Deadfall

by Sue Henry

  Tank sat down and watched this odd procedure with a cocked head that made Jessie smile.

  “You’re going to be hungry, too, buddy,” she said softly, “though you, at least, got a good breakfast.”

  There would be food—and, probably, medicine—in the storage of the kitchens and pantries of the houses on the other cove, if she could reach it without being caught. The beach house was probably out of the question, but the others might provide. She reached into her jacket pocket for the keys, but found only a wadded tissue along with the box of ammunition she had put in earlier. Well, a win—and a loss. A search through the rest of her pockets yielded nothing more, and with a sinking feeling she remembered laying the keys on the chest by the bed the night before, where she could easily find them. Damn! Well, windows could be broken if necessary. There were other ways to gain entry to what she would need, but they would be less efficient and more obvious to anyone looking.

  When she estimated that she was perhaps a quarter of a mile from the beach house, she started toward the other side of the island, having decided to move to the area above the second cove, find a place to hide, and wait for darkness. Her knowledge of the island would be a larger advantage in the dark, when she might not be seen or shot at from a distance. Hungry or not, she would wait for it.

  Tucking her hand with its injured fingers inside her coat, she tried to protect and warm it, hoping it would ease the pain. Instead, the throbbing increased as the chill receded, until she gritted her teeth and took it out again to let the cold rain anesthetize it. What had the fall done? Had she broken the fingers again? Removing the tape and splints in the shelter of her coat so they wouldn’t get wet, she examined the site of the break in each finger. They seemed fine, with no additional swelling. Then she felt each joint and found that the ring finger—the one that throbbed most—was dislocated in the knuckle nearest her palm. Dammit. What now?

  With the knowledge of similar accidents she had witnessed in other dog sled drivers, she knew it should, and could, be put back in place. But would it hurt less if it was relocated? She knew the process was painful, but had never done it, or had it done, herself. Frowning, she thought it over. How hard could it be? Either she could do it or she would find out quickly that it was impossible. It hurt a lot anyway and was, she decided, worth a try.

  Gripping the finger just above the dislocation and below the break, so she could hold on without causing further injury, with a quick, firm motion she pulled hard on it.

  Fierce, stabbing pain knifed immediately through her finger, hand, and arm, sharp enough to make her gasp, cry out, and almost let go, but she kept up the tension, sucking air in through her teeth as the agony continued. Tank whined softly at her feet at the sounds she was making, knowing something was wrong. She ignored him, focusing completely on what she was doing—and its result.

  Suddenly, with a small audible pop, the bone and cartilage slipped back into place and the intense pain was less—not gone, but transformed into the ache and hurt of distress instead of its former torture. Moaning in both anguish and relief, she cradled her hand against her stomach, gulping great lungfuls of damp air, and waited for the discomfort to fade.

  There—that hadn’t been so bad, now, had it? Yes, dammit, it had, she thought. Worse than bad, but…Her last groan turned to what was almost a chuckle, as, amused at herself and still holding her arm against her body, she went on through the woods, forcing her concentration back to the problem of retaining her independent strength and freedom.

  A few hundred feet farther east, she stepped across a tiny creek, but, moving on, she suddenly stopped and broke a medium-sized branch from the willow that grew beside it. Peeling the bark from some of the smaller twigs, she broke it up and put it in her mouth, recalling that this part of the willow supposedly contained a natural painkiller that might ease what was left of her aches and pains. If she had been able to boil water, she could have steeped the leaves. She hiked on, chewing the rather bitter mass that she was glad to find also seemed to make her feel a little less hungry, though she thought longingly of the sausage she had meant to cook that morning, and the thick slices of homemade bread she had sliced for toasting.

  Tank stayed close beside her as they crossed the island, and she was grateful for his company. The pit of her stomach had tightened into its familiar week-old knot. Breathing deeply to retain her calm, Jessie refused to think about it, knowing she would need all her wits, skills, and best response time if she was to keep from falling into the hands of this horrible person. Better to keep thinking of what could be done than to fall into a what if mentality.

  Without help from Alex and Cas, she had only herself and Tank to depend on. That would somehow have to be enough—she would have to make it so.

  Where was the stalker now? What was he doing—planning? Would he anticipate her moves? Could he? Of course. He could easily anticipate her priorities—escape, safety, food, water, shelter. It was almost pathetically simple and he would guess that she would try to avail herself of as many of these as possible.

  He doesn’t need to spend time searching the island for me, she thought. All he has to do is wait long enough and I’ll have to make a try at the supplies in one of the houses. So, she decided, I should make that try as soon as possible, before he’s settled in, ready and waiting.

  It would be frustrating, for, though he could not be on both sides of the island at the same time, she had no way of knowing where he would be at any given time. She almost wished she had gone back to take a look, had some idea what he was doing and, therefore, his plan of action. For all she knew, he could be waiting for her wherever she attempted to supply herself. But he could not watch all the buildings all the time, unless…What if Alex had been right? What if there were more than one stalker?

  23

  “He swears someone stole his boots.”

  “Sure they did.”

