Taking Liberty (7 page)

“For the record,” she said softly, “you’re a bastard, and I never stopped loving you.”

A hand touched mine. I should have pulled back. I didn’t. I’d been here before. In my thirties. When I should have known better, but had been too single-minded and too self-absorbed with quelling my own pain to care either way.

 “I’m not sorry about the punch on the nose,” she said.

“Me either.”

Our hands found each other. Fingers interlocking, squeezing.

I knew what was coming. I hadn’t pulled back then and I was unable to do so now.

Magnetic.

Rae tented the sheets over us. “Promise you won’t flee the scene of the crime, come morning?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

There had always been something irresistible about Rae Burnett. Something invisible. Something that connected us through more than just time and space. I didn’t know what it was. But it felt right. Always had.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispered, a second before our lips touched.

___________________________

She couldn’t sleep.

She had a feeling things were coming to a head.

She got up and made herself a warm milk, then sat in the dark kitchen, listening to an owl hooting in the nearby woods.

All told, she’d hired the services of three private detectives over the course of the past year.

The first two had proven ineffective, and she considered the drain on her finances and nerves a costly lesson in good match-making.

At first, she’d been green to the business. Blind to what skills were best suited for what purposes. She’d enlisted the services of one neighborly recommendation and one from an online ad appearing on the local news website. Both had listened to her story and banked her deposits. Neither had made good on their promises or made her wishes their top priority. After a few choice words and several big checks, she’d had no choice but to let them go.

Most of the investigators she’d vetted since had specialized in proving infidelity. ‘Empty hearts make for cheating minds’ her mother had once said. Adultery was on the rise. The sanctity of marriage having weaker bonds these days than the glue sealing a condom wrapper. Easy money for retired cops looking to make a fast buck with as little actual legwork as possible.

Few specialized in finding people who didn’t want to be found.

But things were looking up.

They were on the right track and she’d caught a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

So far, in the space of a few days, the third private detective had uncovered more significant information than she’d gathered under her own steam all year. Double the efforts of her previous hires.

She expected a location and a name anytime soon.

She finished her milk and returned to the matrimonial bed, slipping quietly under the thick comforter. She lay on her back, in the dark, next to the snoring bulk of her boring husband and stared at the ceiling..

She had a feeling things were coming to a head.

She couldn’t sleep.

___________________________

As promised, Officer Glenn Hillyard of the Kodiak PD picked us up at ten-thirty on the dot and drove us back to the airport in his Ford Expedition. The overnight snowfall had stopped sometime before dawn, leaving the whitewashed landscape a perfect replica of the overcast sky. Christmas Day in Alaska. Cold enough to condense breath and redden noses.

“We could have called a cab,” Rae told Hillyard after first wishing him season’s greetings and then apologizing for our dragging him away from his family a second time.

“Ma’am, it’s all part of the service,” he said happily enough – although I sensed he’d be rushing straight home the moment he dropped us off.

Children make Christmas, and Hillyard was visibly itching to get back to his.

We retraced our steps from the night before, following the long and winding road as it cut a channel though the snow-laden spruce forests.

I hadn’t had much in the way of sleep. Then again, neither had Rae. But we weren’t worse for it. Our expended energies had been replenished by a continental breakfast with a Christmassy twist and enough deep roast to make our ears ring.

“No regrets?” she’d asked, tentatively, as we’d showered and dressed.

“None,” I’d replied through a mouthful of toothpaste, and meant it. Surprised myself with the sincerity of it. Rae had reunited me with the human race. I was no longer a cold outsider, watching life through an unclean lens. Rae had reconnected me with something deep and unspoken. Something beyond the physical. Something healthy. Something Hope would have wanted me to have, after her. Not much in the way of the kind of conversation Rae had hoped for, but sometimes actions do speak louder than words.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

I watched Rae Burnett as she chitchatted with Hillyard about everyday stuff. Supporting the conversation in the way that only women can do. There was a noticeable change in her demeanor this morning. It was visible. Her whole body language was more of a whisper than a shout. A glow in her face. Eyes bright. Cheeks flushed. Everything softer and brighter. Smiling for no apparent reason. She looked like she’d found rekindled love and been up all night getting reacquainted. I wondered if I looked the same.

“Does this constitute a conflict of interest?” I’d asked around eggs-over-easy.

“Shoot, Gabe, I won’t tell if you don’t,” she’d replied breezily.

