by Marc Cameron
“Was the balding guy on his boat here when this went down?”
“Bean?” January said. “No. He must have been out at the Triple C.” She brightened. “Havoc was here.”
“You’re not trying very hard.”
“Hey, the dog’s more trustworthy than Bean. He’s half heeler.”
“Did you run into either of them again after the incident?” Cutter asked. “Later that night maybe?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “My friend Linda Roundy dropped by shortly afterward to bring me a calzone. I went and did some laundry at her house. After that, I bought some groceries and came back here and went to sleep.”
Cutter made a few notes in his book. “Okay then,” he said.
“Can I ask you a question now?”
“Go for it,” Cutter said.
“What’s with the medicine bag? I haven’t seen many white people going against the fashion police with a leather bag tucked into their belts.”
“Stuff from my grandpa,” he said, reaching to pat it as was his habit from time to time.
“Was he Native?”
“Nope,” Cutter said. “Just a cool grandpa. He passed on some things that mean a lot to me so I prefer to keep them with me. That’s all.”
January studied him with eyes as unwavering as a CT scan, but said nothing.
“So,” Cutter said, closing his notebook, “I’ll pass this on to Trooper Benjamin. You probably shouldn’t leave town though.”
“Why?” January asked. “Because you might call me?”
Cutter couldn’t be sure if she was flirting or just wanted to know if he’d follow up.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Well,” January said, “leaving town is exactly what I plan to do, about as quick as you get off my boat. I’m not trying to run away from anything though, and I’ll tell you exactly where I’m going.” She held out her hand, snapping her fingers. “Let me see your notebook?”
He let her take it.
“There could be a bunch of double top secret marshal things in there,” he said.
She flipped through the book, stopping to look up at him with a grin. “Like this top-secret recipe for cheeseburger soup?”
“Exactly,” he said. “You would not believe what I had to do to get that.”
She fished a pen from the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and sketched him a map. “The pod of whales I follow hangs out up near Tuxekan Passage during a storm like the one that’s about to hit us. I plan to drop my anchor and ride out the night in a cove near there so I can get a jump on them after this low pressure blows through.” She flipped the notebook around so Cutter could see her hand-drawn map. “No cell service, and the mountain blocks the radio unless you come up on the sea side. But if you need to talk to me, it’s out Forest Service Road 2051, a place called Kaguk Cove.”
CHAPTER 25
FOOTSTEPS CLOMPED DOWN THE WOODEN FLOAT BEHIND CUTTER, and he looked up to find Deputy Fontaine and Trooper Benjamin coming toward Tide Dancer.
“Well, crap,” January said. “I scared you so bad you had to call for backup.”
“You need to turn your phone on, boss,” Fontaine said. She raised a wary brow toward Cross.
Cutter reached in his jacket pocket for his phone. He’d been so caught up in his conversation with January, he hadn’t felt it vibrating. “What’s up? Did you nab our bandit?”
“Afraid not,” the trooper said. “But I could use some help if you’re done here.”
January nodded. “We’re done.”
“For now,” Cutter said. He looked at Benjamin. “What’s up?”
“A couple of boys say they had a body float up on them while they were fishing in a small cove down toward Soda Bay.”
“The Burkett girl or one of the others?”
“Still unknown,” the trooper said, looking grim. “It could be someone else. Seems like someone trips over a hunter’s bleached bones every couple of years on this island. I had a lady call on a deer skeleton she saw underwater last week. So listen, Lola said you’re a diver?”
Cutter glanced at Fontaine. She must have made some calls on him to find that out. “I am,” he said.
“Still current?”
Cutter nodded. It was an understandable question. A lot of people took a diving course on vacation, then didn’t put on a tank for decades—but still identified themselves as scuba divers. It looked cool on a Facebook bio. “I did quite a bit of diving with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement team. My last dive was a couple of months ago, as a matter of fact, just before I moved to Alaska.”
“Outstanding,” Benjamin said. “I hate to ask, but I might need some help with an underwater search of the bay. It’d keep me from having to drag the bay with hooks.”
