by Marc Cameron
CHAPTER 23
“I DON’T CARE IF WE GET IN TROUBLE,” DILLON SWEENY SAID. HE maneuvered his rod over the side of the fourteen-foot aluminum skiff and flipped the lever on his reel. A cloud of herring oil shimmered upward and left a rainbow sheen on the surface as his bait sank into the water, dragged toward the bottom by a four-ounce lead sinker.
Max George sat at the bow of the boat glancing along the forested bank as he attempted to bait his own hook.
“You’re gonna shove that hook through your finger,” Dillon said.
The Haida boy shot a defensive glance at his friend. “Shut up,” he said, though he didn’t act like he meant it. Max was tall and big-boned, looking much older than his thirteen years. Sweeny found him overly superstitious but chalked it up to his young age and the fact that he was Native. Sweeny had to admit though, this place had great fishing—but it gave him the creeps almost as bad as it did Max.
The boys had no GPS or fish finder, but Sweeny knew exactly where he was. The bay itself was about the size of a city block, relatively shallow at around sixty feet. A large monolith of stone rose up from the bottom, two-thirds of the way out toward the mouth. The stone became visible if the tide was low enough, with a good two feet jutting above the surface. Local legend was that many generations before, the daughter of a local chief wanted to marry a boy from a rival clan from the other side of the island. Her father forbade it, as did the boy’s. Undeterred, the star-crossed couple ran away into the forest but were eventually captured by the girl’s brothers. The boy was killed, and the distraught girl swam to the rock at low tide and waited for the water to fill the cove. The frigid water had sapped her strength—as she had known it would. Heartbroken and completely exhausted, she sat on the rock and waited for the tide to rise and the cold sea to engulf her. The villagers didn’t hear her wistful cries until after it was dark—and too late to save her. From that night, they’d called the place Wailing Rock Bay. Even now, locals said they often saw the dead girl’s face staring up at them from the deep.
Max said he didn’t believe the story. But Sweeny found him awfully jumpy for a nonbeliever.
“You see that?” Max George said. He turned his head to look at the water from his spot near the bow. He’d been in the middle of weaving a hook through the eye of a herring.
“What?” Dillon said. He felt the weight on his line hit bottom.
“There it is,” Max said, pointing to a piece of white paper a few feet beneath the surface. A bank of heavy clouds had rolled in from the west, turning the water dark and brooding. “Give me the net so I can check it out.”
Dillon ignored him, bouncing the tip of his fishing rod to cause the herring on the end of his line to dance at the bottom and hopefully catch the attention of a halibut or rockfish. It was still a little early for lingcod—not that he really cared about the fishing regulations.
The current caught the paper—or whatever it was, causing it to swirl and twist as if alive without coming to the surface.
“Don’t you want to see what it is?” Max asked. “It could be a note or something.”
“You’re always seeing boogeymen and Kushtaka.” Sweeny scoffed. “More likely some tourist boat came into the bay and pumped out their shitter. I’m not gonna let you net some piece of toilet paper and bring it on my skiff.”
“I guess it could be that,” Max said. “But if it is, you want to eat the fish we catch from here?”
“Shut up,” Sweeny said. “It’s a piece of paper. Don’t make a big federal case out of it.”
“And besides that,” Max George said, “you shouldn’t make fun of the Kushtaka. Not while we’re all the way out here by the Wailing Rock.” George was serious about his boogeymen.
“I thought you said that Wailing Rock story wasn’t true.”
“It’s not,” Max said. “But it’s still not wise to make fun of the old stories and traditions.”
A stiff breeze riffled the surface, rocking the boat and sending a chill down Dillon Sweeny’s spine. The wind hadn’t really kicked up yet, but it was just a matter of time. Dillon had spent all his seventeen years on this island. He knew the secrets of Wailing Rock Bay. It was his favorite fishing spot, even with the weather and bad juju. The tide was huge, providing a gigantic flush a couple of times a day that cleared out the bay and brought in new water from the ocean—even if some charter boat had dumped their holding tanks here.
