by Don Porter
“Thank you, kind sir. You do get me into some miserable situations, but you’re good at repairing the damage.”
The proprietor was as sorry to see us go as we were to leave. I did use my card to check out, since hidden identities seemed passé. They had cut back to one waitress, but pigs-in-a-blanket and ham-and-scrambled were as good as ever. The river looked black and sullen, not inviting, and the ice floes were white and constant.
An ice scraper that Avis had provided was in the glove compartment. I rehabilitated the windows. Roads were bare, but fall was no longer beautiful. Trees along the hot springs road looked shabby and dying. Leaves were brown, black branches showing through. Turk was glad to see us, but Angie managed to open her own door. I went around back to the generator shed and started the three-thousand-watt Onan diesel.
The furnace was spotless. Stan must have cleaned it in the spring, and it would have had only occasional use during the summer. The electric-controlled furnace required the generator, and they would have run that only in the evenings. I turned up the thermostat on the wall and the furnace came to life with a satisfying roar. Angie ran water into the kitchen sink until the pressure pump kicked on. Blessed heat poured out of the floor vents. The only frozen thing was Turk’s water pan. I fixed that with a stomp and a fresh pitcher.
“Planning to go to work today?” I asked.
“Well, one of us should do something constructive.”
I’d noticed that Turk’s plaster was no longer sitting on his scalp. It seemed to have raised up half an inch on new hair. “While you’re lollygagging around the water-cooler at Channel Two, I could take Turk back to the vet. Looks like time for a post-operative check-up.”
“Good. Leave the furnace on until you get back. Once the house is warm, it’ll stay that way until evening.”
I dropped Angie at the station, promised on my honor as an unreliable misanthrope that I’d pick her up at six forty-five outside the back door, and drove Turk to Creamer’s Dairy.
The vet removed the plaster by dissolving it with something. Turk had a puckered strip of skin across his scalp but the new fur was coming in fast. Huskys do that. His winter coat would stay ahead of the dropping temperature and when the time came, he’d be comfortable sleeping outside at fifty below.
The house was comfy. I shut down the furnace, then the generator, and told Turk to stay. He sat down and wagged his tail, brushing the gravel into scallops. I drove into town and found Lieutenant Stella at the cop shop. He invited me into his office. It was spare, clean, masculine, with a wooden desk, one extra chair, and one window showing black leaves outside. Mandatory pictures of the governor, commissioner, and chief hung behind the desk. Otherwise the walls were faded wallpaper from the nineteen fifties. He indicated a chair for me and sat behind his desk.
“Did we apprehend two on the FBI’s most wanted list?”
“Nope, far as I can tell, you accosted two innocent tourists who didn’t know Alaska’s gun laws. These guys are clean, have no priors. They arrived from Seattle yesterday, and have no idea about any plots or hits. They’re not quite sure what the term hit means.”
“You believe that?”
“Of course not, but that’s not the point. If we slap them with a fifty-dollar misdemeanor for concealed weapons, you and Angie will have to testify. Not worth the bother, maybe even dangerous. Want to explain to the judge why you were out walking with a shotgun in the night? By the way, why didn’t you tell me you’re a private investigator?”
“When’s the last time you cooperated with a PI?”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“Okay, so the two thugs are actually Christian missionaries in disguise. What can we do?”
“No, actually they were both discharged from the same Marine unit with your former victims, which is a bit much for coincidence. I’ll railroad them out of town for no visible means of support, but they can come back on the next jet if they want to. I’ll convince them that’s not a good idea, but the law is on their side.”
“That’s just dandy. Better luck with the fingerprints?”
“You batted your usual fifty percent. One glass was used by Reginald Parker, a regular Boy Scout. The only reason his prints are on file is his exemplary service as a Green Beret, honorable discharge, and decoration for valor. You do know he’s running for governor?”
“Yeah, I heard. And the other glass?”
