Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel

by Mike Doogan

  Kane could hear the defensiveness in his voice.

  “Okay,” he said, leaning over to look closely at Lester’s chest.

  “Two shots, large caliber. Tap, tap.” He rolled the body over. “No obvious powder marks around the wounds, so the shooting wasn’t point blank, but the entry wounds are close together, which argues for either close range or a very skilled shooter. There’s no telling where the bullets went after they passed though Lester. I suppose if we were to examine every tree within range we might find something.”

  The trooper snorted. Kane rolled the body over once more and looked into Lester’s face. His lips were pulled back in a sick caricature of a smile and his eyes stared unseeing at the sky.

  Maybe he’s looking at God right now, Kane thought. If so, I’ll bet he wishes he’d led a better life.

  “You should get on the horn and call for a helicopter,” he said aloud. “Get the body to a competent ME and criminologists as soon as possible.”

  “Right,” Slade said sarcastically. “We’ve got the budget to be flying dead people around.”

  For an instant, rage reddened the edges of Kane’s vision. He fought it back, stood up, and looked at the trooper.

  “Listen, kid, and listen good,” he said. The trooper took a step back. He could hear the anger in Kane’s voice, too.

  “I don’t give a shit if you’re happy in your job. I could care less if you like me, or wish I was a thousand miles away. But here are the facts. I know a lot more about this sort of thing than you do. More than that, I make one phone call, and you’ve got the brass crawling up your ass asking why you didn’t take the advice of a veteran police officer. Probably be the end of your short, unhappy career in law enforcement. So get on your telephone and order that chopper. I’m going up to the mine, and I’ll send those guys you ran off back down to guard the scene. When they get here, you can come on up and ask Charlie Simms some questions, if he’s in any shape to answer.”

  The trooper opened his mouth to say something. Kane cut him off.

  “And if you give me the slightest reason, and I mean the slightest reason, you’re going to be sitting in a little office in Anchorage answering questions from internal affairs, or whatever it is your team calls the shoo flies, about why you blew off the Faith Wright investigation.”

  Kane and Slade looked at each other for a long moment, until the trooper dropped his eyes. The two men walked back to the cruiser and got in. Kane sat in the passenger’s seat, soaking up heat and listening to the trooper’s cell phone call requesting a helicopter. He was surprised at the way he’d attacked the kid, but something about being involved in an investigation, two investigations now, the return of the old rhythms and procedures, made him feel more confident.

  “They’re laughing at me,” the trooper said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Give me the phone,” Kane said, digging out his wallet and removing the card the trooper brass hat had given him. He broke the connection and punched in the number on the back of the card.

  “This is Nik Kane,” he said. “We met a couple days ago. I’m out in Devil’s Toe now. Somebody hit the mine payroll and killed one of the guards. Maybe you knew him? Lester Logan? Used to be APD? Anyway, the body needs to get back to Anchorage right away for processing, and whoever is answering the phone at trooper headquarters in Anchorage”—he put his hand over the phone and said, “You did call Anchorage, right?” and the trooper nodded—“yeah, in Anchorage, is being a dickhead about sending a chopper.” He listened for a minute. “Of course this is going to cause some shit,” he said. “We shouldn’t be wasting time talking about the obvious.” He listened some more. “Okay,” he said, and hung up.

  “There’ll be a chopper in the air within five minutes,” he said.

  “Who was that?” the trooper asked.

  Kane ignored the question.

  “I just thought of something else that needs attention,” he said, getting out of the cruiser. The trooper did the same. Kane walked around to where he could see the crime scene.

  “From the grooves in that berm beside the road, it looks like somebody pulled up alongside and forced them off,” he said. “So the perps must have had four-wheel drive.”

  “Fat lot of good that does,” the trooper replied. “There’s hardly anybody out here who doesn’t.”

  “Yeah,” Kane said, “but maybe this one left some paint behind. Let’s look.”

