Murder at five finger light

by Sue Henry

  She thought about what it must have been like for the early keepers of the light, back when the area was much less settled than it was now. Some of them must have been odd ducks, willing to spend years of their lives out of touch with the rest of the world, in a sort of voluntary solitary confinement. But they hadn’t been alone, she remembered, thinking of the names of the last crew she had seen on the wall inside the lighthouse. At least they had had the opportunity to say We were here before they went away and left the place empty.

  If the worst happened and their present captors went away and left the seven of them trapped where they were, there would be no record of their presence until, eventually, someone found their remains. Even if someone came, who would think to look in the tanks? They could shout, but odds were they would not be heard unless someone was standing almost on top of them, if then. They could die where they were. It was possible.

  Knowing that in the dark and silence she was letting her imagination take over, it still suddenly seemed important to leave something identifying—some record of her own existence.

  Feeling a little hysterical and foolish, she got up and felt her way back to where she had noticed the pieces of scrap metal. On her hands and knees, she blindly searched the floor in the dark for one of them to use as a tool. She found chunks of concrete, an isopod or two, a puddle of undrinkable water. Then her hand struck a piece of slightly curved metal with a sharp edge on one end. Getting to her feet, she found her way back to the wall near the rest of the group.

  Slowly, by feel in the blackness, she began to scrape on the wall. J-E-S-S-I-E W-A-S H-E-R-E. Then she scratched out the W-A-S and above it carved I-S.

  Under it she added the date and finished by running her fingers over what she had written as if she were reading Braille.

  Then she sat back down and stared silently into the dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ALEX WENT TO WORK ON THURSDAY MORNING GLAD TO have something to occupy his time, for Jessie did not call all morning. Before noon he had completed a report on his trip to Canada and the afternoon was spent clearing his desk of paperwork on several small cases now closed and ready for filing. One open burglary case he set aside until last, then called John Timmons, friend and assistant coroner at the crime lab in Anchorage, to see if he had a report on the evidence left at the scene—a small weekend cabin twenty miles out of Palmer that had been broken into and vandalized the week before.

  “Still waiting the report on the latents,” Timmons told him. “The owner had a party the weekend before, so there’re prints up the yin-yang to be identified. We’re working our way through them, but slowly. By tomorrow—hopefully. Okay?”

  Arriving at home, Alex spent a couple of hours outside in the shed splitting firewood for winter fires, with the kitchen window open so he could hear the phone if it rang. Throwing himself into his work, he burned excess energy with an axe to make stove-sized chunks out of the rounds of log and stack them neatly under a roof next to the shed, where they would stay dry. The swing of the axe felt good and he made a significant and satisfying inroad on the large pile. It had been a year since his last stint at wood splitting, however, so he was aware that the exercise would make itself felt the next day in his back and shoulder muscles. He decided that a long hot shower would not be a bad idea before reheating some of the previous night’s stew for dinner. Next year, for sure, they should acquire a splitter.

  He was still drying himself off with a large towel when he heard the phone ring.

  At last, he thought. Quickly he wrapped the towel around his waist as he moved to the bedside phone and lifted the receiver.

  “Jessie?”

  “Not even close. Sorry to disappoint,” the voice of Ben Caswell, friend and pilot for the troopers, informed him. “But maybe I can make it up to you. Linda’s got enough meat loaf over here to feed the entire cast of Cheaper by the Dozen. Why don’t you bring some of that beer you’ve got going bad in your fridge with no one to drink it and come help us out?”

  Any other time the invitation to dinner would have sent Alex straight out the door, for he knew that Linda Caswell made a killer meat loaf. Not having heard from Jessie the night before, however, he was reluctant to abandon the telephone when he was sure she would call the minute he left.

  “You are surely hooked, old man,” Cas ribbed him. “But I’ll bring you a sandwich tomorrow for lunch anyway, just to remind you what you missed.”

