Stone Cross

by Marc Cameron

  Markham gave a nod. “That would probably be best.”

  Red Fox shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But there’s only six hundred fifty-two people in the village. Everybody here’s on one side of this thing or the other. You might as well relax and talk to folks.”

  Earl removed the tail stand from the rear of the Caravan and stowed it back in the belly pod as soon as everyone had their gear off the plane. Three minutes later, he was down at the end of the runway, opening up the throttle to barrel back toward the crowd. The cold air and slight headwind made the airplane leap off the gravel. It disappeared into the clouds before they had all the bags loaded in the trailers.

  A chilly quiet settled in as soon as the Caravan was gone.

  A few of the roughly two dozen people in the Stone Cross welcoming committee chatted with each other, but they did so in hushed tones, dampened even more by the soupy mist.

  Lola turned a slow three-sixty and shuddered. “This is creepy,” she said. “Why is everyone whispering like we’re in church?”

  “We don’t yell too much,” Ned said. “Yelling’s bad for you.” He shrugged. “We may beat the crap outta each other if we get drunk, but we don’t yell . . .”

  Tina Paisley stood a few steps away from the group, hugging herself as she stared at the spot where the plane had disappeared. “Does anyone else feel like we’ve been dropped off on a faraway planet?”

  The VPSO raised his hand. “I feel that way every time I go to Anchorage.” He chuckled. “To be honest, I’m new here myself. My wife and I transferred from Tooksook Bay, over on the coast. These folks in Stone Cross are good people though. They’ll take care of you. I promise.”

  Cutter had Lola ride on the back of Ned Jasper’s four-wheeler, which would follow the trailer with the judge. Up to now, keeping Markham in sight had been straightforward, but he was sure to get more passive-aggressive now that they were in the village. The VPSO said he’d already been briefed on the threat by Lieutenant Warr and promised to be an extra set of eyes.

  “How about you, Officer Jasper?” Lola asked when it was just she and Cutter with the VPSO. Everyone else was still getting situated and ready to ride. “Any idea if anyone from Stone Cross could have sent the threat to the judge?”

  Ned Jasper threw a leg over his ATV, nodding nonchalantly to a group of three Native women at the end of the line, standing beside their own Hondas. Like everyone but the city manager, the women were dressed for a sloppy ride in the wet snow. “See the one in the middle? That’s Daisy Aguthluk. I was going to talk to you about her as soon as we got back to the school.”

  Cutter shot a quick glance at the women, then let his eyes travel over the rest of the crowd so as not to appear too interested in them. Everyone remained stone-faced. Thankfully, neither Aguthluk or the two women with her appeared to have a gun. “You think she’s our threat?”

  “Pretty sure,” Jasper said.

  “She hates Markham enough to threaten to kill him?”

  “I would, if I was her,” Jasper said. “I mean, I wouldn’t threaten him, but I’d hate him if he did to me what he did to her family.”

  “Everybody ready to go?” Melvin Red Fox shouted over the engine noise of his ATV. Snow fell down the top of his rubber boot. His jacket remained unzipped. Either this guy was impervious to the cold, or he flat didn’t care about much of anything. Cutter recognized him as the latter. He’d been there before himself.

  Red Fox gunned the throttle, waving Cutter over. “You can get warm in the school.”

  Cutter raised his index finger, the universal sign to hold on a minute, before turning back to the VPSO. “What did Markham do to her family?”

  Jasper gave a noncommittal shrug. “My wife and I are new to the village, but the way I understand it, he kidnapped Daisy’s aunt.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Red Fox gunned his engine again. From his nest among the bags in the back of the plywood trailer, the judge yelled for everyone to hurry.

  “We need to talk about this some more,” Cutter said to Ned Jasper. “You stay behind the trailer and make sure nobody gets close to the judge. I’ll see if I can get Red Fox to help me keep an eye on Daisy Aguthluk.”

  Cutter climbed on behind the city manager, facing aft so he could hold on to each side of the luggage rack and watch his new suspect. This put the calves of his Fjällräven pants in the perfect position to catch a constant spray of mud and snow from the ATV’s spinning tires.

