Elements of Kill

by Christopher Lane

  “No, sir. No … Well, sir, there was really no way that we could have … No … No, sir. But we didn’t think … Yes, sir. I know. But—but … Yes, sir. That’s why we brought in an expert and he confirmed that the suspect didn’t speak English … No, sir …”

  Ray smiled at this. Apparently he was the expert. “I need to use a phone,” he told Reynolds.

  Reynolds offered him the desk. “Make yourself at home. I’m going for some fresh coffee.”

  “I can get it,” Billy Bob offered.

  “No. I need to walk off that butt kickin’ we just got.” He rubbed at his rear end as if it were sore.

  After he left, Ray picked up the phone and dialed. As he waited for the call to go through, he told Billy Bob, “See if you can scrounge up a pencil and some notepaper.”

  “What fer?”

  “To make a sketch of …” The line only rang once.

  “Barrow PD.”

  “Betty, Ray.”

  “Our wayward patrolman,” she announced in a husky voice. “The captain was starting to think that you ran away from home.”

  “Is he in?”

  “Yep. Hold on a second.”

  Ray braced himself, mentally preparing for another verbal berating. He checked his watch: 2:20. Somehow it felt much later. This day seemed to be made of elastic, the way it kept stretching and stretching.

  “What in blazes have you been doing, Attla?”

  “Captain. Good afternoon to you too.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The Davis camp.”

  “What in the heck is going on over there? CNN is broadcasting a story about how some lughead security man caught a multiple murderer in Prudhoe. We’ve been getting calls from every news bureau west of Missouri. And guess what I have for them. Squat. I don’t know a thing. I gotta tell ‘em that I can’t comment because the investigation is still open. What the heck’s going on?”

  Ray sighed, wondering where to start. “I told you that we have two dead now?”

  “Yeah. What about this man that was apprehended? Were you in on that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  The captain swore at him.

  “They found one of our people looting my snow machine.”

  “They? They who?”

  “Well, the security guards here at Davis. Or, at least one of them.”

  “So this killer just waltzed into camp and started in on your machine?”

  “No. It was stalled west of here. Died on the way back from Nuiqsut.” Ray immediately regretted this disclosure.

  “What in blazes were you doing in Nuiqsut?”

  “It’s a long story, sir.”

  “I’ve got plenty of time. Start talking.”

  Ray gave the captain a quick overview, touching but refusing to linger on Maniilaq, the prophecy, the breakdown … He omitted Billy Bob’s dream completely, crediting the rescue to dumb luck. Then he related their trip to Deadhorse, careful to describe it as a fact-finding mission. The story climaxed with “Mike’s” bogus confession. Ray purposely left out the part about the infirmary, the brothel, the bouncer …

  When he was finished the Captain grumbled, “Are you trying to say that you’ve got nothing? What about the bodies? Are they wrapped and ready to ship to the morgue? The weather service says flights from Anchorage should get the green light by morning. Maybe sooner. Things are already starting to quiet down here in Barrow.”

  Ray tried to think of a way to avoid the question. “I’m going out to examine one of them in a few minutes. I’ll sketch it, show it around …”

  “It sure would be nice to close this before the city cops and the Feds show up.”

  “Yeah,” Ray agreed.

  “Well, you’ve got a little time. Do what you can. When Anchorage PD makes it in, turn it over. Work with them as long as they’ll let you. Then come on home.” The anger was rapidly receding, replaced by an almost paternal resignation.

  “Yes, sir.” Ray hung up and dialed again. Nothing like disappointing a superior to make a bad day worse. Now for the piece de resistance: telling Margaret that he definitely wouldn’t make it to Barrow by this evening for the shower.

  No one answered. They were probably too busy with party preparations to bother with the phone. Ray felt terrible. He left a short message on her machine: still stuck in Prudhoe. He purposefully left out the part about the frostbitten limbs and the murderer running loose. Margaret would be upset. She would mourn his absence, and, most of all, start to worry in earnest. He would probably be in the doghouse for a while, but he was a cop. Breaking personal promises and causing significant others grief was part of the job description. Margaret would either forgive him and get used to it, or dump him and find someone with a more acceptable, 9-to-5 job to spend the rest of her life with. Ray prayed for the former, unwilling to entertain the idea of losing her.

