To her right was a stack of overdue notices Nickolas Hodge handed Meghan the day she visited him at the office. She let out a heavy sigh and grabbed the stack of warnings. Before she put the papers in front of her, Meghan saw how she held onto the stack—four fingers toward the end of the sheet, thumb on the top. Immediately, Meghan dropped the notices and got up from the desk.
***
The fingerprint kit Meghan ordered from the FBI was one she learned to collect prints with. It took no time at all to dust the papers for latent fingerprints. Why not have a set from Hodge? Meghan wanted fingerprints from Duane too; she had to figure out how to get them without him noticing.
In a stroke of genius, Meghan got up from the desk and ran across the main room, around the Formica table. In the trashcan out the side door was a leftover pizza box Calvin brought with him the last night she saw him.
It only took ten minutes to pull latent fingerprints from the pizza box. She’d handled the box twice, once to throw it away, once to retrieve it. Only she and Calvin’s prints were on the box. Meghan fed the fingerprints into the scanner bed.
Once she had clear prints from the papers Hodge had printed for her and handed off, Meghan scanned the images into the software program. Hodge was right-handed. He handled the late notices with his left hand, pulling them off the printer, collating them on his desk, before handing them to Meghan with his right hand. She remembered watching him but hadn’t thought anything of it until that moment while the software program scanned each of the prints to match them against the one copy collected from the dresser.
The forensic science of fingerprint collection and analysis has been around since the late 1700s. It wasn’t until Juan Vucetich, and Inspector Alvarez of an Argentine police department used the first police collected fingerprints to convict a woman of killing her two children, trying to blame a neighbor for the crime, when her prints were collected from the knife, she used to murder the children. Back then, the composition of the fingerprint powder wasn’t most different than Meghan used to manage the prints in Nancy’s apartment. The fingerprints on the overdue rent notices from Blue Sky Realty were crisp and refined because the stuff Meghan got from the FBI was the best.
She sat back, watching the computer screen as the program went through the analysis. After a few minutes, yawning and rubbing her face, the program grabbed at the exemplar prints she had on file and matched them to the focused latent prints.
The laptop chirped an audio alarm that alerted Meghan she had a possible match. The software program declared a match when the friction ridge impressions wavered between twelve and twenty points. Side by side comparison of the prints highlighted the loops and whorls consistent between the two images. There was consistency between the arches as well.
Meghan had a final match for the fingerprint.
It took her a moment before she realized that in her haste to input two more suspect’s fingerprints, she hadn’t labeled the prints. From the pizza box, she entered five good copies. From the Blue Sky Realty paperwork, she had three good prints. Out of the eight fingerprint comparisons, one was a match to the print collected on the dresser in Nancy’s apartment.
Meghan pulled the smartphone from her coat pocket and tapped in Oliver’s contact.
“Hel—this—liver.”
“Oliver? Can you hear me? Are you still at the dump?”
“—ey, Boss, I—flat—back.”
“Sorry?” Meghan plugged her opposite ear with her finger and listened harder. “I can’t understand you. Are you still at the dump? Did you get a flat tire?”
“Yeah—brok—glass. I—alking, back.”
“I think you said you were walking back.”
“Yeah—” the call ended. One thing about the limited range of cell phones in the bush, they had one cell tower, mounted near the airport. It was barely in the line of sight from the airfield.
Megan called Lester, and the phone went to voicemail. She was on her own.
Chapter Twenty-Six
While it wasn’t the best circumstance when it came to apprehending a suspect, Meghan had more experience than both Lester and Oliver. Kinguyakkii was in the middle of nowhere, but there were a million ways out of town and anyone on the run, if they knew how to survive in the wild, they might get away with murder.
She was on foot, cursing and running toward the other side of town. It was nearly impossible to run with bunny boots on, and after a few hundred yards, thighs burning, Meghan slowed to a brisk walk.