“Wiped clean, nary a print nor a smudge. Alex, that glass could have just come out of a dishwasher. Care for coffee?”
I nodded, he punched buttons and spoke to his phone. The door opened and a pert young woman in patrolman uniform came in with two steaming cups. Apparently it’s good to be a lieutenant. She handed a cup to him, one to me, smiled at us, and departed.
“Could something have gone wrong in the lab?”
“Not a chance. Our print gal is the best. If she says the glass was clean, it was clean.” He sipped, so I matched him. For institutional coffee, it was good.
“Good coffee, thanks. So, where does that leave us?”
“Interesting question. Consider this, what kind of a guy wipes his glass clean after he’s just had a drink with a friend?”
“An obsessive compulsive?”
“Or one who is so paranoid he never leaves prints? Could be darn good reasons for that. Are you going to tell me who you suspected, or are you playing games?”
“No games, it’s just that I can’t explain a reason to suspect this guy. His name is Dave Marino, and he showed up three weeks ago to manage Reginald’s campaign for governor. I don’t suppose you can arrest him because I don’t like the expression in his eyes?”
“Probably not, and keep in mind, that’s not a good reason to shoot him, either. I’ll see what I can find. Want to bet a hundred bucks that the name isn’t phony?”
“No thanks.” We’d both finished our coffee and I stood.
“By the way, we moved back to the cabin in the woods this morning. We’ve tried sneaking around town and it didn’t seem to work. If we disappear, you can look for the bodies at the cabin.” I set the empty cup on his desk. He gave me a rueful nod that I did not take to be encouraging.
I stopped by Fairbanks Electronics, bought two motion sensors, a power supply, two five-hundred-foot rolls of zip-cord, and a bell like the one that had summoned me to grade school classes. Back at the house, I set the power supply and the bell in the spare bedroom, tied the ends of the rolls of wire to the bed frame and set them on the windowsill.
Outside, I just pulled the reels and let the wire lie on the ground beside the driveway. Two hundred feet reached to the road. I left one reel, turned toward town, and followed the road until the reel ran out. A sturdy birch limb made a good mount. I scrambled up, taped a motion sensor to the limb, focusing it on the road, and connected the wire. The other reel and the other motion sensor went an equal distance toward the hot springs.
I was setting us up for false alarms if a moose crossed the road, but anything that moved within five hundred feet of the drive in either direction was going to ring the bell. That made the house seem more like a fortress than a trap. A smart intruder might be able to neutralize Turk with a poisoned beefsteak or a silenced shot, and maybe I was being overly macho again, but with the pistol in my belt, and Angie backing me up with the shotgun, I figured we could handle an invasion, so long as we had some warning.
For no reason I could think of, I drove out to the airport and parked between hangars. The morning frost was gone, the sun trying to make up for it but with minimal success. The Skyvan was missing, Otter tied down. Reginald’s Mercedes and Celeste’s Miata were in the lot, Dave’s Cadillac was not.
The morning jet from Anchorage arrived, rocking the car and damaging eardrums when the pilots honked on the reverse thrusters to stop. It used three quarters of the runway before it turned around and screamed its way back to the passenger terminal. There’s a good reason why bush pilots refer to
the Boeing 737 jet as Fat Albert. It doesn’t use the taxiways, taxis right down the middle of the runway to the far end, then shakes buildings and airplanes when it takes off.
It did occur to me that if I’d followed yesterday’s hunch and staked out the passenger terminal, I might have seen Dave meet the innocent tourists. That would have given substance to some unsubstantiated suspicions. I was debating with myself about making the same mistake two days in a row when the F-27 from Anchorage arrived on schedule and pallets were jockeyed back and forth, but none went into the Otter. The F-27 closed its door, the door of the freight shed slammed down, and the F-27 again used only one engine to sandblast the front of Interior Air.
