Tundra Threat

by Sarah Varland

  There hadn’t been any need for Will to go with her, since she hadn’t needed the use of a plane, so she’d sent him a text that morning to let him know she’d be fine for the day on her own.

  It was funny how much she wished she’d let him tag along with her, just to provide an extra set of eyes and some company.

  But this wasn’t Will’s job; it was hers. And she wanted to prove she could do it well.

  McKenna walked up the steps to her and Anna’s house. She put her key in the door and opened it only to be greeted by Mollie, Checkers and the mess they’d made while she and Anna had been working.

  “So you were into the tissues today, huh?” she noted as she locked the door behind her and put her bag down by the door. The living room was covered in little piles of tissues that looked almost like the snow McKenna knew would soon be blanketing the landscape outside. “Looks exciting.”

  There was a bump outside, around the back of the house. McKenna tilted her head to listen but didn’t hear anything else. Feeling as if she was probably just being paranoid, she hurried to the bathroom, where the window would give her a view in that direction, and looked out.

  Nothing.

  She was starting to jump at shadows. The anxiety from this case was building, she could feel it in the tensing of her shoulders and the fact that her racing heart never quite seemed to calm down.

  She’d had a call from Captain Wilkins earlier in the day, checking on her progress.

  “It’s just...stalled,” she’d confessed, not knowing what else to say.

  “That needs to change. We have enough trouble in your bureau with poachers. We don’t need an unsolved double murder, too.”

  At his words unsolved double murder, she’d shivered. After she’d finished talking to him, she’d called the medical examiner’s office in Anchorage where the bodies had been taken. Though tox screens and all the other details usually took a few weeks to be finished, she’d hoped they’d have information for her already. Unfortunately, the person she talked to had informed her that not only was there nothing to tell yet, but also that even though they could release information to her since she was official law enforcement, it would have to be in person.

  McKenna wondered how Will would feel about flying her to Anchorage in the next few weeks.

  Jerking back to the present, McKenna tensed as she heard someone jangle the doorknob, then relaxed as Anna’s voiced called, “I’m home, did you miss me?”

  McKenna laughed. “I did, actually.”

  “This roommate thing is kinda nice so far.” Anna smiled. “Much less lonely. So. Any ideas for dinner? I’m starving.”

  “Will offered to bring pizza.” McKenna had gotten a text from him just as she was leaving work and hadn’t texted back yet.

  “Ooh, tell him yes. Pizza sounds great.”

  McKenna texted Will, who said he’d be over soon. True to his word, he was knocking on the door ten minutes later.

  “You managed to get a pizza ordered and picked up in ten minutes?” McKenna asked as she opened the door for him.

  Will shook his head and grinned. “Nah. I’d already ordered it. I had a feeling you’d say yes.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah. You’ve missed me today.”

  McKenna laughed. “Have I?”

  He shrugged. “You may not admit it, but I know the truth.”

  Their eyes locked and something fluttered inside McKenna. She swallowed it down. He was just teasing her, he’d probably consider it brotherly teasing. She didn’t need to read more into it than was there.

  “Is that Will with the food?” Anna called from the kitchen.

  McKenna tore her gaze away from Will’s. “Yeah.” She looked at him one last time and then turned away. “He’s here.”

  She walked to the kitchen, Will following her. They set out the food and began to eat.

  “So, nothing unusual has happened? You’re both feeling safe?” Will asked, concern lacing his tone.

  Anna laughed. “Are you kidding? My roomie’s a state trooper. I feel completely safe.”

  “How about you?” He turned to McKenna.

  She nodded. “I have a gun, so I’m good. And it’s nice knowing Lexi and Matt are close. I’m guessing they could come to our rescue, too.”

  “Well, not with a gun,” Anna corrected her. “But yeah, they’d be there if we needed them.”

  McKenna frowned. “I thought everyone had a gun up here, either for safety or hunting.”

  Anna’s gaze darted to Will, then back at McKenna. She shrugged and looked back to Will.

  “I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want it to cloud your opinion of him....” Will began. Uh-oh. Nothing good ever started that way.

  “But?” McKenna asked, her stomach suddenly not in the mood for pizza, or any other food, as she wondered what Will could be leading up to.

  “Matt has a criminal record. The particular offense that restricts him from having a gun was actually more an incident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he’s not allowed to own one anyway.”

  Something cold curled in the pit of McKenna’s stomach. Will had made it clear that being here with Anna would be good partially because her sister and brother-in-law lived so close and could keep an eye on them, help keep them safe. After everything that had happened, Will had asked her to entrust her safety to a convicted felon?

  Had he lost his mind?

  That was exactly what she asked with the look she gave him, but his eyes warned her not to ask the question out loud. Either he was worried about offending Anna, since Matt was family, or he really believed Matt was a good guy. Maybe both.

