Deadly Detail

by Don Porter

  “Oh, my God, Angie, how are you? We got the police report about the accident, and we knew it was Stan’s truck, but they said only one person in it. Are you all right?”

  “Not yet, but maybe I will be. Lydia, I need a few days off.”

  “Of course, we’ve got you covered. Oh, honey, I’m just so glad you’re okay.”

  The word accident had me sitting up in shock. I mouthed, “Accident?”

  “Lydia, exactly what did the police say about Stan’s truck?”

  “I don’t remember the exact words. Do you want me to read you the report? It’s in the newsroom.”

  “No, just tell me what you heard.”

  “Well, it was a freak accident, one chance in billions. It was something to do with a gas line breaking and the spark igniting fumes. Angie, the whole station is broken up over this. Everyone sends their love.”

  “Thanks, Lydia, I’ll stay in touch.” Angie hung up slowly.

  “Accident?” I think we said it together and sat staring at each other. I got up to pace, but there wasn’t enough room, so I punched the wall with my fist. That hurt enough to get my brain back in gear.

  “Alex, could it have been an accident?”

  I paused to add two and two and two before I answered her. “No, it could not have been an accident. Things like that happen in boats sometimes, fumes in closed spaces. Cars can catch on fire, but no, they do not explode. Stan was scared, and it wasn’t paranoia. The guys who came to your house were real, and they came to kill us. I did not imagine the .45 slugs through your front door. Those were not hunters on the river this morning, or rather, they were, and they were hunting for us. So, no, it was no accident. Now, are we dealing with a police cover-up or just the usual incompetence?”

  “What do we do, Alex?”

  “First, we rent a car and I get my pistol in my belt. Don’t you need things from the house?”

  “Desperately. My purse, a hair dryer, some clothes. Do we dare go back?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Avis brought a green Dodge Dart to the hotel. We dropped the driver back at their office in the Polaris building and did the paperwork before we headed to the airport.

  I walked around the airplane three times, looked up under the cowlings, climbed up on the wing and looked into the cabin, no apparent tampering. Still, I took a deep breath and turned my head away when I used the key to unlock the baggage compartment behind the wing.

  The flight bag is a heavy canvas duffel, loaded with survival gear in case you put an airplane down in the tundra. It holds sleeping bags, space blankets, buddy burner, mess kit, chocolate, water purification tablets, beef jerky, and necessary tools. The implements on the bottom of the bag are hatchet and spade; the one on top is my .357 magnum revolver and a box of Speer copper clads.

  There are lots of sexier James Bond-type pistols around, like Glocks and Walthers, but those are for making movies, not survival in the bush. In the unlikely event that Speer ever makes a dud, a revolver doesn’t jam. You pull the trigger again and fire the next round. It’s not meant to spray an area with lead. It just puts a whopping hundred-and-sixty-grain missile precisely where it’s pointed with enough velocity to penetrate the first two or three things it hits.

  Mine is the Smith and Wesson patrolman model with a six-inch barrel. It’s not quite a rifle, but as far as I know, it’s still the most powerful and accurate handgun ever made, and it felt very good jammed into my belt with the windbreaker covering it.

  If you know Alaska’s gun laws, you’re wincing, and rightly so. You can carry any weapon you wish, so long as it’s showing, but it requires a license to carry it concealed, and I do have that. It’s almost a joke, but in Bethel my most faithful charter customers are Alaska State Troopers, and theoretically they travel alone in the legal sense, but with a charter pilot. If the trooper is a good friend, situations just naturally come up that are illegal. My getting a private detective license doesn’t make the events legal, just a little less illegal. Anyhow, the troopers conned me into it. I sent eight hundred bucks to the Professional Career Development Institute, read two good books in the Private Investigator Course, took twenty open-book tests, and got a handsome diploma. The diploma and a twenty-dollar bill got me the license that made it legal to pull my windbreaker over the pistol.

  I rejoined Angie in the Dart. “Up for a drive through the woods on this glorious fall morning?”

  “If you say so. Stan said he’d trust you with his life, so I should do the same.”