I did keep an eye on the road, but Dave’s Cadillac didn’t come from the passenger terminal with a fresh wave of commandos. I was wasting time and getting half frantic. I needed a good idea, or at least a plan, and as usual, when I tried to think, nothing happened. I like to pretend that I get my share of good ideas, but they come when I’m driving or flying, or sometimes just sitting on the commode, not when I’m trying to focus and think.
The temperature had sneaked up well above freezing so it was a good time to do some housekeeping I’d neglected. The 310 needed the gas tanks topped off, oil checked, and winter covers over the engines, just in case the bottom dropped out of the thermometer. I strolled down the flight line to the 310. Bright green, hundred-octane gasoline poured out of the fuel tank drains and the fuel strainers on the engines, so there was no water in the system, but that is a danger when the temperature is flipping up and down. If the tanks aren’t topped off, air fills the space, and air has moisture in it. I checked the oil; both engines were down half a quart, very good for air-cooled engines.
I taxied the bird over to Sea Airmotive’s gas pumps, topped off tanks, and bought one quart of oil from the gas boy, who imagined himself in training to become a 747 pilot. He was as anxious to get on with his career as I was with mine. I added half the quart of oil to each engine, parked the plane, and dug the orange quilted cowling covers out of the baggage compartment. It wasn’t much, but I was doing something. No good ideas popped in when I stopped trying to think.
The Skyvan came home. Freddy climbed out and strolled into the office.
Reginald came out of the building at twelve fifteen, climbed into his Mercedes, but turned left toward the passenger terminal and coffee shop. He wasn’t meeting anyone because no planes had arrived in the last hour, so I let him have lunch in peace. Apparently the rest of the crew brown-bagged it because they didn’t come out.
Reginald returned at one-ten. The cars sat in the lot, and I guarded them. Persistence is the watchword for successful surveillance, so my afternoon must have been successful. Anyway, no one stole the cars. Reginald came out and drove toward town at six-oh-five. Celeste and Freddy came out and stood between their cars to banter for a minute, then Celeste headed for town in her Miata.
Freddy lounged beside his pickup and the brunette of the locked desk came out. What was her name? Muriel? Marlene? The crew from the freight shed dispersed, the brunette typist took thirty seconds to lock and shake the doors, and I was guarding an empty building. She strode to the lot, where she and Freddy glanced around and apparently decided the coast was clear. They locked into an embrace with kisses that made me blush before both slipped into Freddy’s pickup and headed for town. That put a new slant on Freddy, and I should be ashamed to say, added a whole new interest in the brunette.
I was Johnny-on-the-spot, parked behind the Lathrop Building at six-forty-five when Angie came out.
She glanced at her watch while she climbed in. “Amazing.”
“Yep, that’s me, thoroughly domesticated. How was your day?”
“Stinking. Your friend Dave Marino was in all afternoon trying to weasel the cheapest spots for Reginald. He had our top salesman crying, and the rest of us shagging availabilities.”
“Where would you like to have dinner?”
“Supposing, just for a change, I cook something?”
“Darn, I have this image of you as a high-powered executive. Don’t make me change to a household drudge.”
“Well, you could think of me as an executive chef. I can whip up a world-class beef stroganoff in twenty minutes. You can flirt with me instead of trying to make out with every waitress we’ve had.”
We hit the grocery store. Angie knew what she wanted. I just hovered, but there is something intimate about buying groceries together. It’s kind of a grown-up version of playing house. I asserted my macho ego and paid the tab, but it was interesting because everyone must have assumed we were married. Connie and I have done a lot of things together, but I couldn’t remember ever shopping for groceries. Maybe we should try that. I tried to picture grocery shopping with Celeste and got nowhere.
It was starting to get dark by the time we approached the house. We had half a mile to go when a furious barking, and then a howl like an air raid siren startled us. I slammed on the brakes, and Turk bounded across the ditch, pawing at the car. Angie reached over the seat to open the back door and he jumped in.