  After that, and stew for dinner, it was a frustrating evening as far as the telephone was concerned. In three hours there was only Caswell’s single call.

  At eight o’clock, Alex tried to call Jessie, but got the same “unavailable” message as the night before. He tried again three times, with the same lack of response. Finally, he called the Petersburg police to ask if they were aware of any problem in reception for cell phones in the area of Frederick Sound.

  The dispatcher assured him there was not. In fact, she reported, they had just had a cell phone call from a fisherman in the sound who was requesting emergency medical assistance for an injured deckhand. “Sometimes they have trouble getting a signal out there,” she told him, which he already knew. “Keep trying and eventually someone will answer.”

  Alex hung up, wishing he had asked for Jim’s number and had another to try, but it was too late for that.

  With Tank resting as usual on the braided rug in front of the cast-iron stove, Alex tried to watch the television, couldn’t concentrate, turned it off and got up. While Tank watched, he paced and fidgeted, irritated one minute, concerned the next. Something was not at all right. Jessie was not inconsiderate. When she said she would do something you could count on her doing it, or having a good reason why she had not. With the phones working okay, he could think of no good reason for her silence. Unless she just doesn’t want to call, a nagging internal voice taunted him.

  Get serious! would have been his response in the days before he had left and gone to Idaho. Now he wasn’t as absolutely sure. Maybe she really didn’t want to talk to him and this was her way of saying so—without having to say so. Maybe he should just give her space and leave it alone till she came home on Sunday.

  But he couldn’t. There was another voice, one he had learned to trust. It kept telling him that he would be making a mistake to do so. You know Jessie better than that, it said. Trust your instincts. Something’s wrong.

  Sure of it, he picked up the phone and called his commander to request the next day off. Then he called Caswell.

  “I’m headed south first thing in the morning,” he told him, and why. “Do you know a pilot in Petersburg, or Juneau, who could fly me out to Frederick Sound on floats?”

  “I can probably scare one up. Are you sure?”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  “No. You’re pretty good with hunches. It’s a bit of déjà vu though, isn’t it? Flying off to find Jessie on some island?”

  “I thought of that—and didn’t like the feel of it.”

  “You could call Wrangell or Ketchikan and have someone go check it out,” Cas suggested.

  “I don’t want to fire up the guys unless I know for sure something’s wrong.”

  “Want company?”

  “Naw. I’ll just go down and take a look. It’s probably nothing and, if everything’s fine, having someone else along would make it seem like something.”

  But he didn’t really feel it was nothing. Something was ringing warning bells in his consciousness and there was nothing for it but to go and see, however unreasonable it seemed on the surface.

  By ten o’clock the next morning Alex was lifting Tank into a floatplane and climbing in after him from a dock north of Juneau, having been picked up by the friend from whom Cas had called in a favor the night before.

  “Bill Knapp,” he had said, shaking Alex’s hand and touching the bill of his hat when they met.

  Ex-military, Alex had thought as he returned the shorter man’s welcome, and was glad of it.
/>   “Hope you don’t mind the dog,” he had asked, and been assured there was no problem.

  He had not originally intended to take along Jessie’s lead dog, but decided at the last minute to include him, though for the commercial part of the trip it meant confining him in a portable kennel and checking him through like baggage, which he was sure Tank would not have appreciated, had he realized the implication.

  Once in the floatplane without the kennel, Tank, who had often flown in small planes before and knew the drill, made himself comfortable behind the seats, muzzle on the sleeping bag Alex had tossed in, and snoozed.

  Knapp taxied slowly away from the dock to avoid creating a wake and into the open water of Auke Bay, where he increased his speed until they lifted off over Coghlan Island. Once up, he made a left turn into Stephens Passage, which they would follow all the way to Frederick Sound, approximately seventy air miles away.