When she reached the Northern Lights Sounder office, Meghan suspected no one was home. Balled fist, banging against the door, she waited, panting from the exertion. Meghan resolved than when this was all over, and she needed to get back into shape. She doubled-down and banged on the door to the trailer again. All the lights were off, Calvin was nowhere in sight, and his vehicle was missing. Standing outside the trailer, Meghan has to make a decision. She was the chief of police, had a responsibility to do the right thing. Calvin was missing, somewhere doing whatever it was reporters did when they weren’t flirting with the police chief or writing articles for a rural Alaska newspaper.
***
Meghan swore again as she hopped off the steel steps and hurried along the road, cutting through the tall brown scrub brush, thistles, and Loosestrife. No one had lawns in Kinguyakkii. Most of the time it was wild bracken and gravel when snow didn’t blanket the ground, with summer coming, snowmelt gave way to muddy patches of land. She wanted to approach the residence from the back instead of the road. It had more cover, no light from the streetlamp, and as she got closer, she saw a light on inside the house.
Pausing at the rear corner of the house, Meghan felt the hammering in her chest. She was alone, no backup, and from the look of the home, Nickolas Hodge already left. He could be anywhere.
The backdoor had a screen door and an interior door. When Meghan opened the screen door, the piston closer hissed, but the hinges were quiet. The interior doorknob was unlocked. She turned it all the way to the right and pushed. The wooden door had swelled from the inside heat and the outside moisture. The uneven linoleum floor scraped against the bottom of the door, stopping it from swinging open cleanly. The door stopped too close for her to slip inside. Meghan exhaled quietly and pressed her shoulder against the door, using her weight to open it, holding the doorknob as leverage.
The bottom of the door scraped the linoleum. Wood on plastic sounded like an artificial fart and Meghan knew it was loud enough to hear through the whole house.
The back of the house was mostly the kitchen. There was a pantry to her left, the counter, appliances, and a thin walkway that made up the rest of the cooking space. She saw one light on in the living room. It was a single-story house with very few places to hide. If Nickolas wasn’t in the living room, he was either in the bathroom or bedroom; if he hadn’t fled town.
Meghan reached for the light switch. When the figure appeared at the doorway to the living room, it was backlit by the light from the living room. It didn’t wait for Meghan to pull the canister of pepper spray from her holster. It lunged at her.
Nickolas was younger, taller, and when he tackled Meghan, she realized he was stronger than he looked. The oversized winter coat, a parka that was two sizes bigger than her frame, seemed like a good idea to keep warm. While it cushioned Meghan as she slammed against the kitchen counter, she realized the added layer of material put her inside a cocoon, practically gift wrapped for Nickolas.
She hit the counter. Nickolas growled in her ear as his long arms wrapped around her and heaved. Her feet left the floor, boots up; she was freefalling backward, slung like a ragdoll. This time her shoulder and head banged against the pantry door; the wood splintered as she saw a flash of white. Meghan fell forward, trying to catch herself. Canned goods rained down on her from the shelves. The broken door crashed to the floor beside her.
Nickolas meant to kick her in the side. She saw the foot come up and managed to twist away. He wasn’t wearing shoes
and the socked foot connected with the baseboard. Nickolas yelped and dropped his weight on Meghan. She elbowed him, but the coat sleeve padded his face against a good hit. Nickolas grunted, yanking on the inside hook of her arm to turn her over and put his weight on Meghan’s middle. He bore down on her. Before she could react, fight off his pressure, Nickolas’ hands reached for her throat.
It was impossible to see his face clearly. Too dark in the kitchen, the hood of the oversized parka obscured most of her view. She felt and smelt his heated breath on her face as his fingers closed around her thin neck. He’d done it before. This is what Nancy felt when Nickolas squeezed the life out of her. This is a scenario Meghan had trained for during her hand to hand combat with the FBI. Real life was never like simulation. Her sparring partner went easy on her. Nickolas had taken a life once; he had no qualms about doing it again.
