KS13.5 - Wreck Rights

by Dana Stabenow

  “He used to drive for you,” Jim said. “His body was found in the wreckage of that semi your driver put over the side of the Glen Highway three, four days back.”

  Masterson’s eyes narrowed. “Bert’s rig?”

  “Bertha O’Shaugnnessy, yes.”

  “It’s that fucking hill, what do my guys call it? Hell Hill, that’s it. It’s the worst stretch of that fucking road, we’ve put I don’t know how many goddamn rigs over the side there. It’s so fucking steep we can’t recover any of our cargo, and half the time the tractors go over the side with the goddamn trailers. Bert was fucking lucky. It’s getting so I can’t afford insurance on that fucking run. What the hell am I suppose to do, run everything up the goddamn Parks through fucking Fairbanks?”

  “What can you tell me about Paul Kameroff?” Jim said.

  Again a slight hesitation, barely noticeable. “I run a lot of trucks and a lot of cargo out of this warehouse, I don’t know the name of every last fucking employee.” He reached for the phone. “Candi? We got an employee named Paul Kaminski?”

  “Kameroff,” Jim said.

  “Whatever,” Masterson said. “If he’s got an employee file, make ‘em a copy.” He hung up. “That all?”

  “No,” Jim said. “I’ll need to talk to anyone who worked with Paul Kameroff.”

  “What the fuck for? My delivery schedule’s already down the shitter this month, I don’t need you fucking around in the warehouse slowing things down even more!”

  “Nevertheless,” Jim said, imperturbable.

  · · ·

  “That didn’t take long,” Kate said as they sat down with loaded trays.

  “No, it didn’t, did it,” Jim said, reaching for the mustard. “Amazing how in a crew of twenty Masterson couldn’t remember Paul Kameroff.”

  “Amazing how any of a crew of twenty barely remembered that Paul existed,” Kate said, and dug in. There was silence for a few bliss-filled minutes. Murder was a serious subject, but a good cheeseburger deserved attention and respect.

  Jim grabbed a handful of napkins to clean the juice that had run down his hands. “Going to be hard to prove that anyone in that warehouse had anything to do with Kameroff’s death.”

  “Next to impossible, I’d say,” Kate said. She licked her fingers, one by one.

  He managed to resist the urge to offer to do it for her. “There used to be rumors about the truckers in Alaska.”

  “There used to be fact about the truckers in Alaska,” Kate said, sitting back in the booth. “They were a pretty rough crowd during the pipeline days. I was just a kid when they first had oil in the line, back in, oh, June, July of 1977, I guess, but I remember hearing about how they expected a body to come out the other end with the first of the oil.”

  “Did it?”

  “No. If there were any bodies, there’s almost six hundred thousand mostly uninhabited square miles out there to have dumped them in.”

  “Which naturally begs the question, why was Paul Kameroff’s body dumped in the back of a trailer that was going to be unloaded in Tok the next day?”

  Kate met his eyes. “Whoever killed him wanted his body to be found,” they said at the same time.

  Jim shoved his tray to one side. “It was a very formal little murder. He was bound first, hands and feet, no possibility of a struggle when the time came, and then shot. They wanted that bullet to go right where it did.”

  “An execution,” Kate said, “part of the message.”

  “Hi, you all,” a voice said.

  They looked up to see Candi standing next to their table, tray in hand and a bright smile on her freshly-made up face.

  It took Jim a second to remember her name. But only a second. “Candi,” he said, and flashed out his broadest, most welcoming smile. He scooted over in the booth. “Have a seat.”

  Candi didn’t even look at Kate, who stood up and said, “I’ll just check on Mutt.”

  Jim didn’t need to see her meaningful look to know what he was supposed to do. He put his arm along the back of the booth and smiled down at little Candi. “How nice to see you again.”

  Little Candi’s blush was so powerful it caused her pancake makeup to glow like pale pink neon.

