A Shooting at Auke Bay

by Parker, Gordon;

After breakfast Kelli crawled up into her mommy’s lap. Darcey told the child she got to go on a trip with Betty and Ivy, both of whom Kelli considered her grandmothers. They were going to take her to the New Orleans house for a few days.

  That delighted Kelli. She loved the New Orleans house. Because the courtyard was protected from street traffic by the brick wall Kelli could play outside all by herself as much as she liked. The adults could easily keep an eye on her from the house.

  The little girl asked her mommy when she would get there.

  Darcey could only say, “Soon, sweetie, soon.”

  “Will Daddy be with you?” the little girl asked.

  Darcey hesitated for only a moment before answering, with determination, “Yes, sweetie. Daddy will be with me.”

  She refused to believe anything less.

  Darcey let Betty tend to getting Kelli dressed while she drove to the airport. Robert had called the chief executive officer of a company that owned a Gulfstream G450. While the aircraft was most often used to ferry executives and visiting VIPs to Alaska’s energy rich North Slope or down to the continental U.S., the aircraft had also been loaned to law enforcement from time to time. The CEO didn’t hesitate to accommodate Robert’s request without asking any questions. He also agreed to meet Darcey at the airport to give her a personal tour of the airplane.

  Darcey was pleased with what she saw. Designed to accommodate up to nineteen passengers, the aircraft offered plenty of space for the family of three and their guardian. With a full galley and crew, including a flight attendant who would provide meals and snacks, Kelli and her companions should be very comfortable. With a range of almost five thousand miles, the Gulfstream could easily make the flight to New Orleans without having to refuel.

  Meanwhile, Robert was meeting with Anchorage Police Chief Ben Kline at APD headquarters on Elmore just south of Tudor Road. Hackett had returned early that morning to the condo and now was on duty there while Monk used his truck.

  Kline looked tired.

  “How did you do it, Robert?” Chief Kline asked.

  “It has to be in your blood, Ben,” was the answer. “That’s the only way a cop survives.”

  “Oh, that part’s easy,” the chief responded. “It’s the politics that get me. Some days I think about resigning and going back to the streets.”

  Robert laughed.

  “I know that feeling all too well,” the old man said. “And if you think it’s bad behind that desk, try going to Juneau with Public Safety. The best days I had on that job was when I flew around the state to visit Trooper stations and local cops.”

  Robert briefed the chief on the events of the past couple of days. He outlined the plan they had put into place and asked for APD’s cooperation.

  “You have it, Robert,” Kline agreed. “Whatever you need. I’ll play my role and if there’s any help you need from my department, you’ll get it.”

  At Monk’s request Chief Kline agreed to assign two cars to escort them to the airport the next day. Perhaps they were being overly cautious but better that, Monk thought, than putting Trent and Darcey’s family in jeopardy.

  “Oh, and one more thing, Ben,” Monk said. “It would be good if your men didn’t get too curious about what Hackett might have with him. He has a job to do and will need his tools.”

  Kline grinned. “My men wouldn’t dream of separating a workman from his tools.”

  Monk’s meeting with Major Dylan Loughlin, acting commander of the Alaska State Troopers, didn’t go as well.

  “I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, Mr. Monk,” the major said. “You’re not in command of the State Troopers now. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just another civilian. You do anything out of line and I’ll come down on you as hard as I can.”

  Monk didn’t give Loughlin the details of their plans. He would save that for the phone call he would make next. Hopefully he could at least keep the major from getting in their way.

  He made the call from Hackett’s truck. It was a more productive conversation. When Monk finished his briefing and reported on the different reactions from APD and the acting Trooper commander, there was a loud sigh on the other end of the line.

  “That man wants a promotion and assignment as commander of the Troopers. He’s not going to get it this way,” was the response from Juneau. “I’ll have a talk with the major. Just be careful, Robert. I’ll back you up as far as I can. But don’t push me, or the governor for that matter, into a corner. There’s only so much we can do to protect you.”

