by Sue Henry
“Yes. Single red roses.” He nodded toward the inside of the motor home and the three vases that stood on the table. “Like those.
“And though we can’t tell about Kendal, because the river had washed her body clean, the clothes of the woman yesterday were saturated with the same smell as your roses.”
15
IN THE SUNLIGHT, CLEARLY VISIBLE BEYOND THE EARLY-AFTERNOON shadows cast by the peaks of the Chugach Mountains into the valley’s west side, a small red and silver plane soared low over the Knik River. Its shadow flowed swiftly across the ground below, following the contours of the riverbanks and the rushing waters they contained. The plane caught the attention of an eagle perched in the top of a tall spruce, waiting for an incautious rabbit on the bank, or a salmon resting in the shallows along the shore. For a moment or two the large raptor watched the plane closely but soon decided it was not worth investigating.
High on the hill above the end of the road, a woman raised her head at the whine of an engine, rose from the chair she had been sitting in to read the morning paper while she ate her late lunch, and stepped to the window. She watched the plane pass below her, heading upriver. It gleamed brightly in the sunlight as it flashed in and out of her sight beyond the trees and disappeared around the shoulder of a hill. Thoughtfully, she sat back down, but her concentration was broken, and she leaned back and considered what she had seen. Though she waited a long time, listening carefully, she did not hear the plane return. It had either gone over the mountains to Turnagain Arm or had landed somewhere beyond the road along the river.
She thought it was the same plane she had seen before, within the last week, late in the evening, when there was just enough light left to be able to see that part of it was red. There had evidently been enough light for it to land somewhere up there, for she had not seen it come back; but sometime after midnight, she had wakened to the sound of its engine before rolling over and going back to sleep.
Remembering the woman’s body the police had retrieved from the riverbank the day before, she frowned.
Some of the people who lived on the road that ran along the west side of the Knik River had been there when Robert Hansen had brought his victims into their front yard—as most of them considered this side of the river. She and her husband had not; they had bought the house and property only ten years earlier. But though their neighbors did not often speak of it, she had heard enough to be glad that that particular horror had taken place before they had moved in, and she resented the idea that something similar could be happening again. This current nastiness had to be the work of someone else, for Hansen was and would remain incarcerated. But the thought—someone else—sparked a note of fear in the back of her mind.
After another few minutes of deliberation, she got up again and went to the telephone. Laying a hand on the instrument, she hesitated, for those who lived along the road were independent sorts that tended to take care of their own problems, and she was not inclined to contact law enforcement as a general rule. Knowing the troopers had already had men and dogs search the area where the body had been found, she almost let it go. But uneasiness and concern overrode her predisposition, so before she could change her mind she quickly dialed the number on the card the officer had given her.
For the first time since they had started building her new cabin, Jessie hardly noticed what was happening in terms of her cabin building. Prentice was negotiating with the crane operator, who had arrived shortly after the truckload of logs, as to when they would be ready to start raising them into place. The crew was fully occupied in putting down a floor as fast as possible over the joists they had wrestled into place and bolted down. The sound of hammers filled the clearing, along with terse directives from foreman Bill. But Jessie’s attention was focused on Timmons and Becker, her interest in construction overwhelmed by what she had just been told about the roses.
“Why me?” she asked. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
“We don’t know,” Timmons told her. “But there’s got to be some reason. It may be that he thinks you know something because you live here. Maybe he’s trying to scare you off. There may be someone else—Bonnie Russell’s sister, maybe. What if she is buried on this lot? Maybe this is the guy you bought the property from, someone named…”
Jessie broke in. “Daryl O’Dell Mitchell.”
He gave her an astonished look. “I thought you didn’t remember his name.”
“Called about the deed and found out.”
“Oh. Well, turns out he was the nephew of the owner, and the property was transferred to him back in 1978. But there’s no record of the old man’s death.”
“James O’Dell,” Jessie supplied.
