Open Carry

by Marc Cameron

  “How long have you been sick?”

  “You’re awfully intuitive,” she said. “Was it my lopsided chest or the freakishly short haircut?”

  Cutter leaned back against the counter and shook his head. “I’ve been through it before,” he said. “My wife.”

  “Did she . . . ?”

  He nodded. “Five years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Cutter said. “But you’re out here so you must have beaten it.”

  “It was a mutual beating,” January said. “I was diagnosed with cancer the same day I discovered my husband was having an affair with the choir teacher at the school where we both taught. He bawled his head off and begged me to take him back, but I couldn’t stomach him any more than I could the chemo. I lost a C-cup breast and a six-foot boob all in the same month.” She gave a sad chuckle. “I got sick of everyone telling me what my new normal was going to be like. The fact is, I just got sick of everyone, period. After my last round of chemo finished up, I was up late one night crying into my keyboard and surfing singles sites looking for guys who might be interested in a bald woman with one semibodacious ta-ta. . . or, semibodacious ta, I guess—”

  “Stop that,” Cutter chided gently.

  “Anyway, I came across this job doing whale studies for the state of Alaska. It was remote and I’m used to remote. I grew up in a village near Juneau but didn’t want to go back there right away. The interview was over the phone, so the cancer never even came up. By the time I showed up, my hair had grown just enough to look edgy on purpose, so no one around here suspected. I don’t want my identity to be the sad woman recovering from breast cancer.” January leaned her head back against the dinette seat and stared at the ceiling. “I really don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

  Cutter turned and used the hand towel to take the soup out of the oven and place it carefully on the stove top. He nodded to himself when he saw the cheese had bubbled over and run down the sides—just like Grumpy liked it.

  “I’m a stranger,” he said. “It’s easy to talk to someone you’re not likely to see again.”

  “There is that,” January said. “But what if—”

  A hoarse cough pulled their attention to the forward stairs beyond the galley. Cutter turned to find a sleepy-eyed Native girl with mussed hair holding an equally mussed dog in her arms. The girl scratched her cheek and blinked at the cabin lights as she sniffed the air, presumably smelling the soup. Havoc did the same as she plunked him down by the table.

  “Cassandra!” January gasped. “How did you get here?”

  The girl pointed over her shoulder and leaned her head sideways, closing her eyes.

  January looked at her with narrow eyes. “You were sleeping in the quarter berth, weren’t you?”

  Cassandra nodded, moving toward the soup.

  “Careful!” Cutter said. “That’s hot.”

  January stood and smoothed the girl’s messy bed head. It was easy to see the air of mutual trust. “This is my friend, Deputy Cutter,” she said.

  “Arliss,” Cutter said, stooping to eye level as he shook her hand. “Are you hungry?”

  Cassandra nodded.

  Cutter winked. “Powerful stuff, this soup. It will make a person friends for life.”

  January gave a soft smile, looking genuinely happy to have the company during the downpour. “I’ll try to be careful.”

  Cutter passed the bowls one at a time, careful not to spill the near-boiling soup. “Cassandra can have mine,” he said. “There’s enough for me to make another. Won’t take me a minute.”

  January gave Cassandra a spoon. “Don’t burn your tongue,” she said. “I’ll get some extra sleeping bags out of the locker below. Lucky I have enough for a slumber party. I think I even have popcorn so we can stay up all night talking and painting each other’s toenails.” She looked at Cutter. “Bet they don’t cover that in the fugitive-hunting handbook.”

  Cutter gave a somber nod. “They do not.”

  “Better than sleeping on a boat with a murder suspect,” she said.

  “That’s the truth.”

  She leaned in close enough Cutter could feel the warmth of her breath. “You think she heard us talking about my boob?”

  Cutter shook his head.

  January stood there, close.

  Cutter eyed the rain hitting the windows. “Mind if I make one more call?”

  She nodded at the satellite phone. It was right where he left it, on the edge of the dinette. “You know I didn’t kill Millie Burkett, don’t you?”

