Open Carry

by Marc Cameron

  Cutter stopped by the AC store for a couple of things on the way out of town, getting drenched even wearing his Helly Hansen raincoat. He found himself glad he’d opted to put on his brother’s Xtratufs at the trooper post since the grocery store’s uneven parking lot had long since become a lake of uncertain depth.

  From the AC store, he followed the directions January had put in his notebook, driving north out of Klawock on Big Salt Lake Road. He’d been warned that one of Prince of Wales Island’s abundant blacktail deer might dart across his path, but the driving rain kept them hunkered down in the heavy timber, solving that problem while it created another.

  He turned off the pavement to follow a Forest Service logging road to the north for a few miles before cutting back to the west. Rain combined with mud and loose gravel to form a treacherous soup threatening to send Cutter sliding down the mountains into oblivion. It wasn’t quite dark, but blue-black clouds were quickly closing in on the last feeble hopes of light. A runaway creek had jumped its banks ahead of him and now rushed across the road in a slurry of white foam and floating debris. He barely had time to bring the truck to a stop and keep from sliding into the swollen mess.

  Snugging his rain gear around his neck, he got out of the truck to search for a stick so he could test the depth before he crossed. Wind ripped his hood. He had to lean forward just to walk forward. He found a likely piece of alder and with a few tentative tests, discovered the roadway was still intact for the moment. The water was only halfway up the shaft of his rubber boots but appeared to be rising. Not one to let being stranded in the Alaska wilderness stop him, Cutter threw the stick in the back of the pickup in case he needed it later, then like Caesar crossing the Rubicon, drove slowly into the rising torrent. Gravel crunched beneath his tires. Water shoved the truck sideways, but he made it across. Coming back might be a little trickier, but he’d worry about that when the time came.

  The wipers were working overtime by the time he slogged over the top of the last mountain before he reached the ocean. He slowed to a crawl in a modified and not quite controlled slide down the backside of the incline. Gullies turned into waterfalls, gutting the roadway as they tore their way across. Movement at the corner of his headlights caused Cutter to tap the brakes. At first he thought it was a deer, but on further inspection he realized it was a stump, riding on a gigantic mudflow off the clear-cut above him.

  A quick glance in the rearview confirmed that Cutter was abeam the slide. He stomped the gas to keep from being hit broadside and swallowed up in the mud. Fishtailing through the muck, he didn’t stop until he was well into the flat. Even then, it took a five-point turn on the narrow road so he could use the headlights to get a good look behind him. A monster mud slide with broken trees the size of his waist completely covered the road. There was no way the pickup could make it out until a road crew came out for cleanup.

  Cutter leaned against the wheel, thinking, making a plan. The rain kept falling, and he had no idea what lay ahead, so he turned the truck back around before some other portion of this road tried to kill him. The mud slide was certainly going to complicate matters with January Cross.

  The old logging road cut back to the south less than five minutes later, then ended abruptly at a soggy gravel apron and a thick stand of alder bushes. A barrier of logs at the end kept people from driving into the water. The white light from a lone boat at anchor burned brightly less than seventy-five meters away. Shrieking williwaws blew across the surface with every gust, turning the boat stern-to the shore, but the bay was absent the rollers and chop in the less protected waters just outside. It was not, however, absent the driving rain.

  Cutter turned off his lights. He watched the squat vessel weather vane with the shifting wind while he mulled over his suspicions about January Cross.

  Never a man to think for too long when he had the opportunity to act, Cutter flashed his headlights on and off several times, signaling Tide Dancer that someone was on shore. He’d told January he might need to talk to her again. If he was any judge of human nature, he thought she half expected him to drop by.

  There was movement in the boat, then the flash of light as she signaled him back. Cutter watched through a pair of binoculars from the dry cab of the pickup as she looked back at him with her own pair of binoculars from the dry wheelhouse. It was too dark to get a read on her face, but he thought he might have seen her frown. Unhappy or not, she donned her foul weather gear. The door swung open a moment later. Cutter looked on guiltily as she left the comfort of her warm boat and made her way through the rain to a skiff that was tied off the stern rail. It took her a moment to get the engine started in the cold air of the storm.