Meghan pulled at the thumb on Nickolas’ right hand against her neck. As the pressure increased, if she could get her fist around the digit, she could break his thumb, her nails scratched against her throat, pulling at the thumb that felt like fleshy stone.
In desperation, as panic blinded her, Meghan’s right hand closed around a jar that had fallen to the floor from the pantry. She grabbed the plastic pot and swung her arm up.
The plastic container smashed against Nickolas’ face. His hands relented on her throat, and Meghan sucked in a massive gulp of air. The lid of the plastic jar shattered when Meghan knocked Nickolas off. He arched back, hands off her throat but still sitting on her middle. Meghan squeezed the jar and swung again. This time whatever was inside the plastic jar squeezed out. Meghan caught a whiff of peanut butter. A gob of putty smeared over her fingers. She hit Nickolas against in the face a third time.
Something happened. His hands went to his throat, and Nickolas gasped for air as he tilted sideways, and Meghan kicked out from under him.
She scrambled away from him, dropped the peanut butter jar, and saw his shape on the floor in the kitchen as Nickolas gagged, rolled on his side and wheezed. Meghan rolled and crawled away from him, using his injury to her advantage. There was a switch on the wall. She reached for it, smearing peanut butter against the wall.
The overhead fluorescent light flickered on in the kitchen. Lying on the floor in a fetal position, Nickolas clutched at his throat, gasping for air. There was no apparent injury. There was no visible damage to his face other than gobs of creamy peanut butter, and there wasn’t a pool of blood, nothing except a young man bent in half and turning blue and slipping into unconsciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Oliver had a look on his face like he saw Megan standing before him as if she was on fire. Lester had made it back to town. By the time he heard on the police band that Chief Meghan Sheppard had apprehended the suspect, there was a crowd surrounding Nickolas Hodge’s rental property. Most everyone who had access to a scanner heard Meghan on the radio calling for backup. She had to leave Hodge lying on the floor in the kitchen, covered in peanut butter and handcuffed to the stove handle before she ran to the police station and used the police band.
Kinguyakkii had an urgent care clinic but not a full hospital. There was a traveling doctor from time to time who came to town a few times a year. There was a woman named Jackie Qataliña who worked full-time at the clinic. A physician assistant, she was the medical professional in town and arrived on scene twenty minutes after Meghan made the call.
Eric and Linda Kennedy arrived in the ice cream van. Even Duane Warren and Shelley Bass were there to watch as the chief of police, the physician assistant, and the coroner came out of the house, collectively shaking their heads.
“Anaphylaxis affects about 200,000 people in the United States. He doesn’t have an epinephrine autoinjector,” Jackie said with a shrug. “A man can’t live that long and not know he had a severe peanut allergy.” She tilted Meghan’s head up with a gentle push with her knuckle under Meghan’s chin. Examining the bruises left by Nickolas’ grip, she continued to talk. “We don’t have Nickolas on file at the clinic for any food allergies. Something that life-threatening, I usually keep a close eye on.” She gave Meghan a straight look. “You’re lucky.”
Eric stood back with Linda at his side. When Meghan saw him, he shook his head at her. “I’ll take him if I can get some help.”
“We need to get pictures, and I have to write up a report,” Meghan said, retaking charge.
“How about you let your officers handle that,” Calvin said. He slipped through the crowd and handed the digital camera to Oliver.
Grinning, Oliver took the camera and went into the house. Lester followed him.
“How are you doing?” Calvin asked. “If I knew you were going to tackle a suspected murderer alone, I would have come to help.”
“I know, that’s okay,” Meghan said. She wasn’t going to tell him that she’d gone to his trailer for help. The fact that Meghan had collected his fingerprints and briefly considered he was the killer was something she’d never share with him or anyone else. Meghan glanced to Duane. He was busy on the phone with someone, too caught up in the conversation to make eye contact with Meghan. It was a little after eleven on Thursday night, six days after Nickolas Hodge murdered Nancy McCormick, everyone was accounted for, and Meghan could with good conscious, officially close the case.
