“He’s always got a minute for you, Tom,” she said, already reaching for the phone. “Sir, Tom Reynolds is here to see you.” She gave Reynolds a coy smile as she listened to the response. “Yes, sir.”
“Well …?”
“Go right in.”
Reynolds winked at her and started for the door. Ray trailed after him, feeling slightly uncomfortable, a tagalong who wasn’t privy to some private joke.
The office they entered was impressive. Unlike Simpson’s crowded hovel back out on the ice, this was a large room that had been decked out in oak: bookcases, chairs, and a huge, sturdy desk. The walls were papered with a subtle texture and graced with modern art. It effectively made you forget where you were, that this was part of a trailer at Prudhoe Bay. Ray suspected that it could have passed for an executive’s quarters back in Texas.
Before he had time to fully inspect the office and appreciate the various sculptures and wall hangings, a small man sprung up from the desk and strode to the middle of the room to meet them.
“Franklin Bauer,” he beamed, extending his hand.
Reynolds stepped to the side, allowing Ray to accept the greeting. Bauer shook his hand enthusiastically.
“You must be Officer Attla.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bauer.”
“Call me Red. Everybody does.”
Of course they do, Ray thought, nodding. It would be virtually impossible to call him anything else.
THIRTEEN
RED BAUER WAS clownish in his appearance: red hair, red shirt, speckled red tie, even his skin was tinged red with orange-red freckles. It was as if a vandal had snuck up on him and sprayed him with a can of vermilion paint. He immediately brought to mind Red Buttons, except this Red was redder. And smaller. He was a tiny man with wiry limbs and thin hands like those of a miniature mannequin.
“Wow!” Red exclaimed, his face animated. “You’re pretty big for an Eskimo.”
Looking down at the doll-sized man, Ray nodded. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“Have a seat.” Bauer gestured to the armchairs and couch arranged in a semicircle around his desk. When he had retaken his place beyond the wide, gleaming desk, he said, “So, any progress on our little problem?”
Ray stared at him, at the cherublike face, the energetic eyes, the placid expression. Little problem? Was he serious? A corpse that had been hacked up, nearly decapitated … A little problem? “We’re still investigating.” Ray told him.
“I’m confident in your abilities, Officer Attla,” Red beamed. “I’m sure you can wrap this thing up as quickly and quietly as possible.”
Ray was about to nod his head, to humor this guy with a few police clichés. Before he could, Bauer added, “Especially since it appears that the crime in question was committed by one of your own people.”
“My people?”
“An Eskimo. A Native … whatever.” Bauer was still exuding charm, but his eyes had changed somehow. Resting above the everything-is-fine cheer and rather dopey grin, his eyes conveyed a serious, almost threatening message.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Ray tried, attempting to draw Bauer out.
“We got the fax,” he said, still smiling. Opening a manila folder, he lifted a single sheet and shook his head at it. The grin disappeared. Suddenly he was mourning the deceased, acknowledging the cruel way in which the man had been dispatched. “Terrible. Just terrible. Cut up that way. Just like an Eskimo cuts up an animal.” His head continued swiveling, a scowl testifying to his disapproval of the tragedy. “I hate to point fingers, but it sure looks like one of your people did this.”
“That’s one possibility,” Ray acknowledged.
“Any suspects?”
“Discounting myself?”
Bauer’s eyes flashed with contempt, then the smile returned. “You know what I mean, Officer.”
Ray dug the sketch out of his parka. “Recognize this face?”
Bauer glanced at it, then fished through the folder. He lifted a slightly blurred replica. “Looks a little like our VP of domestic operations, Hank Weinhart. But it couldn’t be him because—”
“He flew out on the company jet two days ago,” Ray interjected.
“Right.”
“We’re checking the passenger list, to make sure he was on the plane,” Reynolds said.
Bauer nodded at this, his enthusiasm waning. “Well, rest assured that we will cooperate fully with your investigation, Officer Attla.” He rose, signaling the end of the meeting. Shaking Ray’s hand again, he said, “I wish you luck. We want this thing cleared up, and the truth exposed, posthaste. We also want to make sure that the press doesn’t exploit this tragedy. It has to be handled—swiftly and diplomatically, with kid gloves. And I know you’re the man to do that.”
