Open Carry

by Marc Cameron

  “I’ve never worked an officer-involved shooting,” Benjamin said. “But I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Okay,” Cutter said. “And we’ll need to get another dive team in here to retrieve Greg Conner’s body. But before we do anything, I need to go down one more time to find my grandpa’s revolver.”

  * * *

  The Colt Python lay on top of a flat rock in sixty-four feet of water, as if Grumpy had positioned it there to make it easier to find. It took Cutter longer to put on the dive gear than it did for him to locate the gun.

  Trooper Allen came around the island in the Department of Public Safety boat and anchored in the bay to protect the crime scene and await more divers from the Alaska Bureau of Investigation out of Ketchikan.

  January and Cassandra rode back to town with Cutter while Carmen Delgado went with Fontaine and the trooper. An hour and a half later, the civilians were all dropped off at the medical clinic. Officer Simeon met the three peace officers down the street from an unpainted plywood house on the outskirts of Klawock. He held a folded piece of paper in his hand.

  “Any trouble getting it?” Benjamin said.

  The Native officer shook his head. “Surprisingly, no,” he said. “Judge Faulkner said a couple of knots and a left-handed Flemish coil was pretty thin probable cause. It was the last little bit of evidence that made him sign off.”

  “Mind covering the back?” Benjamin asked, looking at Simeon.

  “Hell no, I don’t mind,” Simeon said. “They always run out the back.”

  “That kind of thinking could get you hired,” Lola said. “I’ll come with you.”

  The full name of the man known only as Bean around Prince of Wales Island was Bernard Everett Anthony Norton. Contrary to Officer Simeon’s prediction, he didn’t run out the back, but answered the front door at Trooper Benjamin’s first knock.

  Bean wore a pair of loose gray sweatpants and a sleeveless T-shirt, the belly of which was covered in oil and grime. His face was flushed, his wispy hair disheveled. The area around his mouth was red as if he’d just rubbed away some lipstick before coming to the door.

  Trooper Benjamin handed Bean a copy of the search warrant and walked in before the man could speak.

  The smell of sardines and cheap perfume made Cutter decide to leave the door open.

  “You the only one in here?” Benjamin asked.

  “Just me,” Bean said. “What’s this all about?”

  “How about we make everybody a little more comfortable?” Cutter said, turning Bean around and handcuffing him behind his back. He set the man in a wooden chair in the middle of the open living room while the trooper contacted Simeon on the radio and told them it was secure and to come inside.

  Cutter snapped on a pair of latex gloves and walked straight to the workbench in a small room off the kitchen. “Got it,” he said, holding up a flat wrench used to build AR-15 rifles. It had the perfect number of cutouts to match the wounds in Millie Burkett’s head. He passed it to Fontaine, who’d come up behind him. She held it to her nose.

  “Smells like bleach,” she said.

  Bean’s eyes flitted around the room, following the movement of the searchers. “It gets dirty,” he said. “I clean it sometimes.”

  “With bleach?” Simeon said, rolling his eyes.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cutter said. “We have the tool to match to the marks left in the victim’s skull.”

  Benjamin took custody of the murder weapon and read Bean his rights while the rest of the group continued their search.

  Fontaine stepped back from a chest of drawers and held up a pair of black satin panties. She looked at Cutter and whispered, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Hey,” Cutter said. “If a guy wants to wear ladies’ drawers that’s his business, but people have killed to keep lesser secrets hidden.”

  Simeon’s voice came from the bathroom. “I got a video camera!”

  The writing on a piece of gaffer’s tape identified the camera as belonging to the FISHWIVES! production company and on loan to Millie Burkett. A short review of the video revealed an almost unrecognizable image of Bernard Everett Anthony Norton cavorting around on the deck of Ernesto Camacho’s boat dressed in a lady’s nightgown.

  “Why didn’t you toss the camera?” Simeon said, shaking his head.

  “I just like to watch it sometimes,” Bean said, letting his chin fall to his chest.

  EPILOGUE

  JUSTIFIED OR NOT, CUTTER’S SHOOTING HAD TO BE INVESTIGATED—and being the subject of such an investigation is only slightly less excruciating than being the victim of the shooting itself. Chief Jill Phillips was unable to fly because of her advanced pregnancy, but she sent the operational supervisor to Prince of Wales Island to look out for the best interests of her deputies on the ground. The US Marshals Service General Council and Office of Professional Responsibility asked the Alaska State Troopers to do an independent review of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Manuel Alvarez-Garza, Luis Sandoval, and Fausto Rodriquez. Investigators from Anchorage along with a blustery Sergeant Yates from Ketchikan asked Cutter to do a walk-through of the incident. They watched with keen interest as he took them through the choreography of what had happened underwater and then on Heceta Island with the bears.

  Cassandra had not said anything since her four words, which only served to bolster Cutter’s case since it made her look even more like she’d needed saving. January and Carmen both corroborated Cutter’s timeline of the events in the water and added plenty of pathos of their own.