  “Says he can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “A week ago last Thursday he didn’t go straight home after work. Changed his work boots for a pair of tennis shoes and stopped by a bar, leaving the boots in his truck. He didn’t lock it—says he never does. The next day, when he looked for the boots to wear to work, they were missing.”

  “Right. How does that prove they were stolen at the bar? They could as easily have disappeared in his own driveway, if, as you say, he didn’t notice they were missing until Friday. Or maybe they weren’t stolen or missing at all.”

  Tuesday, the day following his arrest, J. B. Moule had continued to refuse to answer questions and insisted on having an attorney present. An appointed one had showed up close to noon and spent over an hour with his client. Now he was attempting to convince Jensen that Moule had played no part in Jessie’s harassment.

  Jensen was a hard, if not impossible, sell. But the young public defender, much in need of a haircut, while standing firm and addressing the homicide sergeant earnestly, was giving it his best try.

  “He says his father and the boy next door will confirm that the boots were missing during the time he says they were. He made a fuss—was mad about it. He has a temper, you know.”

  “I’m well acquainted with his temper. Because of it, his father would say anything J.B. wanted. I’d listen to the kid next door, but Moule probably has him intimidated as well. Anyway, if they were stolen, how’d he get them back?”

  “Found them in his truck after work on Monday.”

  “Right. You expect us to believe that? Someone borrowed them on Thursday, developed a guilty conscience over the weekend, and returned them on Monday.”

  Jensen allowed his sarcasm to show in a loss of patience, then decided to let the defender see a little of what he was up against.

  “Look. The boots belong to Moule, and the lab says that they match the prints we found in the trees beyond the dog lot at Jessie Arnold’s Knik cabin. He had the opportunity and his past threats toward me give him motive to harass Arnold. With John Timmons on the stand to
demonstrate that his boots match the casts of those prints, no jury is going to believe those boots were stolen. Besides that, there’s a dozen parole violations we’re working on. He’s going back inside, whether or not he’s charged with harassment and attempted murder.”

  However, when Cas met with Alex later at the crime lab, he had as many reservations as Moule had violations.

  “The boots could have been stolen, Alex, and he’s got alibis for some of the stuff we’ve uncovered. I’m not completely convinced we’ve got the right man here. There’s no real link between him and the traps. He’s not a trapper and neither is anyone in his family, according to his father.”

  “Well, maybe there’s a lot he doesn’t know—doesn’t want to know—about his misguided son.”

  “What about those computer-generated notes?”

  “There’ll be an answer to that one, just wait and see.”

  “You’re not usually so stubborn, Alex. What is it?”

  “I just don’t want to see this bastard slide out from under…”

  He was interrupted as the door opened to admit Becker, who had been working on the problem of Mary Lou Collins and her missing boyfriend.

  “I think I’ve got a line on a guy who may know where to find Jones,” he announced, pulling out a chair and perching on the edge of it with enthusiasm.

  “Who?”

  “Well, I’ve got a friend, Warren Thatcher—a pilot at Elmendorf—that I snow-machine with in the winter. He’s got a Harley he rides when we run out of snow, and he sometimes hangs with a couple of guys who drink at the Aces. Thought I’d give him a call and, sure enough, he knows Jones—doesn’t think much of him, but knows him to say hello to. Warren says Jones has a close buddy, a Dennis Falconer, who works as a mechanic in Wasilla and may know where we can track him down.”

  When Jensen and Becker drove to Wasilla to hunt up the man Phil’s friend had mentioned, they found an ancient service station that no longer pumped gas and had been converted into a garage of sorts that was hardly more than a workshop, cluttered with tools and parts, on a side street half a block from the airport. Old junker cars and several motorcycles stood around, the majority of which seemed to be a source of parts for others in various states of repair.

  Following the sound of voices, they went through a side door and found two men in greasy coveralls examining the engine of a Harley-Davidson that looked as if it had barely survived some kind of wreck. Jensen wondered if its driver looked as bad.

  “Shit, Gus, take a good look at the thing. I still say it’s the fuel pump,” one of them was telling the other in an annoyed tone.

  They turned their heads to see who had come in, then one of the two stood up and came toward them.

  “Help you with something?”

  One knee didn’t bend, and he swung the leg stiffly as he walked. Jensen, also noting that he had a prosthesis with a hook instead of a left hand, guessed that this man’s experience with motorcyles was more comprehensive than just their repair.

  “We’re looking for Dennis Falconer,” Jensen told him, displaying his identification. “He work here?”

  “Dennis? Whatcha want him for? He’s…”

  A heavy wrench came clanging across the concrete floor toward them and the motorcycle fell over with a crash, as the second man shoved it and took off toward a door on the opposite wall.

  Becker was immediately after him, bounding over the fallen machine, covering ground with a speed that allowed him to reach the door only seconds after his target had disappeared through it.

  “What the hell?” the crippled mechanic asked, following as quickly as he could move, in a rolling gait that reminded Alex of the awkwardness of a man in a three-legged race.

  At the door, Jensen saw that Becker’s famous flying tackle had connected and brought down the mechanic he pursued. The two were wrestling in the dirt of a vacant lot, dust flying, as the runner tried desperately to break Becker’s hold and get away. Between them, the troopers managed to subdue and handcuff him.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Dennis?” Gus asked.

