by Henry, Sue
“It is. A man’s been murdered at the fairground in Palmer. Some of what we’ve learned about that may relate to a runaway boy and a blackmailing phone call Jessie got last night from whoever took Tank. She may not have gone off by choice.”
The anger on Ehlers’s face shifted to concern. “Oh, shit!” he said. Closing the door he had burst through, he crossed to the dining table near Jessie’s kitchen and sat down heavily in one of her colorfully painted chairs. “Tell me. And what can I do to help? There’s no sense wasting time circling each other like a pair of pit bulls.”
S o we both looked through the house for clues to where you might have been headed, but found nothing,” Jensen explained. “Then Ehlers volunteered go back out to the kennel on Parks Highway where he was keeping his dogs—and yours, Jessie. He said he would gather some people there who were familiar with the area and begin a search for you. He left and I went to the office to meet Becker. But I went back later.”
T here’s no way of telling where that threatening phone call was made,” Becker told Jensen when he returned to the office. “There was no record of a call to Jessie’s from a pay phone on the grounds. If Wease used a cell phone it must have belonged to someone else.”
“Well, it was a long shot. Anything from Timmons at the lab?”
“Not much. The prints on the ax belong to the lumberjacks in the show, as we expected. I’ve got a man checking on all of them, but just to clear them. I don’t expect anything really. We know the ax shouldn’t have been left in the arena. They think it was somehow overlooked when they locked up the equipment they use twice a day. The shed where they’re kept was still locked, with no sign of tampering. If it was left out, it could have been a lucky opportunity for the killer, not planned ahead of time. It may actually have inspired the killing.
“It’s interesting, though, that Timmons says the dead guy was beat up pretty good before he was killed. Danny Tabor said that he saw two men arguing just before he took off on his bicycle that night. We know one of them was Wease, and I’m wondering if the other could have been Belmont. I didn’t make anything of it when I talked to Danny because Wease interrupted before he could give me any details. But I think we’d better go have a chat with the boy in the morning. Let’s concentrate on the other loose ends tonight. Knowing Jessie, she’ll probably show up soon, wondering what all the fuss is about.”
Jensen wasn’t inclined to be so positive in his thinking. “Maybe,” he said reluctantly. “Have to admit it wouldn’t surprise me. But I’d be more comfortable if we knew where she is. If she doesn’t show up—”
“Then we pull out all the stops. You find anything at her place?”
“Just Lynn Ehlers, with a defensive attitude until he found out she was missing. He’s gone back out the road to do some more searching for her with a few friends.” Jensen hesitated, then, “Has Ehlers been…” He stopped abruptly and swallowed the rest of the sentence.
“Been what?”
Jensen shook his head, changing his mind about whatever it was he was going to ask. “Nothing. It doesn’t relate.”
Becker waited a moment, considering the risk of answering the question he knew Jensen had been about to ask. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “But if you want me to speculate about Ehlers and Jessie—”
Jensen held up a restraining hand. “No, I don’t want you to do that. I’ll get an answer when it’s appropriate—when we find Jessie. Until then it’s not fair to put you, or anyone else, on the spot. It’s my business—and hers. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
“Sure. If that’s the way you want it.”
“That’s the way I want it. Now, what did the rest of those pictures have to tell us?”
Becker reached for the four envelopes containing the pictures from the film they had left to be developed. Opening them one by one, he took out the photos and laid each in a pile on the appropriate envelope. He laid the pictures that had been developed earlier and found in the red bag on another part of the desk.
“I looked these over again,” he said, referring to the latter photos. “There’s something we missed. Each one has a time of day penciled on the back.”
Turning one over, he handed it to Jensen: “2:45 pm” was handwritten on the back.
“There’s something else. I asked the photo shop to return the cartridges that contained the film for these new ones and to keep them with the pictures that had been in them. Each one of them has a time written on the side of it with a felt-tip pen—each one different.”
He handed over one of the metal cartridges so Jensen could take a look at the writing.
“They were almost all taken at the same location, of the same area and building, at different times of day. When you put them in order of the times they were taken, they make an interesting, if rather enigmatic, sequence of people and things coming and going from that building. It gets even more interesting if you add in this last group of pictures we had developed. They’re something else entirely.”
He handed over the group to which he referred, then got up and moved around so he could watch over Jensen’s shoulder as he examined them.
“The cartridge for these is labeled ‘8:45 am.’”
Jensen started through the pictures, tucking the one on top behind the others when he had seen it, keeping them in order. Reaching the fourth photo he stopped and, clearing a space on the front edge of Becker’s desk, went back to the first, then laid them out in order across it.
The first photo showed an armored truck coming into the fairground through what was identifiable as the south gate, for the Chugach Mountains rose prominently in the background. A rear corner of the livestock barn was caught in the left-hand edge of the picture, and from the shadows it cast, it was easy to see that the image had been captured in the morning.