“I appreciate your confidence,” Ray replied, somewhat sarcastically. At the moment he wasn’t certain that he was the man for the job. So far, he hadn’t done much of anything to warrant such lavish praise. Aside from that, he questioned Bauer’s sincerity. Apparently “find the klooch fast and keep it quiet” was the running corporate line.
After they had been ushered out of Bauer’s office, Ray asked Reynolds, “What about the passenger list?”
Reynolds nodded at this. “Grace should have that by now.” He led them past the cute, flirtatious secretary, down the hallway and into another cluster of offices. They were entering a door marked Security when Billy Bob appeared.
“Ray! You alright?”
“Fine,” Ray responded coolly, still irritated at having been deserted by the deputy. Even if the cowboy had slid off the road, that was no excuse for ditching his partner. Not in this weather.
“Hey, buddy, ya had me scared,” he drawled. “When I lost ya in the snow, I stopped for a while and waited. Then, when I tried to turn around, I went off the road. Listen, I’m real sorry. It was all my fault. I screwed up.”
Ray studied Billy Bob’s sullen expression, the hound-dog eyes, lips turned down to hide the buck teeth. He seemed genuinely apologetic, even guilt-ridden. “Don’t worry about it. I’m okay.” He turned to Reynolds and started to make the introductions.
Reynolds cut him off. “We’ve met. How you doing, Billy Bob?”
“Not bad. Better, now that I’m not stuck in the snow.”
Inside the security office, they found Leeland behind a desk, phone to his ear.
“How’s the list coming?” Reynolds asked him, sliding into his own desk.
Leeland held up a hand. “Yeah … Yeah … How much longer? Okay.” He hung up the phone and stuffed a quarter of a sandwich into his mouth before answering. “Ten or fifteen minutes,” he slurred through the bread. “Grace has the list but she’s trying to confirm the whereabouts of all the passengers.”
“Where’s the body?” Billy Bob asked.
“Out front, in the sled,” Ray answered.
“Maybe we should put it some-wheres,” Billy Bob suggested. “In a shed or somethin’.”
“Good idea,” Reynolds agreed. “Help them put it in barn two,” he told Leeland. With that he picked up the phone, making it clear that he wasn’t going to be assisting them.
Leeland cursed, gulped down the last of his sandwich, then rose. “Come on.” When the trio reached the mudroom and Ray and Billy Bob were donning their gear, Leeland said, “I can tell you where barn two is. It’s the second medium-sized shed past—”
“The body’s heavy,” Billy Bob lamented. “We’ll need help.”
Leeland swore again and pulled on his boots. “We can drive it over, I guess.”
Three minutes later, mittens, masks, and goggles in place, they stepped into the wind. It was just past one in the afternoon and the sky was effectively hiding this fact: a gray haze reflecting the lamps, a deep pitch beyond their glow. It looked like midnight during the year’s worst storm. Unfortunately, it was neither.
Leeland unplugged the electrical cord connecting the engine block to the exterior outlet with a yank and hopped into the dr
iver’s seat, triggering the ignition as Ray and Billy Bob climbed into the Toyota. He kicked at the clutch with his left leg and shifted the stick forcefully. Ray wondered at the Forerunner’s ability to survive this brute’s abuse.
They jerked away from the camp building, slid to a halt, then spun forward, studs fighting for traction. A half dozen pools of halogen raced past. The speedometer trembled up to 40 before diving for zero again as Leeland aimed the vehicle, sledlike, at a shed.
Ray eyed the shed, gripped the armrest, checked the sled. It was still in tow, swaying back and forth against the frosty chain guard. At the center of the sled the Polaris sat wounded, defeated. He would attend to that later. Hopefully the camp had parts.
Suddenly they were sideways, Leeland performing an impressive fishtail approach that parked them within two feet of the building. “Okay.”