  “Nothing you need to worry about, Gus,” he spat. “Call Teresa. Tell her to get hold of Spike and tell him…well, just tell him…you know. Okay? And have her get Mary Lou headed my way with some bail money.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  At the mention of Collins’s name, Jensen gave Becker a warning glance, and the younger trooper nodded knowingly as he dusted off his clothes and picked up the gray western hat he’d been wearing. It was more than a little crushed from having landed on the bottom of the tussle. A mouse that looked certain to turn pretty colors was rising under Becker’s left eye, but Falconer, his nose bleeding down the front of his coveralls, had suffered worse damage.

  Jensen was waiting eagerly, when Mary Louise Collins showed up to make bail for her boyfriend’s buddy.

  “He hasn’t been charged with anything—yet,” Jensen told her. “But now that you’ve come to visit my office, you and I are going to have another little chat. I think you’d better give me some specifics on where to find Jones. And don’t tell me again that you don’t know. We’ve already been informed that you do.”

  Collins stared furiously at him from a chair in an interrogation room at the Palmer troopers’ office.

  “Is that what that idiot Dennis told you? In his dreams I know—the stupid S.O.B. Like I told you last night, I haven’t a clue where Spike’s gone. Haven’t seen him in more than a week.”

  “And you intend to stick to that story?”

  “Yeah, of course. It’s true.”

  “I don’t think so, Mary Lou. I can hold you for obstructing justice, you know. And I may just do that.”

  She glared at him through the long, dark lashes of her narrowed eyes.

  “I haven’t done anything you can hold me for. You can’t arrest me for not knowing something.”

  A knock on the door preceded Becker, with a satisfied look on his face.

  “A minute, Alex?”

  Outside in the hallway, he eagerly spilled what he was practically bursting to tell.

  “Hey, you’re going to love this one. We printed Falconer when we brought him in?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember those two motorcycles stolen in Palmer last month?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, guess whose prints match some of the ones we lifted off the pieces of them that we found at the dump?”

  “Oh, yeah? Well—it’s a small world, isn’t it?”

  “They also match some we took off another one that was stolen, stripped, and left in a vacant lot in Anchorage a little over a week ago.”

  “Chop shop?”

  “That’d be my guess. Should we send someone to take a long, close look at that place where he works?”

  “Un-huh—and wherever he lives. Tell Ed to lock him up and start the paperwork. I’ll be down in a few minutes and we’ll see what he’ll give up when he knows what we’ve got on him. You said some—on the prints. That mean there were more you didn’t identify?”

  “Yeah, one more person. Think they might belong to Jones?”

  “Worth a try. We might get lucky—if we can locate him. You might also check to see if he’s got prints on file.”

  Caswell sat down with Becker in Jensen’s office an hour later to discuss what they had so far and what they could do with it, but he wasn’t as focused on the stolen motorcycles or as delighted in breaking the case as the younger trooper. They were still holding both Falconer and Collins for questioning, though they wouldn’t be able to hold the woman much longer without something with which to charge her. Both she and Falconer had continued to maintain that they knew nothing of Jones’s whereabouts, though Dennis Falconer was of the opinion that Collins could reach his friend if she wanted to. Jensen was becoming more inclined to believe the mechanic, who had admitted taking apart the stolen machines for parts but insisted that Jones was responsible for the thefts, and that he knew nothing about them�
��thought the machines belonged to Jones.

  “How should I know they were stolen? He brought ’em in. I tore ’em down. I had no idea they weren’t his.”

  “Yeah, and if my granny had wheels she’d be a…motorcycle,” Becker had not been able to resist commenting, earning an incredulous and amused look from Jensen.

  “Do you usually strip fairly new machines in perfectly good, running condition?” Alex had asked. “You knew just what you were doing, Dennis. What did you do with the parts?”

  “Spike took ’em. And I don’t know where he is. He said he had some personal business and would be back when he got back—maybe a week, maybe more. He didn’t say where he was going. Ask Mary Lou.”

  There was an attitude about Collins’s denial that didn’t convince the troopers that she was as uninformed as she claimed.

  “She’s laughing at us,” Caswell suggested. “There’s a look when she says she doesn’t know—a hint of sarcasm, almost a grin—that shows in her eyes.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alex agreed. “I think she knows exactly where he is—and what he’s up to.”

  Cas was thoughtfully silent for a time.

  “By the way,” he asked, “did you check on that former boyfriend of Jessie’s?”

  “Yes. He’s clean. Has all kinds of alibis. I’ve cut him from the list.”

  Caswell nodded, then frowned, still thinking.

  “Look,” he said finally. “Without a doubt we can put Moule away on parole violations, but we’re going to have to do more work on the harassment to convince me.”

  “Why? Take me through it.”

  “Well, here’s the picture, as I see it.” He stood up and walked to a blackboard in one corner of the office, on which he began to list the days and events of the previous week.

  “The incidents with the traps happened on a Saturday.”

  He wrote “Saturday—traps found.”