by Ron Hess
MURDER AT FIRE BAY
by Ron Hess
Genre: Thriller
Kindle: 978-1-58124-449-6
ePub: 978-1-58124-472-4
©2012 by Ron Hess
Published 2012 by The Fiction Works
http://www.fictionworks.com
[email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Death and Deception
in a Small AlaskanTown
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
An old man stood on the bluff overlooking the bay. How many times had he done this—a thousand? Too many to count. Leaning on his cane and breathing through his mouth, he had shuffled up the dusty path to the wooden bench he had set there years ago. He chuckled to himself. Never mind how many times he had been at that very spot—how many more times would he be able to walk here up hill from his house? He settled himself on the bench. His breathing eased and he began to take an interest in the sea a thousand feet below his perch. A smile crinkled his face. God, but it was beautiful. The bay reached fifteen miles across to the mountains on the other side, their jagged peaks so white it looked like someone had dumped ice cream on them. Boats gently bobbed on the bay’s blue surface this fine evening in August. He looked up. Not a cloud to be seen. Wasn’t it good to be still alive here in Alaska? Yes, yes.
He had made it to the bench. If he died on this very spot, this very second, his life could be counted as wonderful. If he completed the second part of his ritual, he’d feel truly blessed. With quivering hands he removed the binoculars from their case and lifted them to his eyes.
He could see only two skiffs, but that was not surprising. After all, it was past ten in the evening, and all the charter boats had long gone back to their harbor slips. That was okay; two boats were worth his trouble. No counting the times he’d watched as a boat’s occupants pulled a big halibut out of the water. Sometimes they were close enough for him to see them clubbing the poor creature to death. Not a pretty picture, but it was necessary.
He leaned forward on the bench and propped both arms on his knees to steady the binoculars as he focused on the two skiffs now very close to one another. There was a woman in each boat. They must know each other. Probably going to share a cup of coffee since the sea was so calm. Well, life was boring at times when you were waiting for Mr. Fish to bite. Hmm . . . the one in the blue jacket was getting in the boat with the one in the red jacket. Now that was odd. Ah, well, perhaps she was going to help the other woman. Yes, no doubt, that is what it was, something tangled up perhaps.
As the two talked they leaned toward each other, mouths moving, arms waving. It didn’t look very friendly. He lowered the binoculars and sat back, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them wide, trying to clear his vision, but it was no good. He sighed and spent a moment stretching out the kinks in his neck and shoulders. Giving up, he leaned forward again, lifted the binoculars back up to his eyes, and adjusted the focus.
One skiff was leaving. Must have gotten through with whatever they were doing. He glassed back over the sea to the other skiff. Wait a minute—where was the other woman? One skiff was empty and the other skiff was quickly moving away. He could distinctly hear the roar of its motor as it strained to get the boat up on step and then its sound leveling out as it cruised, waves slapping at its sides.
Something was wrong, terribly wrong. That woman in the blue jacket. Hadn’t he seen her somewhere? But where? Well, there was time enough to think about that later. He struggled to his feet, blowing through his mouth. Hell! Of all times to be impaired with a shortness of breath. Of course, that’s what his daughter had told him to expect after smoking all those years. To hell with his breathing! He had to get to a phone and tell the Coast Guard what he had seen. He stabbed the ground with his cane as he walked down the hill. His heart pounded. That was nothing new. But it was getting worse. His doctor had warned him about overexerting himself. He paused and put his free hand to his heart.
Oh, no. Not now!
His vision blurring, with one hand still bracing himself on his cane, he fell to his knees, then on his side onto the path. His vision cleared a few seconds, then dimmed. What beautiful roses.
* * *
Two days later the corpse of the woman lay face down in the sand. She wore Levi’s, a white sweater, and a red coat because even in summer the wind blowing over the cold waters of the bay could be quite cool. On the high bluffs above the beach, ravens soared and croaked their talk one to another. Intrigued by the red coat, they flew down close to the body as if daring it to come alive. Since only its arms moved in the small surf, they became bored and went back to their play. A few hours later a lone coyote came sniffing by. No doubt he was overjoyed by this prospective new food source, yet after a few more sniffs he wandered on, perhaps repelled by the human smell. Humans were dangerous.
She lay there through the night, the tide coming back yet again to gently nudge her. In the early morning of the following day, a passing pilot happened to look down as he turned on a long final at the airport of the nearby Alaskan coastal town. The sight of the body so rattled him that he did a go-around. This time he flew lower and slower making certain of what he had seen on his first pass. It was definitely a body.
Chapter 1
The phone rang. I knew who it was before I picked it up.