They hopped out and walked back to the sled, boots crunching on the brittle snow. Leeland unhitched the sled and toggled the winch. They watched as the chain disappeared into the back of the Toyota. “Let’s just push the whole thing into the shed,” he suggested.
Ray nodded. Why not? Then, when he did come out to repair his machine, he could do so in the relative comfort of the steel prefab.
The three of them nudged the sled, ushering it backward, away from the truck. It skated obediently. But when they tried to twist it for the final trip into the shed, it resisted. The weight of the snow machine was enough to dig the rails into the ice. Bending into the effort, they turned the trailer and lined it up for the shed door.
After Leeland had pulled back the double doors, they guided the sled inside, the rails grinding as they scraped across bare, dry concrete. It groaned to a stop between two identical blue pickups. The enclosure was more of a garage than anything else. Aside from the twin vehicles, it contained a pyramid of oil cans, a mostly dismantled snow mobile, and a simple wooden workbench. Car parts and tools were scattered on the grease-stained workbench in haphazard fashion, like discarded toys in a child’s nursery.
The walls shook visibly with each new gust of the storm. There were gaps at the corners, light and snow pellets sneaking in from all directions. When Leeland slammed the steel doors shut, the squall dissipated but did not disappear. You could still feel a vigorous breeze. Ray decided that the temperature inside was nearly the same as the temperature outside. Working in this deep freeze would be nigh unto impossible, thus the forgotten tools. He scrutinized the Yamaha, wondering if it had a working carburetor.
“Nobody’ll bother your stuff in here,” the hulking security officer promised. “This old barn is just for storage.” He stepped across the shed to the access door and shook the knob. When nothing happened he used both mittens. “Piece of junk is frozen.”
“Can’t we just go back out …” Ray started to suggest, already gesturing to the large, double doors. But Leeland was working the knob as if it had offended him. He seemed determined to teach it a lesson.
As the musclepig battled the door, Ray glanced into the sled. It was a shambles of loose parts, supplies and tarps. He wondered how much he had lost on the trip in. The Polaris had crushed some of his equipment boxes and the wind had probably robbed him of some of his gear. At least the corpse was too heavy to … Ray leaned in and flipped a tarp back. He lifted another. Climbing into the bed, he shoved at the boxes.
“What are you doing?” Billy Bob called above the wind.
The door finally gave, creaking open on repentant hinges, its face now bearing a size 15E bruise. Leeland returned triumphantly. After watching Ray for a moment, he asked Billy Bob, “What’s his problem?”
The deputy shrugged.
Ray was frantic now. Grunting, he tilted the Polaris, kicked beneath it with his boot. He let the machine down with a thud, then knelt and reached under the tarps. Thirty seconds later he stood up. Breathing hard, he stared incredulously at the disheveled contents of the sled and cursed.
“Lose something?” Leeland asked.
Ray swore again, more emphatically.
“What is it, Ray?” Billy Bob wondered, wide eyes looking out from his goggles.
“The body,” he panted. “It’s gone.”
FOURTEEN
“IT CAIN’T JUST be gone,” Billy Bob protested.
Ray shook his head at the sled. “It’s not in there.”
The three men stared at the contents—at the Polaris, the boxes, the tarps, the tools—as if the non-animate objects were somehow responsible.
“Maybe it fell out when we towed it in,” Leeland suggested. He stepped up into the sled and began rummaging. “You sure it’s not in here?”
Ray’s answer took the form of a dramatic sigh. This was just what he needed. Not only had he failed to ID the corpse, he had failed to keep track of the corpse. The captain would have a conniption fit. He suppressed a curse and started across the shed for the door.
“Where you goin’?” Billy Bob wanted to know.
Ray ignored him. Where did the hillbilly think he was going? To get a latte? The body was gone. It represented the only hard evidence that a murder had been committed. Ray’s new mission was to recover the body.
A blast of air met him as he exited the building, pushing him back on his heels. It was symbolic, he decided, representative of this case. It had him on the defensive, reacting rather than taking the initiative. He felt like he was fighting an invisible, insurmountable foe, wasting energy and time in a fruitless search for answers that were swirling away from him like the drifting snow.