  Cutter walked toward the door, turning before he went out to brave the rain. “Grumpy wasn’t just a cook,” he said. “He was an incredibly gifted cop, and he had a saying when it came to homicides—‘Ever ybody’s a suspect but me, and sometimes, I’m not so sure about me.’ ”

  CHAPTER 39

  SAM BENJAMIN LEFT TROOPER ALLEN TO TAKE LIN BURKETT HOME, while he and Fontaine headed over to the FISHWIVES! crew housing. Pounding rain pelted Benjamin’s Tahoe with such intensity he may as well have been driving through a car wash. Pavement blended with forest, wrapping him in a black sheet and forcing him to make an educated guess as to the whereabouts of the road as he drove. Even so, he tore his eyes away from the thumping windshield wipers long enough to steal a quick, sideways glance at Lola Fontaine. The subdued glow of the dash lights added angles to her high cheekbones. The line of her jaw . . . well, the line of her jaw gave him a stomachache. She was the only woman he’d ever seen who looked good bathed in ghostly green light. He caught her throwing him a couple of glances as well, at least he thought he had. But, she’d let it slip about a husband a couple of times—often enough that he knew the guy’s name was Larry. Odd, though, that she didn’t wear a ring.

  He cleared his throat, half afraid she might hear his thoughts in the silence. “What’s the story with your boss? I mean, does that guy ever smile?”

  Fontaine turned slightly to meet his gaze. She laughed, showing incredibly white teeth, looking even prettier in the light. “I know,” she said. “He’s a piece of work. . . .”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Benjamin said. “I’d bet he’s a good guy to have around in a fight.”

  “True enough.” She gave a qualified nod. “But there seems to be an awful lot of fights when he’s around.”

  “I can imagine,” Benjamin said. “He seems pretty old-school—the ‘you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride’ kind of cop. There’s still a place for that, I suppose, but old-school will get you put in a new prison these days.”

  Fontaine started to answer, but her cell phone began to play “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” by Drowning Pool.

  The trooper took his eyes off the road again long enough to shoot her a look at the choice of songs.

  She blessed him with another toothy grin. “Cutter’s ringtone.”

  “Appropriate,” he said.

  Fontaine answered the call, making little grunts to show she was listening while he presumably briefed her about something. “He’s driving,” she said at length. “Get this, boss. Millie Burkett kept a diary. You’ll never guess who she was having an affair with.... How did you know? . . . That’s friggin’ weird. You know that? Yeah . . . Hello . . . You there?”

  Fontaine held the phone away from her ear, looking at the face of it to see if she still had a connection. She turned to the trooper, concerned. “He got cut off.”

  “Not surprised,” Benjamin said, pulling the Tahoe up in front of the FISHWIVES! apartments at the edge of town. He killed the engine, listening to the rain, wishing he could forget about murders and missing people and just sit there with the deputy for a while. “He had to be calling from Jan’s satellite phone. They’re great tools, but in this weather, the clouds can do a number on the connection. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Rain fell down, up, and sideways, drenching them by the time they reached the outer door that led into the apartment buildi
ng. The overpowering smell of new carpeting hit Benjamin full in the face when he pulled it open. Prior to FISHWIVES! the apartments were rented mainly to hunters and fishermen who visited the island. The production staff had balked at the 1970s shag that smelled like deer musk and fish blood. Carmen Delgado paid for new carpet and paint. The owner didn’t care. Once these people left, the hunters and fishermen who returned would be happy with the refurbished digs—so long as the idiots in the crew didn’t burn the place down first.

  Once inside, Trooper Benjamin consulted a note written on the palm of his left hand, and then moved down the dimly lit hallway until he found number 3, Kenny Douglas’s apartment. He pounded on the door with his fist. Fontaine stood on the other side of the frame. Guilty people did crazy things when they were cornered, so both the trooper and the deputy made certain they didn’t park themselves in the fatal funnel just in case Kenny’s crazy involved a .44 Magnum and the wooden door.

  The door directly across the hall opened a crack. An African American girl with cornrows braided with colorful beads peeked out. When she saw the trooper, she opened the door all the way and smiled. She turned and hissed over her shoulder, “It’s okay, Sarah. It’s just the cops.” Leaning casually into the hall, she said, “We had a drunk fisherman the other night who thought he lived here. Sarah just about peed herself thinking you were him.”