  “Fair enough,” Monk said.

  In the afternoon, Darcey made several calls to San Francisco, New Orleans, and Sabine Parish, the rural area in northwest Louisiana where her mother lived at the Pines, the farm that had been in her family for more than 150 years. Trent’s troops were gathering.

  Christopher Booth, now a captain in the San Francisco Police Department, and his partner, Nancy Patrick, still a sergeant in the suburban Richmond PD and not happy about it, both agreed to fly north in answer Darcey’s call for help. She told them to be ready to leave within the next day or two, if that worked for them. She would make the travel arrangements.

  Sabine Parish Sheriff Jack Blake and New Orleans Police Captain Jordan Baron also insisted on coming to Alaska. Darcey thanked them but asked them both to please stay where they were.

  She needed Blake to watch the Pines. And she hoped Jordan would be close by in the event that Hackett needed help. They both reluctantly accepted the roles she assigned them.

  Her last call was to San Francisco to let Miles Diaz-Douglas know what was going on. Miles was chief operating office for Darcey’s highly successful design firm. He was outraged when she told him he couldn’t come to Alaska.

  “What do you mean?” he demanded to know. “Am I a part of this team or not? And, girl, you know no man alive can stand up to me and my shotgun. Haven’t I proved that?”

  Darcey was careful not to let Miles hear her laughing softly as she recalled the night she and Trent were called to Miles’ condo after the man responsible for the murder of Scott Douglas, Miles’ husband, broke in. The would-be tough guy wound up unconscious with his face in his own urine after he wet his pants at the sight of Miles in his long, pink night shirt and pink fluffy slippers pointing a shotgun at him. Furious that the man had peed on his expensive rug, Miles used a heavy, iron skillet to render him unable to function.

  She needed Miles to stay there and keep the company running. There was a lot to that job, she reminded him, especially since they now had an office in New Orleans.

  “Well, maybe we need to open an office in Alaska, too,” Miles said, somewhat mollified by her reference to his importance to the company.

  When Robert returned, she told him about the conversations she’d had. She asked if he would check with his friend who was providing the airplane to see if he would accommodate a stop on the return flight to pick up passengers. A quick phone call earned an affirmative reply.

  Ivy again was in charge of the kitchen as she prepared a jerk chicken. She had marinated the chicken for twenty four hours, in a variety of spices, including habanero peppers. Now it was in the oven.

  After dinner, Betty planned to use the chicken carcass to make a broth and turn the whole thing into chicken soup before leaving for the airport the next morning. That would provide at least a couple of meals for Darcey and Robert.

  It would also help to settle Darcey’s mind. Betty’s chicken soup was one of her daughter’s favorite comfort foods from her childhood.

  Darcey poured a nice Merlot for herself, Robert, and James. Betty and Ivy were sipping hot tea as they all sat again on the deck overlooking Cook Inlet. Kelli was having juice and feeling very grown up.

  The railing around the deck was child proof. Made of heavy duty aluminum and iron, it featured shadows of moose and caribou and bears, much to Kelli’s enjoyment. There were no more than four inches of space anywhere along the railing. Unlike glass, there was no chance
of breakage and aesthetically it was far more pleasing to Kelli and the grownups alike than Plexiglas would have been.

  “Did Trent ever tell you the story about the moose that got drunk and passed out on my back porch?” Robert asked.

  “What?” Darcey laughed. “No, that’s one drinking partner he’s never mentioned.”

  “How would a moose get drunk?” Ivy asked. She had lived in New Orleans all her life. She didn’t know much about moose.

  “Trent takes bourbon to the horses when he’s at the Pines,” Betty said. “They like to smell it but they won’t drink it.”

  “I doubt if a moose would drink it either,” Robert said. “They like fermented fruit. You see, Darcey, I live just at the outskirts of town, on the side of Mount Juneau. I have a crabapple tree right at the edge of my back porch. I usually make jelly with the crabapples and I give a lot of them away. But that tree produces more than my neighbors and I can use. In the fall, the fruit ferments when it falls to the ground. Some of it ferments while it’s still on the tree.