  That stopped conversation. We were both thinking that Stan had trusted me one too many times, and I had let him down.

  We approached the driveway slowly, scanning the woods on both sides for snipers, hidden vehicles, anything out of place. I parked the car at the entrance to the drive and walked down the lane, pistol in hand, looking for traps. I’d let Stan down; I was not going to do the same for Angie. The driveway was clean, with only my pickup parked in front. I went back for the Dart, feeling a little foolish or paranoid.

  I parked ten feet behind the pickup. When Angie stepped out of the car, a streak burst from the woods with a banshee howl and a clatter of dragged chain. Turk jumped onto her, paws on her shoulders, and knocked her flat. I grabbed the chain and dug in my heels to pull him off. He was licking Angie’s face with the apparent intention of drowning or smothering her.

  She sat up and wrapped arms around the big animal’s neck. He was still licking her, and she crooned and rocked him. He had a nasty gash across his head, the thick hair matted with dried blood, and Angie was carefully petting his forehead below the wound.

  “Stay put,” I said, but apparently they intended to. I walked around the pickup once, gun in hand again, and didn’t see anything amiss, but I didn’t touch it. I gave the house the same once-around. If a curtain had moved, or something stirred in the woods, I would have shot it.

  The window I’d used to shoot Turk’s tether was still up, the back door still open. I looked them over for wires, but common sense said they were safe. The phony cops had come to shoot whoever was in the house, not to plant bombs. I walked in through the back door, and through the house, checking the bedrooms and the bath. All were empty and still. The front door had two nickel-sized holes, so I had not imagined those. I opened the perforated door. Angie struggled up and unclipped the chain from Turk’s collar. They came in together, Turk rubbing himself against her legs at every step. They headed to the kitchen and dishes rattled. I stationed myself in the front door and watched the drive.

  With only one way in or out we were in a trap, but it was also, in a way, a fortress. No one was going to come up the river without the sound of an engine announcing it. Trees blocked the view of the road, but I figured I could hear any approaching traffic and I was straining ears. This far out, the only normal traffic would be headed for the hot springs, and that’s maybe a couple of cars per week. I kept the pistol in my hand, and continued telling myself that the silence and isolation were good things.

  A pair of camp robbers fluttered down from a big cottonwood tree and stalked around the Dodge, heads up, chests out, marching like Hitler’s Gestapo, the picture of pompous dignity. They decided the Dodge wasn’t edible and flew up into the trees. Angie was back in ten minutes, wearing slacks and sweater, a suit jacket and a tiny purse over her arm. She carried an overnight case in her hand. Turk was still trying to trip her at every step. I took the case and stashed it in the front seat while Angie and Turk climbed into the back.

  With the key in the ignition, I paused to turn around. Turk was nestled down with his head in Angie’s lap. I had to reach over the seat and stroke his forehead. “Looks like you could use a vet, big boy. Thanks for saving our lives, by the way.”

  “He really did, didn’t he? There’s a vet at Creamer’s Dairy.”

  I set the pistol on the seat beside me for the trip into town, but the lonely road with no driveways seemed like protection. No one was going to walk tha
t far out, so as long as no cars were parked beside the road, an ambush seemed unlikely. Still, I breathed easier when we hit the Steese, and then College Road, where traffic was normal.

  At Creamer’s Dairy, the barn, or maybe it’s the milking shed, is a concrete block edifice, and clean, clean, clean. Apparently the cows are housebroken, and the vet’s walled-off corner looked to me like any normal operating room.

  The vet was Ichabod Crane incarnate, hands, feet, and head too large for connection to his stickman frame, but he seemed to be communicating with Turk on a personal level.

  “That’s one nasty cut, Turk, but we’ll fix you right up. Gonna have to shave some of your beautiful coat. You’ll look like an inverse Mohawk for a while.” He was running delicate fingers over Turk’s skull, and Turk didn’t seem to mind.

  “Probably a mild concussion, but your eyes are alert, and your motor reflexes seem okay. Just hold steady while I relax you a bit.” The vet was scratching behind Turk’s ear with his right hand, but gave him a shot in the shoulder with a hypodermic that looked the size of a grease gun to me. I winced. Turk didn’t.