“Right again.”
Timmons frowned in concern at the expression on Jessie’s face, which clearly indicated the confusion and apprehension going on in her mind.
“Do you think this Daryl Mitchell killed the old man?” she asked.
“Someone did,” Becker said. “Right, John?”
“Unfortunately, yes, someone did. But Jessie, take it easy. You’ve got to…”
But Jessie interrupted again, having no truck with advice at the moment.
“Could this guy be back in Alaska and after me just because I found his uncle? Does that make sense?”
The two men frowned at each other in frustration, trying to decide how much to tell her.
“We’re doing a search to find out where he moved,” Timmons said. “If he took a job in the Lower Forty-eight, he had to use his social security number. Where he worked will show up on his tax records, but it takes time to get into that.”
“We don’t know enough yet, Jessie,” Becker added. “Have a little patience and give us some time. It may not be this Mitchell guy at all.”
“Who, then? You’ve got to have some idea.”
“That’s what we’re working on.” He sighed and gave up a few more speculations. “There are another couple of leads. One woman we think is missing worked at another Anchorage bar, but they tend to go back and forth to cities on the West Coast—even to Hawaii. She could be anywhere: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. We’ve put out the word on her. But I know one thing for sure. Considering what we know about these roses, it’s not a good idea for you to be staying out here alone.”
“But I have to be here.”
As she waved a hand at her dogs and everything that was going on at the building site, his scowl deepened.
“What if my roses have nothing to do with this? It actually might be some friend, you know.”
“And it might not,” he snapped back, finally losing some of his ability to put up with her insistent questions. “That would have to be a pretty big coincidence, and I don’t like the odds.”
“Okay,” she capitulated. “What do you suggest that—”
One of Timmons’s assistants came trotting across the yard. “Call dispatch, Phil. She said it’s urgent.”
As Becker went off to the patrol car to call in, Timmons tried again to convince Jessie of what he would consider reasonable.
“Phil didn’t say you couldn’t stay here, Jessie. He said you shouldn’t be here alone.”
“Oh. Right.” She hesitated, thinking. “So if I had someone else with me, you think it’d be okay?”
“Well—if you had the right someone, it might be. But it would also be easier if you went somewhere else. Don’t you have a friend you could stay with?”
“I’ve got my forty-four.”
“Not good enough,” Timmons protested. “A lot of people are killed with the handgun they keep for defense. Just having one doesn’t guarantee anything.”
As Jessie gave that some solemn thought, Becker came back from his call with a concerned look on his face.
“Someone along the old Knik River Road just called in and said they saw a plane fly up beyond the end of the road, and it hasn’t come back. It may have gone farther south over the mountains, but the woman who called think
s it may have landed. I’m going up there and take a look. Maybe we’ll get lucky, John.”
“And maybe it’s just a fisherman. It’s a bit soon after this last woman, isn’t it?”
“Who knows what this guy’s pattern is, or what he’ll do next? It can’t hurt to check it out. The caller was the wife of the couple Bonnie Russell went to yesterday after she found the body. The woman said she’s seen this same plane before. It could be our guy. I’ll stop by later, Jessie.” He turned to leave, but swung back to give her a stern look and add, “You aren’t staying here alone. Got that?”
He was gone in seconds, raising dust in the driveway in a way that reminded Jessie how much the ground had dried out in the last few days. Timmons went back to working with his lab assistants in their examination of the rest of the yard. Jessie sat for a few minutes in the sun, considering what she had been told and wondering what to do about it.
Angry that someone she didn’t know could threaten her, she was stubbornly tempted to stay where she was and ignore it, depending on her own defenses to keep herself out of harm’s way. But whoever had intruded into her living space the night before could do so again. With care, he could be inside before she was aware and ready for him.
Not with Tank inside with me, she thought. But there were problems with that too. The women Becker and Timmons were telling her about had disappeared without its being noticed until they didn’t show up as expected, at home or at work. There was no way of knowing how this had been accomplished and prepare for it.