  · · ·

  “Well?” Kate said. She was sitting in the crew cab she had borrowed from Jeannie, the clerk at Stoddard’s Aircraft Parts, and since it was coming up on Jeannie’s quitting time she was getting a little restive.

  “She didn’t know anything, either,” he said, slamming into the passenger seat. Mutt poked her nose into the front seat and rested a consoling chin on his shoulder.

  “Did she know Paul, at least?”

  “Yes, she knew Paul, enough to give him his paycheck every two weeks. Oh, and to forward his calls to the shop.”

  “What calls?”

  He gave an irritable shrug. Mutt gave him a wounded look and withdrew her support. “Seems like his sister called a lot.”

  “Sonia?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  Kate, in the act of starting the engine, paused with her hand on the key. “Define ‘a lot.’”

  “Often enough for Candi to recognize her voice. Maybe once or twice a week.”

  Kate stared out the windshield at the unprepossessing city winterscape. There was a lot of slush on the road, a lot of snow on the sides of the road, and the hum of studded tires on pavement as vehicles so dirty you couldn’t make out their color, never mind their make, splattered by. “Why at work, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe when he was at work was the only time she could get to a phone. She lives in the Park, right?”

  “Yes, outside Niniltna. And no, I don’t think she has a phone, she’d have to go into town to make the call.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t afford one.”

  “If he was a Teamster, he could afford a phone. But then why call so often? A couple of times a week, what’s that about?” She started bouncing her knee, a sure sign of intense Shugak rumination. “Their parents are okay, last time I checked. There aren’t any other brothers or sisters. Why’s she calling him twice a week?” She looked at the clock on the dash and started the truck. “We’ve got to get this truck back before Jeannie thinks we’ve taken it and headed for California.”

  · · ·

  The three of them were back in the Cessna and halfway home, crossing the silver ribbon of the TransAlaska Pipeline five thousand feet below when she spoke again. “Jim, do you have a list of dates of when semis have skidded off of Hell Hill?”

  “No,” he said in surprise. “Hazen probably does, since he’s the one who responds to them most of the time.”

  “Let’s go to Ahtna,” she said.

  He changed course without asking why. It was well after dark when they landed. He taxied up to the Frontier Air terminal, where the Ahtna police chief was waiting. “I hope you’ve got something to tell me more interesting than my dinner,” the police chief said, “which I was about to sit down to.”

  Kate brightened. “We going to Tony’s?”

  Tony’s was the Ahtna Lodge, a hotel on the edge of the river. What it lacked for in the way of rooms, which were converted Atco trailers, it more than made up for in its chef, Tony’s partner in life and in the business.

  Hazen sighed. “I guess we are.”

  Both men knew there was no point in asking Kate Shugak any questions until she was on the safe side of her exquisitely charred 16-ounce T-bone, not to mention the green salad with blue cheese on the side, a baked potato with all the trimmings, and pumpkin pie to follow. The Ahtna police chief, who was a big man with a bigger beer belly, said, “Where the hell does she put it all?”

  “Maybe she diets,” Jim said, who was thinking of the cheeseburger and wondering the same thing.

  Kate surfaced for long enough to say “Diet?” like it was a bad word.

  When the plates had been cleared they all sat back with similar satisfied expressions on their faces. A high pressure system had moved
in from the northwest and outside the window the river’s icy surface began to glow, a reflection of the light of the rising moon. The snow-covered peaks of the Quilaks stood out in bold relief against a black, starry sky. Mutt, recipient of her own steak, served rare, gave a satisfied sigh and lay down on Jim’s feet.

  Jim stirred. Admiring the view was all well and good, he had been known to pause in his duty on more than one occasion to do so, or why live in Alaska? But a man had been murdered. “You have that list?” he said to Hazen.

  “Sure. Although I’m still waiting to find out why you want it.” Hazen handed it across.