  The vet condescended to talk to us. “I should keep him for a few days’ observation. He just might have a concussion, and we don’t want any infection.”

  Angie was nodding. She knelt and gave Turk a hug. He licked her face, but in slow motion. He seemed to sag against the vet’s leg.

  I pulled Angie back to the car. Turk apparently understood that he wasn’t being abandoned. His tail was wagging, but with a beat suitable for Brahms.

  “Angie, have you noticed that we haven’t slept in a while?”

  “Yep, a bed sounds good, but now that I have my girl things I need about two hours in the bathroom.”

  “Whatever for? You’re the most beautiful girl God ever made, just as is.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine for you bushmen to say, but we’re in the city now. Never mind why, just take me back to the room. The hairbrush alone will be thirty minutes.”

  We tooled back to town, no one following us, and no lurkers in the hotel parking lot. The stairway was clear. I carried the overnight case in my left hand, pistol casually in right hand beside my leg, but the upstairs hallway was vacant. We ducked into our room.

  I put the chain on the door, but decided that sliding the dresser in front of it would be overkill. I kept telling myself that two deadly professionals were out to kill us, but they wouldn’t know where we were. I set the magnum on the nightstand and stretched out on the big bed. It was like floating on cloud nine. Angie had run straight to the bathroom, and I could hear water rushing into the tub.

  The TV remote was beside the phone so I punched the set to life and ratcheted through the cartoons to the Channel Two noon news. I was slapped in the face with a picture of Stan’s truck, and was glad Angie hadn’t seen it. Next, a long commercial for Friendly Ford, then a talking head pontificating about the upcoming Governor’s race. I recognized both frontrunners. The incumbent has been a personal friend for years. Alaska is a very large place geographically, but thousands of unpopulated square miles don’t count in elections. Population-wise, you could fit us all into Rhode Island and it would seem deserted. The population is small enough that almost everyone knows the gov, and most of us call him Bill.

  The challenger had been in Bethel on the campaign trail and I’d flown him to a few of the larger villages. I vaguely registered that he was the owner of Interior Air Cargo, and somehow that seemed significant, then my eyes closed.

  I awoke to twilight. The TV was off, the curtains open, and it was getting dark outside. Angie was sprawled out on the other bed, wearing a robe over pajamas, with little pink twists caught in her hair. She was breathing deeply, regularly, a comfortable homey sound. I thought it must be nice to wake up to a scene like that every day. Maybe when I get back to Bethel I should try again to weasel Connie into marriage. She seems to like me well enough, but she wants a man who’s home at six every evening. That’s understandable. Her ex-husband was a long-haul truck driver who turned out to have a girl in every town. She’s still smarting from that, and my schedule is too erratic for her. Maybe it’s best that I didn’t have to explain why I’m absent without leave and sharing a hotel room with an extremely attractive young lady.

  I made a backrest of the pillows and sat against the headboard. It seemed like there was something I should remember, but it wasn’t coming to the surface.

  I went back over the conversation with Stan, every word and nuance, but it seemed hopeless. Two guys, one he didn’t know, one he didn’t see, talking about something he didn’t hear. Then the blast at the club. Clearly, someone was smart enough to listen to the CB radio, but channel nine is the Fairbanks calling frequency so that didn’t require special knowledge of Stan. I was calling from two thousand feet up, so my half of the conversation would have been heard anywhere in the area, and I had mentioned the Rendezvous and the time frame. Still, getting to the club within an hour and with a bomb required some organization. A bomb that didn’t leave evidence for the police must have been sophisticated, unless there was a cover up. Having police uniforms handy screamed professional.

  “You awake?” Angie asked.

  “I hope not. I hope I’m having the worst and most convoluted nightmare on record, but probably not.”

  “Is it against your religion to feed a girl twice in one day?”

  “Not if she’s a very good girl. Do you want room service? Your PJs are cute, but they might cause a stir in the restaurant.”

  “Give me thirty seconds.”

