew where she was or even that she had gone. She had left Bottoms Up after her topless dancing shift was over for the night, tired, craving her bed and a good night’s sleep. Her overture to the two men in the parking lot had been a futile attempt to make a few extra dollars she needed badly. What had seemed an opportunity to make enough to solve her current cash-flow problem had turned, without warning, into a nightmare of unimaginable proportions. All she could do was wait and hope that he wouldn’t hurt—wouldn’t kill her. Maybe there would be one moment of opportunity, one chance to run, to escape, to hit him with something, to defend herself. She didn’t see how, but—maybe, if she watched carefully and didn’t lose it completely. She took a deep breath.