***
Once the adrenalin wore off, once the village settled, people went home, and had enough gossip to fuel months of anecdotes; Meghan followed Eric to the cold storage at the Ammattauq Native Trader Store. Lester and Oliver helped move Nickolas’ body into the cooler, put it on the floor beside the steel table where Nancy lay still wrapped in the house bedding.
“Eric, can you get Nickolas’ pants off for me?” she asked casually.
Lester and Oliver gave her simultaneous looks that suggested she’d asked for something that was beyond her capacity as a police chief.
Eric obliged her, moving the wrap they used to carry Hodge’s body into the cool so he could pull at the button and zipper. Her officers hung back by the cooler door watching in mute fascination.
“Is there a bruise on Nickolas’ left thigh?”
“Um, yeah, looks like abrasion and a small hematoma on his upper thigh.”
“Would you say that wound is consistent with someone running into a chair?” She huffed, feeling the burning in her veins from the dissolve of adrenalin. “Like maybe if a chair hit him.”
“I couldn’t say that conclusively.”
“Well, it’s good enough for me.” Meghan needed to have confidence that the person who broke into the police department that night was Hodge, and not someone else tampering with evidence.
Oliver and Lester were chatting, standing at the cooler entrance. Meghan stood inside with Eric. She stared at Nancy’s body.
“Let me get you, gentlemen, some salmon jerky.” Eric moved out of the cool with Oliver and Lester in tow, leaving Meghan alone.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Meghan said to Nancy. “I know it might not matter to you anymore, but I want you to know that we caught him. He can’t do anything to anyone ever again.”
Nancy lay peacefully on the steel table. Meghan wanted to believe that some part of the girl lingered, that she had been waiting to move on. Now that it was over, she could go and not be burdened by this life any longer.
“I wish I got to know you. You had a lot of friends here. People loved you.” Reaching out, Meghan lightly tapped the wrapped foot on Nancy’s corpse. “Goodnight, Nancy.”
She left the cooler without looking or acknowledging the body of Nickolas Hodge and closed the door.
“My husband speaks highly of you,” Linda Kennedy said when Meghan joined the small group on the main floor. Eric offered Meghan a homemade salmon jerky; it had been marinated in teriyaki sauce. It was delicious.
“Eric tells me you’re the go-to person if I ever need a translator.”
Linda smiled. “Maybe if you stick around long enough, you’ll pic
k up more than you realize and won’t need a translator.”
“I think that’s a great idea.”
“What are we going to do with Hodge’s body?” Oliver asked with a mouthful of jerky.
“I’ll contact the troopers in the morning. I still have to write my report and submit it. My guess is they’ll want to take his body to Anchorage for an autopsy.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Linda said. “Why would a guy that allergic to peanut butter have it in his house?”
“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t care.”
“Maybe someone knew he had an allergy and put the peanut butter in his pantry.”
The rest of the group went quiet, watching Oliver after he made the observation. It was a mystery, and while it was intriguing, Meghan had had enough for the day and wanted to go home and sleep.
“You want me to take the night shift?” Lester asked.
Meghan headed for the exit. “You two work that out between yourselves. I need to get a shower. I have peanut butter in my hair still. I’ll see you both tomorrow. The three of us are going to close this murder case together. I want all our names on the docket.” She looked back at her officers and her new friends. “I want to thank you guys for everything you’ve done.”
“The town owes its gratitude to you, Meghan,” Eric said. He put his arm around his wife and pulled her close.
Meghan wasn’t big on kudos and waved ‘‘goodbye’’ while stepping outside.
“Need a lift?” Calvin asked, sitting in behind the wheel of the small green Ford Focus.
“How long you been waiting out here?”
“As long as it takes,” he answered with a smile.
“I only live right over there.” She pointed across the barren field. A few fifty-five gallon drums, a stack of wooden pallets, and a clump of dead fireweeds, that’s all Meghan had to cross to get back to the house and end her day.
A Cold Day for Murder Page 12