  He turned on his lights again so she could see to navigate but moved the truck at an angle so as not to shine them full in her eyes. Raindrops peppered the surface of the bay, throwing up a layer of back-splash spray a foot above the surface. The little outboard screamed above the wind as Cross approached the shore. One hand clutched the tiller, the other clamped an orange nor’easter rain hat on top of her head against the wind. Cutter backed the pickup into a hollow in the alders, getting it off the main roadway, and then stood on the shore in the downpour, waiting. He stepped up as soon as he heard the skiff’s bow scrape gravel.

  “I’m surprised you made the trip!” January shouted above the hiss of rain and howling wind.

  “I know,” Cutter said, sloshing in to push the boat back into deep water before he climbed over the side. “Mud slide has the road completely blocked!”

  “That sounds good!” she yelled, throwing the boat into reverse. “I’ve been too busy to eat!”

  Cutter tried again, holding on to his own hat now. “I said the road is blocked!”

  She gave him a thumbs-up. “Great! I’m starving.”

  Cutter gave up and returned the thumbs-up, deciding to wait until they were on the boat. He’d either just made a poor woman venture out in the driving rain so he could ask her a few questions—or he was about to explain to a murderer that he needed to spend the night.

  CHAPTER 35

  GARZA GRABBED A WOODEN HANDRAIL BESIDE THE DINING TABLE and braced himself. They were in the teeth of the storm now and Pilar skidded down the face of another wave, plowing into the trough at the bottom. The incredible headwind sent monstrous waves breaking over the bow, slowing the boat to a wallowing crawl.

  It was late, but no one could go down below without getting sick. The storm made the pitching boat feel much smaller than it was. Fausto wrestled the wheel, peering back and forth from the rain-streaked windscreen to the glow of the GPS, working hard to keep from running aground. He’d suggested they stop, but Garza forced him to press on, determined to retrieve the media card before the body washed up on shore. This island was far from uninhabited. A body would bring an investigation and it was only a matter of time before someone doing the investigating recognized the fool Camacho on the footage.

  Another wave broke, shoving the bow downward and holding it there for an agonizing moment. Garza released a penned-up breath when they bobbed back up again. Fausto cursed and readjusted his seat. According to his last report, if they didn’t all drown, they would round the bottom of the island sometime close to midnight. At that point they would stop beating against the storm and move into the lee of the islands that formed a barrier between the fetch of the open ocean and Prince of Wales Island, bringing welcome relief from the monstrous waves.

  Garza looked across the table at the pitiful prisoner and forced a smile. She looked away, obviously terrified to be living on the same earth with him. It had been a mistake to force her to the brink by killing Beti before her eyes. He should have let the poor girl hold on to some small possibility that she might survive this encounter. Of course, her survival had become impossible from the moment she’d lifted the camera to her eye and filmed the face of Ernesto Camacho. And now she was a witness to Beti’s killing. Perhaps that had been a mistake. No, he thought, he needed to make a point. That was
all there was to it.

  Luis had asked to be the one to kill Beti, but she’d been standing there talking incessantly, making such demands—and it had just happened. Garza looked at this trembling woman sitting across from him. Perhaps he would let Luis kill her.

  Luis, he was not very smart, but he was loyal and deserved to be rewarded once in a while. The skinny man with the rat-mustache now sat across the salon next to the aft exit, his face bent over a five-gallon bucket, sallow and green. Garza had warned him about throwing up on the carpet. Chago slouched at the navigation station across from the dinette. He leaned forward, elbows on the small desk, head in his hands. He wasn’t seasick, but he was broody. It didn’t really matter to Garza. Chago was always glum about something. He did his job. That’s what mattered.