  The route in from the airport headed directly toward the river, bringing the procession into Stone Cross on one of the smaller gravel side streets. Junked ATVs and snowmobiles—called snow machines in Alaska—slumped forlornly in front of, beside, and behind almost every house. Here and there, black strips of meat hung drying under flat-topped sheds. Canadian jays flitted back and forth over the bloody remains of a caribou ribcage. Caribou hides were everywhere, hanging over sawhorses, draped over porch rails, or tacked against walls with the flesh side out. Heads and antlers lay strewn beside most of the weathered houses. Dogs sat in front of wooden boxes, some chained, some loose, all watching with mild disinterest as the procession of ATVs roared past.

  Aguthluk and the two other women stayed with everyone else as far as the edge of town, then peeled off at a thick line of willows, disappearing to the south. The rest of the ATVs kept going up the side street. If Cutter had his bearings right, they’d turn to the left at the end when the road made a T, and head north toward the school. He toyed with the idea of asking Red Fox to follow her, but decided he’d better stay with the judge. The quicker they got him inside the school, the better.

  A stub-legged village mutt that looked like a cross between a German shepherd and a Corgi stood and watched them pass, holding a caribou hoof in its mouth.

  Ned Jasper rode up so he was shoulder to shoulder with Cutter, working the handlebars to keep his ATV out of the potholes and ruts. “Looks like that scene from Yojimbo—where the dog carries in that guy’s arm . . . I love that movie.”

  “I know what you mean—”

  Cutter paused. He’d heard something—a scream maybe. Red Fox slowed. As did Jasper. They must have heard it too. The noise came again, muffled, but out of place. Jasper used his chin to gesture toward a sun-bleached plywood house on the north side of the street that they’d driven past.

  An instant later, a large window beside the front door shattered outward, and a woman launched through the opening as if she’d been shot from a cannon. She hit the ground facedown, skidding in the snow and gravel, before coming to rest in a stunned pile. Naked from the waist down, she wore nothing but a dingy gray T-shirt. Blood poured from a gash on her forearm. Even from thirty feet away, it was easy to see when she looked up that she’d been beaten badly enough that one of her eyes was swollen shut.

  Cutter jumped off the back of Red Fox’s ATV while it was still rolling, ducking to the side to avoid the attached plywood trailer that carried the judge and attorneys.

  Lola dismounted as well, but Cutter pointed to the trailer, ordering her to stay with the judge. He waved Red Fox toward the school, leaving Cutter and Ned Jasper to deal with the girl.

  The front door to the house flew open as Red Fox pulled away with the judge and a very unhappy Lola Teariki. A wiry man shot out the door but stopped on the porch, fists clenched, cursing at the top of his lungs at the woman. He wore saggy briefs and a pair of unlaced military boots. Long, black hair was mussed like he’d just gotten out of bed.

  Neither looked to be over twenty-five. The woman scrambled to her feet to face him, screaming back. The man stood on his porch and ordered her back in the house. When she didn’t move, he spat out an obscene threat and ran down the steps directly toward her, leaving no doubt as to his intentions.

  The woman held up her hands, bracing herself to ward him off. Blood dripped from the point of her elbow, painting the snow. Her index finger bent unnaturally at a right angle from her hand.

  Cutter was already running. This g
uy had thrown a woman out a window. He was, as Grumpy used to say, bought and paid for.

  Cutter came in at an angle, reaching the shirtless kid just as he cleared the last step. Instead of trying to catch him before he got to the screaming woman, Cutter simply reached out and gave him a shove between the shoulder blades. Momentum and blind rage carried the guy’s torso forward faster than his legs. He threw his hands out in front of him, still cursing as he surfed into the sloppy snow on his chest. His feet, wearing the weight of the heavy, ungainly leather boots, kept moving forward even after the rest of him stopped. His back arched, his legs bent at the knees, and the boots flew up, slamming into the back of his head like a scorpion stinging itself.

  Cutter glanced up to see the woman pedal backward. Too drunk or high to know how much pain he was in, the young man scrambled to his feet, but Cutter came in from the side, grabbed a handful of hair. He pushed up and over, driving the kid back and down, as if he were spiking a ball. Grumpy always called long hair a murder-handle. It certainly made for a nifty handhold when there wasn’t much of anything else to grab.