Resisting the urge to curse the weather, and the entire investigation, he steadied himself, adjusted his goggles, and set out for the camp building. The wind could be good or evil, Grandfather had always told him. It all depended upon your attitude. A fool fought against it, allowing it to become an enemy, something that taunted him on his journey. A wise man embraced the wind, welcoming it as a friend. Instead of battling it, he used it for his benefit, harnessing its power, and allowing it to become a companion in the lonely hours. As simplistic as it sounded, the advice was basically true. It was counterproductive to worry about what you couldn’t change. The key was to turn the wind—obstacles, problems, challenges—into an opportunity and go with the flow.
How could he do that with this case? Ray wasn’t sure, but he had to do something, to take a different tack. His current strategy of police work certainly wasn’t reaping anything worthwhile.
As he walked into his “Friend,” leaning against each new gust, Ray studied the ground. If the body wasn’t in the sled, someone had taken it. And if someone had taken it, they would have left tracks. The problem was, footprints had about a two second life span in this weather, blowing clean almost as quickly as they were made. He looked anyway: part of a tire imprint here, lumps of snow there, an oil stain encased in ice …
Ray had never been a brilliant tracker. Not like Grandfather. The man was a master, able to follow a fox or a herd of caribou or a wolf for miles. He could read the most subtle signs, interpret them, anticipate the animal’s next move. Ray had been reasonably good as a teen. Hunting had been something of a religious rite, something he had practiced diligently. But now … years later … Though he still hunted on occasion, whatever skill he had once possessed had atrophied. He remembered a little, how to discern the direction of an animal’s travel, how to estimate the time since it had passed by, but his principal means of bagging a caribou these days was to set up camp in a known migration path and wait. When they showed up, he knew what to do.
Ray reached the spot in front of the camp where the Toyota had first been parked. The ground was a dirty white, mud and compact snow forming a slick, shiny surface for the blowing pellets to dance across. Tire marks were in abundance, all weeks old. He bent and studied the area where the sled would have been. Rubbing a mitten over it, he contemplated the question of the hour: why? Why would someone rip off a dead body?
When no answer presented itself, his mind moved to the next step in the mysterious progression
: who? Without knowing why, determining who was tricky. Motive would give rise to suspects. He stood up and mentally stepped back from the dilemma. First, who could have physically managed it, given the circumstances? The body was heavy. It probably would have taken two individuals. And they would have needed a place to stash it. Those prerequisites narrowed it down to every worker in camp.
Unless … What if the body had been missing back at the rig? No. Ray had spent a short time bunking with it in the sled. So it was there when Reynolds and Leeland showed up. Maybe it had simply rolled out of the sled on the way in. The ride was bumpy. No. The two-foot high sideboards would have prevented that. Either the body pole vaulted out or someone helped it.
Ray moved to the space where the Toyota had been and crouched. He reached a mitten down and tapped the snow. It was dark. Oil. The Forerunner had a leak.
Rising again, he frowned beneath his mask and pondered the second question again. Who?
Leeland and Billy Bob crunched past.
“We’ll be in the office,” the deputy told him.
Ray watched them enter the building. No. It was a crazy notion. Ridiculous. Still, he couldn’t seem to avoid it. Billy Bob? Mr. Buck Teeth? The good old boy from Texas?
According to Billy Bob, he had been stuck in a snowdrift when Ray’s Polaris died. Okay. But where had he been when the sled was sitting there in camp, unattended? Where had the deputy been when Reynolds and Ray were meeting with Red Bauer? For that matter, where had bunny teeth been when Ray went one on one with the hoist back at the rig?
It was more than just a leap to get to that conclusion. It was a commuter flight. But … what if … Okay, say Billy Bob had been involved—heck, why not go all the way and make Billy Bob the murderer? There was still the big puzzler: why? Why would a police officer assigned to Prudhoe Bay assault a fellow law enforcement representative? Why would he steal a corpse? Well, if he’d killed the guy, he would want to hide the evidence. In fact, he might even sabotage a snow machine, in hopes that a nosy policeman would freeze to death.
Elements of Kill Page 11