Blood Appeal

by Lyle O'Connor

  “I’m supposed to meet him this weekend.”

  “Why?”

  “Business opportunities. He figured I’d be able to help with the details.”

  “What sort of details?”

  “Jake was working that out.”

  “Did Jake say what he did for Snuth?”

  “Some.”

  “Some thug work?”

  Duke’s gaze fell to the ground in front of him.

  “Yeah, I’m sure Jake told you the stories about kidnappings and intimidating people—and I think you liked what you heard.”

  Duke’s stare at the ground intensified. Despondent. His lips pressed into a thin line.

  “I know the mold Snuth was cut from—pure greed. He’s a pressure squeezer, but he doesn’t have the strength to do it himself. So he uses his money to buy people like Jake and Hayden—and you. He needs you to strong-arm people until they submit and relinquish their land for his purposes. He’s a modern day carpetbagger.”

  “Jake said Mister Snuth had his eye on a silver mine in southern Missouri. He wanted to ‘acquire’ it. He was willin’ to pay a good chunk of change for the right guys who could watch over his assets.”

  “Listen to yourself. Snuth needs a private force that’ll commit crimes for him. He doesn’t care how you get the results. Woolf kidnapped Dawn for that very reason. Snuth said he ‘wanted,’ and everyone on his payroll was willing to do whatever—to satisfy his lust.”

  Duke was an unprincipled man. He’d proven he had no foundation. Above all, he’d misled himself through bad opportunities and foolish choices.

  “Who killed the girl?” I tried to blindside him with a hope he’d trip up and confess.

  “I wanted to keep her around.”

  “You were just going to use her for a while.”

  Duke shrugged and said, “Yer so smart, you figure it out.”

  I didn’t appreciate his snotty tone or the ugly look he threw my way. Rather than engage in name-calling and other childish behavior, I took the higher road and unloaded a hollow-point into his Durango cowboy boot. His foot was still inside.

  When his lungs gave out from the howling and screaming I raised my weapon to gain his attention. “Duke, I know who killed Dawn.”

  Duke scoffed between sobs, “I doubt that. There ain’t no witnesses to prove it.”

  I aimed my weapon at Duke’s good boot and said, “We can do this all night. You have plenty more parts to shoot up.”

  Duke covered his good foot with both hands. I lowered the weapon and tossed some bait his way, “Minnie killed her.” I didn’t believe it; I wanted to see his reaction. If he admitted he’d killed Dawn, I’d put him out of his misery quickly. If he tried to lay that phony excuse on me like he had the others he’d suffer a long time.

  Duke’s expression went quickly from pain and agony to bewilderment. His eyes widened, eyebrows raised, and his jaw dropped open. He was as close to speechless as I’d seen him. Duke’s reaction—was all wrong.

  “I’m not sayin’ nothin’ no more. You’re just gonna kill me like ya did the rest of them.”

  Duke wasn’t a chivalrous kind of guy. He could have taken the bait and said Minnie did it but I suspect he clammed up because he didn’t have it in him to accept responsibility for Dawn’s death?

  I pressed the issue with him, but he wouldn’t talk. I threatened him with more lead and shot him once in the hand, but he wouldn’t talk.

  With no one feeding the campfire, it faded to a few smoldering embers. Daylight had crept in amongst the gloomy shadows, cast by the spruce and hemlock trees that dominated the basin’s landscape.

  Duke’s head bobbed and his eyes closed for short periods of time. He’d grown lethargic. A loss of a couple pints of blood does that to a guy. Our interchange was over. I stood behind him for a moment and waited for his reaction. He showed no sign of concern. I’ve always believed a man faced with an end-of-life scenario chooses to end his life quickly rather than continuing to suffer.

  Shuup…

  A pink mist blowback filled the air. I took a step toward his shoulder and took aim at the back of his head a second time.

  Shuup…

  Bone fragments and brain matter splattered onto the ground. Double tap—a signature kill. I preferred to end all my hunting trips in that manner.

