Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 02 - A Fatal Thaw

by A Fatal Thaw(lit)

  how good a shot he was." He met Jack's eyes. "Small targets, moving,

  that kind of thing."

  Jack closed his eyes and said wearily, "Jesus Christ." "John Weiss, who

  we think was conscious and saw all this, was trying to crawl out to them

  when McAniff walked over and shot him. One shot, right here." Bill

  demonstrated with a cocked finger to his left temple. "Point-blank

  range. Powder burns beneath the skin, casing next to the body. He just

  walked up, stared him straight in the eye, and shot him."

  There was a brief pause as both men imagined the scene in their minds;

  the mother shot where she sat; the father allowed to live long enough to

  witness the cold and deliberate murder of his own children; the last,

  lone and by then probably welcome shot to the head. Jack's skin crawled,

  and he shook himself and got up to refill their cups. The coffee was hot

  and strong and burned going down, and it brought Jack back from that

  cold scene by the lake to the more prosaic surroundings of his crowded

  office.'

  "Next stop, the access road to the Nabesna Mine. It was just more dumb

  bad luck that had MacKay Devlin

  turning onto the road to Niniltna when McAniff passed by. He says he

  hung a right a little fast and skidded to a stop on the old railroad bed

  right in front of McAniff's snow machine. McAniff had the 30.06 out and

  up before Devlin could blink his eyes, and Devlin says he just took off

  running. He says McAniff shot at him five or six times, which agrees

  with the number of casings we found at the scene." Bill blew on his

  coffee and sipped at it. "Only nicked him once, on the outside of the

  upper right arm. Just like Becky Jorgensen. The McAniff specialty."

  "Lucky for Mac."

  "You know Devlin?" Jack nodded. "I think he was more than just lucky."

  "How so?"

  "I figure McAniff must have been getting tired. At any rate, he didn't

  pursue Devlin the way he did the others. He got back on the snow machine

  and drove down the road. And, as we all know now, about twelve miles

  later he ran into Kate Shugak."

  Not by a glint in the eye or a change of tone did Bill betray knowledge

  of Jack's history with Kate, or of Kate's previous employment on the

  Anchorage D.A. investigators' staff, but then he'd only been with them

  himself for eighteen months. While highly unlikely, it was possible the

  gossip had cooled off. Jack doubted it.

  "Hers had been one of the homesteads Chopper Jim had warned on the way

  in," Bill said. "She took her shotgun out to the road, waited for him

  and bagged the bastard." He drank coffee and observed, "Too bad she

  didn't kill him." "She wouldn't."

  "Seems a pity. Would have saved us a lot of time and the taxpayers a lot

  of money."

  "True." "So." Bill began gathering the files into a pile. "What've we

  got here? One, two, three, four, five, six, six, seven, eight, nine,

  count'em, nine murders in the first degree. Jesus. And one, two

  attempted murders."

  "Those two attempts include the try at Mac Devlin?" Bill looked up. "Of

  course. Why?"

  Jack smiled, a small, wry smile but a smile nonetheless. "In the Park,

  shooting at Mac Devlin isn't quite the same. thing as attempted murder."

  "Then what is it?"

  "I think it's more in the way of a team sport." Bill looked puzzled, and

  Jack said, "McAniff. Tell me about him." Bill produced yet another

  manila file folder and opened

  it to the first page. "You know mass murderers virtually didn't exist

  until the sixties. Since then, there've been enough to begin building a

  profile."

  "How fortunate for us."

  "Yeah. Anyway, Roger McAniff fits the profile, so well it's scary. He's

  thirty-one, and M&Ms are usually in their twenties or thirties. He's

  five-six, which makes him a little shorter than average, and M&Ms

  usually are. He weighs in around one seventy-five, which makes him

  overweight, which also fits into the profile, but when you consider he's

  coming off an Alaskan bush winter, maybe that statistic doesn't mean

  very much in this case. He's got a mustache."

  "Mass murderers got mustaches?" Jack said, smoothing down his own neatly

  trimmed mustache and beard. "Most of them. Most of them are also usually

  white, usually male and usually likely to kill their victims in their victims'

  own homes."

  "This guy is just typical as hell, isn't he?" Jack said, still stroking

  his beard.

  "For a mass murderer," Bill agreed. "When'd he move to Niniltna?"

  "Last fall. He was working as a computer programmer for Alaska Petroleum."

  "On the Slope or in town?"

  "In town. There was a big rif-reduction in force-last September, and he

  got his pink slip then. About the same time his wife threw him out.