Dillon came here to fish as often as he could sneak away. The school had probably already called his mom at work and told her he hadn’t shown up. His mom would have tried to call his cell—which he’d left in the truck because it didn’t work all the way out here anyhow. Then she would have called his dad, who would have pretended to share her anger that their oldest son was skipping school so near the end of the semester. But Dillon’s dad was cool. He understood that sometimes a guy needed a mental health day—and there was no better way to do that than go fishing. Later, his dad would assign him some chore he’d been going to make him do anyway and then privately confide that he was glad Dillon was fishing instead of frying his brain on computer games.
The tip of his rod dipped sharply, bringing a familiar surge of adrenaline down both arms. No matter how many times he put a line in the water, when a fish hit, it was like Christmas morning, waiting to see what was on the other end. Sweeny flicked the rod to set the hook. He kept the tip up and began to reel. Whatever it was, this was a monster.
“Got it,” Max George said, leaning over the bow with the landing net. His hook and the piece of herring lay in the floor of the skiff. He held up a piece of lined paper that looked like it had been ripped from a notebook. “Told you it was some kind of note.”
“Forget the stupid note and get the net ready.” Sweeny reeled fast to stay ahead of the fish on the other end. He yanked backward, horsing the rod to bring the fish to the surface. The line suddenly went taut as if he’d snagged on the bottom. “Dammit!” he said, an instant before it snapped.
Sweeny glared at the Native boy.
“It’s not my fault,” Max said. He craned his head to one side and pointed. “Look. It’s another piece of paper.”
Sweeny turned to look at the water. “Would you shut up about—”
A shadowed movement caught his eye, deep in the water—well below the new piece of paper. At first he thought it was the fish that had broken his line. They swam to the surface sometimes when they were dazed. But this was bigger.
“You think it’s a halibut?” George said. “Maybe a harbor seal.”
“That’s no seal,” Dillon said, bending over the side to get a closer look. “Maybe a halibut though. Hand me the net in case it gets close enough.”
An instant later he shoved away from the gunnel, nearly falling over the other side of the boat. Max saw it at the same time and screamed, a full octave higher than his normal voice.
It was no halibut or seal floating up from the depths to meet them, but the face of a young woman. Her lips had been eaten away by sea lice and shrimp, causing her to look like she was snarling. Her neck arched backward and lidless eyes stared heavenward as she rose up from the depths.
Max vomited over the side when the body broke the surface. She was wrapped mummy-like in heavy burlap cloth with only the head exposed. Her hands and feet looked like they were tied, but the boys didn’t stick around to make sure.
CHAPTER 24
JENNY, THE CLERK AT THE ALASKA STATE TROOPERS OFFICE, DREW Cutter a map, but there was no need. Craig Harbor was almost close enough to the AST post he could have hit it with a rock. The parking lot was located on the north side of the Craig-Klawock Highway, overlooking the larger harbor normally occupied by dozens of fishing boats. According to the trooper, the forty-two-foot vessel January Cross used for her orca studies was moored at the very end of the smaller South Harbor. Jenny said he’d be able to recognize it by the US Forest Service enforcement boat in the slip two boats down.
The deputies hadn’t yet had the opp
ortunity to check into their rooms, but the small rental apartments Fontaine had booked for them supposedly overlooked the harbor. Cutter decided to go see January Cross first, and drop off his gear after he finished.
Gray clouds hung from a low sky as Cutter turned the trooper pickup into a parking lot on the north side of the highway, then crossed the road to make his way down to the docks. The sound of his boots on the wooden docks alerted a tawny little dog to his presence. The dog barked once, then stood with its front paws on the gunnel of a boat named Tide Dancer and growled as Cutter approached.
Cutter’s grandfather had spent a lot of time on his Boston Whaler and Arliss had spent a lot of time with his grandfather. Grumpy would say things like, ”Only a fool fights the ocean.” He told him to treat the sea like a woman. “Watch for the little signs and tells that will let you know when she’s sweet and inviting or in a devilish, sour mood.” Like a woman, a boat could take you places you could never get to otherwise, but only if you knew how to take care of her. Arliss couldn’t help but think that if he’d been able to apply Grumpy’s techniques to human women, his life would have been much smoother sailing.