  The shirtless man’s chin shot skyward as his head followed Cutter’s fist toward the snow. The image of the bleeding woman was burned into Cutter’s mind, and it was all he could do to keep from following up with an elbow to the kid’s face. Instead, he let the ground administer the beating.

  The kid hit with a sickening oomph, the wind driven out of his lungs. Cutter had him rolled onto his belly and cuffed while he was still attempting to manage a croaking breath. The kid was in his twenties, no small fry, probably pushing five-ten and one eighty. Cutter still had him by five inches and fifty pounds, not to mention a lot more experience smacking people who were even bigger and stronger than he was.

  A Native woman holding a baby peeked out the door of the neighboring house, looked at the scene, then glared at Cutter like he’d been the one to attack the half-naked woman. She ducked back inside without saying anything. A wizened old man carrying a plastic bag of groceries over the arm of a traditional parka slowed his ATV long enough to look from Cutter to the man in handcuffs, and then drive stoically on.

  The kid cursed and jerked against the cuffs, trying to get his feet under him so he could stand. Cutter kept him in the snow with a knee in his back.

  Two elderly women from across the muddy street brought out a blanket and covered the sobbing woman. Both appeared to ignore the handcuffed kid, instead giving Cutter the same accusatory stare and head shake before leading the sobbing woman through the fog, back inside the house with the broken window. She left a trail of barefoot tracks and blood in the mud and snow.

  The VPSO looked sheepishly at Cutter. “I guess some of us do yell.”

  “You’ve handled this guy before,” Cutter said, once the women were out of earshot.

  “Oh yeah,” the VPSO said. “And I haven’t been here all that long. This is Archie Stepanov. As you can see, he gets a bit mean when he hits the home brew.” Jasper squatted next to the handcuffed man. “How are you doing, Archie?”

  “I didn’t know the Troopers were comin’,” Stepanov said. “Tell him to let me stand up.”

  “Ready?” Cutter said to Jasper, ignoring Stepanov.

  The VPSO gave a curt nod, and helped Cutter haul the kid to his feet.

  “Where’s your lockup?” Cutter asked.

  “Across from the school,” Jasper said. “But it’s not really much of a lockup. More like a big dog kennel with a padlock on it. I’ll need to hire someone to watch him until the Troopers can get here or I transport him out.“

  “I’ll be out before that, genius,” Stepanov said, staring daggers at Cutter. “My mom’s on the village council and the nonprofit board. She has dinner with your colonel every time she goes to Anchorage. Soon as she tells him how you beat my ass, he’ll have you hauled before a judge for police brutality.”

  “Doubtful,” Cutter said quietly, fighting the urge to point out that if he beat someone’s ass, they wouldn’t have the ability to gripe about it for days.

  “Come on,” Stepanov said, going from belligerent to weepy drunk in a mercurial change of tactics. “Please. Can’t you just let me go? I help you guys sometimes with my boat.”

  Cutter led him by the elbow toward Jasper’s ATV. “Where do you want him?”

  “Mind riding in the trailer with him?” Jasper asked. “The VPSO office is just up the road.”

  Stepanov wailed, pulling against Cutter’s grip. “Somebody please call my mom. She’ll straighten this out. It was all a big misunderstanding. Ask Doreen. We were just screwing around and she fell out the window. If she’s hurt, that’s what caused it.”

  “Hmmm,” Cutter said. “We were right here. Saw the whole thing.”

  “She fell,” Stepanov said, wide-eyed and shaking his head as if it was all so clear.

  Cutter’s voice grew more sinister. “How about you remain silent.”

  “Seriously, Trooper,” Stepanov said, pleading now. “Come on, buddy. I’m telling you. I make some mistakes when I’m drinking, but you know me. We’ll be laughing all this off by tomorrow. This is all a big misunder—”

  “I’m not a trooper,” Cutter said, reaching the back of the trailer. He pulled Stepanov close, looking down so they were eye to eye. “US Marshals, and I could not give a pinch of shit about who your mother knows. I am not your friend. I am not your buddy. Fact is, you see me anywhere besides the courtroom and you should do yourself a favor and keep walking.”

