Deadly Fate

by Heather Graham

  “We moved her to the concierge level—easier for a cop to stay up there and guard the hall,” Haskell said. “I’ll put you in the elevator to the top. You need a key.”

  Up on the concierge level, Haskell nodded to the police officer on duty, who nodded back and acknowledged Thor, Jackson and Clara.

  “She’s in her room?” Haskell asked.

  The officer nodded and Haskell tapped at the door.

  “Who is it?” came a scared voice.

  “It’s Arnold Haskell, Miss Blaine. I’m with some people from the FBI. You can check your peephole.”

  “It’s Thor Erikson, Misty. We spoke before,” Thor said.

  Apparently, Misty trusted no one. “Show me your badge!” she said.

  He pulled his badge from his pocket and put it up to the peephole. A moment later, the door opened.

  Misty Blaine and little Emmy Vincenzo, Marc Kimball’s assistant, seemed very much alike, in Thor’s opinion. They worked—and had worked—for people who cowed them. They were hesitant, ready to shrink into the shadows.

  Misty was a plain woman, medium in height and size. She moved with her shoulders slumped and her eyes darted nervously about.

  “Who are they?” she demanded suspiciously, looking at Jackson and Clara.

  “I’m Clara Avery,” Clara offered quickly. She had an innate ability with people; she stepped forward and reached for the other woman’s hand. “I was on the island. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Misty nodded, nervously pumping Clara’s hand. “Horrible, horrible, I can’t believe... They gave me something to sleep. I still couldn’t sleep.”

  “I understand,” Clara said, and turned to Jackson. “This is Jackson Crow. He’s with the FBI, too. These men are going to find out what happened. But they need your help.”

  “I—I’ve spoken to them. I don’t know... I said good-night to Natalie when we came up. We were on a different floor...all of us had rooms here. But the others...they were going out to the island. It was just Natalie and me in the hotel after they were gone. She wasn’t afraid... She didn’t know anyone here. I don’t know how he got in. We didn’t talk to anyone but each other, I don’t think. Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know!” she said. “I just went to bed. I woke up, and Natalie... Natalie was...oh!” She started to shake, big tears welling in her eyes.

  “You’re sure that Natalie didn’t speak to anyone, tell anyone that they could come up?” Jackson asked her.

  Misty shook her head. “Natalie was all about Wickedly Weird. She was married once—so I heard. I guess she scared him away. She’s very intense. Oh! She was very intense. She would call me at three in the morning sometimes. She really loved Vacation USA best. But when she had an idea for Gotcha, she would call at any hour of the day or night and tell me about it, and she’d be so excited.” She paused, shaking her head. “‘Did she have any enemies?’ That’s what they asked me! Of course, there were people who didn’t like her. But just because someone doesn’t like you doesn’t mean that they’d do something like this! And the people she deals with aren’t here in Alaska. And this was...sick! If someone is mad at you, maybe they’d smack you or at worst shoot you or...” Her voice trailed and she just stared at them, stricken.

  “Misty, did you notice anyone paying special attention to her or any of you? Think about it, will you?” Thor asked gently.

  “Special attention?” Misty said, perplexed. “I mean, everyone here was super nice to her, even when she was a little bit short. I mean, I guess a lot of people think that reality TV is cool, you know? Alaska—Seward!—was going to be on Vacation USA.”

  “Anyone besides the hotel people,” Jackson said.

  “You’re observant, Misty. I’ll bet that’s why you’re great at your job,” Clara said. “Did you get into a conversation with anyone else, say, on the street, or anything like that?”

  “Anyone who looked at you strangely,” Thor said patiently.

  She looked at him and shook her head, but then began to frown. “I only remember the man...the man in the chair!”

  “What about the man in the chair?” Thor asked.