  Replacing the phone, he glanced up at Billy Bob. The cowboy was waiting, pencil and paper in hand, like an eager, dumb-faced hound: Deputy Dog.

  “Let’s go have a look at that corpse.”

  THIRTY

  THE STORM MAY have loosened its grip on Barrow, but it was reluctant to leave the Slope. The temperature was up slightly, to a balmy minus 46, and the snow had subsided. The wind, however, was once again possessed.

  The short trek from the main building to the shed where Driscoll’s body had been stored proved difficult. Billy Bob fell twice; Ray, once. With just a few yards to go, they were nearly taken out by a sheet of corrugated metal that had been ripped from the side of a building somewhere in the distance and flung with the fury of an angry god. It collided with an equipment hanger a quarter mile behind them, the resulting crash muted by the roar of air rushing past their hoods.

  Inside the shed they found boxes of auto parts, a pickup that had been mostly dismantled, and a man sitting on a crate. Propped against the wall, he was bundled up—mask, goggles, wool scarf wound around his head like a turban.

  “How’s it going?” Ray asked politely. The man, fast asleep, snorted in response. “So much for posting a guard.”

  Ten feet from Rip Van Winkle was a six-foot bundle. Billy Bob leaned over the long, plastic-shrouded package and began unwrapping it. With a royal blue parka, matching hood and mask exposed, he asked, “What do ya think?”

  Ray knelt over the body. “I think he’s dead.”

  “Same MO though, huh?”

  “Possibly.” Ray poked the frozen block of flesh. It was hard to tell much of anything. The corpse was rock solid, encapsulated in a thick layer of ice, more like an elongated glazed ham than a human body. There were dark stains on the upper left chest, around a tiny, crusted hole in the parka where, presumably, a bullet had entered. Matching stains ringed the bottom of the mask. Ray tried to pry the head back to examine the neck but it wouldn’t budge. Something chipped off in the process. He dug a three-inch long chunk out of the hood—a gray stone shaped like an ear.

  “The worm was cut out, right?” Ray asked, stuffing the ear into one of Driscoll’s pockets.

  “Yep. Just like the other one. Wanna thaw ‘em out so you can see?”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “You gonna draw ‘em?”

  “If we can get the mask off, I guess.”

  They bent and began working it away from the skin, peeling neoprene and polar fleece like paper from a freezer-burned fudgesicle. “Careful,” Ray cautioned. “Bad enough shipping him home in a body bag. It would be a shame for Mr. Driscoll to arrive earless.”

  When the mask finally came off, it did so suddenly, taking swatches of grayish purple skin with it.

  Ray removed his mittens, took the paper and pencil, and began working to reproduce Driscoll’s face. Thirty seconds into the task, his fingers had been stiffened by the cold, and what little talent he had was rendered moot. The pencil lines became primitive, reduced to chicken scratches. Making the job even more challenging was the fact that Driscoll now bore little resemblance to anyth
ing living. Recreating his features with any accuracy under these circumstances seemed impossible.

  Five minutes later, the sketch as complete as it was going to get, Ray offered it to Billy Bob. “What do you think?”

  “Hey, that’s perty good.”

  “Does it look like him … at all?”

  “Sort of … maybe … a little … around the eyes.”

  Ray had filled the closed, darkened voids of the corpse with wide, kind eyes. “I’m not sure his mother would recognize this. Looks like the work of a kindergartner, in a hurry, with a dull pencil.” He jotted down an estimate of Driscoll’s height, weight, guessed at his hair and eye color.

  “What got him killed?” Ray wondered aloud as they covered the body back up.

  Billy Bob shrugged.

  “Did he do something? Say something? Why would someone hunt a vice president and a rig foreman as if they were animals?”

  Bunny Teeth grimaced at this, as if it were an unfathomable mystery.

  “For that matter, why try to take out one of the cops assigned to the case?” Ray gazed at the deputy. “If we assume that whoever wants me dead is also responsible for the two murders, then all we have to figure out is who had the motive and opportunity to steal my gear and rig the Polaris.”