One by one, the photos followed the progression of the armored truck across the fairground and up to a red building on one side of the central plaza—the same building they had seen in the photos that had originally been found in the red bag. There the truck stopped, a door in the building opened, and two uniformed men got out and went inside. The next photo showed them coming out again carrying the canvas bags typically used to transfer deposits of cash from one secure location to another. In the last couple of pictures, the truck drove back across the plaza and out the gate through which it had entered the grounds.
Leaving the photos where he had placed them, Jensen leaned back in his chair and looked up at Becker. “I’d say there’s more to this than just a stolen camera,” he suggested.
“I’d say there could be a lot more,” Becker agreed, returning to his chair behind the desk.
“I assume at least part of that building is where the day’s cash is kept.”
“Yes, but they don’t publicize that fact. Very few people know exactly where it’s secured at night—even people who work at the fair. Cash is collected from the ticket booths, and care is taken to disguise its transportation across the grounds to that location. Take a look at what the people going into that building are carrying in the pictures. It’s never anything that looks like a money bag.”
Jensen flipped through the photos again, identifying people and the burdens they carried—fast food sacks, boxes of frozen meat, a woman’s large purse, an ordinary backpack. He nodded.
“This could put a whole new spin on Tank’s disappearance—and Jessie’s,” Jensen said, scooping the photos back into a pile that preserved their order. “If this is what it appears to be, a plan for robbery, it explains Wease’s motive for chasing the boy to get his camera bag back—also his reluctance to let you walk away with it and make the assumption you’ve just made. I think we’d better have another chat with your good buddy Wease, as well as Danny, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Maybe even have the boy take a whack at identifying him?”
“My thought exactly. I’ve got to make a run into the crime lab with some stuff that can’t wait on another case.
I’ll see if I can get any more information out of John Timmons while I’m there. You got a place to stay tonight, or do you want to crash with me?”
“Till I find a place to rent, I’ve got a space at the Lake Lucille Inn in Wasilla. You know—that Best Western by the lake where Caswell floats his plane sometimes?”
“Where he used to float it. You knew Cas crashed his plane this summer?”
“Yeah. I’ve got to call him, maybe tonight. How’s he doing?”
“Good. Looking for another plane already.”
Both men left the office, heading for the parking lot.
“Transportation?” Becker asked.
“I brought Jessie’s truck back into town. Didn’t think she’d mind. I left a note, but I’m going back out there anyway. She just might have turned up. Won’t hurt to check on her dogs either, though Billy Steward was there earlier.”
“Okay. If I get anything new I’ll call you later,” Becker promised, climbing into his own pickup. “Either at Lucille’s or Jessie’s.”
Jensen watched him out of sight, then drove to Wasilla, where he stopped long enough to pick up a hamburger, onion rings, and a six-pack of Killian’s before heading out the familiar eight miles on Knik Road. Half an hour later he was once again climbing the steps of Jessie’s new house and letting himself in with the key that old Pete guarded in the dog yard.
CHAPTER 18
I had been at Jessie’s long enough to finish eating and was headed for the sofa with a beer, to do some serious thinking, when I noticed that the answering machine was blinking,” Jensen told the group assembled in Jessie’s living room.
Several heads turned to glance at the table against the south wall, where the downstairs phone resided, but the machine was not blinking at the moment.
“It reminded me that I meant to call Caswell, but I thought I’d better find out what was on the tape. It could have been another message from the dog-napper.”
Frank Monroe couldn’t help smiling at the word Alex had jury-rigged.
“But it wasn’t, was it?” Jessie asked.
“No. It was someone named Maxie, checking in from the Yukon Territories. From the message, I assumed it was your friend from the night before. She left her cell phone number, so I called her back, thinking she might shed some light on where you’d gone that morning.”
M axie,” a husky voice answered on the second ring.
“You don’t know me. I’m Alex Jensen. I’m calling on behalf of—”
“I know who you are,” Maxie interrupted. “You’re Jessie’s Alex—one of the boys in blue.”
“State trooper, actually. Look, I got the message you left on Jessie’s machine. You were here last night, right?”
“That’s right. Where’s Jessie?”
“Could you tell me where you are now?”
“Question with a question. Sounds official. I made very good time and drove late. I’m at Kluane Lake until tomorrow morning. Is something wrong, Alex? Where’s Jessie?”
“We’re not sure. We found her truck out the Parks Highway, but she hasn’t been seen since this morning.”
“Beg yours?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said she’s missing?”
“Yes—never made it in to work at the fair today.”
“Bloody hell!” Maxie’s voice came sharply back, apprehensive and frustrated. “I warned her that going hunting for Tank was a crook idea. But it doesn’t surprise me that she went anyway. She did, didn’t she?”
“We think so. Do you have any idea exactly where?”
“No. I wish I did. If I hadn’t promised to be in Colorado yesterday, I’d turn around and come right back there.”
There was a long moment of silence, then Maxie spoke again. “Please, will you keep me posted until you find her?”
“Of course. This number?”
“Yes, in the evening I’m usually someplace where this cell thing works. If you don’t mind my asking—oh hell, even if you do. What are you doing back in Alaska?”
“Well-l,” Jensen practically stuttered in surprise that this stranger would ask, or know anything about him, “that’s a long story.”