“Bronski!”
It was my boss in Anchorage. Who else? I mean, here at Howes Bluff in Western Alaska, the post office phone doesn’t ring often. From behind a sorting case, my wife, Jeanette, and her twin sister, Jean, at another case, peeked through open slots.
I gave Jeanette a wink, laid my wire-rim glasses down, and leaned back in my chair. “Yes, sir!”
There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end.
“Bronski?”
I could understand his questioning tone. Usually I answered with a somewhat unenthusiastic “Yeah, Boss.”
Things had been going well for the past month. I was a happy camper, simply enjoying life. “Yes, sir?”
“Oh, for a minute there I thought we had a bad connection.” His voice sounded muffled. That meant he was rolling an unlit cigar around in his mouth. Poor Boss. Now even he had to go outside to smoke. What this must have done to his work habits was beyond my imagination.
“How’s it going out there?”
“Okay,” I answered, trying not to sound too happy.
“I see.” More hesitation.
I learned long ago to wait him out, mostly because it infuriated him.
“Uh, Bronski, I’ve been thinking.”
Maybe it was the serious tone of his voice or maybe it was the funny feeling in my gut, I don’t know, but to be on the safe side I motioned to Jeanette to pick up the extension.
“Yes sir?” I said, and took my feet off the desk.
“Uh, you heard about the supervisor down in Fire Bay being found dead on the beach this morning?”
“Uh . . . no, sir.”
By now I was standing, my free hand tapping a pencil on the desk. I really had heard about the supervisor, but I was playing dumb. An old friend worked in the Boss’s office, and I had no intention of the Boss finding out.
“Well, they think she hit her head somehow and fell out of her skiff. I need somebody to take over her job and also serve as officer-in-charge until a new one can be appointed. You remember Bill, the O.I.C? Well, sorry to say, we had to ship him off for a while to detox. Bill has been having self-confidence problems. So, Leo, bottom line. I want you to go. It’s a double-duty assignment and I know you won’t be happy about it, but you’re just about all I got.”
I threw the pencil down and sat down with a thud. Go? Go to Fire Bay? I was happy here. Besides, what did “all I got” mean anyway?
“What if I said no?” I asked.
“Of course, you can say no, Bronski. But before you do, I want you to think about your Postal Service career.”
My career? I almost laughed out loud. I didn’t know I had one.
“Boss, you know I’ve been married only a little over a year. I’m not wild about leaving Jeanette, and besides, who would take over for me while I’m gone?”
The Boss’s chair squeaked. “Got that covered. Jeanette Bronski will take over your duties.”
I slumped over the desk, head in hand. I heard Jeanette walking toward the desk, coming to stand by me. I sighed. “How long do I have to think this over?”
At first, it sounded like w the Boss as trying to chuckle, but that would have been unusual. Instead, he went into one of his infamous coughing jags, the kind that lasted a minute or so. I held the phone away from my ear and rolled my eyes at Jeanette, who was standing very still, her hand cupped over the mouthpiece of the cordless phone. She did not smile.
Finally he quieted down and spoke, trying to be cheerful. “Take an hour, Bronski. Remember your Postal Service career.” With that, he hung up.
I sat there a few seconds, my hand still gripping the phone. Chills ran up my back, not unlike those I used to get in Vietnam walking along a trail. A shoulder squeeze from Jeanette brought me back to the present. I looked up at all five feet of her, resplendent in her pin striped Postal Service shirt, took her hand and kissed it, then held it to my cheek. This was my love, my peace, and my rock. I stood up and nodded to Jeanette’s sister, Jean, across the room.
“It’s all yours, Jean. Jeanette and I are going up front and then maybe to the restaurant.”
She nodded back. Taking over was no big deal, since most everyone had already been in to check their mail.
Jeanette and I grabbed our jackets, and walked up to the front window; where I paused for a moment to look out on the street scene. Not a person or dog in sight, just a gravel road with gray, unpainted single-story houses with smoke coming out of pipe chimneys. There was a blue-sided, single-story commercial store farther up the street that handled everything from food to pots and pans to clothing. A few feet farther was the white Russian Orthodox Church with its blue spires. At the end sat a small, gray building, now a café, a great meeting place if you wanted everyone in the village—and by the way, that’s five hundred people—to know some choice piece of rumor. There were a couple of side streets with a house here and there with maybe fish drying on a rack in the front yard alongside the satellite dish. Inside the house, impassive faces might be watching “Everybody Loves Raymond” or some CNN news event, or Mom and kids might be cutting up moose meat just taken for food. On the hill above us sat the school and electric generator. At one time or another, I had been in every building in the village. It was a scene that I had come to cherish in the past year and a half. Days were getting shorter as summer wore on and there was a certain waiting tension in the air. Winter was coming and you had better damn well be ready for it.