Cutter himself had endured a not too secret love affair with boats his entire life. At least two of his ex-wives had made it clear early in their doomed marriages that they derived no pleasure from walking up and down the docks looking at other people’s boats. Cutter, on the other hand, could walk the docks and stare at other people’s boats for hours. It was just a matter of imagining what you would do and where you would go if the boat were yours. There’d been many times over the years when he’d seen a particular boat and dreamed of what it would be like to take her out. Some boats beckoned you aboard.
Tide Dancer was not such a boat.
Cross’s converted trawler was moored stern to the dock, among boats of much less frequent upkeep. A dismasted sailboat sat forlornly on the other side of the float. Below the waterline, her nameless fiberglass hull had become home to many years’ worth of trailing kelp and blossoming anemones. To Tide Dancer’s port side, a lopsided aluminum runabout with a weathered blue ragtop wallowed low in the water. Grumpy would have certainly stopped such a vessel on suspicion of carrying a load of contraband. Tide Dancer was neat and shipshape if not handsome. In sharp contrast to her neighboring boats, she was clean and uncluttered, older but in good repair. Cutter couldn’t help but notice she’d had some work done, and by someone who didn’t possess the sure hand of a master boat builder. There was a crookedness to the vessel that while not ugly, was just not quite right.
The dog stopped growling and opened its freakishly wide face in a long yawn—as if Cutter wasn’t worth the trouble.
A tall woman with mussed black hair nearly as short as Cutter’s looked up from wrestling a five-gallon propane tank into a lazarette along the starboard side of the vessel. She wore a gray hoodie with the sleeves pulled up to her elbows against the relative warmth of midday. Faded jeans, snug where the hoodie was conspicuously loose, were tucked neatly into a pair of chocolate-brown Xtratuf boots like the ones Cutter had borrowed from Mim. It wasn’t politically correct, but men looked at women’s figures—and January Cross was pleasantly curvaceous, even in the baggy hoodie. She carried herself with a regal and upright air, as if she knew she was the captain of not only her vessel, but of a great deal of everything else going on around her as well.
“Can I help you with that?” Cutter said, stopping beside the boat’s transom and giving the unwieldy propane tank a nod. “I’m in no way saying you’re not strong enough to do it,” he added. “But if I was trying to get a full bottle of propane down in that little locker, I’d accept your help if you happened by.”
“Put that way,” the woman said, “I’d be most grateful.”
The little dog jumped down off the transom bench and scampered over to sniff Cutter’s pant legs as he swung open the gate and stepped onto the aft deck.
“Havoc’s usually a little less trusting.” The woman shoved a pile of wrenches and shop rags into a canvas tool bag and then glanced up at Cutter, hazel eyes smiling, thanking him for the help.
Cutter stepped back when they were done, wiping his hands together. The woman peeled off a pair of leather work gloves and extended a petite but strong hand. It was calloused, but not overly so. Her calluses were pink and, Cutter suspected, newly acquired.
“January Cross.” She gave his hand a firm shake.
“Arliss Cutter,” he said. “I should have introduced myself before I came on your boat.”
Cross shook her head. “I knew who you were as soon as you stepped onto the float. Everybody on this island knows everybody—and their business. And anyway, I had no doubt I’d be on someone’s list when I heard Carmen and her cameraman had gone missing. I’m just glad you’re not that Sergeant Yates. There’s a first-class jerk if there ever was one.”
“I’m not with the state troopers,” Cutter said. “United States Marshals.”
“I heard that too,” she said, looking neutral and unimpressed.
A string of cursing erupted from the next slip, under the ragtop. Cutter glanced down to see a balding man bend over the dock working to retrieve two hard plastic rifle cases similar to the one Fontaine had brought to the island. Adrenaline shot down Cutter’s arm when he noticed the AR-15 carbine hanging from a sling around the man’s neck. Cutter’s gun hand brushed the front of his jacket, putting the Colt Python within easy reach.