“What the devil are you doing here, big boy? I told you to stay.” I dropped the car into gear and started to roll. Turk whined like his heart was breaking. I stopped.
“Darn, I wish you could talk, fella.”
“He’s certainly trying, isn’t he?” Angie asked.
“Big time, and I think I’m getting the message. Has he ever met you on the road before?”
“Never.”
I popped the trunk and jumped out. The shotgun was wrapped in towels. I shook it free of its travel wrapping and handed it to Angie. “You’re driving. If anyone tries to stop you, blow them away.” I dug Lieutenant Stella’s card out of my wallet and handed it to her. Angie scooted over under the wheel and took the card.
“Go back to the nearest phone, probably the Rendezvous is open, and call Stella. Don’t come back without the troopers.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry, nothing stupid or macho. I’ll just skulk around and try to decipher what Turk is telling us.”
Angie backed around in a half circle and spurted gravel. I got my pistol in my hand and stepped off the road into the trees.
Chapter Eighteen
I paralleled the road. If any cars came from Angie’s driveway, I wanted to get a look at them. Leaves had fallen but they were damp rather than crisp so I could walk without crackling, and sight distance was much more than it had been during my last foray. That was a two-edged sword. I felt naked between trees. Bushes that had made a blind a week ago were bare sticks, and I could see, and be seen, right through the low tree branches. I used the squirrels’ technique, moving fast between shelters then freezing and scanning from each new perspective.
That works for squirrels. You see a blur of movement but they’re invisible when they freeze and you begin to doubt what you saw before they move again. Mostly I was counting on whoever was there to be expecting a car and concentrating on the drive rather than the woods. Problem was that they would be set, not moving. I got close enough to see there were no cars in the drive, but that only meant they had been dropped off. I started seeing shapes that could be men with rifles crouched under bushes, but each time I studied one it turned into a log or a branch that still wore leaves, and definitely, nothing moved. The woods were totally, eerily silent except for my breathing.
I dropped down and crawled for the last fifty yards until I came to a big cottonwood that looked bulletproof. I had a clear view of the edges of the drive, and could see a man lying beside the track with a rifle sticking up. He would have been an easy shot, but I couldn’t spot his accomplices. Once I shot, I’d be the center of attention and I didn’t see a suitable bunker close by. The cottonwood was good, but not that good. I did a slow scan, both sides of the drive, then the trees, and I couldn’t spot them. There had to be at least two men, maybe three. Why not ten or twenty? I came back
to my original target and he had turned into a log with a branch sticking up.
I decided they must be inside and crawled toward the house. It was too dark to see into the house, but nothing showed in the picture window. I lay flat behind a mound of leaves and just watched over the gun sight.
Ten minutes crept by in slow motion. It seemed like forever since Angie had left, so surely the troopers were on the way. The house looked peaceful and inviting, but those solid walls also looked impenetrable. Anyone inside would be warm and comfortable, could spend the night if necessary. When I stopped moving I noticed it was cold, and I wasn’t dressed for it.
More time crept by. My feet were checking out. I took the pistol in my left hand and warmed the right one in my pocket, then switched and rubbed my undamaged ear but was worried about staying invisible. When squirrels freeze, it usually isn’t literally. I was wondering about backing off and waiting for the troopers on the road when something moved at the end of the house.
It was a strange rocking motion, a gray blur the size of a washtub. It passed the house and turned to cross the drive, then another appeared behind it. A pair of porcupines waddled past the house and disappeared into the woods. I got up and stamped my feet, then stumped around back and fired up the generator. The hot exhaust from the muffler felt good so I basked in that for a few minutes before I went inside and started the furnace.
Turk’s food dish and water pan were empty and there were porcupine quills in both of them. I was sitting on the front steps with a cup of coffee when the school bell in the spare bedroom announced time for classes. A minute later two state troopers came slinking down the edges of the lane with rifles at the ready.
“Hey, Jim. Nice night for a drive. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”