  Dixon’s body lay sprawled along the edge of where he’d crafted his campfire. Forest scavengers from bears to fox and ravens to a myriad of insects would take their toll rapidly on Dixon’s flesh. Alaska’s wilderness being vast and remote would not quickly yield his body to discovery.

  If ever.

  I picked up my brass, counted them against the number of times I’d fired my weapon and placed them in my vest pocket. I located both knives he’d tossed across the fire pit and into the dirt. The folding belt clip knife was a Kabar Warthog. I found it fit nicely on my belt and looked better than when Dixon wore it. The second knife was a high-quality Kershaw speed assisted automatic. I thought I’d give it to Anna as a gift. She would appreciate its value. Dixon’s long gun, an SKS, was a substandard junker in my opinion. I tossed it into the water to let it return to nature.

  After a quick search of the body, I’d found only his wallet that had any form of identification. In his front pants pocket was a wadded up ten dollar bill. I tossed his wallet in the river, but there wasn’t any sense throwing good money away when it could be donated to a charitable cause.

  I retraced the same route that I’d taken when tracking Duke. I covered the distance in a quarter of the time. At the training maze, I stopped to make radio contact. The level of commitment and excitement that had spurred me on through the night had wavered. I was exhausted.

  “Comm, inbound.”

  I waited and listened. Nothing. I repeated my transmission.

  The radio crackled, “Go for Comm.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Kuhl’s voice was crisp and clear. “Comm, pick up.”

  “Roger, en route.”

  I walked through the training maze keeping a sharp eye out for movement. There was potential to encounter other members of their militia. This was the Alliance weekend for their drill. According to Duke, Snuth was scheduled to arrive for their meeting.

  I passed Boury’s charred and burned out Cherokee at the edge of the parking lot. I didn’t bother looking at the body. No other vehicles were in sight. I entered the brush behind the compound and worked my way to the road. Kuhl was parked at the edge of the Richardson Highway at the compound access road. It was as if a fifty-pound weight had been taken off my shoulders.

  When I opened the van door, Kuhl immediately asked, “What about Duke?”

  Sarcasm stuck in my craw, “I’m okay, thanks for asking.”

  “I can see how you’re doing. What about the other guy?”

  “He won’t need a ride.”

  Kuhl slipped the van into gear and pulled onto the highway northbound. We pulled into the RV campground and alongside the Avenger. I knocked to awaken Anna before I entered the motorhome. When she answered the door, she didn’t look like she’d slept at all. I stepped inside and closed the door. My bug-out bag hit the floor as Anna fell into my arms. Her head tucked tightly to my chest. She whispered, “I missed you.”

  I repeated the words back to her. When the embrace began to loosen, I said, “I have to shower and get cleaned up.”

  She took me by the hand and led me down the short hall to the bathroom before she let go. “I’ll be waiting,” she whispered.

  The words were pleasant to my ears. She might have expectations of more than I could deliver. Once I’d showered I stepped into the bedroom and as promised Anna was waiting for me—fast asleep. That’s what I called getting lucky. There was still time for a power nap.

  Late in the afternoon, Kuhl arrived for the powwow. Anna recapped her delivery of the animals to the rescue center in Palmer. “As promised there were no questions asked. I also made a substantial cash offering to ensure the animals found
a good home.”

  “Well done,” I said.

  “You need to get those Alaskan plates off your Avenger right away,” Kuhl said. “Those animal rescue staffers might have captured your license number.”

  “They’re not traceable to my rig.”

  “You’re right with one exception. As long as they are attached to your car you run the risk of being connected to our events. Dump the plates.”

  “Good idea.”

  The next half hour Kuhl and I recapped our target acquisition and their terminations. Kuhl mentioned that Minnie’s name came up as the killer.

  “I find that hard to believe,” Anna said.

  “Her personality is all wrong. I don’t think she has it in her to be a killer,” Kuhl said.

  “Boury believed what Duke told him. That’s all,” I said. “In the end, Duke was unable to accept responsibility and confess.”

  “What’s our next step?” Anna asked.

  “Snuth,” I said.

  Kuhl closed his eyes and lifted his eyebrows, “I don’t think anybody disagrees he is the root cause of all that has happened.” Anna acknowledged Kuhl’s statement with an assenting nod.

