by Marc Cameron
He turned south, down the channel, past the tank farm and the sewage treatment plant to his left. He thought of running all the way to Stephens Passage. Auclair would hide him if he could get to the Valkyrie, but that was a no go. The wimpy fuel can in the skiff was only about half full, not nearly enough juice to get him thirty miles, especially not at this speed.
He turned to look behind him, winced at the pulse of pain it shot through his razor wounds, then slowed a hair, straining his ears, listening for pursuing boats in the fog.
Feeble lights told him he was abeam Douglas Harbor to his right. He slowed even more, cheating more to the middle of the narrow channel, hoping he could sneak past any waiting cops.
Schimmel had to get out of town – not so easy when the only way in and out was by boat or plane. Childers would know. Yeah. That was it. He’d give Dallas Childers a call. Childers would come meet him, tell him what he should do.
Tears welled in Schimmel’s eyes when Childers picked up on the second ring. He was gruff, dismissive when he answered, but he was always that way. It didn’t mean anything.
Schimmel gave a quick rundown of what had happened, trying not to cry, leaving out the part about taking the shaman’s rattle from the dig.
“So what do you think I should do?”
Silence.
Schimmel didn’t worry. Childers was probably trying to figure out the best way to get him out of here.
“I know a place,” Childers finally said. “It’s kind of a climb, but it’ll get you away from the cops.”
Schimmel listened to the directions and then turned the boat farther south toward the old Treadwell Mine. He felt better knowing that Childers was on his way. Yeah, he was gruff, unpolished, but he was the closest thing Dean Schimmel had to a friend.
Chapter 35
Harold Grimsson pounded the arm of his leather chair with the flat of his calloused hand. Dollarhyde’s voice poured from the speaker of the cell phone on the table beside him. The condescending bastard was telling him there was absolutely no way to kill the Hernandez brothers.
“Oh,” Grimsson said, sloshing the whiskey in his other hand as he smacked the chair again. “There’s always a way.”
“True enough,” Dollarhyde conceded. “If you accept the risks that go along with it.”
“What do I pay you for?” Grimsson’s voice rose nearly an octave. “Let me ask you that. I told you I wanted those little pendejo rats dead, what? Two weeks ago? You assure me that you’ll take care of it and then come back with nothing but excuses. My ancestors would have cut your head off with an axe!”
“Mr. Grim—”
“Don’t you Mr. Grimsson me! You gave me certain expectations when I hired you. Was it all a bag of shit?”
“No,” Dollarhyde said. “It was not all a bag of shit.” His voice was even, unflappable, as it always was, the mocking, ginger-ale-sipping, self-righteous son of a bitch. “I suppose I could get myself arrested and then shank both brothers myself during chow…”
Grimsson found himself nodding in agreement. He scooted forward in his chair and took a bracing slug of whiskey. Finally. A good idea. “Now you’re thinking like the guy I pay you to be. I know you don’t have the balls to do it yourself, but you could get your boy Schnitzel to do it.”
“Schimmel.”
“Shitzle, Shamwow. Makes no difference to me what his name is. I mean the weird bag of bones. Have him go break a bottle over some JPD cop’s skull. That takes at least one badge out of the equation, and he can do the Hernandez brothers when they toss his ass in Lemon Creek.”
“He’s connected with Valkyrie,” Dollarhyde said.
“Always with the why-nots,” Grimsson said. “So what if he’s connected with Valkyrie? Half the people in jail have probably dug ditches or broken rock for me at one point or another in their miserable lives. I want you to make this happen.”
“Yes, sir,” Dollarhyde said. He sounded unconvinced, but Grimsson didn’t doubt he would do as he was told.