  “Yeah …?” Billy Bob replied, jaw slack. He seemed to be having trouble keeping step with these mental gymnastics.

  “Somebody from seventeen? Simpson? Ed the dealer? One of the roustabouts? If any of them had a motive, I can’t imagine what it could have been. And it would have been a real feat for them to rip off my sled. They would have had to come down from the rig, do the job and get back without being seen. Even in good weather that would be tough.”

  Ray sighed, still looking at Billy Bob. “And taking Wein-hart’s body, that had to be someone around here. Someone at the Davis main camp.”

  The deputy’s eyes grew wide. “You mean the killer is one of the fellers we talked to already?”

  “We’ve got the men responsible for checking the pipes,” Ray continued, ignoring him. “They had the opportunity: access to the yard, to the pipes … But no motive that I can see. We’ve got Bauer. He’s pretty anxious about the big meeting with Arctic Slope Regional. Does that give him motive? Maybe. Not really, though. And no opportunity. He sticks around the office. I can’t see him trudging around in the snow, sabotaging Polaris carburetors.”

  “What about that chief feller?”

  Ray nodded at this. “What about that chief feller&” he mumbled, frowning. “There again, he’s all hot and heavy about the deal with Arctic Slope. Didn’t get along with Weinhart. Possible motive, I guess. Fits Maniilaq’s warning … sort of.”

  “Who?”

  “But there’s no motive for killing Driscoll. Besides, Makintanz would have had to get up to the rig to do that. It’s hard to visualize the chief setting foot outside of the Bradbury without a darn good reason. A reason I can’t figure out.”

  “Maybe he just likes to hunt,” Billy Bob submitted.

  “Actually he does. At least according to what I’ve read. But hunting humans for sport? Randomly nailing a couple of Davis employees? Not even the chief would do that. Kill someone, maybe. He’s pretty ruthless. But he’s not insane, at least not that I’m aware of. He’d need a motive.” Ray swore softly at the tangle of events and their nonexistent explanations, and the confusion of it all was giving him a headache.

  “And how the heck does Salome figure into this?”

  “Sala-who?” the deputy declared.

  “I need some coffee,” Ray announced, fastening his mask.

  “And some lunch,” Billy Bob agreed, following suit.

  They left the dozing attendant to his duty and set out across the yard, this time hurried and pushed across the ice by a furious tailwind.

  After discarding their parkas and gear in the mudroom, they trudged to the cafeteria. Men were gathered in clusters along the tables closest to the food line, talking, laughing, horsing down chow. Ray and Billy Bob had just filled Styrofoam cups with coffee and were in the process of loading their plates when Reynolds and Leeland came marching through the door.

  “We just got a call,” Reynolds announced with a somber expression. “There’s been another murder.”

  Ray cursed under his breath. “Where?”

  “Deadhorse.”

  “Was it Makintanz?”

  Reynolds’s brow furrowed. “Huh? No. Some girl. Worked at the roadhouse.”

  “How was she killed?” Ray asked, silently praying that the answer would involve a drunken brawl or a jealous rage.

  “Same story: bullet in the heart, neck slit, part of the tongue chopped out.”

  Ray inhaled slowly at this disclosure. He glanced at Leeland, who was grinning, raring to go, as if a woman being brutally murdered was the ideal form of entertainment.

  “I’m warming up the Toyota,” Leeland said, on the verge of celebration.

  “Don’t bother,” Ray told him.

  “Huh?”

  “What happens in Deadhorse isn’t your concern.”

  “But …”

  Ray waved him off. “You guys are assigned to this camp. You work for Davis. Crimes committed in Deadhorse are the deputy’s jurisdiction.” He aimed a thumb at Billy Bob. “Right Deputy Cleaver?”

  The cowboy swallowed hard. “Uh … uh-huh.”

  “But we could help …” Leeland pled, his chance at playing policeman disappearing.

  “We’ll keep you informed and give you a call if we need your help,” Ray assured him with a thin smile. This was almost fun.

  “Here,” Reynolds grunted. He handed Ray a slip of paper. “Her name was Honey. She was a call girl at Fanny’s.”

  “Honey?!”

