Chapter 22
PRESENT DAY
Ketchikan was one of those you-can’t-get-there-from-here parts of Alaska.
Flying direct from Anchorage would have taken just over two hours, if such a flight were available.
In order to reach Alaska’s First City, you either took the milk run or overflew Ketchikan for Seattle, only to board another northbound jet and fly back the way you came.
Cutter and Teariki opted for the former.
The milk run departed Ted Stephens International shortly before eleven a.m., then made stops in Juneau, Petersburg, Wrangell, and sometimes Sitka, before finally touching down in Ketchikan six long hours later.
Cutter finally took a full breath when the fisherman in the aisle seat stood to retrieve his luggage from the overhead bin.
He used the newfound elbow room to send a quick text to Mim, letting her know they’d landed safely, and then stuffed the sailing magazine he’d been reading into the backpack at his feet.
Normally, he would have used the time to look over the case files, but he didn’t especially want to give his seatmates any interesting reading.
He’d traveled light—a small amount of extra ammo for his two guns, a couple of knives, a toothbrush, and a change of underwear.
Lola wanted to get back home to her boyfriend and Cutter had a pregnant wife to think of.
They’d stick around just long enough to check on Joellen and nab the outlaws that were their excuses to come down in the first place.
Excuse was not really a correct term. There were always people who needed arresting.
Alaska was a wild place, a target-rich environment when it came to manhunting.
The problem was that those targets were scattered across a state two and a half times as large as Texas, with no roads connecting the majority of the hidey-holes.
Time and money dictated the frequency of trips task force deputies were able to take.
Cutter was a manhunter, not a bean counter, but supervising the Alaska Fugitive Task Force had taught him to stretch his budget by stacking more than one reason to visit any particular place before spending the money on travel.
He’d asked Lola to do workups on three target fugitives thought to be hanging out around Ketchikan, providing plenty of bang for the taxpayer dollar.
Joellen’s call simply sped up their timeline.
Backpacks over left shoulders—to keep their gun hands free—Cutter and Teariki shuffled like cattle off the plane and into the airport.
They quickly made their way downstairs to the rental car counter.
Ten minutes later, with vehicle keys and round-trip passes for the ferry stapled to their contract, they headed outside to locate their well-worn Subaru Outback from the eight vehicles parked along the chain-link fence overlooking the water.
Endless evergreen forests, fishing boats, and the near-constant buzz of floatplanes coming and going from the docks made it clear they’d left the big city of Anchorage far behind.
With large swaths of flat land at a premium around the city of Ketchikan, the airport was located across the Tongass Narrows on Gravina Island.
Public sentiment in the lower forty-eight nixed the idea of a “Bridge to Nowhere,” leaving Ketchikan visitors reliant on a public ferry or water taxi to reach the city side of the Narrows.
Cutter chalked it all up to the Ketchikan experience.
It gave him just the mental reset he needed to realize he was someplace out of the norm.
Southeast Alaska was famous for abundant rain, but today they were treated to bluebird skies and glass-calm seas. Cutter backed out of the parking spot and headed down the hill to wait for the next ferry.
He ended up at the head of the line, with a clear view of the Narrows.
The small, exterior-deck ferry had just started its five-minute return journey across from the Ketchikan side.
Lola settled into her seat, poring over the three powder-blue warrant files.
She’d dressed for rain and had her waterproof Helly Hansen pushed up to her elbows in the warmer-than-expected weather.
Cutter rolled down his window and killed the engine while they waited, letting in the crisp seaside air laced with the faint odor of diesel fuel.
She held up the top folder.
“We’re starting with Darrell Evan Church. Conspiracy to distribute heroin and … possession of a firearm during a drug transaction. Ketchikan PD says they can point us to his girlfriend … Jessica Stone. Sounds like she’s a winner in her own right. Paranoid as hell, according to the LT.”
“Any paper on the girlfriend?”
“Afraid not,” Lola said.
“I know this is a last-minute trip,” Cutter said. “But what makes you say she’s paranoid?”
“Wears a ballistic vest everywhere, according to the LT. Detective Barr knows her. Barr was busy on another case when I called yesterday. He texted this morning. He’ll brief us more when we get there.”
Sixteen million acres of national forest surrounded the city of Ketchikan. Formerly a timber town, fishing and tourism now provided a living for most of the 9,000 souls who called it home.
Fifteen minutes after they’d crossed the Narrows, Cutter hung a left under the shadow of two massive cruise ships tied up along the docks. Ketchikan Police Department was just two blocks away, toward the mountains.
The deputies showed their credentials to the dispatcher behind the glass and were buzzed through and shown to a small conference room.
It was an older building but well-kept, and decorated like most law enforcement offices the country over, with drug identification charts, a poster to remind officers how to identify human traffickers, and some shooting competition awards.
Cutter was surprised to see not only the KPD detective but two Alaska state troopers in the room.
Detective Barr sat at the head of the oval table under a poster of the Tommy Lee Jones movie The Fugitive—which had probably been made a couple of years before any of the three Ketchikan LEOs in the room were born.
A Tlingit Native, Willis Barr was dressed in jeans, Xtratuf rubber boots—the ubiquitous footwear of Southeast Alaska—and a blue mock turtleneck that had Drug Enforcement Unit stenciled over the left breast pocket.
Somewhere around thirty, he looked to be the oldest of the local coppers.
The other two wore the navy-blue slacks and light-blue uniform shirts of Alaska state troopers—gig lines arrow straight, patrol boots polished to a mirror shine.
Troopers Murphy and Heath looked like they could have come from central casting on a television crime drama.
Murphy’s blond hair was pulled back in a tight bun.
Heath’s dark G.I. Joe mustache was neatly trimmed to match his gelled hair.