  “It was October. Trent was a teenager. His dad took him out of school for a few days and brought him up for a hunting trip. We planned to go after Sitka black tail deer,” Robert continued. “We had a fair amount of snow and it was cold enough to keep it from melting. Good hunting weather.”

  “Huh,” Ivy said. “Sounds more like good fireplace weather to me.”

  “That, too,” Robert agreed. “In fact, I was lighting a fire in the wood stove in my back room when I noticed we had a visitor. There was a cow moose curled up in the snow, sound asleep on my back porch. I warned Trent and his dad to be quiet when they came back to see our visitor.

  “It was something,” Robert said. “We don’t see a lot of moose in Juneau. And that moose was drunk. Every now and then she would get up, stagger over to the crabapple tree, eat a little more of the fermented fruit, then drop back into the snow and fall asleep again.

  “That went on for three days. I was scared to death that any minute we could have a drunk, 1,500-pound moose come crashing through the back door,” Robert remembered. “By the third day I guess she’d had enough. We watched her stumble across the yard to the back fence. With those long legs she had no problem stepping over it. I always wondered if she had a hangover,” he said.

  “You’re making that up,” Ivy said. “Moose don’t get drunk.”

  “This one did,” Robert insisted. “Drunker than nine hundred dollars.”

  “What does that mean?” Betty asked. “Drunker than nine hundred dollars?”

  “That means she was drunk. Really, really drunk.”

  The grownups all laughed at the image of the drunk moose. Kelli laughed, too, because everyone else was laughing. She pointed to the outline of the moose on the iron railing and said, “Moose.”

  “Yes, Kelli,” Uncle Robert said. “Moose. And no crabapples.”

  Same Day. Dimension Unknown.

  Trent wanted to leap out of bed and hold her. He knew she was there. He could sense her presence.

  He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t speak. He still didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Or somewhere in between.

  Darcey had been there. Now she was gone. He was alone again.

  But he wasn’t alone. Someone else was there. Someone he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  “Dad?” He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t speak.

  He saw his dad without opening his eyes.

  He called out to him without speaking.

  “Yes, son,” he heard his dad say.

  “But you’re dead. You’ve been dead for a long time.”

  “Yes, son,” he heard his dad say, “but I’ve never really left you.”

  “Am I dead? Does this mean I’m dead?”

  “I don’t know, son,” was the answer he heard. “I don’t think we will know that for a while yet.”

  “How can I see you and talk to you now?” Trent asked.

  “I can’t answer that, son,” his dad replied. “I don’t really understand it myself.”

  “This is just great,” Trent said, venting his frustration. “I can’t see or speak to my wife but here I am having a conversation with the image of my father who’s been dead for more than twenty years.”

  Trent could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He heard the beeping from one of the machines to which he was attached speeding up. Suddenly the door opened and a nurse came in, alarmed by the increase of his heart rate. His father disappeared.

  He tried to relax. The beeping sound slowed. The nurse was apparently satisfied that nothing untoward was happening. She left him alone.

  Alone with his father who reappeared as the nurse left.

  “Why did you leave when the nurse came in?”

  “I don’t know,” was the reply. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “Well, you were always good at leaving,” Trent said, feeling the old burning bubble of anger swelling his chest. “You left my mother. You left me when I was too young to know why. I only knew you were gone and I missed you. I was afraid you would never come back.”

  “Yes, that’s all true,” his dad said, sadly. “We talked about all this years ago. I thought we had worked through it.”

  “I don’t think the pain ever goes away completely,” Trent said. “That feeling of abandonment is a forever kind of thing.”

  “I know, son, and I’m sorry. Leaving you and your mother was the worst mistake I ever made. It wasn’t good between us but I could have tried harder. I should at least have loved you enough to stay.”

  “It’s too bad she can’t hear you say that.” Trent spat the words bitterly.

