The Boy in the Snow

by M. J. McGrath

  ‘What can I help you with?’

  Derek explained what he was looking for. The barman listened without making eye contact, then, signalling to Derek, shouted over at the fat guy.

  ‘Hey, Zoom, fella here looking for a Slope slut.’

  Derek held out a hand. The fat guy didn’t take it.

  ‘What you out for?’

  ‘Russian girl. Young.’

  The fat guy turned ever so slightly and gave Derek a quick eyeball.

  ‘Out of here, keep west on Spenard two blocks and you’ll come to Mary-Jane’s. T&A bar. Go past the APD substation, you’ve gone too far. Ask for Willis. Tall guy, biker. Tell him Zoom sent you.’

  Derek finished up his beer, got back in the rental car and found Willis at Mary-Jane’s. For another couple of twenties, the man sent him to an old, run-down house a few blocks down from the police substation at the western end of Spenard.

  He rang on the front door. A short, plump woman in her fifties opened a door at the side of the building.

  ‘We’re not open for business right now.’ She was speaking in English but her accent was unmistakably Russian. Derek felt a twinge of nostalgia, hearing it.

  In Russian he said, ‘Willis sent me. I only want to talk to you, just a few minutes.’

  The woman frowned.

  ‘We’ve got nothing to say,’ she said in Russian. Then, switching back to English, ‘Are you a cop?’

  ‘Do I look like a cop?’

  The woman gave him a haughty look. ‘Like I said, we’re not open for business.’

  Whatever a john looked like, he thought, he wasn’t it and the woman knew.

  ‘Listen, I’m at the university.’ He spoke in Russian again. ‘A research project into the night economy. It’s completely confidential.’ He gave his widest smile. ‘I can pay you.’

  The woman looked up and down the street. Her face seemed sunken and exhausted. She opened the door a little wider and took a step back into the passageway. When he stepped inside she signalled for him to raise his arms, then patted him down, checking for weapons.

  ‘Ten minutes, two hundred bucks,’ she said, in English. Then in Russian she added, ‘I keep a weapon. You try anything, I’ll blow your balls off.’

  She led him down a tiny corridor and into a small, self-contained living area at the back, where two women sat on a sofa, one dirty blond with eyes as blue as icebergs, the other younger, and delicate-looking, cradling a baby. The delicate one looked up when they entered, clasping the baby to her, an expression of fear on her face.

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ the older woman said. ‘He just wants to talk to you for ten minutes.’

  The two women exchanged anxious looks.

  The older woman said something Derek didn’t understand. By her body language he understood her to be reassuring the two women that he was clear of weapons. ‘He’s paying,’ she added, turning to him and winking, ‘a hundred and fifty bucks for ten minutes, more if he goes over.’

  ‘It’s a research project for the university,’ he said, in his best Russian.

  The two women sat back down.

  Derek smiled at the baby.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  The young woman clasped the infant more firmly to her breast. She looked afraid. From over the other side of the table, the older woman glared at him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  When Derek got back to the studio, Edie had a pot of blood soup on the burner, waiting. She poured off a bowl and placed it on the table. The soup smelled thick and wonderfully redolent of home. She saw he had no spoon and went over to the kitchenette, telling him about the compound with its heavy fortification, and the presence of the high-up cop.

  ‘You think it’s some secret facility?’

  ‘Very possible,’ she said. ‘Something’s going on there for sure.’ She put a spoon down on the table. He picked it up, thanking her for going to the trouble of making the soup.

  ‘I guessed you’d be needing a pick-me-up,’ she said. ‘I picked up some roadkill at the side of the highway, still warm.’ She went to the refrigerator and opened the door. A skinned leg tumbled out. Bending down, she picked it up, brushed it off and pushed it back inside. ‘Coyote. Rehomed him.’

  Derek blew out air, chuckling grimly, then diving into the soup brought a spoonful to his mouth.

  ‘So?’ she said.

  He closed his eyes, allowing the richness of the meal to make its way onto his taste buds. She let him finish the bowl in silence. When he looked up in expectation of a refill, she was staring expectantly at him.