  Regardless, McKenna couldn’t believe he expected her to accept that for herself without proof. She was working a murder case, and he had just told her that there was someone very close at hand who could be considered a suspect.

  She looked over at Anna, who was eating her pizza, conscientiously keeping her eyes on her plate, as if she was trying not to interrupt the private fight McKenna and Will were having silently.

  “Oh,” McKenna finally said. “I didn’t know.” She grasped for something to change the subject, lighten the mood. “So, does anyone want to watch a movie after dinner?”

  Anna and Will both jumped at it.

  As Anna went to pick a movie and Will helped her clean up the kitchen, McKenna’s mind stayed on the new revelation that Matt had a criminal past. Whether or not it would offend Anna and Will, McKenna was going to have to look into this. It was her case and she had to do as thorough a job as possible. People’s lives, her life, could depend on it.

  * * *

  Will had finally left just before midnight, and McKenna had gone straight to bed. The events of the week and the revelations from that night weighed heavily on her mind. She was sure they would keep her awake, and yet she was asleep almost the moment she hit the pillow.

  “McKenna.”

  In her dream, someone was shaking her. Or maybe it was an earthquake. It was hard to tell with dreams. And it was almost like someone was calling her....

  “McKenna!”

  She blinked her eyes open and saw Anna standing beside the bed, fully dressed. She sat up, scooting back against the pillow and willing herself awake. “What’s wrong?” A quick glance of the bedroom showed nothing out of place, and she couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, but it felt like the middle of the night and she didn’t know why Anna would be up.

  “We’re fine. But I just got a call in to work. There’s a body on the beach just outside of town. It doesn’t look as if he died of natural causes, according to my supervisor. Since I’m on call, I’ll be one of the paramedics responsible for handling the body until it can be flown to the M.E.’s office in Anchorage. I don’t know any detai
ls yet, but wondered if you wanted to come, just in case it’s connected to your case somehow.”

  McKenna was already pulling a sweatshirt on over her pajama shirt. “Give me a second to change. I’ll be right there.”

  Anna left the room and McKenna changed into jeans and put shoes on in record time.

  Mollie looked up with mild interest as she exited. “Go back to sleep, girl,” McKenna told her and the dog lay back down, seemingly relieved that she didn’t have to interrupt her dreams.

  “We’ll have to take the ATVs. The crime scene is past the roads.”

  McKenna nodded, having anticipated this. There were no roads from Barrow to another town, so if you needed to get anywhere outside of town, you had to take an all-terrain vehicle or fly.

  They each jumped on their four-wheelers and Anna led the way to the place she’d been told to go.

  Several emergency personnel had already gathered and the lights they’d set up around the crime scene cast a hazy orange glow on the otherwise-dark night.

  And it was a crime scene. That had taken McKenna no time to realize. The pool of blood under the man and the wound she could see looked consistent with a gunshot.

  In fact, the entire scene looked eerily familiar.

  Her throat tightened and she fought to take even breaths. Frustration warred with the panic that was building—she needed to be able to handle this. Captain Wilkins was right—she had the training, the tools needed to solve this case. She just needed to pull herself together and do it. “Thanks for bringing me,” McKenna whispered to Anna.

  “So it’s connected to your case?” Anna looked pleased that she’d been able to help.

  “I’m pretty sure.” McKenna looked around the dark expanse of rugged shoreline. The wind from the Arctic Ocean stabbed through her clothes, even with the coat she’d grabbed on her way out the door. She shivered.

  Anna walked toward the other emergency personnel.

  McKenna did her best to stay out of the way, since this wasn’t her crime scene. Anna and the other paramedic, who had apparently arrived just minutes before her, were examining the body, and a man from the North Slope Bureau Police Department stood nearby.

  “Looks like he hasn’t been gone long.” Anna shook her head.

  “Even if someone had found him sooner,” the other paramedic began, “blood loss would have been too great.”

  An even greater heaviness seemed to descend on the scene. McKenna wandered to the edge of the lit-up area and scanned the darkness that surrounded them. Nothing seemed out of place. In fact, everything seemed peaceful and utterly quiet. Too quiet for her taste, since it left nothing to distract her from the clamorous thoughts in her mind.

  Why would someone shoot a man this far out of town and leave him there?

  Or maybe the better question was, what was he doing so far out of town that ended up getting him shot?

  This wasn’t like some of the cases she’d heard about at the trooper academy, where people got in fights and killed each other in the heat of the moment. Cases like that were all too common in the Alaskan bush because of the rampant alcohol abuse. No, this was different. This was planned, in a location where there would be no witnesses.

  She could see no signs of a struggle from where she stood. She assumed there might have been tracks of some kind that could have been investigated, but those would have been compromised when the first paramedic responded to the scene. She didn’t fault them for not preserving the integrity of the area—the possibility that they could save a life had to come first.