  Three days after the shooting, the ABI investigators shook Cutter’s hand. Though they didn’t discuss their findings, it seemed clear that any recommendations to the prosecutor would be in his favor.

  “NHI,” Fontaine said, as she walked out of the trooper post with Cutter. It was almost six in the evening and the low sun stretched their shadows across the parking lot. The Polynesian woman’s long, black hair had escaped its bun and hung thick around her shoulders. Somehow, she’d found a flower to stick behind her ear.

  “Pardon?”

  “NHI,” Fontaine said. “No Humans Involved. Makes things much easier when all the bad guys are so . . . well, bad.”

  “Maybe a little,” Cutter said, thinking she was right, and wishing she wasn’t. Killing a man shouldn’t ever get easier, but it did.

  Gerald Burkett had been able to bond out on his own recognizance, while Kenny Douglas remained in jail. Officially in federal custody, Hayden Starnes would fly back to Anchorage the following morning with the operational supervisor and Fontaine since she hadn’t been directly involved in the shooting.

  Cutter looked at his watch. “I’m going to head down to the harbor for a bit and say good-bye. You can come along if you want.”

  Sam Benjamin was about to get off shift, so there was not much chance of that. That also explained the new hairdo.

  Fontaine shook her head. “The chief did tell me I’m supposed to keep you from throat punching anybody until we get home. But you should be good at the harbor without a Jiminy Cricket.”

  Cutter nodded toward the trooper post and waved at Sam Benjamin.

  “Maybe I should be your conscience, Deputy Fontaine,” Cutter said.

  “Deputy Teariki,” she corrected. “Think I’ll go back to my maiden name before headquarters sends the new creds. And don’t worry about me, boss. My people were known to eat our enemies until the Christian missionaries sailed in and told us we were naked heathens. Thanks to them, we got heaps of conscience.”

  * * *

  Cutter found January in the South Harbor. Carmen Delgado was helping her carry groceries and other provisions onboard Southern Cross, the Westsail 32 that January had purchased the day before.

  Cutter stood on the dock looking at the shippy little double-ender. It was older, built sometime in the seventies, but the furled sails looked crisp and white. The teak bowsprit and toe rails glowed in the long light with a recent coat of varni
sh. The cockpit was small, meant for open water cruising, so Cutter kept out of the way and handed the women canvas bags of food out of the trolley they’d rolled down from the parking lot.

  He passed a cardboard flat of canned fruit salad across the lifelines to Carmen Delgado. “Are you going with her?”

  “I wish,” Carmen said. “I’m not as brave as she is. Anyway, I’ve got to stick around here until the network can send someone to take over for me.”

  “Take over?” Cutter said. “I thought FISHWIVES! was your baby.”

  “It is,” Carmen said. “I mean, it was. I don’t think I can stomach what the show’s turned into. Fitz Jonas kicked his wife out and now she’s living with one of my camera guys. The network says it makes for great television drama, but I just think it’s sad. I still get ‘created by’ credit so I make money as long as the show’s successful, even if I’m not the executive producer. That frees me up to explore some other ideas—maybe something about drug cartel violence.” She looked over her shoulder at January. “Or badass breast cancer survivors.”

  Carmen’s cell phone rang. She spoke for a moment, and then returned it to the pocket of her fleece jacket. “Sorry,” she said to January. “Svetlana is having a fit about her wardrobe. Before FISHWIVES! came to this island wardrobe was whatever they put on in the morning, and now . . . Anyway, I gotta run.”

  She gave Cutter and January each a hug in turn, promising to stop by the next morning, and then trotted up the dock toward her car.

  “So,” Cutter said, sitting in the cockpit of January’s new purchase in his stockinged feet. It didn’t matter that he’d save her life, she wasn’t about to let him on her boat wearing boots with black rubber soles. “You’re really going to do this?”

  January sat down beside him, groaning from a long day of double checking systems and provisioning the sailboat. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, catching the last few rays of the sun as it set across the bay. “You’ve been around me for what, five days now?”

  “Is that all?” Cutter mused. “Seems like longer.”

  “It’s long enough for you to learn that I’m not much of a people person. I’m rude, and crude, and if you ask the film crew, they’ll tell you I’ve got a flaming temper. I mean, I can get along with maybe five or six people in the entire world—and even you guys would get tired of my foul mouth and bad attitude before a week went by.”

  “I’m glad you included me in the list,” Cutter said.

  “It’s a hell of a lot safer for civilization if I get away from it for a while. So, I figure I got two choices,” she went on. “I can string up a blue tarp out near Blind Bob, or I can cut the dock lines and come to grips with my bitchy demons while I’m safely out at sea. I think my sailor dad would be a lot happier if I did the boat thing instead of turning hobo. I’ve had my eye on this beauty since the ‘For Sale’ sign hit it.”

  “You’re thinking Hawaii?”