  Jim put it on the table between him and Kate. He was aware with every breath that he took that she was mere inches away from him. It felt like the right side of his body was being cooked over a slow fire. He wondered if she knew.

  She met his eyes and smiled at him, a rich, almost languid smile. Oh yeah, she knew.

  “Why did you want this list?” Jim said.

  Her smile widened at the brusque tone of his voice.

  “Like me to get the two of you a room?” Hazen said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, and if you listened for it a trace of envy.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Kate said lazily, not taking her eyes from Jim, “but we can always get our own.”

  Jim could feel the color rising up into his neck and could do nothing to stop it. He tapped the print-out on the table between them. “The list, Shugak.”

  She actually pouted. He hadn’t known she could do that. But she picked up the piece of paper and studied the columns. “Hell Hill’s body count is up this year,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Hazen said, “I noticed that, too, when I was putting the list together. We’ll get one, at most two semis jack-knifing on that curve in a year. This year there have been four.”

  “What accounts for four, do you think?” Kate said. “Weather, maybe?”

  Hazen frowned and shook his head. “This winter’s been no worse than normal.”

  “Maintenance?”

  Hazen shook his head again. “Far as I know, it’s been business as usual. The guys up at the state highway maintenance station are always griping about their equipment, always wanting the next new John Deere 155 horsepower road grader, but they’re all still employed. I imagine the governor knows well enough to leave Pete Heiman’s district alone when it comes to budget cuts.”

  Kate handed the list to him. “Did you notice anything else on that list of yours?”

  Jim had but he remained silent.

  Hazen looked at the print-out. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Three of the four semis were owned by Masterson Hauling and Storage.”

  “You don’t have the cargo on the list.”

  Hazen stared at her. “Probably groceries for the AC store in Tok. Not a lot of construction supplies being hauled up the highway in the winter. Okay, Kate, what’s going on?”

  The waiter brought them coffee all around, with a small aluminum pitcher of half-and-half just for Kate. She rewarded him with a warm smile, and he turned away and ran into a customer sitting at the next table, who knocked over his wine glass.

  When the resulting disturbance died down, Kate said, “Have you guys ever heard of wreckers?”

  “’Wreckers?’” Jim looked at Hazen. They both shrugged. “Guess not. Who or what is a wrecker?”

  “Wrecking, as it was defined in England, particularly on the coast of Cornwall, was the deliberate luring of a cargo-laden ship onto an offshore reef, usually by means of false signal lights, or by extinguishing the lights of lighthouses built to warn ships away from dangerous waters. The ship would run aground, break apart and the cargo would float to shore, where the wreckers were standing by to pick it up.”

  Hazen looked at her. “Where the hell do you get this stuff?”

  She shrugged. “I read a lot.”

  Jim, unheeding, was thinking back to that drizzly morning below the curve coming off of Hell Hill. “Are you saying—”

  “One, Paul Kameroff went to work for Masterson Hauling and Storage last fall, leaving a perfectly good job on the North Slope for no good reason. Two, his sister Sonia called him at work once or twice a week from November on. Three, Bert O’Shaunnessy said she braked because she saw a woman run in front of her semi. Four, all the Masterson trucks were hauling groceries bound for AC in Tok.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hazen said.

  “You’re saying that the grocery loads Masterson Hauling was running to Tok were deliberately targeted?” Jim said.

  “By this Sonia? Who’s what, the sister of the dead man?” Hazen said.

  “By Sonia and who’s ever in it with her,” Kate said. “There were a lot of people on the hillside that day, you told me. She was just one of them.” She drank coffee. “You should talk to the drivers of the other trucks that went over. See how many of them saw someone run in front of their semi.”

  “And Masterson found out,” Jim said.

  Kate nodded. “He’d lost at most one truck per year in previous years, and there are other trucking outfits that make that run. He must have wondered why he was being picked on.”

  “So,” Hazen said, “Paul Kameroff was fingering loads for his sister Sonia?”