  And Beti, well, if Chago knew how to tie a knot and the nautical chart was correct, Beti Cárdenas would remain strapped to a twenty-kilo Lewmar anchor, thirty fathoms below the surface.

  * * *

  Carmen had seen violence before. She’d been walking out of the Costco in Commerce with her grandmother when a gangbanger had dragged a girl out of his car and stomped her to death right there in the parking lot. He had looked like a monster, with sagging pants, a shaved head, and a face covered with tattoos.

  Manuel Alvarez-Garza, on the other hand, was a good-looking guy, the kind she would have talked to in a club. He was probably ten years older than her, but not old enough to be gross—and he had money, which made the age gap even less. He wore pressed khaki slacks and an expensive cotton shirt rolled up with one turn at the cuffs. His Brooks Brothers alligator belt alone was likely worth more than her first car. He had no visible tattoos and his hair and nails were neat and well groomed. When he spoke, his voice was soft and even.

  And that made him all the more terrifying.

  “The devil will not be dressed as a monster, my child,” Carmen Delgado’s grandmother would often say. “Oh, no. The devil will be handsome. He will come to you like a lover and he will smile and offer you a sweet.”

  Carmen had never felt so trapped. Garza had shot his girlfriend as if she were a stray dog. His men had dutifully dumped her overboard without so much as a shrug. Luis looked like he wanted to kill everyone on the boat. And Chago, who had seemed a tenuous ally, would no longer even meet her eye. Even the boat seemed bent on killing her, on the verge of sinking with each crashing wave.

  She racked her brain on what to do when they reached the cove. If they were able to find Greg’s body, she still owed Garza another media card. She could tell him where it was but she might as well put a gun to Cassandra’s head herself if she did that. There had to be a way to get these men the second copy of the footage without getting anyone else murdered. She just had to figure it out before they reached the cove.

  Across the table, Garza smiled benignly.

  “I am afraid this storm is making you ill, my dear,” he said. “Eat this. It will settle your stomach.” He pressed a piece of ginger candy into her hand like the devil that he was.

  CHAPTER 36

  “YOU WANT A PIECE OF CAKE?” JANUARY CROSS ASKED WHILE Cutter hung his dripping raincoat on the wet locker just inside the door next to hers. “It’s store-bought but it might take the edge off your chill. Easy to get hypothermia out there in the rain.”

  “I’m fine,” Cutter said. “Not much of a cake guy.” Havoc came up to sniff his leg, then, clearly not impressed, turned and went below.

  Cross was still dressed in the same clothes from earlier that day, but both hoodie and jeans had dark blotches where rain had worked its way past her foul-weather gear. She crossed her arms and stood back to look him up and down in the harsh yellow glow of her cabin lights. A large video camera with clear plastic housing sat on the dinette table to the port side of the salon, along with a half dozen smaller GoPro units. A pile of red shop rags and various tools said she’d been working on the cameras before Cutter signaled her.

  “Likely story about the mud slide,” she said. “I’ve never had a guy use that one on me before.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s the only story I have.” He wiped rainwater out of his eyes with the back of his hand, and, out of habit, he scanned the room for weapons. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything.

  “There’s plenty of room on the boat,” she said. “But you’re bound to ask me a lot of questions since you’re staying the night. Do you need to read me my rights or something?”

  Cutter nodded, feeling a familiar flutter of adrenaline in his chest. Was she testing the water? “Maybe I should,” he said. “If you have something to hide.”

  “Oh, Deputy Cutter,” she sighed as if she were completely exhausted. “The sum total of the things I have to hide would mortify you.”

  “So, it sounds like you’re hungry?” Cutter changed the subject.

  “Don’t know where you got that idea.” January grinned. “Did it have anything to do with the incoherent begging for you to cook me dinner when I picked you up in the skiff?”

  Cutter raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I could hear you fine about the mud slide. I just hoped you’d whip up one of those cool recipes I saw written down in your notebook.”