“Now,” Grimsson said. “That other thing…”
* * *
Ephraim Dollarhyde ended the call and pitched the cell onto the blotter at the center of his desk. If it had been possible, he would have shot Grimsson through the phone lines. The arrogant fool thought he was oh-so-much smarter than everyone around him. Normally, that’s what Dollarhyde wanted him to think. The inertia of such monumental hubris made him easier to steer in the right direction. Dollarhyde had been the brains behind every important decision since he’d come aboard. Oh, Grimsson believed he was running things, but the idiot was too caught up in his whiskey-addled bravado. Kill him. Dump that. My grandfather would have cut your head off with an axe. In truth, Grimsson’s forefathers were cod fishermen for as far back as Dollarhyde could see. Still a rough lot, to be sure, but not the horn-helmeted, axe-wielding Vikings of legend Harold Grimsson liked to trot out there with every threat he made. And he made a lot.
Dollarhyde was the man behind the power. The chamberlain to the shogun. The special adviser with the king’s ear. But all too often kings and shoguns started to believe their own bullshit and forgot who propped them up. They began to think they were invincible, above the laws of probability and physics. Bulletproof.
Dollarhyde’s phone pinged, showing he’d missed a call. It was from Senator Fawsey. The brainless idiot had left a voice mail. An actual voice mail… Dollarhyde buried his face in both hands. These people were so incredibly exhausting. It wasn’t as if voice mails could be discovered by the FBI or anything… Groaning, Dollarhyde listened to the message.
As stupid as it was to leave the information, it was promising to hear.
According to the lawyer who’d bailed him out, Levi Fawsey had taken off at a dead run as soon as he hit the JPD parking lot. Childers and two other trusted men had rushed in to scour the area, checking the boy’s apartment and all his old haunts. He’d gone to ground. Disappeared. Senator Fawsey’s message said he had a couple of leads where his son might be staying. Thankfully, he didn’t leave the locations on the voice mail. He’d call when he knew more.
Dollarhyde deleted the voice mail, opening the app that was supposed to overwrite everything on his phone seven times. NSA-level protection, the app claimed. In reality, Dollarhyde knew the voice mail was still out there, on Fawsey’s phone, or just floating around in the phone company cloud, waiting for the FBI to grab and use it to bury everyone.
Done is done, he said to himself, and punched in the number for Dallas Childers.
The former Marine answered on the first ring.
“Yeah.”
“It’s me,” Dollarhyde said. “How’s Schimmel?”
“I just hung up from him.”
“So he’s alive…?”
“For now,” Childers gave a soft chuckle. “He’s hurting, though. You’re not going to like what he told me. Apparently, he was downtown and some cop took out after him. He said he had no choice but to run. It’s all over the news.”
Childers filled him in about the kid in the water.
Smart, Dollarhyde thought. Smarter than he gave Schimmel credit for.
“Did he say why he was downtown? Why the cops were after him?”
“Nope,” Childers said. “We’re supposed to meet in half an hour. You still think he might be the rat? That could be why he was running. If some deal went south or something.”
“Not likely,” Dollarhyde said. “Find out what you can when you meet.”
“You want him alive after the meeting?”
Dollarhyde thought about that. “Grimsson has a job for him, so, yes, keep him alive.”
“Unless he’s the rat.”
“Yeah,” Dollarhyde said, knowing there wasn’t much of a chance of that. “Unless he’s the rat.”
Chapter 36
Changing into dry clothes after being soaked to the skin for two hours was nearly as good as a nap. Though, Cutter had to admit, the cold water had drained him. A nap would have been welcome, if he�
�d had the time.
Bobby Tarrant arrived as Cutter stepped off the elevator into the lobby. Everyone, including the Forest Service LEO, stepped into the parking lot and crowded around Maycomb’s iPhone.
The YouTube video her friend at the radio station had found turned out to be a campaign commercial, produced during Fawsey’s first run for a seat on the state senate a decade before. His car dealerships had already made him wealthy, a man separate from the masses. It helped to be an everyman in Alaska politics – someone whom the people identified with, someone they could trust. It was hard to trust someone with money.