  The two men walked over and examined the left side of the Explorer.

  “Nothing,” the trooper said.

  The two men stood there for a moment.

  “I’m headed up to the mine,” Kane said. “Come on up when you’re relieved.”

  He walked back toward his truck.

  “Hey,” the trooper called, “you’re the one who should be staying here.”

  Kane ignored him, got into his pickup, drove off the road, around the cruiser and the crime scene, then back onto the road and up to the mine. He found the front gate open and nobody in the box. He drove to the trailer where Simms had his office and walked in. He walked past the secretary, who called, “Wait a minute.” He ignored her, opened the door to the conference room, and walked in. For the first time since he’d gotten out of prison, he was feeling like he was in his element, in control.

  Richardson, the mine manager, was sitting at the table with a couple of other suits and the two men the trooper had run off.

  “Take your pal here, Tony, and go back down and secure the crime scene,” Kane said. “Then send the trooper on up here.”

  “You taking over, then, Nik?” Tony asked him.

  “Just temporarily,” he said, “until somebody with more experience shows up.”

  Tony and his companion got to their feet.

  “Wait a minute,” Richardson said, “where do you two think you’re going? I’m in charge here.”

  A slow smile spread across Tony’s face.

  “That’s the way you want it, fine,” he said, “but if you want the payroll back, your best bet is to let all of us do what we know how to do.”

  The mine manager looked from Tony to Kane to the other suits. Finally he looked at Kane again.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

  Kane waved a hand at Tony and his companion.

  “Take off,” he said, “and don’t let anybody touch anything.”

  “Aw, jeez, Nik,” Tony said, “who do you think you’re talking to?”

  The two men left the room. Kane took a chair.

  “Do these two know about the payroll-shipment arrangements,” he said, nodding at the other suits, “or should we be talking alone?”

  “They know,” Richardson said.

  “Great,” Kane said. “How many others?”

  “Just us,” the mine manager said, “and, of course, Simms. It’s only the people who need to know. Reynolds here is the chief accountant, and Lewes is the head of employee relations.”

  “Uh huh,” Kane said. “I don’t suppose that their secretaries might have found out, or anybody else who works in the office?”

  “We keep the information to ourselves,” the one called Reynolds said. He didn’t sound very convincing.

  “Never mind,” Kane said. “Tell me about the arrangements for this shipment.”

  The mine manager hesitated, looking at the other two suits.

  “Look,” Kane said, “you want your best chance at recovering the payroll, talk. Otherwise, don’t.”

  Richardson sighed and started talking.

  “We used to deliver the payroll the same way every time. Armored car from a bank in Fairbanks. But a few months ago, Charlie suggested we start changing up. He was getting nervous about being so predictable. ‘It’s a four-hour trip, and there’s lots of places to waylay that armored car,’ he said.

  “It made sense to change up the arrangements, so we did. We still use the armored car from time to time, but we’ve flown the money in in a small plane, and had
it driven down in an unmarked car. The four of us pick a method the day before the shipment, and that’s how it’s delivered.”

  “How was it delivered this time?” Kane asked.

  “Airplane,” Richardson said. “Simms and Logan met it at the landing strip.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kane said, “I drove by the landing strip coming from Rejoice. I didn’t see anybody waiting.”

  “That’s a different strip,” Reynolds said. “The Devil’s Toe strip is up the highway a ways.”

  “How much money did they get?” Kane asked.

  Reynolds looked at a printout that lay in front of him.

  “One hundred thirty-seven thousand, three hundred thirty-four dollars and seventeen cents,” he said.

  “Not much for an operation this size,” Kane said.

  “Some of the men have their salaries deposited directly into the bank,” Reynolds said.

  “And we’re down to a skeleton crew right now,” the mine manager said. “Gold prices are kind of soft.”

  “Still,” Kane said, “if whoever did this had waited until summer, they could have gotten—what?—twice that? With enough overtime, three times?”