  Cutter set him down on a patch of bare plywood in the trailer, his back against a wall.

  Stepanov shivered. “Can I get a blanket?”

  “Fresh out of blankets,” Cutter said.

  “That was badass,” Ned Jasper whispered before Cutter climbed into the trailer with the prisoner. “But I should probably let you know, his mother really does know the colonel.”

  “So do I,” Cutter said. “And I happen to know he hates domestic violence. Anyway, that wouldn’t matter.”

  Jasper sighed. “We usually have to play things a little calmer out here. Sort of a going-along-to-get-along type deal.”

  Cutter cocked his head, raising a brow. “You wouldn’t have arrested him?”

  “Oh yeah,” Ned said. “I would have arrested him. But I woulda had to be nicer about it. You never know if Stepanov might be the guy to come by in his boat when you’re stuck on a sandbar.”

  Cutter scoffed. “This guy beat the hell out of a girl half his size. I’d rather spend the night on a sandbar than pull my punches with somebody like him.”

  Ned Jasper thought about that a moment, then shrugged, his broad face cracking a smile of approval. “Like I said, badass.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Ned Jasper used his cell phone to call someone on his list to watch the prisoner while they were en route to the office. The jail guard must not have had far to walk, because he was waiting when they pulled up. He was young, maybe eighteen, and wore a hoodie with the Stone Cross Timber wolves basketball logo on the front. Jasper introduced Cutter as the visiting marshal. The kid nodded like he knew already and shook Cutter’s hand.

  “Fog’s rolling in fast,” the kid said to Jasper. “Might have to do a telephonic hearing if you can’t get him to Bethel.”

  “Maybe so,” the VPSO said. He looked up at Cutter. “Think your judge would want to do an arraignment?”

  Cutter started to answer but Jasper cut him off.

  “I joke. We’ll get you settled and I’ll call the court in Bethel. They’ll probably let him out though . . .”

  Booking someone wearing nothing but tighty whities didn’t take long and they had Archie Stepanov locked up in less than five minutes. Ned Jasper was right. The holding cell wasn’t much, just six eight-foot by eight-foot sections of dog kennel that formed a chain-link cube. A blue rubberized wrestling mat functioned as a floor and mattress while a five-gallon plastic bucket in the corner provided a latrine. Considering that many of the homes in Stone Cross still used t
he honey-bucket system, the arrangement couldn’t really be viewed as cruel or unusual.

  The school was just across the road.

  The beige metal façade looked out of place compared to the faded, wind-bitten houses they’d passed on the way in from the airport. Ned Jasper’s plywood trailer contained half the airplane passengers’ luggage, so everyone including the judge came out to help unload when they rode up. Lola snickered when she saw the back of Cutter’s pants as he was getting his bags from the trailer. “Looks like they dragged you here.”

  Melvin Red Fox gave a sheepish grimace. “Shoulda warned you, Deputy,” he said.

  “I think he got most of this when he took down Archie,” Jasper said.

  Red Fox groaned. “Figured it was probably Archie who threw Doreen out the window. I heard last night on the VHF somebody made a big batch of home brew. That boy ain’t the only one who has problems when he’s drinkin’. You’re gonna be busy, Ned.”

  “Maybe they’ll wait till after the potluck,” the VPSO said. He nodded toward Cutter’s muddy pants. “Just stomp a couple times to get the big chunks off and you’ll be fine. School is still in session for a couple of hours, so you’ll have to stage all your gear in the library until classes get out. Judge, I think they have you in the consumer and family science room—what we used to call home economics. You’ll have your own toilet, but I’m afraid you’ll have to shower in the locker room. I’m not sure where Birdie is putting the rest of you.”

  Jasper had a fair amount of mud on his own boots and did as he’d instructed Cutter, stomping them on the heavy metal grating that led up to the double set of glass doors. Cutter suspected they weren’t the first to come to this school with muddy boots.

  Markham stood at the top of the steps, bag in hand, looking a little stunned. “Is she all right? That girl who crashed out the window?”

  “Who, Doreen?” Jasper shrugged. “I’ll go and take some photos of her injuries in a few minutes. Sad deal, that one. I’ve been tellin’ her to get away from Archie since I moved here two months ago.”