Both had jawlines that could cut glass. More importantly, they looked extremely fit—something that immediately endeared them to Lola Teariki.
“Hope you don’t mind I invited AST,” Barr said. “It’ll become clear why in a second.”
“The more the merrier,” Lola said.
Cutter and Lola shook hands with Barr and then each trooper in turn.
“Our sergeant’s in Juneau for the week,” Trooper Murphy said.
Cutter took out his pocketknife and a piece of cottonwood root and held them up toward Barr.
The detective grinned. “Almost done with that one,” he said, nodding to the cottonwood.
“I am,” Cutter said.
“A spoon?”
Cutter nodded. “My granddad carved a lot of spoons.”
Barr had worked with the Marshals several times over the past couple of years and knew of Cutter’s propensity to whittle while he worked through strategy.
Lola gave a quick briefing on Church’s background and criminal history, finishing up by passing out copies of his Alaska operator’s license photo.
“White male, five ten, a buck ninety,” she said.
“Born in seventy-five. No prior record of violence, but he was packing a Glock during his last arrest. He’s looking at a ten-year mandatory minimum this time.
” She glanced up from her folder at Detective Barr.
“Your sergeant told me you could get us a line on his girlfriend.”
Barr gave a solemn nod. “Jessica Stone. That’s why I invited the troopers to join us. She’s one of the jumpiest human beings I’ve ever met in my life, and I’ve seen some real tweakers.”
“A problem with meth?” Lola asked.
“If she does, it’s early days,” Barr said. “She’s still got all her teeth.”
“I understand she carries a 1911,” Lola said.
“Close,” Barr said. “A Bren Ten in a Miami Vice shoulder holster. Jess is never without that pistol and a KA-BAR knife on her belt. Oh, and don’t forget about the ballistic vest.”
Trooper Heath drummed his fingers on the conference table. “Mozambique drill,” he mumbled to himself.
“Right,” Barr said. “But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
She left town a little over a year ago. Gone about three months maybe.
I don’t know where, but I think something happened to her during that time.
Something bad. She came back a completely different person.
Took some potshots at a floatplane that flew over her trailer about a week after she returned to town.
I thought for sure I was going to have to shoot her when I went out to talk to her about it.
She knows me. Hesitated long enough I was able to get the cuffs on her.
The judge gave her a slap on the wrist and let her walk.
She moved after that. I saw her around town now and again but had no idea where she went until a few days ago. ”
“Any active warrants?” Cutter asked.
“Kind of,” Barr said. “I need to tell you, though, she doesn’t trust anyone, especially law enforcement. She swears she’ll shoot it out with any cop stupid enough to confront her again, even me.”
“Sounds like a challenge,” Lola said. “Say we do locate her, what’s the likelihood we find Church?”
“Witnesses say there’s a male staying with her,” Trooper Murphy said. “Fits Church’s description. It sounds like they’re squatting in a little cabin deep in the Tongass north of Ward Cove. Couple of hikers stumbled across it and told the Forest Service cops who patrol that area.”
Cutter stopped whittling for a moment and glanced up. “Are you sure it’s Jessica Stone?”
“I think so,” Barr said. “She achieved a good amount of notoriety after she tried to shoot down that floatplane. This is Forest Service jurisdiction, but it’s common knowledge I went to school with her.
They came to me after they took the hikers’ report.
Forest Service LEOs set up cameras out by Ward Lake.
They’ve got eyes on the road leading in from Ward Cove, as well as the trails that go back to the illegal cabin.
Her beat-up Mitsubishi came out this way around noon today with a white male in the passenger seat.
She’ll be back at some point. I’d say we head out there.
Good chance your guy is still with her.”
Lola put both hands flat on the conference table. “Sounds like a plan. I’m assuming y’all have less-lethal. Cutter and I have Tasers, but I don’t fancy getting that close to anyone with a ten-millimeter pistol.”
The troopers nodded in unison.
“I have a forty-millimeter and Trooper Murphy has an ARWEN,” Heath said. “Either one could break her arm, but they’re not lethal as long as we don’t hit her in the noggin.”
Pepper spray and impact batons had once been referred to as nonlethal, but enough people had died from breathing issues or getting a flying plastic missile to the head that the powers that be had decided to call them less-lethal.
“She’s legit scared if you ask me,” Barr said. “It’s like she sold her soul to the devil and now she’s afraid he’s coming to collect.”
Cutter stopped whittling and looked up. “That’s an awfully interesting analogy.”
Barr’s eyes glazed over in a thousand-yard stare.
“Something she said to me when I arrested her. They’ll kill me, they’ll kill you.
They’ll kill my family. They’ll kill your family …
” Barr took a shaky breath, returning to the present.
“Spookiest shit I ever heard in my life. She said it like it was a foregone conclusion. A done deal.”
Lola sat with her mouth agape.
“Does she have a brand, by chance?”
“How’d you know that?” Barr said. “On the nape of her neck.”
Lola and Cutter exchanged glances.
“A wolf, I think,” Barr said. “I took a photo of it when we booked her after the floatplane thing.”
The detective spun around in his chair. Seated, he duckwalked to a computer in the corner without getting up. A few taps of the keys later and a printer spat out five copies of Jessica Stone’s booking photos. Cutter was closer. He studied it a moment and then slid a copy to Lola.
“Holy hell,” she gasped.
Trooper Murphy held up her copy of the paper. “Barr’s right. It looks like a wolf and a … I don’t know, a tree or a torch, maybe. You’ve seen this before?”
“We have,” Cutter said.
“And they’re all dead.” Lola pushed away from the table. “Church is our fugitive, but our primary objective is now Jessica Stone.”