  According to the head of the

  Niniltna Tribal Council-" Bill squinted at a page. "Billy Monk?"

  "Billy Mike."

  Bill made a careful note. "Right, Billy Mike, according to him, Talbot

  showed up in Niniltna around Halloween." "Enter the boogeyman."

  "In person."

  "From what we can tell without the autopsy reports, he's a pretty good

  shot."

  "Expert." Jack raised his eyebrows. "Literally. In the army, 80 to 83."

  "See any action?"

  Bill shook his head. "He was stationed in Panama. Not much going on

  there then."

  "Didn't re-up?"

  "Nope. Transferred to Fort Richardson in 83, took his out here."

  "Army have anything to say about him one way or the other?"

  "No, pretty much standard evaluations all the way across the board.

  However." Bill flipped to another page. "You'll like this. When the

  troopers searched his cabin, they found a computer printout of the

  names, phone numbers and home addresses of Parks Department employees,

  and another of Department of Public Safety employees, including fish

  hawks and the State Troopers' own Alert Team. Nine of'em." He looked up.

  "Including Jim Chopin."

  "Jesus Christ." The vexing problem of whether or not it had come time to

  shave forgotten, Jack dropped his hand from his beard and sat up.

  "Where'd he get those?"

  Bill shrugged. "He worked with computers. Alaska Petroleum pumps half

  the oil out of Prudhoe Bay; theirs is one of the biggest and ,best.

  We've got their department head going through their hard drives now,

  trying to backtrack and see if he accessed state computers through

  their system. Half the Department of Public Safety is hanging over his

  shoulder."

  "I'll just bet they are. Jesus," Jack repeated. "What the hell was he

  going to do with those lists?"

  "Who knows?"

  "Has anybody asked him?" "He's got a lawyer."

  Jack grunted.

  Bill straightened and stacked his papers into a neat pile. "Doesn't

  really matter, anyway. With or without charging him for attempted murder

  on MacKay Devlin, on conviction we should be able to put McAniff away

  for, oh, I'd conservatively estimate, say, 299,999 years. Without

  benefit of parole."

  Jack toasted Bill with his coffee mug. "I hear his lawyers are
r />   considering pleading insanity caused by eating too much junk food and

  getting too little light in the winter."

  Bill's mouth turned down. "I can see it now. We the jury find the

  accused not guilty by reason of insanity, caused from eating too many

  Twinkies and spending a winter in the Alaskan bush. He'll probably be

  sentenced to the Alaska Psychiatric Institute and be out on the streets

  in two years."

  "Nope. He'll still have to serve his time," Jack said. He sat

  contemplating the prospect with patent satisfaction. "According to the

  new `guilty but mentally ill' provision in the criminal code."

  "That's right, I forgot. One of the smarter things the legislature has

  done in the last ten years."

  "Maybe the only." The phone rang on Jack's desk and he answered it.

  "Jack Morgan. Oh hi, Slim. What can I do you for?" He listened. "What?"

  He listened some more. "Are you sure?" An odd note in his voice made

  Bill look up. Jack's eyes were narrowed and intent, looking at something

  Bill couldn't see.

  "Ballistics confirms? Did you-" Jack listened for a moment to the voice

  on the other end of the phone. He closed his eyes and shook his head.

  "Great. Thanks, Slim. I think."

  He set the phone in its cradle with great care and looked across the

  desk. "That was Slim Bartlett."

  "The coroner."

  "Yeah. He's got some news about the autopsies on the Niniltna massacre

  victims."

  "What?" "First of all, Lucy Longstaff was pregnant."

  Bill's lips tightened into a thin line. The wad of paper he held

  crumpled a little, and it took a conscious, visible effort to the relax

  the grip he had on it. He smoothed the sheets with exaggerated care.

  "So. Ten murders."

  "No. It's still just nine." Jack paused. "Slim told me something else,

  too."

  "What?" "You're going to like this."

  Bill Robinson was beginning to know Jack Morgan in this mood. He sat

  back and let him play it out. "The ice just went out at Nenana and I won?"

  "Better." Bill waited. "Slim says that the bullet that killed Lisa Getty

  came from a different rifle than the one that killed the rest of the

  victims."

  Bill straightened with a jerk. "What!" "Yeah, I know."

  "Shit!" "Yeah," Jack Morgan said thoughtfully. "I know."