  “I told you,” he said, smiling for the third time that day. “Those recipes are double top secret.” He glanced at his watch. “It is dinnertime, but mind if I borrow your satellite phone? I’ll cover the cost.”

  “Knock yourself out,” January said. “But you’ll have to stand there with the door open in order to get a signal.”

  On January’s advice, Cutter stood half in, half out so he could get a signal and not get completely drenched. He braced the aft door against the wind with his foot. Even in the protected bay, the storm made it impossible to hear over the phone.

  Fontaine seemed unimpressed that he’d just about been pushed off the mountain by a mud slide. She gave the information to Trooper Benjamin, who promised to pass it along to highway maintenance so they could get the road cleared once the storm abated.

  Cutter’s next call was to Mim. His heart sank a little when Matthew answered.

  “It’s Uncle Arliss!” he shouted, calling over his brother. They had a habit of holding the phone between them so talking to one always meant talking to them both.

  He asked if they were being good and obeying Grumpy’s rules. They laughed their seven-year-old belly laughs and said they were obeying the fun ones. They asked when he was coming home. It had been a long time since anyone had asked Cutter that question. For some reason, it filled him with immeasurable loneliness.

  “I’ll be home before too long,” he said. “Is your mom there?”

  Mim must have been standing beside them because she came on the line immediately.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Just thought I’d check in,” he said. “Let you know I made it safe.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. “Did you catch your bandit?”

  “We did,” Cutter said. “Chased him into the woods. Big fun.”

  “I’m sure the boys will want to hear all the gory details.” She paused. “Not that I don’t. I just mean—”

  “It’s okay,” Cutter said. “I get it. Gory details have never been your thing. Listen, this is a satellite phone so it’s costing a bajillion bucks a minute. I gotta go.”

  “I’m glad you called,” she said.

  “Me too,” he said. He ended the call and stepped back inside feeling flushed.

  “Checking in with the wife and kids?” January looked up from the dinette where she sat with a cloth cleaning the lenses on her pile of cameras.

  “My sister-in-law and her kids,” he corrected.

  “Okay,” she said. “If that’s the way you want to play it.”

  Cutter stood at the door looking at her. “Why would you doubt my story?”

  “Because you sound like you doubt your story,” she said.

  “Touché,” Cutter said. “Doubtful or not, the story’s a lon
g one.” He picked up one of the GoPros. “Trooper Benjamin says you spend a lot of time around the south end of the island.”

  “Getting right down to business, huh?”

  “I did ask to borrow your phone first,” Cutter said. “Didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “No worries,” January said. “Tlingit people have a figure at potlatches and feasts called Naa Kaani. He’s the guy on the totem poles wearing the button blanket and holding the speaking staff. He keeps the meeting in order.” She passed him a wooden spoon that was sitting on the table. “Here is your speaking staff. You have the floor.”

  “The south side of the island,” Cutter reminded her.

  “Yes,” January said. “I go where the orcas go. This pod liked the fishing down there. Now that the herring are in, they’ll be up here.”

  “Carmen Delgado and Greg Conner had supposedly gone to shoot some footage on the south end the day they disappeared.”

  “You mean the day I threatened them?” January said.

  “Yep. That’s the day.”

  “Footage of what?”

  “That’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out,” Cutter said.

  January went back to cleaning the lenses. He noticed she used her left hand a great deal in her work.

  “I didn’t notice before,” Cutter said. “Are you left-handed?”

  “Depends,” she said. “Is your killer left-handed?”

  He shrugged.

  “No,” she said, going back to work on the lens. “I’m sort of ambidextrous. I’m predominately right-handed when I commit any nefarious deeds though.”

  “I’ll make a note of that,” Cutter said.

  “Anyway,” January said. “I rarely see anyone out there besides a few fishing boats. The production crews use small skiffs though, so they’d be near shore. I might never notice them. Carmen may have had one extra fuel tank onboard when they zipped by me yesterday, but I think I would have noticed a bunch of spare cans. That limits their range out of Craig Harbor to a few dozen miles.”