  As the turn was made Alex looked over the pilot’s shoulder to see the deep blue of the Mendenhall Glacier’s crevasses and the permanent snows of the ice field glistening high above them in the morning sunshine. The Juneau airport passed below at the north end of Gastineau Channel and fell behind as Knapp skirted the end of Douglas Island to fly along its western side, periodically muttering into the microphone of his headset for clearance from the airport. Finished, he gestured toward a second headset and Alex put it on to be able to hear what was said to him over the roar of the small plane’s engine.

  “The weather’s great for flying,” Knapp assured him. “We’ll be able to land on Frederick Sound and pull up to the lighthouse with no problem. When it’s choppy you can’t get in out there. They’ve got no dock, so rough weather beats up floats on the rocks.”

  “You’ve been there before?”

  “A time or two. It’s a great location. You going to stay long?”

  “A day or two,” Alex said, wondering just how much Caswell had told this man about his reasons for wanting to reach Five Finger Light as soon as possible.

  “Cas said there might be some kind of trouble out there,” Knapp said, as if in answer to that thought.

  “Nothing that I know of for sure,” Alex answered carefully. “But my lady is out there. She said she would call and does what she says she will, but I haven’t heard from her for two and a half days now. That’s enough not like her to make me uneasy.”

  “Know what you mean,” Knapp said, frowning. “My Cheryl wouldn’t let that much time go by if she knew I was expecting to hear from her.”

  They flew on down Stephens Passage with one island after another coming into view. For a long time Admiralty slid by on the right, notable to the residents of Southeast Alaska for its large population of grizzlies, but Alex, watching, saw none on the beach. On its near side the long narrow finger of Glass Peninsula ran south for over thirty miles, with 3,316-foot Washburn Peak rising three-quarters of the way along it.

  Knapp was a commercial pilot and not a law enforcement officer, but he, like Caswell, flew for the State Troopers on contract when needed. In an environment where there are few roads and almost every community must be reached either by air or sea, getting anywhere in a hurry most often means flying, in good weather or bad. As Southeast Alaska is not known for its sunny days, Alex, though concerned about Jessie, enjoyed the flight that gave him a rare window on an extremely beautiful part of the coast and was almost sorry when they reached Frederick Sound and Five Finger Island appeared far ahead of them.

  “Whales,” Knapp said suddenly, pointing down.

  Leaning close to the window, Alex was able to pick out a pod of five humpbacks cruising along near the surface of the water, so small from that altitude that they looked like fat sardines. One after another they rose to blow and breathe, then one breached, throwing its huge body out of the sea and crashing down with a huge splash.

  “Out there, across the sound.”

  Perhaps half a mile away another whale had risen and Alex sighted it just in time to watch the flukes appear as it dove. Beyond it he saw spray as two more blew—then another. The sound seemed full of whales.

  “They’re beginning to head for Hawaii for the winter,” Knapp told him. “A few stay here, but most of them migrate south—like some of the rest of us would like to.”

  A fishing boat was running north in the middle of the sound, and as the pilot swung in low over Five Finger Island Alex saw a tug with a raft of logs on a line behind it chugging slowly south between the island and the distant mainland. But his attention was focused on the white deco-style lighthouse that rose high on its crest of stone, red-roofed and solid in appearance, with several outbuildings and what was evidently a helipad near it. He looked carefully for people, but saw none. Even what he could see of the woods and rocks were empty, except for what appeared to be a sea lion swimming a few yards off the south shore.

  Knapp took his plane to the east, made a wide descending turn, and flew back toward the island, dropping down to skim the waves until the floats made solid contact with the water when they were still a fair distance away. It slowed the plane so he could taxi up to the rocks that rose to a wide platform in front of the building.

  As they drifted to a stop Alex, used to flying with Caswell, was ready to step out, walk the float, and hop off onto the rocks with a tethering line, while Knapp held the plane close with gentle acceleration. As soon as he could see it was secure, the pilot shut down the idling engine, stepped out, and brought Tank ashore with him.