  "Jim?" The trooper shrugged. "We've collected all the evidence there was

  to collect, and your people have examined it." He nodded at the pile of

  file folders on Jack's desk. Bill Robinson leaned against one wall,

  watching the exchange. "Those are all the statements we took. You've

  read them. Lottie Getty and Becky Jorgensen

  were together at the time Lisa Getty was shot. We tested Lottie's rifle

  and it came up clean. Becky was unarmed. George Perry never got on the

  ground. Hell, it was a Saturday morning. Usually pretty quiet in

  Niniltna on Saturday mornings, at least until the mail plane lands, and

  then everybody in town can hear it and they come out. Until then-" He

  spread his hands. "There's just no reason, or there wasn't, to suspect

  that anyone else was doing any shooting that day." He paused. "Is ballistics

  "They're sure. "

  "Did you have them run another test?"

  "And a third. They all come up the same. Lisa Getty was shot by a

  different rifle than the others."

  "Damn.,, "So," Jack said, studying his feet. "Where will you start?"

  Heavy lids drooped over the trooper's eyes and Jack couldn't read the

  expression in them. "I'm. afraid I can't

  start

  Jack stared at him in disbelief. "Why the hell not?" Chopper Jim said

  evenly, "I was involved in a personal relationship with Lisa Getty

  recently."

  Jack sat up. "How recently?"

  "Recent enough to keep me out of this investigation

  The trooper looked up, and the expression on his face was as close to

  defensive as Jack had ever seen Jim Chopin get. He was surprised it was

  even possible. He waited.

  "It started New Year's Eve at Bernie's Roadhouse," Jim said at last. "It

  ended Valentine's Day at hers."

  "Who broke it off?" "She did."

  Jack's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "Did you fight?"

  "No." The word was brought out with unnecessary force, and Jack noticed

  it, and Jim noticed he noticed it,

  and Jack noticed him noticing. Their eyes met and they both laughed at

  the same time.

  "Gotta ask, Jim," Jack said, sobering.

  "Yeah. I'm not-I don't-" For a moment the trooper was

  uncharacteristically at a loss for words. "Oh hell," he said, and gave a

  short, humorless laugh. "It's a little different," he said, his voice

  wry, "being on the other side." "Yeah." Jack waited.

  "It wasn't like we were in love or anything. It was just one of those

  things." If the legends were true, Chopper Jim went through "one of

  those things" on average about once a month. Jack sat back in his chair

  and regarded the man sitting across from him.

  Even sitting down Chopper Jim looked every bit of his six-feet-ten-inch

  height and every one of his well developed and superbly maintained two

  hundred and seventy pounds. On his feet, in the Alaska State Trooper's

  uniform, all blue and gold and badge and gun, Jim simply radiated

  authority and competence and strength and probity and rectitude; most if

  not all of the virtues and certainly none of the vices. If you squinted,

  he looked a little like John Wayne. If you didn't, he still did.

  The appearance was something of a fraud as far as women were concerned.

  Beneath the flat brim of the hat, the calm, blue eyes could turn,

  without the slightest warning, deadly seductive. His jaw was firm and

  square and held up a quick, charming and totally untrustworthy smile.

  Chopper Jim always carried with him a musky whiff of having just rolled

  out of bed, and the seductive sense of being just barely able to wait

  until he got back in it, preferably accompanied. Jack had hoisted a few

  with the trooper, off duty and out of uniform, and he had to admit, not

  without a trace of envy, that not for nothing did they call Chopper Jim

  the Father of the Park. Kate herself was not entirely immune, he

  realized for the first time with a small shock, or she wouldn't have

  maintained such an air of implacable hostility around the trooper.

  It remained to be seen how immune Lisa Getty had been.

  Jim was speaking again. "We went at it hot and heavy for six, seven

  weeks. Then, on February 14th I flew into the Park and went to her

  house. It'd been a week since I'd seen her, and she was-well, never mind

  that. She let me in, and then she let me out again about five minutes

  later. She said," and Jim seemed to be trying to recall the exact words,

  "she said she liked me a lot, that it had been fun but it was time to

  move on, and she hoped there were no hard feelings. Then she opened the

  door and smiled at me." He paused. "She didn't even say she hoped we

  could still be friends. She did everything but help me outside with the

  toe of Her boot." He shook his head. "I've never been given the bum's

  rush before. At least not like that."
<
br />   "Another new experience for you," Jack couldn't resist saying.

  Again, Chopper Jim surprised him. He gave Jack a crooked smile. "Sure as

  hell was. Sure doesn't happen to me a whole hell of a lot."

  Jack thought about it. "She say why?" The trooper shook his head.