January scooped up her dog and scratched him behind the ears. “Do you think it’s Carmen?”
The trooper shook his head. “I just don’t know, Jan. The boys seem to think the body is a female, but Greg Conner had long dreadlocks, so who knows.”
The pink left January’s cheeks. “This is horrible. I have some tanks and a couple of dry suits onboard if you need them. I need to get the zipper fixed on mine, but there’s one that should fit the marshal.”
Fontaine all but growled. “That won’t be necessary. The trooper has a dry suit we can use.”
January winced as if she’d been slapped. “Okay then. Just thought I’d offer.”
“And I do appreciate it,” the trooper said. “Weren’t you just down near Soda Bay?”
“I was,” January said. “Following the whales wherever they take me.”
“Going back?”
“Other direction,” January said. “That low is sending big winds and rain our way. The orca are out with the herring and I hear there’s a pretty good run up near Kaguk Cove. I’d like to get up there before this storm hits—if I’m allowed to leave.”
“You’re fine,” Benjamin said. “Get on with your life. We know where to find you.” He looked up at the mountain above the harbor, nodding in thought, then turned to Cutter. “I’ll call you on your partner’s phone if we need to dive. I still have a lot of interviews but I’ve got to go see what these boys found. Officer Simeon’s chief has cut him loose to help out. My partner’s back from Port Protection and they’re interviewing some more of the FISHWIVES! crew as we speak. We’ve had a couple of Hayden Starnes sightings that could be checked out. He’s a prime suspect, so you’d be doing double duty if you were able to find him.”
“Of course,” Cutter said. “Just point us in the right direction.”
Benjamin tore a page out of his notepad and handed it to Fontaine. “You should talk to Blind Bob first. He’s got a camp with four or five other vagrants out on the point past the Craig cemetery. It’s about a mile or so in through the timber. This map should get you there.”
It was Fontaine’s turn to look suspicious. “How good a witness could a guy named Blind Bob be?”
The trooper laughed. “I’m not sure why people call him that. To tell you the truth I don’t know much about him. I understand he disappears during the winter but shows up every spring like clockwork and throws up his camp out there on the point. Strange dude though, I’ll tell you that.”
“Strange dudes are my specialty,” Fontaine said. “Isn’t that right, boss?”
CHAPTER 26
IT TOOK LONGER TO WALK UP THE DOCK TO THE BORROWED TROOPER pickup than it did for Cutter and Fontaine to drive down Hamilton Street, past the docks again, and across the breakwater of granite riprap to Cemetery Island.
Old-growth forest enveloped them quickly. Clouds ahead of the approaching storm obscured the spring sun, and towering stands of spruce and cedar defused the remaining light, giving the place an otherworldly feel. The baseball diamond was surrounded on three sides by thick undergrowth and tucked in behind an acre of white crosses and gray headstones. It felt like they’d stumbled onto some ancient Mayan ruins instead of a sports venue on the edge of town.<
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Lola broke off a cedar frond as they walked past, crushing the aromatic needles absentmindedly and holding them to her nose for a sniff. “You seemed to be pretty cozy with that chick on the boat,” she said.
Cutter turned to look at her as they walked. The trail was wide and fairly level at this point. “Cozy?”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “A little informal for a simple interview.”
Cutter nodded. “It’s good to listen to people once in a while when we’re not booting doors—and she had some interesting things to say. Anyway, you and Trooper Benjamin look to be getting along well enough. So you gave him your phone number already?”
“He has interesting things to say.” Fontaine smiled.
Following the trooper’s instructions, they took a fork to the right. The gravel trail rose steeply, moving away from the ocean and up over the backbone of the small island. The sound of breaking surf gave way to the hiss of wind through the trees and the intermittent chirp of birds. The island was less than a mile across and the trail soon began to slope down again toward the windward side.
Cutter smelled the camp before he saw it.