Jeanette took my hand. “C’mon, Leo, let’s go have a cup of coffee.”
I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
Again, that chill worked its way down my spine and I didn’t like it one bit.
It was a cool day out on the street. The leaden sky leaked a mist just heavy enough that the gutter on the post office dripped kerplunks now and then into a rain barrel at the corner of the building. After a few steps in the mud, I began to shiver.
“Leo, are you all right?”
“Yeah, honey, I will be as soon as I get back inside. Must be catching a cold or something.”
“Uh, huh.” I wasn’t fooling her one iota. She knew better. It was she who had to listen to me talking in my sleep when the dreams came. Nightmares, that ranged from a former marriage, to Vietnam, and back again to the present day in this village. I patted her arm and gave her a smile.
“Winter’s coming on.”
“Yes,” she said.
The village priest, Father Markoff, dressed formally in his black robe and head cover, gave a shout from where he stood in the doorway of the church.
“Leo! Jeanette! Where you going?”
Jeanette gave him a wave.
“Where are you two off to?” he asked again.
“The café,” we answered back.
“Why don’t you come over? I’ve got a fresh pot brewing on the stove.”
I looked at Jeanette and nodded. Why not? We turned ninety degrees to the left and made for the church. I licked my lips. I had not had a drink in days, and Father Markoff was well known for the liberal portions of whiskey he added to his special coffee. I used to be a drunk. In the last year I had pretty much gone on the wagon. Something I prided myself on was that I could take a sip now and then without going overboard. Some people might say that a true alcoholic can’t take even a sip. But I like to think that’s not me.
He rubbed his hands together. “Getting cool.”
“Geese heading south,” Jeanette said.
We silently followed the good priest into the church. About halfway in I stopped and looked the place over. A church without pews was still somewhat new to me; for Jeanette, who was Yupik, it was home, and represented a large part of her culture and her belief system. It provided her a sense of security, a security I married into when I married her. Although a small church, it had various icons on the gold-colored altar with pictures of saints hanging on the white walls surrounding us. Rays of light shot through the stained glass windows to focus on the altar—whether by design or Divine Providence, I was never quite sure.
Jeanette sighed. I looked down and saw her eyes getting misty. She too felt the power and awe.
“C’mon, Leo,” she said quietly.
Another tug on my arm and I was again following the Father over creaky floorboards back to his office behind the altar area.
He swung his arm, gesturing us to sit down in chairs arranged in a circle, and regarded us through those knowing blue eyes of his. He pulled at his grizzled beard and sat down. “So, how’s it going?”
Jeanette and I had come to expect this question. Every few months he would haul us in and ask, staring at us, making sure what we told him was the truth, I guess.
“Ah … pretty good,” I said.
He leaned forward and, without warning, slapped me on the knee. “What’s this? The luster of marriage wearing thin?” He was smiling.
Jeanette piped up. “Leo has been asked to take a temporary officer-in-charge position elsewhere and I have to stay here. We have one hour to make up our mind.”
Father Markoff looked back to me, his smile showing pea
rly white teeth. “Only one hour? My, oh my, the Postal Service moves in mysterious ways, does it not?”
“Not if you knew my boss,” I said.
He nodded. He had heard me speak about “the Boss” before and not always in glowing terms. He stood and reached for the coffee cups.
“Where does he want you to move?” he asked, passing out the old white mugs.
“Fire Bay,” I answered.
“Ah, Fire Bay.” There was a silence as he poured the coffee and then added a half shot of whiskey. To my surprise, Jeanette also took a share. Finished with the sharing of coffee, he leaned back in his swivel chair, his blue eyes settling on me for a moment before speaking.
“I’ve been there, you know. It’s a big town of more than four thousand, with a movie theater and lots of restaurants and culture for such a small place. In the summer there’s charter fishing, what with the tourists and all. It has everything Anchorage has, including drugs and alcohol.”
He paused and took a sip. I took a big gulp and looked at Jeanette. Her mouth was a straight line. There was no joy there, nor help. Father Markoff cleared his throat.
He knew all about my problems.
“Are you ready . . . Leo?”
I stared down into the depths of my coffee, looking for the clouds.
“I don’t know. But the Boss has made noises,” I added, and paused to look over to Jeanette again. Was that pity I saw? “About my postal career being in jeopardy. He’s used that line on me before. It doesn’t usually bother me.”
I took a sip of that wonderful concoction and my shivering stopped.