The thing about age is, the older we get the more we make a point of getting to the point. We learn that time is too precious a commodity to waste on formalities. Rae and I both knew where we stood. Both older and hopefully wiser. We’d cut to the chase and made up for half a lifetime of being apart.

And something had changed inside of me.

For the first time in recent memory I had a weird sense of happiness. It was frightening and yet joyous. Like holding your newborn baby for the first time. I didn’t want it to end, but at the same time I was scared by the responsibility.

The universe has a way of lulling us into believing, right before it rips reality open and lets us fall through.

I watched Rae lift Hillyard’s spirit with her affable nature, dazzled by it.

I was acutely aware I’d opened a box. Not exactly Pandora’s, but no less packed with potential calamity. I’d set the contents free. Unleashed possible mayhem. I wasn’t sure if I could put them back or even if I wanted to.

Our connecting flight consisted of a six-seat Cessna seaplane with amphibious floats painted luminous yellow. It took off from a dock on the edge of the Kodiak Air Station. Clawed its way into the frigid air as the overcast sky brightened in the east. It was a little too cramped and rickety for my liking. Everything rattling. I spooned myself into a plastic seat at the very back and clung on as the small plane hugged the rugged coastline, heading southwest.

“The runway at Akhiok is down for maintenance,” the pilot shouted above the drone of the propeller. “There’s a seaplane base at Moser Bay. That’s as far as I go. A boat will pick you up there and take you the rest of the way.”

I gaped through grubby windows as the lunar landscape opened up in the burgeoning light. A lumpy sky the color and texture of old muslin. Visibility: fair. Wind chill factor: freezing. On one side, I could see an uneven white landscape of deep snow and black rocky outcrops, fractured by ice-covered streams and craggy mountains shrouded in layers of curling mist. On the other side, a beaten panel of flat pewter water stretching out into the misty Pacific as far as the eye could see.

“You doing okay back there?” Rae called over her shoulder.

“I haven’t thrown up yet, if that’s anything to go by.”

Everyone who knows me knows I’m a bad flyer.

Despite the cold, I had sweat streaming down my sides.

“Akhiok is a Native fishing village located on the island’s southernmost tip,” the pilot was shouting in his tour guide voice. “It’s the remotest community on Kodiak Island. Fewer than eighty inhabitants and just a handful of buildings. Most are private dwellings. There’s a school and a small medical clinic. It’s also home to the historic Russian Orthodox church, built at the turn of the twentieth century.”

I phased him out. Stared through the window at the flawless ocean and thought about the flawed passage that had brought me here.

The ghosts of demons past.

We all have them.

I’d swept up more than most over the years. An entourage of hell hounds, soul-suckers and psychological leaches. Together, they formed an invisible force field of denial. The downside was their steady power drain on my psyche.

But I was on the mend – or at least I had been.

Prison had taken my liberty but not my time. Plenty of empty hours to think about the final condemning moment that had certified my place in the asylum: that cheerless day in August, caught in the middle of a hurricane, caught with my guard down, caught red-handed. Up to that point, I’d dedicated eighteen months of my life to the relentless pursuit of the man who had wrecked it. I’d shunned everything else: people, friendships, work. I’d become insular, paranoid and, in the end, dangerous. I’d seen spooks in every shadow and even tried to kill an innocent man just because he’d flipped my switches.

But I’d learned my lesson, right?

___________________________

Like a skimmed stone, the seaplane skipped as it hit the water, then plowed a furrow into it, using the sudden friction to absorb its momentum. I lurched in my seat. The pilot cut the power and we coasted toward a big, roofed jetty jutting out onto the icy bay. I could see several stubby boathouses on the snowy shoreline. No signs of life. He nudged the Cessna against a large square platform at the end of the pier and we jumped out onto the weathered gray timbers.

It felt colder down here. Icicles fringing eaves.

There was a small aluminum skiff moored on the other side of the platform, I saw, with a solemn-faced Alaskan Native in a blue-and-black lumberjack coat seated by the outboard motor. He looked like he’d been sitting there all night. Looked about ninety years old and probably was. A roundish face as chiseled as an island outcrop, sheltering beneath the peak of a dark blue
Alaska Nanooks
baseball cap.

“We’re looking at a sundown at approximately four-twenty,” the pilot called after us. “There’s more snowfall on the way – which makes it unsafe flying after dark – so make a point of being back here with at least an hour to spare. I’ll wait as long as I can, then I’m out. You have my number. Call me if you’re unable to make it back in time. Happy holidays!”

The granite-faced boat captain helped Rae into the flat-bottomed skiff.

“You picking up strays today?” she asked cheerfully as we climbed aboard.