  ‘Slope sluts,’ he said, ‘not my phrase.’ He called Bonehead over and began scratching his head. A dreamy, dog-heaven look spread across the animal’s face. ‘I spoke with a fella in a bar. He said they work the oilfield guys. The oilers come off a two-month rota up on the North Slope with cash in their pockets and an eight-week hard-on. He said the girls come in from all over. Russia mostly, or some part of the old Soviet bloc. Ukraine, Georgia, those kinda places. Four men to every woman in this state, so there’s always a demand. He didn’t seem to know how they got here.’

  ‘Or didn’t care.’

  He raised a defensive hand. ‘Hey, I’m just passing on what the fella said.’ What was it with women, he thought to himself. Eyes like fists sometimes.

  ‘He know why Russians particularly?’

  ‘A lot of native girls left, big demand for them in the lower 48. They speak English, which makes things easier, but their pimps pass them off as Asian babes.’

  ‘What are they thinking?’ Native Americans and Asians were about as alike as walrus and moose.’

  Derek shrugged. ‘They’re guys, Edie. At that point, they’re not thinking,’ he said. ‘Not with their heads, anyways.’ The conversation was about to go down a road he couldn’t defend. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I’m just the messenger here.’

  ‘You speak with any of the women?’

  He told her.

  ‘The older of the two said they’d both come over from Russia of their own accord.’ She’d given him a line about how they were just another kind of economic migrant. He’d mentioned TaniaLee Littlefish to them but they’d claimed not to know her.

  ‘You think they were lying?’

  ‘I dunno. The younger one looked real young,’ he said. ‘And kinda scared. She didn’t really do any of the talking.’ He thought about the baby in her arms. He’d tried to buy more time with them, but they wanted him gone. After he left the house, he’d gone into a bar and called Zach Barefoot.

  ‘Zach said the state trafficking law is really weak. The whole sex industry is pretty much left to its own devices. You wanna bring a girl over from Russia, even a really young girl, it’s not hard to do.’

  ‘How young?’

  ‘Thirteen, fourteen maybe.’ He felt bad just saying it. Part of him wanted to forget the whole thing, return to Nome and do what he’d come to Alaska to do, help Sammy Inukpuk make it through the toughest dogsled race on the planet. The other part reminded himself that those girls were somebody’s kids. ‘You think they could be caught up in some kind of ring, working out of Nome and maybe at the compound at Meadow Lake?’

  Edie was sitting at the table now, winding her braid around her fingers. She seemed to be lost in thought. The dog was back in the corner, chewing his balls.

  ‘Maybe we need to find out what’s going down at that compound. Like, who owns it.’ She stared at him. There was a fierce kind of glow in her eyes. He’d seen it before but it never got any easier to look at.

  20

  Chuck Hillingberg’s private cell phone had been peeping since they landed at Juneau airport an hour ago, but he’d not yet had a minute to check the log until now. For the first time since he and his team had left Anchorage early that morning, no one needed his immediate attention. He pulled out the phone, flipped it open and checked the screen, then excused himself to no one in particular and sidled into the bedroom of the executiv
e suite at the Northern Palace Hotel.

  With a sinking heart he dialled Mackenzie’s number. He, Andy and Marsha had been up half the night, working out a press strategy for the mayor’s office. They’d been in more or less continual touch with Mackenzie about whether to try to bury the story or come clean with whatever details they had in order to try to defuse it. It was important that the police chief and the mayor were singing the same tune. Towards dawn they’d agreed that Mackenzie should hold a morning press conference at the APD offices, going heavy on the fact that the chief suspect in the second death was already in police custody and the APD weren’t looking for anyone else. They agreed that Mackenzie would announce a thorough ‘fact-finding’ investigation into the Old Believers living in Alaska and in particular into rumours that Galloway headed up a renegade splinter group, the Dark Believers. He would emphasize that there was no evidence at this stage to suggest that the Dark Believers were anything more than an urban legend, but would give his assurances that he would personally head the investigation. Andy had come up with a sound bite for him: ‘In this rocky state, no stone will remain unturned.’ That had even impressed Marsha.