  January shrugged. “I’m thinking south, then west. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten in my planning. Cyclone season is just winding down in the Pacific. Maybe I’ll island hop until I find a place I want to wait out the next season.”

  Cutter tried to imagine her alone on the wide open ocean. “You’ll take a sat phone, right—and check in regularly with your parents?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t mind an e-mail now and again,” Cutter said. “Or even a postcard from Bora Bora—so I don’t worry.”

  “You know what I’ve noticed about you?”

  Cutter braced himself. “What’s that?”

  “You seem to go for birds with broken wings.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Well, I’m broken,” she said. “There’s no denying that. But I wonder if you’d like hanging out with me if I was just plain old January. Sometimes, well-meaning people pick up something injured and try to fix it. That might work with domestic animals—but it does more harm than good with wild things. More often than not, I think, those wild things get panicked at all the attention—and only hurt themselves worse trying to get away.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Cutter said, feigning a tear. “They grow up so fast.”

  “I’d invite you to spend the night on the boat,” she said. “But you seem to have some unresolved feelings for your sister-in-law.”

  “Sounds creepy when you say it out loud.”

  “But you don’t deny it?”

  “Well,” he groaned. “I won’t spend the night. Let’s put it that way.”

  “Dammit,” she said.

  “I would, however, cook you dinner in your new galley.”

  January turned to look at him, eyes brighter. “Something from your double top secret notebook?”

  “You bet.” Cutter smiled.

  January held out her hand, waiting for him to fish the notebook out of his pocket. “It’s a good thing you’re not spending the night,” she said. “I’d cast off while you were sleeping and your ass would wake up in Tahiti.”

  * * *

  Cutter was at the docks again by dawn, having spent a good deal of the night looking out across the dark harbor from the deck of his apartment not two hundred meters away from January’s sailboat. Walking around the docks and looking at boats was, for him at least, far more enjoyable than just about anything else.

  Seagulls squawked and squabbled, fighting over the tiny baitfish that rose to the surface in the quiet waters of Shelter Cove. A low tide gave the air a slightly fishy smell. The snow-covered peak of Mount Sunny Hay glowed a golden orange with the coming sun.

  January had said most of her good-byes the day before, so only Linda, Carmen, Cassandra, and Cutter showed up to see her off. True to her word, Carmen left her camera crews at home—though the departure of the husband-stealing siren would have surely made for some good footage.

  Sailboats are inherently quiet, even when under power, and January cast off her dock lines and slipped away in relative silence, the thrum of the Westsail’s little diesel engine barely audible above the cry of gulls.

  Cutter’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he stepped down the dock, unwilling to mar the solemnness of the departure with chatter. He frowned, grumpy that anyone would call him at this hour—until he saw it was Mim.

  “Hey,” he said, feeling the familiar flush that came over him when they spoke.

  “I have an early shift this morning,” Mim said. “Thought I’d check in. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Not at all,” Cutter said. “I’m stretching my legs down at the docks, just looking at boats.”

  “Really?” Mim said, sounding almost giddy. “I can’t think of anything much better than walking the docks and looking at boats.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Years ago—almost twenty now—I went to Prince of Wales Island with members of the Alaska Fugitive Task Force to track a man suspected of murder who had fled into the woods. We eventually found our man, and I fell in love with the place despite the grisly circumstances (and boy, were they grisly). In any case, the old growth forests and incredibly interesting people made me sure I would someday set a book there.

  This is it—and, as always, I had a great deal of help.

  My wife, Victoria, listens, reads, plots, and generally puts up with being married to a guy who writes about murder and mayhem. My barber and unofficial publicist, Linda, let my wife and I stay in her vacation home in Florida while I researched the area where Arliss Cutter grew up. My good friend Steve Szymanski introduced me to Ben Mank, who was kind enough to answer my questions about what it’s like to be an Alaska State Trooper on Prince of Wales Island.

  My friends Molly Mayock, Rob Pollard, Chris Loft, and Shannon Murphy gave me valuable insight and background in the world of reality television.

  My buds at Northern Knives in Anchorage, Mike, Lori, and Doug, offer me a great place to sit and talk weapons and mayhem—which I don’t get to do often enough.

  Though my wife and I took several
trips back to Craig and Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, much of Open Carry was written on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands—the ancestral home of Lola Teariki Fontaine. The list of good people there is too long to include all of them, but I do want to thank my friend’s Bill, Mii, Tuakana, George, and Karleen—and especially Karla Eggelton and Halatoa Fua of Cook Islands Tourism, and Jean Mason of the Cook Islands Library and Museum.

  The publishing world can be a rough one, but I’ve been fortunate to work with Robin Rue of Writers House literary agency, as well as Gary Goldstein and the rest of the folks at Kensington Publishing for the last sixteen years.

  And of course, a big thanks to all my brothers and sisters with the US Marshals Service who raised me from a pup—you are, and always will be, my family.