  “There was a big dry board in Masterson’s office,” Kate said. “It had all the trips on it, all the trucks, where they were going and what they were carrying, when they were leaving and when they were scheduled to arrive. I think Sonia called Paul a couple of times every week just to see what was heading our way.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jim said. “The trucking firms lose a semi of stuff a year, maybe, and they don’t make a fuss about who picks it up after. The Park rats are onto a good thing here. Why get greedy, why ruin it? Is the Park having a rough year?”

  “I don’t think they were picking up stuff for subsistance purposes,” Kate said.

  “You think they were reselling it?” Jim said.

  She nodded. “Otherwise, why so many? It was bound to attract notice. Which, of course, it did.”

  There was a brief silence. “You think—” Hazen said.

  “I think Masterson figured it out, killed Kameroff, and tossed the body in the back of Bert’s trailer knowing it was going to be run off the road like the others had been,” Kate said. “Knowing that the body would be a message to the people at the other end.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hazen said again. “The driver could have been killed.”

  “She sure could,” Kate said. She looked at Jim. “I told you. That’s a tough crowd.”

  · · ·

  Jim found a friendly judge and got a warrant to toss the premises of Masterson Hauling and Storage. He didn’t find anything. The three drivers of the previous three wrecks had taken early retirement long before he ever got there and had moved Outside. Candi was genuinely distressed when she couldn’t find their personnel files. The union local knew a different judge and Jim never did get a look at the union’s membership files.

  Sonia Kameroff cried a lot during her interrogation, and said very little. Bert O’Shaugnnessy couldn’t positively identify Sonia as the women she’d seen running in front of her semi. Jim talked to a few of the others he had seen at the wreck that day, only to be greeted with blank stares. “Trucks always go off that hill,” one man told him. “Always will, it’s a bad hill. Shit, Jim, we’re doing a public service by cleaning up the mess. That trucking outfit sure ain’t gonna do nothing. And no point in letting all that food go to waste.”

  “I can’t prove a damn thing,” Jim said to Kate.

  “No,” Kate said, face turned up to the sun. They were in back of her cabin, sitting on the boulder perched at the edge of the cliff overlooking the stream. March had come in like the proverbial lion and the snow cover was melting almost as they watched.

  “They could have killed someone, Kate.”

  “Someone did get killed,” she said.

  Jim hated to let any case go, especially murder. “Got any thoughts about the gun?
”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, not without sympathy. “Sure. They probably tossed it off Point Woronzof, let the tides take it out. That’s what I would have done.”

  Nettled, he said, “You’re taking this awfully calmly. You went to school with the guy. Don’t you care?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Those wreckers I told you about?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sometimes they drowned. Sometimes they got caught, and sometimes they got hanged. Sometimes people off the ships drowned. But most of the wreckers were peasants living way below the poverty line, no jobs to speak of, no homes, no way of feeding their kids. They thought the risk was worth it.”

  He was silenced.

  “Wreck rights,” she said after a while. “We call it salvage rights now, but it was wreck rights then. If it washes up on shore and you find it, it’s yours.”

  “And if it falls off the highway and you find it—”

  “Then that’s yours, too,” she said.

  Mutt came back with a ptarmigan and sat down to lunch. The three of them sat in the sun for a while longer, and then Kate went back to her cabin, and Jim went back to town.

  Excerpt

  If you enjoyed “Wreck Rights,” we think you’ll like So Sure of Death. It’s a novel in the popular Liam Campbell series by Dana Stabenow, and it’s now available as an e-book at stabenow.com.

  So Sure of Death

  “NOW, THERE IS THE SOUND of someone not flying his own plane.”

  “Shut up and breathe.”

  Wyanet Chouinard sank obediently into a modified Horse Stance as the float plane roared overhead. She was a grown woman, the owner and proprietor of her own air taxi service and the mother of a soon-to-be-adopted son. She didn’t have to take orders from anyone, but she would from this one old man.