Cutter had spent a good portion of his career helping State Diplomatic Security with dignitary protection, dropping him into the grease of politics and politicians. Standing by the wall, radio pigtail trailing from his ear, pistol hidden under the tail of his jacket, while they talked their schemes and dreams and situational ethics right in front of him, as if he were nothing more than a potted fern. Sure, there were a handful of rich and honest people in politics. But then, in Cutter’s experience, there were only a handful of rich and honest people period.
Fawsey was a millionaire, not a billionaire. He could lose his fortune with a couple of bad business deals, but was still rich enough that he risked seeming snobbish and out of touch with everyday folk. He wasn’t nearly rich enough to be worshiped, so he had to establish himself as a man of the people – a bona fide Alaskan.
That’s what the commercial was for.
Set against the incredibly beautiful backdrop of the Tongass National Forest, Fawsey stood with his pretty wife and handsome son in front of a tall yellow cedar. He recounted his years as a young father, working his way through school at the University of Alaska Southeast campus. How he and his wife worked at a fish hatchery south of Juneau, turning their son, Levi, loose every summer from the time he was ten years old to explore the mountains behind the hatchery. The forests, Fawsey said, were his son’s home for five years, and remained so to this very day. He extolled his virtues as a free-range parent, letting the wilderness help raise his child. He compared it to the kind of governance he represented – the kind of government Alaskans liked.
The kind of government that stayed out of your way.
Maycomb pocketed her phone when the video ended.
“It’s a long shot,” she said. “But if Donita Willets is still alive, I’d bet Levi Fawsey stashed her somewhere out there. Behind the hatchery where he used to explore as a boy.”
Van Dyke sneered. “That narrows it down to… Oh, I don’t know. How far can an energetic kid hike in the five years between the time he’s ten and fifteen?”
“Still,” Cutter said, refusing to acknowledge their feud. “It gives us a place to start.” He thought for a moment, then turned to Tarrant. “Bobby, is there a chance Forest Service has maps of any cabins in that area around the fish hatchery? If Fawsey was going to hide her anywhere, it’s likely to be in some kind of dwelling.”
“There are a couple of obvious ones,” Tarrant said. “But I’m guessing he’d want something more off the beaten path than a recreational use cabin. We have a burn list that we’ve determined need to be destroyed. Rangers stumble on them usually while they’re in the backcountry – illegal structures put up by squatters, hunters, and such. Takes a while to get around to torching them though, so there are a few out there. The weather has to be right.”
Lola smiled. “Don’t want Smokey the Bear starting the fires.”
“No kidding,” Bobby Tarrant said. He turned toward his green Tahoe, but spun immediately, seized by an idea. “I’ll round up some air assets and find out which officers are familiar with that area around the hatchery. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of topo maps, but I may have something better. I know a guy.”
Chapter 37
Lola went with Detective Van Dyke to the Valkyrie Mine Holdings main offices in the Mendenhall Valley, leaving the hatchery lead and Bobby Tarrant’s “guy” to Cutter. The offices were not much to speak of. A bored receptionist sat behind the counter playing games on her phone. The lobby was small, with two ratty avocado-colored chairs that looked like they’d been manufactured sometime around statehood and a low coffee table with a few dusty mining magazines. It reminded Lola of some of the shabby clinics she’d visited in the emerging nations of the South Pacific. She half expected to see a line of tiny black ants climbing the wall.
The receptionist looked up from her game of Candy Crush long enough to glance at Rockie Van Dyke’s badge.
“We need to check on someone who may have worked here,” Van Dyke said.
“You’ll want to talk to Elaine in HR.” The girl went back to her game without picking up the desk phone, pushing an intercom, or even yelling over her shoulder.
“Is Elaine here?” the detective said at length.
The girl heaved a dramatic sigh, rolling her eyes like a teenager. Lola thought she must have been the boss’s daughter or something – maybe his mistress.
She picked up her phone, searched for the right button to press, and then paged Elaine from HR to come to the lobby.
