by Marc Cameron
“Should we bring them back to you, Patrón?” Chago, the larger and more sensible of the two men in the skiff, asked.
“No,” Garza said. “Patrón,” it had a pleasant ring to it. “Bring me their cameras. Put their bodies somewhere where they will never be found.” He looked up at the ominous line of black clouds to the west. “But hurry. I want to be off this cursed island as soon as this is resolved.”
The men nodded and sped away in the skiff.
“Come, Fausto,” Garza said to the man in the wheelhouse as he began to roll up his sleeves. “You will find a spare anchor in the forward locker. I must ask for your help in sinking our former employer.”
CHAPTER 10
A LASKA STATE TROOPER SAM BENJAMIN PUNCHED IN THE NUMBER to Sergeant Yates in Ketchikan and pushed the bowl of homemade tomato soup across his sparse wooden desk, away from the phone. Yates, his supervisor, was a hard man, prone to bitter conversation that did not go well with soup.
Benjamin had four years on with AST—having come aboard the year after the brass in Juneau pulled the plug on Alaska State Troopers, the reality television show that made the agency a household name across the United States. Like many new troopers fresh out of the academy in Sitka, Sam Benjamin had started his life in the blue shirt working as a road-toad in Palmer. He’d done his share of traffic enforcement on the road system north of Anchorage before taking what he felt was a plush assignment to Craig, on Prince of Wales Island. It had been great at first, but then a new sergeant arrived who happened to be a level-ten asshole. Don Yates had transferred in from the bush post of Dillingham and treated it as his sworn duty to, as he put it, “knock the pavement out of any road troopers’ mouths” and get them accustomed to working a remote post. But POW Island wasn’t exactly remote—and there was plenty of pavement, so Yates couldn’t do much but crap all over Sam Benjamin’s world with his little nuggets of doom and gloom at every opportunity.
Five months into the posting, during an office visit to Craig, the sergeant had gone so far as to stomp on Trooper Benjamin’s Stetson in a fit of rage—over a difference of opinion about what criminal charges should be filed against a local drug dealer. Benjamin had just stood there stupefied while his boss had gone ape shit and flattened the blue felt campaign hat. This guy obviously had some serious anger issues, but the incident had actually worked in Trooper Benjamin’s favor. Sergeant Yates remained a hat-stomping bastard, but he seemed to realize that the pancaked Stetson was a serious indictment against him and began to treat his subordinate with a sort of dismayed ambivalence for not reporting his outburst to the lieutenant in Ketchikan. The best thing about it was that Yates more or less left Benjamin alone.
Sam Benjamin was a good-looking young man, a smidge under six feet tall with erect posture and dimpled chin that looked sharp in the blue trooper uniform. Ever since a tall man in a similar uniform had landed a Super Cub on his father’s hunting camp when he was ten years old—and let him wear his flight helmet—Benjamin had wanted nothing more in life than to wear the golden bear badge. No shit they could dish out at the academy or any attitude of an angry superior could quell his ambition or stifle the unbridled pride with which he wore that badge.
The television show was a different story. FISHWIVES! sucked the life out of him. Not only had he missed his own chance at stardom with the cancellation of Alaska State Troopers, but now he had to deal with all the crap that went with a crazy reality show on his island. It included fistfights, frequent drunken parties, and the influx of drugs by the dregs of humanity that hovered around the crew members like flies. And it was, in fact, just one of these sketchy types who was the reason for the young trooper’s call to his sergeant. He pulled Hayden Starnes’s driver’s license photo closer. With a wispy mustache, seventies mullet haircut, and vaporous eyes, he even looked the stereotypical pervert.
“Call the US Marshals,” Yates ordered, before Benjamin could even tell him what the federal warrant was for. “They get paid to pick up boneheads like this guy.”
Benjamin decided not to point out that he got paid for exactly the same thing. “Will do,” he said, knowing it was the only answer Sergeant Yates would accept. “What if they can’t make it down? This guy’s wanted on sexual assault and kidnapping charges out of Oregon.”