  “We’re not,” Fontaine said, giving the young woman a humorless look. “Kenny Douglas around?”

  “He’s in number three,” the girl said.

  Benjamin nodded. “Doesn’t appear to be home.”

  The girl pointed to number 5 as her roommate Sarah peaked over her shoulder in curiosity. “He might be over in Tucker’s room. I heard noise coming from there a few minutes ago. Sometimes they get together and play Assassin’s Creed.”

  “Thanks,” Benjamin said.

  “Anytime.” Both girls lingered in their doorway, probably hoping to see something interesting since the police were there.

  “You can both go back inside now,” Fontaine said sternly, shooing the girls into their room before turning down the hall.

  It took two solid minutes of pounding before the door to apartment number 5 finally flew open. Tucker Jackson stuck his shirtless chest out, ready to tell off whoever was making the racket. He started to retreat back inside when he saw the trooper, but Fontaine placed her hand on the door and said, “Not so fast, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I didn’t know it was you guys,” the cameraman said. He wore nothing but a loose pair of gray basketball shorts and his face was flushed as if he’d been running. It was only then that Benjamin noticed the errant flap of dark bangs that had been so bothersome the night of the bonfire was now held up high on his forehead with a bobby pin. Even in his pretrooper days, when he’d had longer hair, Sam Benjamin could honestly say he’d never worn a bobby pin.

  “We need to talk to Kenny,” the trooper said. He couldn’t decide if the flap of hair or the new look bothered him more. There were just some people that rubbed him wrong—they had a bad smell about them. Tucker Jackson was one of those people. He might not be a killer, but he couldn’t be trusted. Sam Benjamin was certain of that.

  “He’s not in his apartment?” Jackson looked down the hall.

  “Well, he’s not answering.” Fontaine leaned sideways, trying to get a peek inside his room. Jackson pulled the door shut so only his eye and a strip of his face showed.

  The deputy pressed the issue. “I hear someone else. We understand Kenny Douglas comes over to play video games once in a while.”

  “He does,” Jackson said. “But he’s not here now.”

  The trooper cocked his head, looking Jackson in the eye. “Has anything ever led you to think Kenny might have had a . . . more than friendly relationship with Millie Burkett?”

  “What?” Jackson said. “No . . . I mean, Kenny comes on to all the girls, but . . .”

  “Stop covering for him, Tucker,” Fontaine said.

  “I’m not covering for him.”

  Fontaine raised dark eyebrows. “Then who’s in there with you?”

  Jackson whispered, “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”

  Benjamin pointed at the room with his left hand while his right drifted toward the grip of his Glock. “Kenny?” he said softly.

  Tucker Jackson groaned and shook his head, opening the door.

  Bright Jonas lay in a tangle of sheets on the bed at the far side of the small studio apartment. She had a knitted afghan with a weave much too large for Benjamin’s tastes pulled up to her chin.

  “I can’t believe you,” she spat, throwing Jackson a withering stare.

  Fontaine gave a tired sigh. “Well, you sure made it over here quick. You must have left right after we did. It’s none of my business, but I don’t see how you think you’ll get away with it in a town this small.”

  “This is a one-time thing.” All the woman’s earlier bravado had vanished. “It’ll kill poor Fitz if he finds out.”

  “I’m not driving over to tell him,” Benjamin said.

  Bright closed her eyes. “He headed out in the boat right after you left.”

  The trooper stifled a gasp. “By himself?”

  She nodded, the afghan moving in time with her quivering chin. “Checking the herring pens.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Bright,” Benjamin said, “but if he braved those seas to check the herring pens when there’s not a thing he can do about it if they blow away . . . I’m thinking he already knows.”

  Jackson pulled on a T-shirt. Fontaine looked at him and scoffed. “I’m not the morality police or anything, but have you seen the size of Fitz Jonas?”

  “He’s a gentle guy,” Jackson said, sounding as if he genuinely liked the man. “I can’t imagine him getting mad.”