  “Yeah. You know her?”

  “Yeah. No. Well, I talked to her … today.”

  “I met her once,” Leeland said, one eyebrow raised. “Quite a little lady. Trust me, what happened to her is a real shame.”

  “Your grief is overwhelming,” Ray deadpanned.

  “Course, you work that trade, you got to accept the dangers.”

  “Like being murdered at the age of fifteen?”

  “She was only fifteen?”

  Ray wrapped his sandwich in a napkin, then fastened a plastic lid on his coffee. “Back to Deadhorse,” he told Billy Bob.

  Ten minutes later they were rolling down main street. The town looked exactly as it had earlier—deserted, forsaken, abandoned. The only difference was that it contained one less living resident.

  There were a dozen vehicles at Harry’s now, several pickups, a gray sedan, and three snow machines. Business was picking up just as Honey had predicted. As they got out of the Explorer, Ray’s mind presented a mental photograph of Honey: thin, pretty, heavy makeup—a mere child acting the part of a mature, sexually active woman. With the picture came an accusation: you should have done something!

  “Yeah, I should have.”

  “Huh?” Billy Bob asked. He had just plugged the Explorer in and was waiting to go inside.

  “Nothing,” Ray muttered. He wasn’t superman. He was just a cop. A cop who cared about people, maybe too much. Honey’s fate hadn’t been his fault. Still, he couldn’t help wondering: What if …

  Apparently the patrons of the roadhouse weren’t aware of what had taken place in the back. Inside twenty or so men were busy drinking beer, shooting pool, throwing darts, swearing and laughing too loudly. The radio that had accompanied the lone dishwasher had been replaced by a jukebox that thundered country music.

  The enormous bouncer had recovered from their earlier conflict and was standing, statuesque, feet shoulder width apart, in front of the door to Fanny’s. If Harley Davidson had commissioned a gargoyle, this brute would be it: 380 pounds of muscle, attitude, and tattoos. His left arm was folded behind him, military style. In his right he held a pool cue. Somehow Ray got the feeling it wasn’t for playing billiards.

  As they approached, Ray noti
ced that the man’s nose had swelled to twice its usual size. A ring of purple decorated the flesh of his left cheek. Ray’s kick had actually damaged the clown.

  When he saw them coming, the man smiled, twirling the cue through his fingers like a cheerleader’s baton.

  “How’s it going?” Ray stopped at a point he hoped was out of cue range.

  “Hard mornin’. But things is startin’ to look up.” The grin widened, offering a view of yellow, crooked teeth, a silver cap, a gap where a bicuspid had once been. “I’m just fixin’ to have a muktuk for lunch. Care to join me?”

  “Actually, we’ve already eaten.”

  “I insist, blubber breath.”

  Ray considered flashing his badge but decided the gesture would be wasted. “We got a call.”

  The man’s eyebrows rose. “That right? I didn’t call anyone. Far as I know, there ain’t been no problems here … yet.” The cue was moving like a buzz saw now.

  Ray took a slow step backward. He looked to Billy Bob and found him retreating to the other side of the nearest pool table. “Fanny called.”

  “Huh …” the beast grunted, clearly uninterested. He started forward on two tree-trunk legs: a redwood scorned.

  The roadhouse grew quiet. Someone pulled the plug on the jukebox. Conversation fell away. Instead of hunching over the billiard tables, the men were upright, leaning against their cues.

  “That klooch givin’ you trouble, Elvin?” a voice asked from across the bar.

  “Nothin’ I cain’t handle.” Taking the cue by the end, Elvin began swinging it like a baseball bat. “Ain’t that right, officer?”

  Ray backed up, bumped into a pool table, then felt someone push him forward, into the fray. Elvin lunged and sliced the air with the cue. Ray stumbled, ducking sideways. The cue found a table leg and cracked in two.

  Elvin frowned at his broken weapon. “Good thing we got plenty a these things.” He lifted his hand and another cue flew to it, as if by magic. “Thanks, Nick.”

  “Anytime,” a deep voice responded. “Bust the klooch’s head up, will ya?”

  “Deputy,” Ray said without taking his eye off of his stalker. “You have your gun?”