She scowled and slapped her leather work gloves against the side of the bench in frustration. You’re too damned independent for your own good sometimes, Jessie! she told herself, and knew it was true. For the moment, she gave up on the problem, but it lay in the back of her mind, a persistent nagging worry. With Alex Jensen living in the same house, she had felt a certain amount of protection and company with which to share the fear of a stalker. Now she had only herself to depend on. But it did no good to be unreasonably stubborn—and, as a voice in her head reminded her, it could get you killed.
Banishing the thought, she got up and walked over to where, under multiple hammer blows and the crack of a nail gun, the floor was rapidly expanding to cover the basement. Prentice came across to tell her what had been decided about the early log delivery.
“They’d already been loaded on the truck, so they brought ’em on out, hoping we’d be able to start today.”
“Will we?” Jessie asked expectantly.
“Yeah.” He grinned assurance in her direction. “I sent J.B. to get two guys from another job to lend a hand. Give us another couple of hours to finish the floor and put down those half logs, and then the log crew can start up with the rest. Okay?”
She nodded, but didn’t answer, still wondering whom she could ask to stay with her that night that would satisfy Timmons and Becker—and herself. With the defining walls of her cabin about to take shape, the idea of going somewhere else appealed to her even less.
Stevie came trudging by them with part of a sheet of plywood subflooring she’d taken to the saw when it didn’t quite fit where it belonged.
“Two hours, boss? You must know we’re better than that.”
“Not if I count your coffee breaks.”
“Have I had one this morning? Not!” She grinned and moved on without stopping, but Jessie didn’t respond.
“Hey, you okay?” Prentice asked, noticing her frown and lack of response.
“What? Oh, yeah, Vic. I’m okay.”
She looked up and gave him a smile, but it was forced and she felt it.
“Look, Jessie. If something’s wrong, maybe I can help.” He paused to check her reaction. “I can at least listen.”
She shook her head. “Thanks, Vic. I just—ah, no. It’s just something I have to figure out.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do.” He laid a friendly hand on her shoulder, went to follow Stevie back up the ladder to the unfinished floor, and was soon pounding nails with the rest of the crew. Refocusing, Jessie went to help.
By one-thirty the floor was laid. Waiting till Vic’s people had gone for lunch, Jessie walked through what would soon become her living space. She envisioned the large window that would go into the wall nearest the dog yard and stood in front of that space, imagining a view of all her mutts. Despite all the noise and activity going on nearby, none of them seemed disturbed. Tank lay on top of his box in the sun, muzzle on front paws, keeping track of what was happening in a lazy sort of way. Bliss had rolled to her back and was asleep, half in, half out of her box, on some straw she had dragged out, probably getting tired of the pressure of lying on unborn puppies. Tux, totally unaware of the existence of his progeny, was lapping water from his bowl. He looked up as if he knew he was being observed, walked to the length of his tether, and lay down as close as he could to his best pal, Pete.
Jessie turned around to assess the rest of the space the main floor of the cabin would occupy. It seemed suddenly larger than she had anticipated, but she realized that was an illusion. Walls would make a difference.
Timmons, finding nothing, had packed up his equipment and assistants and departed, shaking his head in resignation. “You hear me, Jessie,” he had said, frowning through the lowered window of the van. “It’s not a good idea to stay out here alone.”
Vic’s people, like Jessie’s dogs, were relaxed around the yard on piles of building equipment and supplies. Dell, as usual, lay sprawled on a pile of lumber, hat over his eyes, supposedly catching a snooze with Stevie nearby. Vic and Bill had gone into the motor home to take another look at the blueprints. Hank Peterson, who had finished moving and smoothing dirt before joining the flooring effort, was balanced on a sawhorse, munching an apple. He grinned up at her. “It’s lookin’ good, Jessie.”