  “He’s supposed to meet with Duke and Jake this weekend,” I said.

  “I’ll need to set up shop with a visual on his plane. Once he’s airborne, I can track by GPS then notify you with his direction of travel. In order to do that, we have to improve our communications ability.”

  “We’ll spend a couple days in the RV near the Glennallen phone towers,” I said.

  Kuhl took off for Anchorage. Anna and I broke camp early in the morning and drove into Glennallen and staged. We checked our cell phone signal and placed a call to Kuhl.

  “Good timing. Snuth is at Lake Hood and appears to be preflighting the Cessna.

  We sat for the better part of an hour waiting for Kuhl to call back. When the phone rang, Anna answered, and with a simple “Okay” disconnected the call. “Thomas said Snuth is driving east out of Anchorage.”

  “He’s full of surprises.”

  “Thomas said he’s alone in a beige Cadillac Escalade and that he is running a loose tail. He’ll update us when he has something.”

  It was a long forty minutes before Kuhl made contact. “We don’t have Intel on where the meeting was taking place, correct?”

  Anna put him on speaker. “Right,” she said.

  “He’s stopped at King Mountain Lodge. I’m going inside.”

  “If you think he’ll be there a while, we’ll roll that direction. It might have been selected as the meeting site.”

  “He’s coming out, stand by.”

  Ten minutes later Kuhl reported, “There is a row of small cabins on the south side of the lodge’s parking area. He’s pulled his Caddy over to the end cabin farthest from the lodge.”

  “We’ll travel. Where to?”

  “A mile or so south of the Chickaloon turn off. It’ll take you a couple hours to get here, and you’ll lose cell phone capabilities through some of the passes.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  Chapter 18

  “If money is the root of all evil, then greed is the seed.”

  —Unknown

  At Milepost Six just north of Chickaloon, I put a call into Kuhl. “What’s our target’s status?”

  “Rats in the hole. What’s your locale?”

  “Chickaloon turn off.”

  “I’ve positioned my ride at the east end as you enter the AO. Pull your vehicle directly in front of the lodge, parallel with the highway. Go into the lodge and get a drink at the bar or order food. Give it an hour or so, then take a stroll alongside the highway in my direction to hook up.”

  “Got it.”

  We swung the RV in as planned and shared a plate of nachos chased with beer. After an hour, Anna and I made our way through the parking lot and onto a dirt trail next to the highway to Kuhl’s van. I made the call that we were inbound. As I reached for the handle, the vans rear door cracked open.

  Inside we pulled up empty five-gallon paint buckets for stools. “We can’t depend on the darkness of night to cover our activity,” I said.

  “He may not be here later,” Kuhl replied. “He was supposed to be meeting with someone—nobody has shown.”

  “Then he’s still alone,” said Anna, “that’s good.”

  Kuhl nodded and said, “There’s quite a bit of action at the lodge. We can use the wooded area behind the cabin and move up without being noticed.”

  “Okay, I’ll knock and Kuhl, you breach. Anna, I need you at our six on this one. Let’s prep.”

  In less than twenty minutes, we’d prepared for the assault. We slipped into the wooded terrain and made our way about fifty yards to the small one-floor cabin. Kuhl and I moved up alongside the east side wall. Momentarily we would be exposed to the highway that ran parallel to the row of cabins and within eyeshot of the lodge that sat on the west side of the long parking lot.

  I mounted the two steps onto the twelve-foot-wide front porch that ran the length of the rustic building—an awning covered the entire porch. Kuhl was close behind me but kept enough distance between us in case he had to react to unforeseen circumstances. With our light windbreakers over our tactical vests, we looked like a pair of religious zealots knocking on doors. Kuhl stepped to my right and opposite the hinged side of the door. Pulling his .45-caliber from his vest he held it tight to his chest. He nodded and flattened his back against the wall. I stepped slightly to the left to give Kuhl plenty of room to breach.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  A voice rang out from inside the cabin. “About time!” The door swung open wide, too wide to close it when Kuhl stuck his .45 in the guy’s face. The man took a couple of steps backward. I followed Kuhl inside. By the time I closed and locked the door, Kuhl had already subdued our target on the floor. It took only a moment to insure we were alone in the one-room cabin.