  The press call had proceeded smoothly, which was just as well. After the disaster of his appearance on yesterday’s breakfast shows, the Hillingberg team couldn’t afford another slip up. And that included Police Chief Mackenzie.

  As the number was connecting, Marsha slipped in, pointing to a news item in that morning’s Juneau Globe on her iPad and frowned. The Anchorage Courier had led with the second dead boy, the whole of the front top half a grim crime-scene picture complete with police tape and forensics in anti-contamination suits. In the normal run of things, the Globe went out of its way not to cover anything happening in Anchorage in an attempt to demonstrate that just because the city had all the population and most of the money, those living in the capital weren’t obliged to sit up and take note of it. To the residents of Juneau, the happenings 600 miles to the northwest weren’t usually of great interest on principle, but the possibility that a serial killer – and not just a serial killer but a child murderer – was on the loose was shocking enough to have cut through at least the Globe’s professional indifference. There it was, just underneath a lead about the sale of timber licences near Glacier Bay. Second boy found dead on Old Believer land. It wasn’t a big spread but it was a mighty irritant, today of all days, when Chuck was due to give a major speech and appear in a prime time TV debate with Shippon.

  He nodded and grimaced then held up five fingers to signal to his wife that he’d be with her shortly. She acknowledged him with a blink and slid back out into the living area of the suite.

  Mackenzie picked up. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Tell me it’s not about to implode out there.’

  ‘Nothing’s imploding yet.’

  ‘You got any ID on the second kid, the Jonny Doe?’

  ‘We’ve checked all the hospitals in the state for Down Syndrome babies born in the last year but until forensics are through we won’t know how long they kept the body before leaving it out.’

  ‘They? I thought we were only looking at Galloway for the killing?’

  Mackenzie corrected himself.

  ‘So did you formally charge that Believer asshole with the second kid’s murder yet?’

  Mackenzie took time to respond. ‘Thing is, mayor, the evidence is trickier in this one, and we got no witnesses, but we’re on it.’

  ‘I don’t want you on it; I want you on top of it. Move the guy to a quieter location, and then find the evidence to charge him. Shut this down.’

  There was a pause. Chuck filled in the gap. ‘What?’

  ‘The Lodge. One of the guards found footprints outside, along the perimeter. Said they were small, a woman’s probably.’

  Chuck’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Anyone missing?’ In the three years since the Lodge had been just a regular old hunting spot, there had only been two they hadn’t got back and it had been nearly a year since they’d gone. They both had really good reasons not to say anything and so far neither of them had.

  ‘That girl who ran off?’ They’d had a runaway a couple of days back, but so far as Chuck knew, they’d caught up with her.

  ‘We got her back.’

  He felt his chest loosen. He held the phone away from his brow, buying a little thinking time. His top teeth worked his lower lip.

  ‘Any case,’ Mackenzie said, ‘they’ve all been moved out, like you wanted. Most probably it was nothing.’

  Chuck felt the skin of his lower lip split open. He raised his fingers to his mouth and inspected the blood. ‘Doesn’t Galloway have a wife?’

  Mackenzie cut in. ‘She’s about to drop a baby, don’t see her struggling through the snow. In any case, it’s not their style. Both Believer communities, the ones up at Meadow Lake and the ones outside Homer, have gone right into themselves. They’re not gonna be giving us any trouble, I guarantee.’

  ‘You checked the security tapes?’

  ‘We’re on that. The guard said there were dog prints. Ten to one it was just some native woman out hunting.’

  There was a knock and Andy’s head appeared around the door.

  Chuck said, ‘Listen, I gotta go,’ and finished up the call.

  Andy raised a finger to his lip. ‘What did you do to your mouth, boss?’

  Chuck waved the question away.

  ‘You got something for me?’

  ‘The Iditarod thing?’