“Be even better soon,” she returned, and climbed down to find something edible for herself. It had been a long time since breakfast.
Before lunch was over, the crane had roared to life and its operator was swinging logs into place around the perimeter of the finished floor.
Except for Bill, after a bit of cleanup, Vic’s crew had gone.
“You’ve all done a full day’s work in record time.” Vic waved them off. “Get outa here. I bet you can think of something to do with a sunny day.”
But the work continued, for with the logs had come another crew of experienced builders from the company. Their expertise lay in knowing precisely how to shape logs and fit them together, one on top of the other, until they formed walls in the predetermined configuration. They had already built the cabin once, as it had been designed, in the company yard where the logs were turned and cut. Each one had then been numbered, the structure taken apart, and the logs put on the trucks in reverse order, so that the first to be loaded would be the last to be delivered and raised on site.
They worked rapidly, skillfully, reassembling the cabin like an enormous set of Lincoln Logs. Swinging the heavy logs around carefully in order to miss the trees that grew close on one side, the crane operator lifted each one to where it belonged. Then he lowered it slowly, while two men maneuvered it into place, allowing precut holes in it to settle over the long bolts J.B. had set into the concrete before it hardened.
Hank Peterson stayed for a while to watch and gratefully accepted a beer Jessie retrieved from the motor home. They sat together on the pile of lumber Dell had vacated, enjoying brew and sunshine and watching the logs go up, one by one.
Vic Prentice finally sent Bill home as well and joined them when the logs were two high around the perimeter of the cabin floor.
“So whaddaya think, Jessie? Beginning to look like a house?”
“Yes!” Satisfaction filled her voice, and he was glad to see a smile back on her face.
16
WHEN THE LOGS WERE FIVE HIGH, THE CRANE WAS SHUT down for the night and the building crew departed. Hank Peterson had already gone, but Vic Prentice had stayed to be sure everything we
nt as planned.
After Hank left, Jessie sat watching the work till midafternoon, thinking hard about staying alone that night. She understood her reluctance to ask anyone for help and the stubborn independence that was responsible for her attitude. The motivations behind her inflexibility were unimportant at the moment, so she refused to assess them. She recognized that she was struggling between two fears—one of depending on someone else and the other of some unknown person’s possible intrusion. The two seemed to weigh equally in her mind, so there was no easy solution.
What can I do to lessen the odds if this nut with the roses shows up again? What can I do to make myself safe? she asked herself and felt better. Doing something—anything—was superior to worry. What were her assets? Could she improve or add to them?
The roses had possibly been intended to please but confuse her, perhaps to create a benign feeling that would lessen suspicion. If she hadn’t caught sight of her floral benefactor disappearing into the trees the night before, it might have worked. But she had seen him, though he might not know it. And now, thanks to Timmons and Becker, she knew—or thought she knew—that this was no generous racing fan or secret admirer. That knowledge was an asset, for she was now aware and on guard.
The dogs in her kennel were a help, for some of them barked at every unfamiliar vehicle, person, even animal that entered the yard. She could count on them to warn her of an approach, welcome or not. Bringing Tank inside with her for the night would be a good idea. He would, she knew, be excellent protection, for he wouldn’t hesitate to place himself between his mistress and any threat. Maybe she would bring in dependable Pete as well.
In the back of a closet in the Winnebago, Jessie had a reliable Winchester Model 70 Pre 64 given to her by her father. He had taught her to shoot the bolt-action rifle, and she was comfortable with it. It was one of the few things that had not burned in the arson of her cabin, and she kept it mostly for sentimental reasons, her Smith & Wesson .44 being handier to carry on the trail with her dog teams, where she might need to shoot an angry or recalcitrant moose. She thought about getting the rifle out but wasn’t satisfied with the idea of so large a weapon in the limited confines of a motor home. It would be too easy to bump the barrel against something, spoil her aim, and miss a target. However, there might be another solution to this problem.