January noticed and gave an imperceptible shake of her head. She waved at the man.
“Hey, Bean,” she said.
“Jan,” the man said. He hustled brusquely toward the parking lot with his armload of rifle cases.
“That’s Bean,” Cross said once the man was out of earshot. “He’s a weirdo, but he’s basically harmless.”
“Likes his rifles, I see,” Cutter said.
“I think he must sell them or something,” January said. “He told me once he builds them himself. His day job is doing something for the Triple C Mine. He lives in town but I guess they have a nice shop out there.”
“Interesting,” Cutter said. Unwilling to turn his back on an armed man, he watched Mr. Bean exit the parking lot above in a newer Ford pickup.
“In any case,” he said once the man was gone, “I’m down here from Anchorage looking for a federal fugitive named Hayden Starnes.”
Cross shook her head. “Don’t know anyone by that name.”
“He was going under the name Travis Todd,” he said. “Did odd jobs for the production company. Trooper Benjamin said you travel all around the island. He thought you might have noticed Mr. Todd camping out on one of the beaches.” Cutter gave her Starnes’s description.
Cross took a water hose from the same lazarette where they’d stowed the propane and dragged it toward the faucet on the dock. “Wish I could help,” she said. “I haven’t seen anybody like that.”
Cutter stepped up and helped feed the hose out of the locker, making certain it didn’t kink before she had it screwed into the faucet.
“Okay,” he said. “The trooper also asked that I talk to you about the argument you had with the production crew last night.”
Cross laughed. Finished with the hose, she stepped back aboard. “Who said it was an argument? They sped past in their boat without paying any attention to the no-wake zone. It just about knocked me into the drink, so I told them to slow down. Admittedly, I did use my eighth-grade teacher voice.”
Cutter raised a brow. “From what I remember about my eighth-grade teachers, that could be considered a deadly weapon in some jurisdictions.”
“You got that right,” she said. “Anyway, they were in too big a hurry to argue. Carmen didn’t even acknowledge me. The kid with the dreads—I can’t remember his name—he just flipped me off as he shot by without slowing down.”
“You’re a teacher?” he asked.
“I was,” she said. “Biology. At present, I’m working on an orca study for the state of Alaska.”
>
“Nice,” Cutter said. “So what time did Carmen and this guy with dreads speed by you?”
January shrugged. Her eyes looked upward, the way someone did when they remembered rather than fabricated. “I don’t know, around seven thirty or eight maybe. It was just beginning to get dark.”
Cutter pretended to be writing.
“I see what you’re doing here,” she said at length.
Cutter looked up from his notebook. “And what’s that?”
“Most people dislike a vacuum in the conversation,” she said. “The guilty ones fill it up with incriminating stuff without your even having to ask.”
“So,” Cutter said. “Is there any incriminating stuff you want to add?”
January chuckled. “It’s no secret that I’ve been pissed at Carmen Delgado. Most people think it was because of the husband-stealing siren thing on her stupid show.”
“Seems like a good enough reason to be upset,” Cutter said.
“I suppose,” January said. “But that’s not it, really. Have you seen the totem poles and carvings on this island? Prince of Wales is brimming with Native Tlingit and Haida culture. These are incredible people and even more incredible stories. Carmen promised me when she first came here she’d include those stories in her television show.” Cross shook her head, disgusted. “I haven’t seen a single Native person in any of the episodes.”
“I’ve never understood why people watch what they do on television.”
“I suppose,” January said. “But she did make me a promise.”
“Can anyone else corroborate your version of the events?”
She shrugged again. “Let’s see,” she said. “Linda hadn’t gotten here yet. Cassandra Brown was here.”
“Cassandra Brown,” Cutter repeated, writing the name down to pass along to Trooper Benjamin.
“She’s a twelve-year-old Haida girl who’s sort of befriended me,” January said. “But she doesn’t speak, so she’s not going to be much help.”