  “This a robbery?” Snuth nervously asked. We let him run off at the mouth as he repeated his question. Sometimes you can learn a lot about someone just by listening. In a subservient tone he said, “I have money. Cash. It’s yours if you leave now.”

  Neither Kuhl nor I spoke.

  Tension had gotten the better of him and a chill filled the air as he fixed his gaze on me. With a gruff tone Snuth bellowed, “I’m a businessman. I have friends in Alaska clear to the governor’s office. I’m telling you I have very powerful friends, and unless you get out of here now, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Hell will be paid in full,” I said. “You can count on it.” To let Snuth know the level of concern I had with his scare tactics I smiled and said to Kuhl, “Once we take care of business here, evidently, we need to pay the governor’s office a visit.”

  Kuhl nodded.

  Snuth looked at his wristwatch, “There are men on their way here—right now. They aren’t the kind of people you want to have a run in with.”

  I glanced at Kuhl and said, “First he wants to give us money. Lots of money. He thinks he can buy his way out of his problems. And when we didn’t accept his cash offer, he starts threatening us.” I looked back at Snuth, “Is that how businessmen conduct business? Throw money at a problem and if you don’t get what you want, you intimidate until you get it?”

  “It works,” Snuth conceitedly said.

  “The native lands you wanted to mine up by Glennallen. Is that how you handled that business transaction? You tossed out some money to get it and when the elders told you to pound sand, you leaned on them?”

  “That’s garbage!” Snuth shouted. “Those are false accusations! Is that who you’re working for, a bunch of stinking Indians?”

  “No, Mister Snuth, we freelance in the justice system, and your moral principles have come into question.”

  “Hey, that was smooth. I’m impressed,” Kuhl quipped.

  “You think this is funny?” Snuth snapped. He looked at his watch and grumbled, “Some sort of big joke. I offered you a chance
to make a buck and leave and now it’s almost too late.”

  “You’re wrong Snuth, it is too late. You’re responsible for what your greed has wrought. Those henchmen you hired to put pressure on the tribe through criminal activity–” Snuth cut me off, “I had nothing to do with any of it. Nothing. And you can’t prove otherwise.”

  “Prove? I suppose you’re right. But like I told you, we’re freelancers. We’ve come to right the wrongs you’ve committed on innocent victims.”

  “You act like what you do is somehow nobler, but it’s the same thing I’m accused of by this pack of Indians. How ironic,” Snuth said then glanced at his watch.

  “They’re not coming,” I said.

  “Who,” Snuth asked.

  “Boury, Woolf and Leigh.”

  “You got to them did you? Snuth asked. “Convinced them it was in their better interests to back out of their dealings with me.” His smirk widened.

  “No—I killed them.”

  Stunned into silence, Snuth’s mouth gaped open in shock.

  Then with a speed that belied his short, pudgy frame, he bounced to his feet and broke for the door. I body-checked him into Kuhl’s arms who took him to the cabin floor again. I scrambled to keep a glove over his mouth while Kuhl pulled his knife and went to work.

  Kuhl stabbed Snuth three times in the chest then stood to keep from being covered in blood. People don’t die as quickly in real life as they do in movies. As long as the heart worked, blood pumped out the holes.

  Snuth rolled to his right side, eyes wide open. Motionless. He tried to speak, but his words slurred. Soon he was merely silent.

  Snuth indicated earlier that he had money on his person. Kuhl checked his wallet and collected the cash. “Two grand in hundreds,” Kuhl said. “Plus some smaller bills.”

  Anna was our lookout at the cabin’s front corner. I opened the door and motioned her inside. “The head of the snake,” Anna voiced as she saw Snuth’s lifeless body.

  “Time to wrap up,” Kuhl said. “You guys get going; I’ll tag along in a few days.”

  We prepped for the six-hour drive to Tok and planned to cross into Canada the following day. We fueled the RV at Glennallen, paying cash as always. The practice of leaving credit card tracks was a sure way to get caught.