“Kidnapping would be the FBI then,” Yates said, an expert at the bureaucratic sidestep. “They’ll come down if it gets their name in the paper.”
“It says ‘US Marshals’ on the NCIC hit,” the trooper said. “Supervised Release Violation for charges of sexual assault and kidnapping—”
“Now it makes more sense,” Yates said, harrumphing like he’d just won some championship debate. “Don’t make this a bigger deal than it is. Your bonehead’s already been to court on the original charges. He’s just skipped town on his probation officer.”
I wonder what would make a convicted rapist and kidnapper skip town? Benjamin thought, but he didn’t say it.
“You have him located?” Yates asked, sounding for a moment like he might actually relent.
“I did,” Benjamin said. “He works as a gopher for the production company that does that show FISHWIVES!”
“I love FISHWIVES!” Sergeant Yates said.
Of course he did. Trooper Benjamin rolled his eyes.
“Anyway,” Benjamin continued. “No one has seen this guy for a day and a half. That’s what got me interested in him in the first place. The field producer reported him missing. He was using the name Travis Todd, which happened to be an alias the marshals are aware of, I guess.”
“So you’ve located a federal fugitive and lost him all in the same day?”
“I do not know where he is at this moment,” Benjamin said, pushing the soup farther away. “But I’ll find him if he’s still on the island.”
“Call the marshals,” Yates repeated. “If you don’t have enough to keep you busy . . .”
“Understood, Sergeant,” the trooper said. A chime rang outside his office, signifying someone was standing in the lobby outside the front door. He hoped it was Wendy bringing over some extra pizza from Papa’s across the strip mall. Sometimes she did that. His soup had gotten cold anyway. “Someone’s here,” he said. “Gotta go. I’ll let you know what the marshals say.”
“Whatever,” Yates said before hanging up. Benjamin thought he heard ice shift in a whiskey glass. That would explain a lot.
The trooper pushed back from his chair and stood, going through the quick once-over he always did when meeting with members of the public—.40 caliber Glock where it should be in the Sam Browne belt, low across the hips—check; gig-line arrow straight from the top button of his trooper-blue uniform shirt, through his belt buckle and zipper—check; pens in his pocket—check. Unlike many Alaska state troopers, Benjamin often opted for an under the shirt ballistic vest, believing it made him look more squared away and streamlined than the bulkier external vest carrier. A trooper who paid attention to detail had a better chance of surviving when the shit hit the fan—and Sam Benjamin did everything to make certain the details in his life were squared away.
Jenny, the AST clerk, had gone home at five, so visitors had to ring the doorbell. There were two troopers and two Fish and Wildlife troopers—known as brownshirts—assigned to the island. It was a rarity to have more than one working at any given time.
Benjamin stepped out of his office and through the cubicles occupied by the two Fish and Wildlife troopers—who both happened to be off island at the moment—to find Gerald Burkett standing outside the thick glass window.
Burkett was a round man, like a beach ball with legs. His dirty T-shirt had seen better days—and might have actually fit a man seventy pounds lighter. It looked more like a tank top now, revealing a third of Burkett’s ponderous belly. He wore a pair of gray sweatpants with one leg stuffed down the top of his black rubber gum boots. An assortment of stains on both thighs showed the sweats did double duty as shop rags in the small engine repair shop where Burkett
worked. A full, dirty blond beard bent outward below his chin at a right angle as if he’d fallen asleep with his head resting on a desk. His eyes were bloodshot, but that was usually the case with him by this time of day.
The trooper cocked his head to one side, catching the sour whiff of cheap alcohol as he opened the door and got nearer to the man. “Hey, Gerald,” he said, keeping it professional but friendly. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”
Burkett sniffed. He’d been crying. Drunks often sobbed, but not Burkett. He was an oak among soft pine trees—stoic, unbendable, and far more likely to be a mean drunk than a weepy one.
“I did,” Burkett said. There was a softness in his gray eyes that Benjamin had never seen before—like he was looking at an injured puppy or something. It was so out of character that it made Benjamin stand up straighter and rest a hand on his Taser.