“I’m a forward and practical woman,” Maxie gave him to understand. “You’re permanently back?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Does she know?”
“Not yet.”
“But you intend that she should?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. That’s enough of your business. How can I reach you if I think of anything valuable? But she didn’t tell me anything really.”
He gave her the number of the Palmer office, and before she hung up, she promised to keep in touch. Then she was gone; leaving him staring at the phone in his hand, dazed and a little abashed. She had made straightening out his relationship with Jessie seem simple in a way. He dropped the receiver back in its cradle and went back to sit down on the sofa and finish the beer he had carted along to the phone.
Feeling jet-lagged, he leaned back on a pile of pillows and slowly emptied the bottle, trying to concentrate on prioritizing the events of the last twenty-four hours.
I had meant to leave a note and go back to the Lake Lucille Inn, but the next thing I knew there was sunshine coming in the window and I’d spent the night on your sofa,” he told Jessie across the circle. “Some time in between I’d kicked off my boots and rolled up in an afghan. I came to when Becker started hammering on the front door.”
S till half asleep, Jensen had stumbled to his feet to answer the knock. “Oh, it’s you. Thought it might be—”
“Nope. But I thought I’d find you here,” Becker said as a bleary-eyed Jensen stood in his stocking feet holding the door open and gathering his wits.
“I crashed and burned last night. Bedtime comes two hours earlier in Idaho, and I didn’t get much sleep in the Seattle airport yesterday.”
“When you weren’t at the Lake Lucille Inn, I hoped Jessie had come home from—wherever.”
“No. Make some coffee while I take a quick shower, will you?”
“Sure.”
As Becker headed for the kitchen, Jensen climbed the stairs to Jessie’s bedroom, where he stripped off his clothes and climbed into her new shower. A welcome cascade of hot water helped bring him back to life. The mug of strong coffee Becker handed him when he came back down ten minutes later completed the job.
“Time to interrogate Wease?” he asked, retrieving his pipe and joining Becker, who was drinking his own coffee at the dining table. “Then we’ll talk to the boy?”
“It’s what I had in mind.” Becker nodded and watched as Jensen lit the pipe with a kitchen match. “Why don’t you get one of those special lighters for pipes?”
“Tried ’em. They don’t work as well as matches. Besides, I’ve always kind of enjoyed the smell of sulfur. Reminds me of lighting the woodstove when I was a kid at home.”
He frowned in concentration and began to think out loud. “It seems to me that we should really dig into this guy Wease. In thinking it over, it seems to me that he’s probably our best bet for finding out what’s going on here, both with Jessie and with what looks like a crime in the planning stages, if not in progress. If we push him hard enough it should…”
As he continued to lay out what he had come up with since talking to Becker the night before, he flipped his hand to extinguish the match, then held it hesitantly for a moment, realizing he had no place to put it down. Still talking, he casually got up and walked into the kitchen, where he opened a cupboard above the stove, extracted an ashtray that he obviously expected to find there, and returned. Setting it on the table, he dropped the burned match into it.
Becker watched the maneuver with an interest in how subconsciously Jensen was making himself at home in Jessie’s living space, but said nothing to break into the other man’s verbal analysis of what should be done about Ron Wease. The ease of the activity he had just observed revealed everything about Jensen’s aspiration
s for the relationship, but calling attention to that would serve nothing, so once again Becker simply noted and mentally filed it.
“We’ll head for the fairground first,” he said when Jensen finished talking. “It’ll be faster to find Wease’s address through Dave Lomax at the security office, if he’s not off somewhere on the grounds.”
B ut Ron Wease was not to be found on the grounds.
“Never showed up today,” the director of security for the fair, Dave Lomax, told them angrily. “No phone call or nothin’. He’s history. I’ve already replaced him.”
“That’s a pretty knee-jerk response, isn’t it?” Jensen asked. “How do you know for sure he won’t show up?”
“Well”—Lomax scowled—“I guess I don’t. But it’s not the first time. I gotta have dependable people, so I’m done putting up with—”
“You got an address? Even better, a picture on his records?” Becker broke in.
“I can give you a home address and phone number, but no photo.”
“Well, we know what he looks like anyway, but I thought photos were part of your security records.”
“Yeah—we take our own with a Polaroid. He kept saying he’d get it done but never seemed to get around to it.”
Lomax sorted through a file in the drawer of his desk and came up with an application form that he handed to Becker. “See—no picture.”
With a scowl, Becker copied down the address listed. “Sloppy,” he growled, which earned him a speculative and resentful glare from Lomax as the two troopers went out the door.
“You know,” Jensen said as they headed for the address Ron Wease had given on his application form, “there’s one thing that bothers me about all this that we haven’t talked about.”
“What’s that?”
“The boy, Danny whatsisname, saw Wease behind the pub that night arguing with someone. I keep wondering if that someone could have been Belmont. If it was, there could have been more to their disagreement than an argument. Wease chased the boy, but he could have come back later to beat up on Belmont and wound up killing him. I want to know what that argument was about.”