  “Want to go to the Wagon Wheel for barbecue?”

  “No, not tonight. I don’t want to hear music or see happy people dancing. I just want to eat something, have a glass or two of wine, and go right back to sleep.”

  “The perfect agenda—twenty-nine seconds left.”

  In five minutes we were seated in the restaurant downstairs, dark, intimate, but no music and no dancing. The pistol in my belt felt reassuring and the other patrons were mostly the dregs of the tourist trade, poised to head south and causing no trouble. I got a shock when I noticed it was nine o’clock, twenty-four hours since Stan’s death. It didn’t seem right that we were still alive, ordering dinner. How could we be doing normal things, looking like normal people? Angie’s world had just been ripped apart, mine had a terrible hole in it, and yet I was calmly asking the sommelier the vintage of their Pouilly Fuissé. I decided not to think. I’m pretty good at that. Angie was obviously struggling, emotions flitting like a kaleidoscope show, but she bit her lower lip and studied her menu. Life must go on, food must be ordered and eaten. Stan was there at the table with us, we just didn’t mention it.

  The lamb chops béarnaise were perfectly done, spicy crisp crust around pink centers, but somehow I didn’t seem to taste them. Angie was toying with her salmon steak. We were washing the food down with a bottle of the 1973, which should have been pure ecstasy, and Angie was surpassing her two-glass estimate, but she didn’t appear to be enjoying the wine either.

  I know, it’s utterly gauche to drink white wine with red meat. I don’t know who makes up those rules, but I suspect they’ve never tried it. I think it’s one of those truisms with no truth to it, but perhaps I don’t have a sufficiently educated palate. In any case, no wine police showed up to arrest me. It occurred to me that even though Angie appeared poised and sophisticated, she probably wouldn’t know the finer nuances of wine.

  Our little candle in its glass bowl made a soft flickering light across Angie’s features. Large, Kahlua-colored eyes reflecting candlelight, long black lashes that had not come from her makeup kit, high cheekbones and overall symmetry and harmony—she was exquisite. That thought led to how much Stan had to live for, and then to our campfire on the riverbank, the slender strength of her leaning against me for warmth and comfort.

  “Whatcha thinking about?” Angie was watching me over the rim of her wineglass, and I hoped she hadn’t caught me st
aring.

  “I’m thinking that we can’t wait around for killers to find us. We need to find them. Our best clue must be at the freight office. Tomorrow, I’ll try to wangle my way in, maybe ask for a job handling freight or something. If we knew who was picking up or dropping off freight at closing time last night, it might give us a starting point.”

  Chapter Six

  At breakfast, I scanned the dining room and decided I was being paranoid. Threats never seem quite real on sunny mornings in happy crowds. Angie had wrinkled her nose and announced her intention of buying me some clean clothes. I handed her three twenties and she made that come-on gesture, like “hit me” in blackjack. I added another twenty. She kept waggling fingers. One more twenty. She nodded and folded the bills into a pocket.

  I started down Cushman toward Second Avenue, but turned right after two blocks, circled a block, and came back to Cushman. We were definitely not being followed. Angie spurned my suggestion of the Alaska Commercial Company so I dropped her at Monty’s upscale haberdashery. She waved and the store sucked her inside. I drove out to the airport.

  I parked in front of Interior Air Cargo. An office with large windows and an entrance was on the right. The rest of the building appeared to be a warehouse with an overhead door that could admit a truck, and beside it a pedestrian door into the freight area. That was the door Stan had used. I turned away from it, and entered the office.

  A gray Formica counter reached from wall to wall, with a hinged section at the left end for employees to go through. Two sharp, attractive young women sat at desks, a no-nonsense brunette at a computer, a breathtaking blonde working on a ledger. The back of the room had two doors, apparently to two private offices, and to the left of them was the fateful door into the freight area. The ledger lady gave me a smile and came to take my shipping order. Time to think fast.

  “Hi, I’m in town for just a few days, but I’m running short of cash and wondered if you happen to have a temporary opening? I’m familiar with shipping, but I’m also good with a broom and a mop.”