Burkett continued, oblivious. “I been drivin’ around the island trying to find my daughter. Just now had my first drink. You can check me on the PBT if you want.” The PBT was a handheld device for administering a Preliminary Breathalyzer Test, and the fact that Burkett called it by name attested to his experience with such things.
The trooper waved Burkett through the door into his office and motioned toward the plastic chair beside his desk. “Your daughter, you say?”
Burkett nodded. He took a long hawking sniff to clear his sinuses, swallowed whatever it was that came up, then looked straight at Benjamin with those pleading eyes. “Millie,” he said. “You’d know her, I’m sure. Tall thing, dark hair and skin like her mom. She’s Tlingit, ya know.”
The trooper took out his notebook and pen. “I’ve seen her around. When did you see her last?”
Burkett nodded like he heard the question, but answered on his own terms and in his own time.
He sniffed again, using the back of his forearm to wipe his nose. “She’s a good girl. And I ain’t just sayin’ that ’cause I’m her dad. She don’t get into trouble much. At least she didn’t until those TV guys came into town. They started her carrying that damn video camera everywhere she went, putting ideas into her head that she was some kind of investigative reporter or somethin’. She’s just . . . the active sort, you know? Kids like her get bored on an island like this.”
“I see,” Benjamin said, his pen hovering above the notepad until Gerald Burkett gave him some piece of information he could actually write down besides “tall, dark, and Native female.”
“She didn’t ever come home last night,” Burkett finally said. “That didn’t surprise me though. She stays out with friends sometimes, so her mom and me, we just went on to bed. But when I checked, none of her friends had seen her. Come to find out, nobody has, not since yesterday at two when she told Wendy over at Papa’s Pizza she was working on a story or some shit.”
“Did she tell Wendy what this story was about?”
Burkett shook his head, then buried it in his hands. “Not at all,” he said, the words muffled against his palms.
“Where have you looked so far?” the trooper asked. Teenagers hiding out from their parents was not really out of the norm on an island as large as Prince of Wales. There were hundreds of miles of road and countless remote spots to camp and do all the things that teenagers did when they camped.
“I checked all her friends’ houses and all the drinkin’ places in the woods where I’ve caught her before. She’s been hangin’ out with those guys from that show, FISHWIVES! I don’t like ’em. I just went by their rooms and they’re all off somewhere. I don’t know, maybe she’s gone off with ’em. Her mom’s scared shitless she’s got herself caught by Kushtaka. . . .” His voice trailed off and he stared at the floor.
“Kushtaka?” Benjamin said, but he didn’t write it down. “The otter-man?”
“I’m sure you think my wife is crazy,” Burkett said. “But you wait until you get lost in these dark woods. If you’re lucky enough to make it out alive, then you come back and tell me you don’t believe there’s stuff out there honest white men like you and me can’t explain.”
The trooper read over his notes. At length, he held up the driver’s license photo of Hayden Starnes. “You ever see your daughter hanging around this guy?” Word order was important here. If he’d asked if Starnes had been “hanging around” Millie, it might have caused undue worry.
Burkett shook his head. “Looks like a creep. Who is he?”
“Works on the show,” the trooper said.
“That figures,” Burkett said. “But no, I don’t recognize him.”
The trooper decided not to go into any more detail. “I need to make a call,” he said. “After that, I’ll make some rounds and see what I can find out about Millie. Until then, I want you to call your wife and have her pick you up. You can’t drive home. ”
Burkett coughed a phlegmatic cough. “You’re a hardass,” he said. “You know that?”
The trooper gave his official grin. “So I’ve been told.”
“I’ll wait out in the lobby.”
Benjamin showed Burkett out, then sat back down at his desk. He turned to the page in his notebook where he’d written Hayden Starnes’s name and date of birth. It was an awfully big coincidence that a convicted sex offender and kidnapper would disappear the same day Millie Burkett went missing. The two had to know each other from the television show. That wasn’t proof of anything, but the trooper’s instincts told him a shape-shifting Tlingit land otter was the last thing he needed to be worried about.