  “Again, none of my business,” Fontaine said, “but screwing someone else’s wife doesn’t make a man mad. It makes him go berserk. My ex-husband suspected I was sleeping with every guy I worked with—though I never gave him cause. I’m pretty sure he’d have killed the guy if I had.”

  “Hey, I was thinking of a place where Kenny might be,” Tucker Jackson said, eager to change the subject. He bent over the dining room table to a map on a piece of paper he ripped from a spiral notebook. “The production company rents a little house up the hill in Klawock. We use it for storage mostly. Kenny’s kind of a shade tree mechanic so he keeps some tools out there as well to work on the two vans the company actually owns. I’ve heard him talk about taking women out there sometimes . . . for you know, privacy.”

  Benjamin studied the map before looking back and forth from Jackson to Bright Jonas. “You guys might try hunting a private spot yourselves next time—so I don’t end up having to arrest poor Fitz for a crime of passion.”

  Trooper Benjamin shut the door on his way out, and then passed the hand-drawn map to Fontaine. He shot her a sideways grin before they braved the driving rain to run to his Tahoe.

  “Ex-husband?”

  The Polynesian woman gave him a wide grin, showing her perfect white teeth. “Hm,” she said. “I never mentioned that?”

  CHAPTER 40

  CUTTER HELPED JANUARY CLEAR THE SOUP BOWLS OFF THE TABLE, then offered to take a look at her damaged dry suit while she did the dishes. He loved to cook, but hated the cleanup—not one of his most endearing qualities, as several of his ex-wives had pointed out.

  Cassandra sat across the salon at the navigation station, working contentedly on a pencil drawing of an orca. Havoc chewed a piece of rawhide at her feet.

  Outside, the storm raged on with a renewed fury. Huge drops of rain, driven by gale-force winds, pounded the cabin and hissed off the surface of the protected bay in a menacing, primordial moan. The boat swung like a kite at the end of the anchor, weather-vaning to a new position with each fickle gust.

  January peered out of a window above the sink. “Did you hear that?”

  Havoc stood and gave a short woof, followed by a lo
w growl, tawny hackles up.

  Cutter cocked his head, trying to hear over the gale. “The waves slapping the hull?”

  “I know that’s what it is,” January said. “But my overactive imagination makes me think—”

  She stopped in midsentence and they both looked at Cassandra.

  The girl sat poised with her pencil in the air, listening intently. After a moment, she shook her head and bent back over the drawing.

  “You guys have me acting crazy.” January twisted the dishrag, her cheeks flushing bright pink. “I’m usually just fine by myself.”

  Standing next to the dinette table, Cutter laid out the dry suit and then arched his back.

  “My legs could use a stretch anyway,” he said. “I’ll take a walk around before I settle in for the night.”

  “That’s just crazy talk.”

  “I don’t mind,” Cutter said.

  “That wind will blow you off the deck,” January said. “I’ll bet it’s gusting to forty knots.”

  “Seriously,” Cutter said. “I don’t mind getting wet.”

  “I’m not worried about you,” January said. “I’m worried about me getting wet. If you go overboard, Cassandra and I will have to go out and save you.”

  Cassandra looked up from her drawing and looked at Cutter, eyebrows raised, shaking her head as if to say, I’m not going out there.

  Cutter raised his hands in surrender and slid into the dinette seat. Havoc looked relieved he wasn’t going outside as well and curled up under Cassandra’s feet again.

  Cross’s dry suit had started life as midnight blue and charcoal, but hours of sun and salt had faded it to varying stages of gray. Heavier and more restrictive than the DUI suit he’d borrowed earlier from Benjamin, the thick neoprene operated on the same principle, keeping water out and warm air in. On this older suit, the neoprene itself acted as an insulator rather than relying on a quilted or fleece undergarment like the one under the thin DUI laminate. A long metal zipper ran in a slightly curved arc, from the left hip almost to the right shoulder. It was well waxed and appeared to function normally. A female cut, this suit was fuller in the hips with darts at the bust area. There were at least a dozen flimsy plastic grocery bags stuffed into the right cup pocket.