  “True,” Richardson said, “but a hundred thirty-seven thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at.”

  Kane was silent for a moment.

  “Any idea who might have done this?” he asked.

  The three men looked at one another and all shook their heads.

  “I know Simms was worried that somebody inside the mine would be involved,” the mine manager said.

  “So he must have thought it would be one of you three,” Kane said, “since you keep the payroll information so secret.”

  The three men looked at one another again.

  “Look,” Richardson said, “the truth is, I don’t know who might have known about the shipment. This office isn’t all that big, and the walls aren’t all that thick.”

  Kane got to his feet.

  “So you’ve got—what?—seventy, eighty people working here now, and any of them might be involved?” he said. “And some of them have got families who might have heard, and others get drunk at the roadhouse and might tell anybody? What were you people thinking?”

  No one said anything.

  “Okay,” Kane said, looking at the mine manager, “why don’t you show me where Charlie Simms is?”

  Richardson went into his office and came out wearing a coat. Kane followed him out the door and across to a prefab wooden building.

  “Look, it won’t do any good to stress the negative,” Richardson said as they walked. “It’ll only make trouble. For your friend Simms, as well as everyone else.”

  Kane followed the mine manager into the building, down a short hall, and into what could only be a clinic. Charlie Simms lay on an examining table under a light blanket, an IV dripping something into his arm, and wires running from his body to a couple of machines. A small black man with a trim goatee sat on a chair next to him, making notes on a clipboard.

  “This is Divinity Aaron, our medic,” the mine manager said to Kane.

  “Mr. Aaron,” Kane said, “how’s the patient?”

  “He took a heck of a blow,” the medic said. “Seems a little concussed but otherwise okay. His pulse is strong, and so’s his blood pressure. I’ve got fluid running to keep him hydrated.”

  Simms’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Who’s there?” he whispered.

  “It’s me,” Kane said, “Nik Kane. How you doing, Charlie?”

  “Head hurts like hell,” Simms whispered.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Kane asked.

  Simms closed his eyes. The silence stretched out so long that Kane thought he’d gone to sleep. Then Simms cleared his throat.

  “Can I have a drink of water?” he asked.

  The medic picked up a plastic cup with a straw in it and held it to Simms’s lips. Simms lifted his head a little, groaned, and drank. His head fell back on the pillow.

  “I can’t remember,” Simms said, his voice a little stronger. “I remember meeting the airplane at the Devil’s Toe airstrip, getting the money, driving back. But after turning onto the mine road . . . nothing. God, my head hurts.”

  “Might be better if you let him rest for a while,” the medic said.

  “Okay,” Kane said. “There’s a doctor coming over from Rejoice. I’ll send him by here to check Charlie out. There’s a trooper helicopter headed this way, too, so if he needs to go to town to get checked out, we can send him on that.”

  “Don’t want to go to town,” Simms said. “Want to catch whoever did this to me.”

  “I’m sure you do, Charlie,” Kane said. “I’m sure you do.” To the medic, he said, “You take a gun off him?”

  The medic pulled open a drawer and handed Kane an automatic. It was a Glock 17. Not Kane’s favorite weapon, but dependable and relatively cheap. Kane popped out the clip, then worked the slide. A round arced out onto the floor. The clip was full, and the gun didn’t smell of gunpowder.

  “Hasn’t been fired,” Kane said, reloading it and replacing it in the drawer. “Lester’s shotgun hadn’t been, either. So none of our bad guys is leaking blood.”

  He looked around the room, saw Simms’s clothes hanging on a chair, and scooped them up.

  “I’ll bring you some more clothes, Charlie,” he said, “but these are going to the crime lab.”

  Simms didn’t reply. Kane walked out of the clinic, followed by the mine manager.

  “Why are you taking his clothes?” Richardson asked. “You don’t think he’s involved, do you?”

  “Standard procedure,” Kane said. “The lab might be able to lift something that tells us about the perps.”