Lola opened a folder containing a couple of screen shots from the surveillance video of Mary Dutchik’s gallery camera and spread them out on the desk. In one, Bandana Hands’s gaunt face peered almost directly at the camera. He was bent and crooked, his expression twisted with pain. “Wonder if you’ve seen this foldy-uppy guy before.”
“That’s Dean Schimmel,” the girl said. “He’s a—”
A heavy-set woman in a blue sweatshirt and tight jeans poked her head around the corner from the hallway behind the reception desk. It was almost a tactical quick peek, like Lola would have done were she searching a house for an armed fugitive.
“These detectives are asking about Schimmel,” the receptionist said.
The woman introduced herself as Elaine, the Human Resources manager. She looked at the photo.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s Dean Schimmel all right. I’d recognize his skinny ass anywhere. What’d he do now?”
Van Dyke raised an eyebrow. “Now? What’s he done before?”
“Nothing, really,” Elaine from HR said. “Drunk driving, maybe some weed. Stuff like that.”
“He threw a baby girl in the ocean,” Lola said, her words coming out like they tasted bitter.
The receptionist looked up from her game. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Lola said. “He didn’t want to talk to us, so he just snatched the kid away from her mother and pitched her in the drink like a piece of garbage. All so he could get away.”
“So,” Van Dyke said. “Dean Schimmel still works here, then?”
Elaine nodded. “A general laborer out at the mine.” She pulled up a roster on her iPad. “He’s supposed to be out there now, but it looks like he banged in sick for the last two days. They sent him back to town to see a doc.”
A tall man with slick black hair came around the corner of the hallway. He carried a stack of files in one hand and a leather lawyer’s briefcase in the other. Ready to walk out the door, he wore a raincoat and rubber boots over jeans and a powder-blue button-down.
“Shred these,” he said, handing off the files to Elaine, before peering up at the two women standing in his lobby. He gave Lola the once-over, as men often did, and then glanced back at Elaine, obviously feeling like he’d walked into something that was beneath his interest.
“These are detectives,” Elaine said, as if warning him not to say anything that would get them all in trouble. “Asking about Dean Schimmel.”
Lola caught a flash of something in the man’s eyes. She was relatively new compared to everyone else on the task force, with just over three years on the Marshals Service, but she had an instinct for creeps – and this guy was one. He set off all manner of I-got-somebody-chained-up-in-my-trunk alarms as soon as he came around the corner. She’d misjudged bad people before, by hoping they were decent, but she’d yet to be wrong when she thought there was something “off” about some
one.
Lola fished her credentials out of her rain jacket. “She’s a detective. I’m with the US Marshals.”
“Ah,” the creepy dude said. “The Marshals… I suppose they’re calling in the big dogs for the murder.”
“We were already here,” Lola said. “Sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Ephraim Dollarhyde,” the man said.
“And what’s your position here, Mr. Dollarhyde?”
“Lobbyist, adviser, that sort of thing.”
Van Dyke showed him the screen shot.
“That does look like Schimmel.” He looked genuinely surprised. “What happened to his hands?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Van Dyke said. “So you know everyone who works at the mine by name? Even the laborers?”
“I should,” Dollarhyde said. “I oversee the background checks when they’re hired, but I confess that I don’t know that many. I only know that’s Schimmel because we were just talking about firing him.”
Elaine turned and looked at him, eyes blank.
“And why is it that you were talking about that?” Lola asked.
“I’m afraid I’d have to talk that over with our lawyers before I went into any details about an HR matter. Can I ask why you’re interested in him?”
The receptionist spoke up now. “He killed a little kid.”
Dollarhyde recoiled as if he’d been slapped – a little heavy on the dramatics, like he wanted them to think he was just hearing the news.
“The kid didn’t die,” Lola said, locking eyes with Dollarhyde. “But she could have. If he calls in, tell him the police and the US Marshals are looking for him. Tell him this place is far too small for anybody to hide very long.”
Dollarhyde excused himself and disappeared out the front door. He walked briskly to the parking lot, where he got into a white pickup and drove away.