  Chuck moved out into the living room and shut the door into his bedroom. A couple of heads bobbed up from their phones and laptops, checked what was going on and returned to their work. Andy’s two assistants had spent much of the morning anonymously discrediting the mothers of the two dead kids on Alaska parenting websites. The fact that no one yet knew the ID of the second baby, let alone his mother’s, made their job easier. The goal was to convince enough people that the kids were the unfortunate offspring of deadbeat, crackhead mums so that the bloggers and lurkers would start to feel that, maybe, the kids were better off dead. Then they wouldn’t care who’d killed them; they’d be secretly thinking, whoever committed the crime had kind of done those babies a favour.

  At the same time as trying to cool down the story of the dead boys, the Hillingberg campaign needed to cook up some fast feel-good to shift the focus of the news agenda. He and Marsha and Andy had been talking about that, too. Negative stories were all very well but they never worked on their own. Alaskans were by nature good news people. The ones Chuck knew – and he knew a great many – weren’t much given to navel gazing. Some time around dawn, they’d settled on a plan.

  Chuck scoped around for his wife but Marsha had disappeared. From his spot in the wing-backed chair Andy said, ‘She just went into the other room to make a phone call. Didn’t want to be disturbed.’

  Chuck, walked to the bedroom on the other side. He moved in close to the door and put his hand on the knob. He could distinctly hear his wife’s voice.

  ‘Have him call me urgently.’ She was calm but clearly very angry. He made to turn the doorknob, then thought better of it. From the bedroom, he heard Marsha say, ‘No, I don’t care what time of the day or night. Just have him call.’ The phone clicked off and he heard footsteps moving towards the door. He knocked. The door opened almost instantly.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s you.’ She strode purposefully across the room and sat down on the sofa. For a moment she seemed to be resettling herself inside her skin. He sat down beside her. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking about and her expression made it very clear she wouldn’t take too well to being probed. Andy Foulsham pulled up the chair close enough so they could all three talk in low tones without being overheard.

  ‘I had an associate bend Steve Nicol’s ear at the checkpoint in Ophir.’ They’d already discussed terms.

  ‘Nothing traceable?’ Marsha said.

  ‘Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t get to this one. No paper trail, no electronic trail. We
’re talking the middle of fucking nowhere.’

  Marsha frowned at the bad language. ‘He’s gonna play ball?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Foulsham said.

  Chuck said, ‘What did you have to offer him?’

  ‘Two and a half to lose and a few interviews. My associate said we’d get him an answer by the next checkpoint.’

  Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This was some costly diversion. Chuck bit his lip. He wondered whether this wasn’t all some kind of panic reaction; that Dark Believer Fever would drop off and people would forget about the dead kids.

  ‘Tell him it’s a deal,’ Marsha said.

  Chuck raised his eyebrows but she wasn’t looking at him. Maybe she had some idea where they were going to get that kind of money. If she did, she hadn’t told him about it.

  There was a knock; the door to the suite opened and April came over.

  ‘Marsha? Alaska Woman magazine is waiting downstairs.’ Marsha tutted with irritation. ‘You promised them ten minutes?’ The first-lady-in-waiting took a breath and smoothed her hair. Chuck watched her glide across the room and out of the door.

  He waited for Andy Foulsham to busy himself on the phone, then slid into the bedroom where his wife had just finished up. He went over to the phone and pressed last number recall.

  A perky voice answered.

  ‘Mr Schofield’s office.’

  For a while after he cut the connection he sat on the bed, staring into the middle distance, scrabbling for thoughts which seemed to tumble away from him like loose shale. Why had his wife been so insistent on speaking to Tommy Schofield? He could hardly ask her. It didn’t take a genius to see that she was trying to keep it from him. He looked around the room for clues but naturally there were none. His wife was never sloppy. She’d learned her lesson the hard way. He took a deep breath and went back out into the fray.

  Andy had switched on the TV. The local Juneau news channel was showing a small protest by a group of mothers outside the APD building in Anchorage. Two or three had fashioned banners reading: ‘NO DARK BELIEVERS IN THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN’. Chuck Hillingberg sat back and closed his eyes. For some reason he felt as though he was about to step off a cliff.