Armies, Boy Scout troops, mountaineering camps—any group of people who stayed in a place for more than a few hours had to deal with the disposal of their own human waste. To Cutter, the odor of Afghanistan would always be one of wood smoke, rotting garbage, and an overabundance of uncontained crap. It was a smell pervasive in every Third World country he’d ever visited, clinging to his clothes and hair so strongly that the odor was the first thing anyone mentioned when he got off the plane in Miami. The closest thing he’d experienced back in the States was the smell of a homeless camp on the edge of the Everglades—and now the windward side of Cemetery Island.
It was a small place, as homeless camps go. Cutter counted five shacks of varying size and design nestled back in trees, all easily spotted because of their bright blue tarp roofs and walls. Some were nothing more than simple lean-tos, but a couple were the Taj Mahal of blue tarp construction with anterooms and awnings strung out with guy lines made from scavenged net and fishing line. Driftwood and deadfall poles made up the bulk of the construction as the camp occupants apparently didn’t want to run afoul of the Craig city fathers by cutting live timber in their protected park.
A woman of indeterminate age sat in a folding camp chair under the nearest awning. She was at least forty, perhaps much older . . . or younger; Cutter couldn’t be sure. Her face shone with the shellac of someone who spent a life exposed to the weather and rarely bathed in anything but the wind, giving her an ageless, almost mummified appearance. Her faded jeans consisted of more patch than original garment. A few strands of silver hair slipped out of a loose top bun that had run amuck.
The woman took a swig of something from a metal coffee thermos with a bent top. “The ocean’s that way, if you’re lost.” She had a few more teeth on the bottom than she did on top—which wasn’t saying much—making her lower jaw appear to jut in a sort of gummy under bite.
“We’re looking for Blind Bob,” Fontaine said.
“You guys cops?”
“We are,” Cutter said, figuring there was nowhere to run anyway. “US Marshals.”
The woman chuckled, her round belly bouncing in time with her laugh. She took another swig from her mug. “So Blind Bob’s went and got hisself in trouble with the federales, huh?”
“Not at all,” Fontaine said. “We just need to ask him some questions.”
There was a rustling inside the tarp house and a bony man wearing nothing but a pair of briefs emerged from the blue shadows. Thinning gray hair stuck out in all directions as if he’d just crawled out of bed. His skin was startlingly pale, especially when contrasted to the dinghy briefs, which were no longer whitie or tightie. The underwear sagged so badly he might as well have worn nothing at all but, thankfully, he stepped into a pair of blue running shorts that he snatched from one of the guy lines. Shirtless, he flopped down in the camp chair next to the woman, apparently unfazed by the chilly wind that blew off the ocean.
“Blind Bob at your service,” he said. “Step into my castle.”
Cutter tipped his head toward the tarp-and-driftwood structure. “I thought this was her castle.”
“Who, Meg?” Blind Bob shook his head, then turned to the woman. “She’s just visiting. As a matter of fact, why don’t you give us some space, my dear. In case the marshals have something sensitive to discuss.”
“It’s okay with me if she stays,” Cutter said.
“That’s all right,” Meg said, wallowing to her feet with a grunt, careful not to spill whatever she was drinking. “I need to visit the little Meg’s room anyhow.” She raised the bent thermos as if to toast, and then threw Blind Bob a conspiratorial wink before she waddled off into the forest, vanishing quickly among the ferns and shadows.
“Come on in and sit,” Blind Bob said, motioning to Meg’s chair and a seat someone had carved out of a cedar stump. Cutter let Fontaine choose, and to his relief she let him have the stump, taking Meg’s seat for herself.
Blind Bob grinned, showing a near perfect set of teeth. Upon closer inspection, Cutter saw that he was relatively clean, and his body absent the unwashed gloss and the odor that went along with it. A pyramid of toilet paper rolls was visible just inside the flap of the tarp house, as was a washbasin and a neatly made cot.
“Let me guess,” Blind Bob said, patting his bare thighs with both hands as if singing a camp song. “You thought I’d at least be wearing Mr. Magoo glasses.”