  “She kind of brushed by him. I just thought he was kind of funny looking,” Misty said. “We were hurrying toward the elevator—the place had suddenly filled with people and she wanted to get up and away from the crowd. And she brushed by his knees. She kind of absently apologized or said ‘Excuse me,’ or something like that. He looked at her for a moment and said, ‘Not at all. No worries.’ He was polite... It just seemed to take him a minute to talk.” Her eyes suddenly became huge. “You mean it could have been him?” she demanded.

  “Misty, we don’t know anything yet. We’re going to keep investigating,” Thor told her.

  She nodded again. Her eyes filled with tears. “Both of them! Natalie and Amelia. I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it. My mother warned me that people might not always like getting gotten, but I never imagined...”

  “Misty, we think that this is just a very sick and cruel human being,” Thor said. “And nothing would have changed what he wanted to do. Normal people just change the channel. Thank you—you’ve been a tremendous help. Lock us out.”

  “Oh, I will, I will. The officer is still in the hall, right?” Misty said.

  “Yes, he is,” Jackson assured her.

  “I’m here. I guess for now. They asked that we stay a few days. Of course, we have to stay. The cameras, the props, the equipment...the police haven’t cleared us to pick up the props. Tomorrow morning, I think. I can’t wait... I can’t wait to leave. Except when I leave, I won’t have an officer in the hall. So, right now, I’m glad to stay. I mean, you have to get him. You have to. How will any of us be able to go to sleep at night?” she asked.

  “We’ll do everything possible,” Thor assured her.

  Now that she’d let them in, she didn’t want to let them go.

  “You will. And you’re here, right? If I think of something else, I can...well, you can call me. Anytime of day or night. I’m used to it. I was used to it. I don’t know what will happen now. I mean, Natalie was Wickedly Weird Productions... Amelia was our media presence...it’s so horrible.”

  “Yes, yes, it is,” Clara said. “There’s nothing we can say to make it better. We’re just so very sorry.”

  Misty suddenly hugged Clara, gripping her tightly. Clara allowed her to cling. Then she gently disentangled herself.

  At last, they were able to leave.

  Thor, Jackson and Clara headed out of the Nordic Lights Hotel. Thor wanted to make one last stop: the airport.

  They were able to find Ben Greenhall, head of security, who directed them to the hangar where they could find Ash McGruder, the pilot of Marc Kimball’s plane.

  McGruder was playing a game at a desk at the far rear of the hangar with Vince Beardsley, a mechanic. Both were interested in speaking with them—asking the usual questions when a scandalous tragedy had taken place in the area.

  Thor and Jackson answered the questions carefully first, and then asked their own, wanting to know if either man had actually seen Marc Kimball on the plane.

  “I never saw him,” McGruder said. “His car is always here for him when we arrive. I’m in the plane at the time—he clicks a button to tell me to leave. I’ve already been questioned, you know. I didn’t see Marc Kimball or his little minion when we took off. Or when we landed. Not in the flesh and blood. Look, he pays me and pays me well. I fly the plane at a moment’s notice—else I’d be in a bar right now or enjoying a good time seeing whales or watching salmon jump or something! It’s good money, I’m a good pilot, and I’m paid to fly and mind my own business. It’s what I do.”

  He was sincere. They all thanked him; Thor gave him his card and asked him to call if he thought of anything. Then they left.

  As they drove, C
lara murmured, “It still doesn’t mean anything. I mean, don’t we all have to watch out for the fact that we really dislike Kimball?”

  Thor glanced over at Jackson, who smiled.

  “Yes, we have to be aware of that,” Thor said, and he put a call through to Enfield, who arranged for a Coast Guard vessel to get them back out to Black Bear Island.

  Tate Morley was here; Thor was certain of it—just as he was certain now that the man wasn’t working alone.

  “It was him,” Jackson said flatly. “It was Tate Morley sitting in that chair. He might have targeted Natalie already, but he made up his mind when they interacted in the lobby.”

  As they left the dock, Thor noted that Clara was looking at the many vessels there—including the Celtic American ship the Fate.