CHAPTER 11
Anchorage
CUTTER SAT IN HIS SISTER-IN-LAW’S DRIVEWAY AND STARED AT THE garage door, wondering if she’d made it home. It was nearly seven, but that didn’t mean anything. She was an emergency room nurse, and like Cutter’s, the length of her shifts often depended on the behaviors of others. Two fights in one day notwithstanding, there were a hell of a lot more minefields in the split-level cedar home than he’d ever had to negotiate at work. Fights he could handle. Emotions, well, they were a different animal altogether.
It had taken him over an hour to get a new phone at the Fifth Avenue Mall, and then he’d stopped to do some shopping on the way home to save his sister-in-law the trouble. He took the time to load all seven plastic grocery bags in one hand so he didn’t have to make more than one trip.
Mim’s twin seven-year-old boys met him at the front door to the arctic entry, each clinging to a leg in an attempted jujitsu takedown that, thankfully, they had yet to perfect. War bag and ballistic vest in one hand and seven bags of groceries in the other, he tromped across the plywood floor past the coat rack, a line of rubber boots, and white chest freezer, to enter the house proper through a second door. In the summer, such a mantrap at the entrance to the house seemed like overkill, but during the Alaska winters, these arctic entries provided a barrier to frigid air entering the house every time the door was opened. Cutter hoped his Florida blood thickened a little before that.
He paused midstep on the gray slate floor and looked down at the smiling boys.
“I need to take off my boots so your mom doesn’t murder me,” he said.
Collectively known as the M & Ms, the boys each slid off their respective boot as though dismounting horses. Cutter kicked off his high-shanked Tony Lamas and pushed them back next to the wall with his toe. “What’s for dinner?” he asked.
Michael, the elder of the twins by twelve minutes, blinked doe-like brown eyes. He had deep golden hair, like his father had had, and a soft, smiling disposition. He shrugged and opened his eyes even wider. “I dunno.”
Matthew, the younger brother, regarded Cutter with narrowed steel-blue eyes. Of the two, he looked the most like their great-grandpa Grumpy—and his uncle Arliss—including the mean mug and flaxen blond hair.
“Mom’s not home yet,” Matt said, his eyes unwavering—as if he was waiting for Cutter to flinch. “And Constance won’t come out of her room to fix us anything to eat.”
Cutter set his war bag in the corner and leaned the heav
y ballistic vest against the wall.
“Well,” he said, nodding toward the granite island in the middle of the kitchen. “You know what men do when no one makes us dinner?”
“Scream?” Matthew said, smiling a crooked smile and only half kidding.
“Of all the things you can do in life,” Cutter said, “screaming is rarely the answer.” He shooed the twins toward the kitchen. “What men do, is make our own dinner,” he said. “Your great-grandpa would have had something to say about this—”
The twins perked up. “Let us be men!” They said it in unison. These were the magic words to get Cutter to reveal one of his grandfather’s rules.
Most of these rules described the way Grumpy Cutter believed a man should comport himself—always look sharp, show gratitude, be slow to anger but quick to action. To Arliss, this part of the list had seemed never ending, even constraining at times. It was the many man-skills on the list that he loved. Grumpy made no secret of the fact that before any boy could pass into manhood, he had to know how to do certain things—start a fire, sharpen a knife, saddle a horse, navigate by the stars, and, among other things, cook.
“Grumpy Man-Rule number seven,” he said. “A man ought to know how to cook creamy scrambled eggs.”
Michael cocked his head to the side, looking unconvinced. “Wait, I thought Grumpy Man-Rule number seven was keep the car waxed and shiny. . . .”
Cutter opened his sister-in-law’s fridge and shook his head. He dug behind a net bag of sadly shriveled brussels sprouts to get a carton of eggs from the drawer. “No, keeping a clean vehicle is Grumpy Man-Rule number nine.” He set the eggs on the granite island next to the gas burners and grabbed a pan from the rack above. The twins pulled up two chairs from the table and stood on either side of him, elbows on the counter, chins on their hands.