“Well,” Cutter said, “they do call you Blind Bob.”
“They do,” Bob said, nodding as if contemplating the answer to a great mystery. “So, you met Meg.”
Cutter and Fontaine nodded in unison.
“The other guys here, they call her Megladon on account of her caboose being so large . . . and whatnot.”
“Kinda mean hearted,” Fontaine said.
“That’s what I thought,” Bob said, slapping his legs harder. “Anyhow, let’s be honest. Meg doesn’t have much in the way of classic beauty, but she’s a hell of a gentle soul.”
Cutter was beginning to see where this was going.
“You should have seen my first wife.” Bob spoke quickly, as if afraid his guests might leave if he stopped talking. “Or maybe not, I suppose. Next to her, Meg looks like Miss America. My friends all tell me I must have been blind to have married that woman, but I told them I saw beauty there—at least I did until she tried to drown me for the insurance money. I didn’t see that coming. Everyone at the university started calling me Blind Bob.”
Fontaine shot a sideways look at Cutter. “University?”
“I know, right. Guess it’s surprising to find a professor of psychology turned hobo on an island in Southeast Alaska . . . or anywhere, for that matter.” Bob gave a sheepish shrug. “Everyone processes their wife trying to murder them in different ways, I suppose. A man sails off to a desert island and lives in a grass hut and people call him adventurous. I come out to an island in Alaska to live in a hut and folks think I’m the third M.”
“What’s that?” Fontaine asked.
“They say people come to rural Alaska for good paying jobs, because they want to save the downtrodden Natives, or because they just aren’t cut out for normal society—money, missionaries, and misfits.”
Cutter gave a solemn nod. It was impossible not to like Blind Bob; he was so forthright. Out of habit, Cutter searched the ground for a likely piece of wood, and when he found a chunk of cedar that would suit his purposes, picked it up and took out his pocketknife. He held up the wood and a Barlow pocketknife. “Do you mind?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” Bob said. “My dad always said you could trust a man who whittled.”
Cutter eyed the length of cedar, then went to work as he spoke. “We wanted to ask you about a man named Hayden Starnes. You might know him as Travis Todd.”
“Sure, I’m familiar with Travis.”
Bob smoothed the wayward hairs back over his head with the palm of his hand, getting down to business. “He came here a couple of days ago, looking to hide out. An odd duck, if you want my professional opinion.”
“You have good instincts,” Cutter said. “He was working on a television show in town—”
“FISHWIVES!?” Bob said, leaning forward and eyes sparkling with animation. “I love FISHWIVES! You know, there’s a never-ending litany of reality shows about Alaska every year, but every last one of them is as fake as a glass engagement ring—except for that one. It’s the best show on TV by a mile.”
“I’m with you there, Bob,” Fontaine said. “My husb—” She caught herself, shot a glance at Cutter, then continued. “I watch it all the time.”
Cutter looked up from his carving. “How do you watch television clear out here?”
Bob hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the tarp. “We aren’t all savages,” he said. “I have a little knockoff generator that I picked up at the Costco in Ketchikan. It’s overkill, but I use it to charge my iPad so I can stream FISHWIVES! and check in on Facebook every few days.”
“Good to keep up with the news, I guess,” Cutter said.
“I’ll skip the news, thank you very much,” Bob said. “It’s nothing but a pack of lies now anyway.” He craned his head up and looked past Cutter, down the gravel beach and out to sea. “The fleet’s going out,” he said. “Herring must have arrived.”
Fontaine nodded toward the thick bank of black clouds marching in from the Gulf of Alaska. “They’ll still take their boats out in that?”
Bob shrugged. “I’m a professor of psychology, not marine biology, but it could well be that the storm is what pushed the fish in,” he said. “I don’t know. But what I do know is that the herring won’t wait on the weather. If the fleet doesn’t get them netted and put in the kelp pens, the fish’ll find their own beds to spawn in.”
“Speaking of the herring fleet,” Fontaine said. “Who’s your favorite Fishwife?”