“Highlight of my week,” he replied without a kink in his stony expression. “Beats dead beavers.”

There was a small pool of water in the bottom of the boat, with a pair of tatty life preservers forming an island in the middle. They looked as old and as weathered as their owner.

Rae nudged one with the toe of her boot. “Are we expected to wear these?”

“Only if you intend on going in the water,” he replied.

I said my hellos and settled up near the bow. The boat captain revved the outboard. Gasoline fumes stung at my nose. Slowly, the skiff angled itself away from the jetty, then picked up speed, bow tilted slightly skyward.

The seaplane bobbed in our wake.

Next stop: Akhiok – the scene of the crime.

I didn’t know what to expect. I have attended countless crime scenes and have as yet to come across any that are the same. I still wanted to know why Stone had seen fit to send two of his agents all the way up here. No question he knew more than he was telling. But what?

We headed south at a leisurely rate of knots, keeping close to the coast. We passed through the narrower neck of the bay, then followed the ice-locked shoreline out west. The black water was mirror-flat, reflecting an inky facsimile of the monochrome sky. Looked cold enough to freeze anything with less than a two-inch layer of blubber.

I huddled inside the parka as the cold air forced tears in my eyes.

Rae was busy engaging conversationally with the deadpan boat captain. Showing a genuine interest in the smallest details. Men are clumsy in comparison:
You see the game? What did you think? They were robbed of a win, weren’t they?
I listened to her voice, to her undulating southern inflection. Warmed to it like a child with his ear pressed against a music box.

I didn’t know what was going to happen between us later, but I was already looking forward to it.

Prison has a lot to answer for.

Finally, our destination came into view: a scattering of snowy-roofed structures, jutting out of the frozen tundra like tombstones. One or two columns of lazy smoke climbing from metal chimney stacks out back. A few other fishing boats of varying sizes moored up against the curve of frozen beach, including a big fancy private motor cruiser that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Shoreline Marina in Long Beach. Otherwise, no signs of inhabitation.

The boat captain steered the skiff toward a small boat launch slanting into the still water. There was a man waiting for us on the concrete slope, I saw, just back from the water’s edge: another Alaskan Native in a padded black coat and one of those Russian-style fur hats with the ear-warmers. His round face was as sullen as the sky. Behind him, a necklace of footprints stretched back up through the snow and into the village.

The skiff moaned as the aluminum hull grounded against the concrete slipway.

The guy in the furry ushanka offered his assistance to Rae as we climbed out. I could see a shield-shaped patch sewn to his sleeve: a brown bear with the words Kodiak Police stenciled above it. Same badge I’d seen on Hillyard’s winter coat.

“Quinn,” I said, extending a gloved hand. “And this is Special Agent Burnett.”

“Officer Locklear” he acknowledged with a nod, “Kodiak Police. Welcome to Akhiok. I’m sorry your visit isn’t under better circumstances.”

We left our boat captain behind and followed Locklear into the village. Brittle ice cracking and fracturing under our boots. Breath smoking from our lips. Frigid air fingering through every seam.

The place looked abandoned. Snowed-under. Compacted gravel roads eroded into wide ruts and rimmed with hardened black snow. Buildings silvered by the elements. Rolling hillsides of virgin white snow veined with jet black rock in the background. Top of the world.

“We’re a small, tight-knit community,” Locklear explained as we navigated frozen puddles. “Nothing like this has ever happened here before. Everyone’s shocked. Especially Julie.”

“Julie’s the one who found the body?”

“Julie Tsosie. She’s eleven. She’s still pretty shook up.”

Finding a dead body could do that, I knew.

“I realize it’s Christmas Day,” Rae said, “but we’d like to speak with her, if possible.”

“Not a problem. I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

“This body,” I asked, “where did Julie find it?”

“On the beach, down by the water. It was around midnight.”

“We’d like to see that too.”

“Sure.  I’ll take you there after we’ve seen the doc.”

Sanibel came to mind, four months back. Another body had been found on another beach. I’d been called in to inspect that discovery too. This was becoming a pattern.

“Where’s the body now?”

“Medical clinic.”

We arrived at the main street: basically, a wider thoroughfare formed by individual buildings shouldering both sides of a gravel roadway. Everything looked old, worn, held together by the ice and snow and countless rusting nails. Rudimentary Christmas decorations were hung from window frames. Locklear pointed the way and we headed toward a long wooden structure with sky-blue sashes. Even before we got there, I could see Santa Claus had beat us to it.