  “We can go back. I can get you aboard her anytime,” he said.

  “She’s a beautiful ship, isn’t she?” Clara said, smiling. “I loved being hired on by the company. They take such good care of their ships. And, of course, all of the company’s ships are old and historic. The Fate dates back to World War I. She was a hospital ship and avoided a number of torpedoes. She was also used to carry South Vietnamese families to safety at the fall of Saigon. She’s really a grand old dame and...”

  “And?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I was just thinking that it’s ironic that my role in this play is that of a ghost.” She studied him. “Amelia really likes to just hang out with me. Talk and all,” she told him.

  “And you’re not afraid anymore?”

  “Not of Amelia,” she told him.

  “Amelia just wants help,” Jackson said, studying the Fate, as well. He turned to smile at Clara, then directed his attention at Thor. “He’s here—we both know that he’s here. He’s changed over the past decade. I think you were right when you said that it wasn’t so much the fairy-tale thing that he needed, but the dramatics of it. The theatricality. First fairy tales. Now infamous murders. The first, the Black Dahlia. And, I believe, he would have killed Connie Shaw in a manner like the Ripper’s murder of Mary Kelly. As to what we believe to be his first murder, I’m not sure.”

  “They weren’t caught,” Clara said.

  “What?” Thor asked.

  “The Black Dahlia killer was never caught, and neither was the Ripper. Do you think that he’s replicating killers who were never caught—maybe even suggesting that you can’t catch him now?” Clara asked.

  Thor and Jackson looked at one another, and then at Clara.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I think you’ve got it,” Jackson said. “I’m going to try to FaceTime Angela before we get out to the island.”

  He left them, pulling his phone from his pocket, turning it in different directions.

  Thor and Clara remained by the rail, watching as they left Seward behind.

  “You really love Alaska, don’t you?” she asked him.

  Thor said, “I do.” He turned and smiled at her. “Alaxsxaq—that’s the native word and it means ‘the Great Land.’ The first Russians in the area also referred to it as ‘the great land to the east.’ It is a great land. So much is still natural—back at my family’s property, you can have moose and caribou walk up to the front door. The landscape is magnificent, carved out by the many glaciers. You can come to dozens of different places to see fantastic sea life. You really come to believe in something greater than yourself out here. Russian influence is still heavy, in a beautiful way. You have the gorgeous orthodox churches that are scattered about many cities. Man being man, by the mid eighteen hundreds, hunters and trappers had killed off a lot of the otters and the seals, and Tsar Alexander II saw the country as a liability that just wasn’t offering much profit anymore. The US was about to engage in the Civil War, so congress wasn’t that interested in buying what looked a bit like a frozen wasteland that wasn’t paying off for the Russians anymore. But in 1867, William H. Seward, then secretary of state, gave his all to see that the United States purchased Alaska. ‘Seward’s Folly’ was the term used by many, but the United States went ahead and bought it for about seven million dollars—less than Marc Kimball paid for Black Bear Island. I think it was reckoned that we spent about two cents an acre.” He grinned. “There’s another expression they used for Alaska at the time that I like—‘Uncle Sam’s Attic.’ It’s a great attic. And, in time, it proved to be one of our great assets.”

  “Ah, spoken like a native son,” she told him, grinning. “You’d never consider leaving.”

  “I have left—and who knows? I could leave again. But I’ll always come back. It will always be my home.” He felt a little twist inside. “It can be a violent state. There are huge distances that are still wild. Sometimes the law is hard to maintain. But we’re also a place many, many people want to visit—pristine, fascinating. It kills me that...”

  “That Tate Morley has come here,” she finished for him.

  He nodded.

  A long strand of her hair blew about in the wind; she went to pull it back. He found himself reaching out to help her.

  His fingers grazed over her skin. She didn’t back away; she looked at him, a slight smile on her face, and he realized that it might have been that moment when they both realized something.