  She pulled out a notebook she’d been using to jot down thoughts about the case, and recorded everything she saw, including impressions about the man, from what she could see of him. He was dressed in hunting camo.

  “Who called this in?” McKenna asked when Anna came near her again.

  She pointed to a man who looked to be a civilian. “That guy over there. His name is George. He’s one of Barrow’s most vocal residents. Have you met him yet?”

  McKenna noted Anna’s raised eyebrows, and her own raised in curiosity for what could cause her to have that reaction to the man. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Talking to him might be a good place to start. Just...don’t let him get to you. He can be kind of abrasive.”

  McKenna made her way to where the man stood. He was Native Alaskan and was one of those people who seemed to defy the ability to pinpoint age. She’d guess him to be in his early fifties, but knew she could be off by twenty years either way. “Excuse me, sir?” she said to get his attention as she approached.

  He met her gaze and the expression in his eyes shifted from disinterest in the scene around him to unmistakable contempt. “What do you want?”

  “I have a couple of questions about how you found this man here.”

  “You’re the new wildlife trooper, aren’t you?”

  “I am. I’m McKenna Clark.”

  He looked at her outstretched hand but didn’t reach for it. “That man, he isn’t wildlife. So why do you care?”

  “I care because I’m concerned he may be related to another case I’m working on.”

  The man smirked. “Ah.”

  His knowing smile made her uneasy. He couldn’t know about that case, could he? The details of it had been kept quiet. Since those murders had occurred so far out of town, no one could know about them. Could they?

  She cleared her throat, hoping he’d give her some details that could help. “So, could you tell me how you found him? What were you doing out this way?”

  “Wildlife troopers are just in the way up here. I hope you know that. You mess with the native way of life. The government has no business telling us how or when we can hunt.”

  So much for getting his cooperation.

  “Could you answer the question, please?” she asked firmly, hoping she’d mostly kept the irritation she could feel rising in her throat out of her tone of voice.

  “All the government has brought here are too many rules, too many regulations and too many men who care nothing for the land or the animals and use them for their own gain. We need to protect our land from the government and from his kind.” He jerked his head in the direction of the dead man. “Not the other way around.”

  So, that was a no, then—he wouldn’t be answering her question, or helping her in any way. “I guess you’re not up for questions.” She sighed and turned away, walking closer to where the paramedics were now loading the dead man into a medevac helicopter. Then she froze. His kind? What had George meant by that?

  She turned around to ask him, but he was gone. Either he’d lost himself in the cluster of emergency personnel—not likely since there were only three of them—or he’d wandered far enough away to not be illuminated by the lights.

  Something told her he knew more than he was saying. So the question was, could he be a valuable asset to helping her solve the murders?

  Or was he the one behind them?

  * * *

  Will was just leaving for work when he got an SOS text from McKenna telling him the coffeemaker at the trooper post was broken and asking if he could bring her some. He checked his watch. He’d planned to leave early just because he’d woken up early, but he didn’t need to be at work for over an hour. This would provide a good excuse to make sure she hadn’t had any more threats or close calls she hadn’t told him about, before he got to work and prepared for his afternoon hunt.

  He made the coffee and texted her back that he was coming, to which she’d replied Thanks. I’ve been up almost all night.

  That had made him pick up the pace even more. Had there been a new lead on the case? He’d barely put his truck in Park before he got out and ran to pound on the door of McKenna’s office.

  “Hi! I found out some information on the man who was shot on the beach.”
McKenna’s eyes glittered with excitement. “Are you ready?”

  “Whoa.” He held the coffee mug and carafe away from her. “You sound like you’re caffeinated enough.”

  “Not a drop yet today, mister. Give me that coffee and nobody gets hurt.”

  He handed it to her and she poured herself a mug, took a long sip and smiled. “Ah. I can think better now. Okay. Ready?”

  “First, what man on the beach?”

  “I forgot, you didn’t know.” She took a deep breath and filled him in on the previous night’s events. He could picture her, silhouetted by the glow of the lights the investigators and paramedics would have been using, while a killer was out there and after her. It wasn’t a picture he liked, but if it had produced a lead, maybe he should try not to think about it. “Should I be sitting down for this?” he asked.

  She seemed to consider it. “Nah. It’s exciting, but not game changing.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “His name is Seth Davison.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Exactly. That’s because he wasn’t a local. We talked to his family and found out he was here on a hunting trip.”

  Will shook his head. “I don’t see how that’s a lead. Just about everyone who comes here is here to hunt.”

  “You’re probably right. But it’s still something to look into. Especially since the other two victims were here to hunt, too. There has to be a connection.”

  “So where will you start?”

  “Investigating the hunting-guide companies around here. Starting today with your competition. Tomorrow I’ll be at Truman.”