  The trooper pulled up as they reached the mine manager’s office. Kane stuffed Simms’s clothes into a big evidence bag. His coat was too big to fit, so the mine manager went off to find a garbage bag.

  “You can try Simms if you want to,” Kane said to Slade, “but he’s pretty loopy and says he doesn’t remember anything about the crime.”

  “I suppose he’ll keep,” the trooper said. “I wonder if they’ve got any coffee in there.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Kane said, and led the way into the office trailer.

  From there they went to search Charlie Simms’s quarters, in a nest of prefabs as far from the mill house as they could be and still be inside the fence. Even at that distance, Kane could feel a light shaking in the floor. The quarters were about the size of a decent hotel suite: bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen.

  The search didn’t take long. There were a few clothes in the closet and dresser, shampoo, shaving gear, cholesterol medicine, and Viagra in the bathroom.

  “Viagra?” Slade said. “What’s he want with Viagra out here?”

  “Good question,” Kane said, “although just because he has it with him doesn’t mean he’s using it.”

  There was beer in the refrigerator, canned food in the cupboards and dirty dishes in the sink, a paperback western on a table next to one of the armchairs, a row of videotapes beneath the big TV. About what Kane expected to find in a construction camp room.

  By five p.m., they were back in the trooper’s office. They’d examined the Explorer thoroughly, searched Logan’s locker and Simms’s office, and come up with zip. They sent Lester Logan’s body and Simms’s clothes back to Anchorage on the helicopter. The pilot said that a couple of trooper investigators were on their way out from Anchorage by car.

  The doctor from Rejoice had said he couldn’t tell how serious Charlie Simms’s injuries were, and he’d be happier if Simms went to town for evaluation and observation. So Kane had packed him a bag, and they’d loaded Simms on the chopper, too, along with the medic.

  “Just make sure he gets to the hospital okay,” the mine manager told the medic. “We’ll charter you back here in the morning.”

  The medic had grinned at the prospect of a night in town.

 
After the now fully loaded helicopter left, Kane and Slade made one more eyeball scan of the area before the light left completely, found nothing new, and reopened the road. In between all that, they’d done a lot of waiting, eaten a lunch the mine’s kitchen had knocked together for them, and drunk a lot of the mine’s coffee.

  “Any ideas about this?” Slade asked. He had his hat off, his collar open, and his stocking feet up on his desk. His hair was a mess, and he looked about twelve.

  “Lots,” Kane said, “but nothing that bears sharing right now. I guess what we do for the time being is wait and hope Simms’s memory comes back. And you can keep an eye out for anybody spending more money than he ought to have. Or taking any spur-of-the-moment vacations.”

  The trooper nodded.

  “You think we’ll catch whoever did it?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure of it,” Kane said.

  Slade dropped his feet onto the floor and leaned forward.

  “What do you know that I don’t?” he asked, so earnestly that it made Kane laugh.

  “There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to answer that question,” Kane said. “But as far as this holdup goes, just keep your shirt on. Part of being a good detective is knowing when to press and when to wait.”

  The trooper settled back in his chair.

  “I’m sorry I was so snotty this morning,” he said. “It’s just that life here is a lot more complicated than it might look, and I’m not sure I’m cut out to handle it, even without robberies and murders.”

  “That’s not what we were having difficulties about,” Kane said. “Remember? We were arguing about Faith Wright.”

  The trooper tensed at the mention of her name. Kane stood up.

  “I’m leaving now,” he said. “Monday, if you’re still not too busy with the robbery, I’m going to want you to accompany me to the high school so I can search the girl’s locker.”

  Slade started to say something, but Kane held up his hand.

  “Between now and then,” he said, “I want you to think about how you’re going to handle this. If you’re wrapped around the axle in some way that involves doing your job right, decide how you’re going to deal with that. Just don’t think that one of your options is to stonewall me or lean on me or somehow get me to go away. Because that’s not going to happen.”