  That they were both young and healthy and sexual creatures. He been attracted to her since he’d seen her, since he’d actually talked to her, seen her move, the way her eyes lit up when she was angry, glistened when she laughed...

  Yes, she really was beautiful and charming and he hadn’t been immune, he’d been sexually attracted in every way.

  But was there was something deeper than that?

  He liked her, he knew. Really liked her. The fight in her, for one—the great right to the jaw she had given him when she had thought herself in danger. She would never let life pass her by; she would always reach out for what seemed important to her.

  “I really wish you were on the Fate,” he said. “Actually, I wish you were a couple thousand miles away, safe at your home in New Orleans.”

  She smiled at that. “One thing I’ve learned—there is no place in the world that can be guaranteed safe. And if someone is coming after you, you can’t keep running. You have to stop them, unless you want to run forever.”

  The air was so cool and fresh around them. The snow glistened on the mountains. The sea appeared as if it was dotted with a million crystals, and she seemed to be everything beautiful about the world as she stood beside him. He longed to touch her, just bend down and feel her lips with his own. Because there was so much that was good in the world, and she seemed such an incredible and seductive part of that beauty as they stood there.

  “Look!” she said suddenly, pointing to the water.

  It appeared that a spray of diamonds suddenly burst above the surface of the sea.

  He smiled.

  “Salmon,” he told her.

  “Salmon?” she asked.

  “Hey. Alaska is famous for its salmon,” he said. “You see them everywhere in these waters. They jump, and they make the scenery even more magical. And you can see whales breeching. When you’re close enough and they come up, it’s amazing. But, let me warn you—when they send air out their blowholes, it can be nasty. Bad breath in whales!” he said lightly.

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “I still love whales!” she told him. There was a breath of excitement in her words. They’d forgotten murder and dismembered bodies for a moment.

  He wanted to put an arm around her and hold her close and just look out at the spectacular scenery, the glaciers in the distance reflecting the water and the sky, the ice appearing to be a spectacular shade of blue itself.

  Jackson walked back to them, distracted. “Hey.”

  Thor tamped down the idea of setting his arm
around Clara.

  Jackson pocketed his phone and said, “I reached Angela. She found a case that matches Natalie’s scene. Happened in the late 1920s. Jeannette Warren, thirty-two, was found in a hotel room in Chicago, her body curled on the bed, her head displayed on the dresser. The killer was given a moniker—the Deadly Dancer—because Jeannette was a dance-hall girl and she’d been ripped up. The police at the time thought a few other disappearances might have been due to this man. He was never caught. It didn’t hit the media the way it might have now, and while some police officers suspected that Jeannette’s killer might have had other victims, it was never proven.”

  Thor looked at him and slowly nodded. “So, this is what we theorize at the moment—there are two killers. Tate Morley is one of them. Somehow, in prison, he communicated with someone who became his accomplice. Morley, we believe, was in the Nordic Lights Hotel, and killed Natalie Fontaine. His accomplice was out on the island, either ready to meet up with Tate Morley, or ready to commit the second murder. The accomplice knows Alaska and Black Bear Island. One of the two was back on the outskirts of Seward today, and terrified—and possibly meant to kill—Connie Shaw. The displays were to appear as close as possible to the murders carried out by the Deadly Dancer and Jack the Ripper and the killer who murdered the Black Dahlia. But there’s one thing I can’t figure out.”

  “What’s that?” Jackson asked.

  “Where the hell are the weapons? It’s one thing to strangle a woman with one’s bare hands—it’s another to cut up a body.”

  They were all silent. Black Bear Island was just before them, snow-covered, wild and dense, and, in Thor’s mind, hiding the secrets that could lead them to the truth.

  * * *

  Marc Kimball’s behavior was oddly like that of a father who was distraught with a college-age student’s tardiness when coming home at night.

  And he seemed to be all theirs that night; the Wickedly Weird crew had made arrangements to return the next day and gather the last of their property from the Mansion. Kimball told them that he had asked them all to stay the following night.