  It seemed odd to Alex that not a soul had come out of the lighthouse to meet them. Someone should have heard the plane. Glancing around, he could see no restoration work being done either. It looked closed up and empty.

  “You’re sure they’re here?” Knapp asked.

  “Supposed to be. Let’s go up and find out.”

  Climbing over the rocks, the three of them crossed the platform, empty except for a heavy cement mixer sitting in front of the closed lower doors. They went up the outside stairs to the door, which was also closed. Alex hammered on it with his fist, but there was no response. Turning the handle, he found it unlocked and walked on into the kitchen where he called out.

  “Hello. Anyone here?”

  There was no answer.

  Hurriedly, they made a search of the rooms on that level, opening all the doors. In every room there was all the normal evidence of people staying there: clothing, sleeping bags, pillows, duffels, suitcases, towels, toothpaste. Finding the stairway to the room below, Alex went down for a quick look, but came immediately up again when no one answered his call.

  Kneeling beside the dog on the kitchen floor, he addressed him. “Where’s Jessie, Tank. Find Jessie.”

  Though the husky had followed them in their search, told to find his mistress he now trotted back to one of the bedrooms and barked once sharply. Following, Alex looked more closely and recognized things he knew belonged to Jessie. Sitting down beside Alex, Tank looked up expectantly for further orders.

  “Good boy,” Alex told him. “Well, he knows she was here. So where is she now—and everyone else that’s supposed to be here working?”

  “My guess?” said Knapp. “They’ve gone off for a side trip somewhere and will be back later. There used to be a fox farm over east on Fanshaw where they took me once. Maybe they’ve gone there—or out fishing.”

  “Maybe. There was no way to let Jess know I was coming. We’ll wait, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Sure. But there’s gotta be a way to get up in the tower,” Knapp suggested. “Wouldn’t hurt to take a look from the top.”

  From the door in the second hall they climbed the tower stairs that followed its square walls with ninety-degree turns. When they reached the last sweeping curve of metal steps with its brass rail, they went up that as well, leaving Tank at its foot, and stood looking out on a full 360-degree panorama of Frederick Sound and its surrounding mountains and islands.

  No one was visible anywhere that they could see, though the trees to the south ob
scured that part of the island.

  But outside on the circular walkway, Alex found and picked up a single cigarette butt, mashed flat under an indifferent foot.

  As far as they could tell, Five Finger Island was empty.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS WHEN THEY CAME DOWN FROM THE TOWER AND made another search of the lighthouse and the area around it for any clues they might have missed that Knapp discovered the sunken Seawolf at the bottom of the small cove and waved Alex over to take a look at it.

  “There’s something really wrong here,” Knapp said, looking up from where he knelt at the edge of the platform. “How the hell did they get off the island with their boat down there?”

  “We don’t know for sure that they only had one boat, do we? Maybe they didn’t leave the island. Just because the lighthouse is empty and the rest looked empty from the air doesn’t mean that it is. They could be somewhere in the trees between here and the south end, so we’d better find out.”

  Knapp agreed. “And if they’re not, we’ll fly on to Petersburg and see if we can find out anything there. But I really think, if they’re at the south end, that when I circled before landing they should have seen and heard the plane.”

  “Well, if we have to go to Petersburg and there’s still nothing,” said Alex, with a note of anger and determination in his voice, “I call in every man I can get from the Troopers and Coast Guard till we know what’s wrong, where they are, and why.”

  With a last look at the lighthouse and still calling out periodically in the hope that someone would hear and answer their shouts, they went up the steps by the boathouse toward the trees.

  Tank perked up considerably when they started down the trail. Nose to ground, he trotted along quickly, wagging his tail when he stopped to wait for Alex and Knapp to catch up.

  “Jessie’s been through here and he knows it,” Alex said, watching the dog carefully. A little farther on, he stopped to examine a mask attached to a tree they passed, but quickly continued.