  His dad said nothing in response to that. He was silent for a moment.

  “I never abandoned you completely, you know. We still spent a lot of time together. And I always tried to be there for you when you needed my help.”

  “That’s not the same as being there every night and every weekend,” Trent said. “You were sort of a quasi-father. And it doesn’t make up for all the nights I heard my mother crying in her room.”

  “Yes, I know. She was a good woman. She deserved better.”

  “Yes, she sure did.”

  “But I was there for you when she passed away,” his dad said. “When you lived with me in Baton Rouge I was there with you every night. And we had some great times. Remember our trips to Alaska? Remember the drunk moose on Robert’s back porch?”

  Trent laughed.

  “Yeah, those were great years, Dad,” he said. “But I always felt bad that Mom wasn’t there to share them with us. I always felt like she got cheated.”

  “She did get cheated. I’m not denying that,” his dad said. “And now you have a beautiful child. Your mom would be so proud that you named Kelli for her. And if I’d been given the chance to pick my son’s wife, I would have picked Darcey.”

  “They’re both great, aren’t they?” Trent said. “I’m very lucky.”

  “And you’re a great husband and father, son. I’m very proud of you.”

  “And now I might be abandoning them just as I was abandoned.”

  “No, it’s not the same thing, son,” his dad was quick to disagree. “I made a mistake. You did nothing wrong.”

  “I’m not even sure what happened,” Trent said. “All I know is I’m probably dying and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “That remains to be seen, son,” his dad said. “We don’t know yet.”

  The image of his dad faded away as the nurse returned. She checked all the machines attached to his unmoving body. She seemed satisfied.

  He lay still. Unable to open his eyes. Unable to speak.

  Was he alive? Was he dead? Was he somewhere in between?

  Dimension still unknown.

  July 11th

  Jim Segal scanned the newspaper as he sipped the morning’s first cup of coffee. Nothing. Not a mention of Trent Marshall.

  He was certain it was a good kill. He saw the blood on Trent�
�s head where the bullet struck. He watched him fall limply to the deck. Why hadn’t there been some report in the news?

  He was increasingly concerned that something had gone awry.

  Suddenly exploding, he tossed the newspaper across the room, narrowly missing an expensive lamp.

  Calm down, he told himself. It wouldn’t help to lose his self control. He could do nothing until he had more information.

  He briefly considered sending McGraw to the hospital in Juneau but rejected the idea. It wouldn’t be smart to appear interested in the shooting. That would show a connection to the victim. A connection he didn’t need.

  If Marshall wasn’t dead, he might have been flown to Anchorage. There were specialists in brain injuries in Anchorage. If he was still alive, he was probably in one of the city’s hospitals.

  There were three main hospitals in Anchorage. There was also a specialty hospital where patients were sent when no more could be done for them elsewhere. If Marshall was still alive his injury would be so serious as to get him sent to the specialists there.

  He thought about sending Jayne to see what she could find out. But she couldn’t just go wandering through the halls looking into rooms. Someone would start asking questions. And if she found him, then what? With her perverse addiction to murder, anything could happen if someone got in her way.

  He didn’t need anyone asking questions. And he sure didn’t need Jayne wandering through the hospital, armed and thirsty for blood. He went to his bedroom to shower, shave, and get dressed for the day.

  It was sixty-nine degrees with not a cloud to be seen as the Gulfstream prepared to take off. A pleasant, short sleeve shirt day in Anchorage.

  Kelli was squirming in her seat. Betty strapped the three year old in, then placed herself in the seat next to her. She looked around at the aircraft’s luxurious cabin.

  “My, my, this is some airplane,” she remarked.

  “I thought flying first class and that boat we were on were something,” Ivy replied. “But this airplane… this really is something. Really something.”

  APD Chief Kline had sent two unmarked cars to transport the small group to the airport. True to his word, none of the officers asked any questions of Hackett. They did their best to avoid attracting attention. Fortunately, the Gulfstream was parked well away from the main terminals so the departing group attracted little attention.