Chapter 54
Cutter woke to the sound of a distant whistle. Sleeping on a ship could feel like being inside a massive cocoon. Surrounded by steel, systems, and the ocean, it took him a moment to get his bearings. The Polar Star was stopped. He could tell that much.
The horn sounded again, far away up Gastineau Channel.
Cutter rolled out of his blanket and arched his back, stretching out the inevitable kinks that came from sleeping on a sofa.
A wall of heavy fog met him at the veranda door.
Mount Roberts, which rose directly out of the sea and should have been visible across from the Franklin Docks, was lost in a cloud.
Of course it was foggy. This was Juneau.
Cutter eased open the sliding door and stepped out on the balcony in his bare feet.
The air was wet and fresh, incredibly welcome.
Cutter was always happier in open spaces.
He peered through the fog, catching fleeting images of green and a flash of dull red—the Mount Roberts aerial tram.
To his left was Mount Juneau—under which ran miles and miles of mine tunnels whose guts provided the stony base for this city.
He shivered at the memory of his time in those tunnels.
Lola and Joellen were quiet, apparently still sleeping.
The sun had been up over an hour and a half.
He kicked himself for sleeping in, especially when Mim had to get up with the twins in her condition while he got to lounge around on a cruise ship.
He supposed that was one reason he took the couch—to punish himself for having it so good.
He’d stayed up late making notes on his most pressing cases.
Lola’s determination was contagious, and he’d spent an inordinate amount of time on the Branded Ones, though most everything new they had was conjecture.
Sexy conjecture, to be sure, and probably enough to get Lola’s dream multiagency task force off the ground, but there were more gaps than substance.
At any given moment, the Alaska Fugitive Task Force carried well over one hundred and fifty active warrants.
Every day more warrants ended up on Cutter’s desk—some federal, others from the Alaska State Troopers or Anchorage PD.
Leads dried up, moving the file to the Check-in-Sixty-Days folder.
Some fugitives were believed to be out of Alaska.
These earned collateral leads to other districts or agencies.
Some got tired of constantly looking over their shoulder and turned themselves in.
Others were arrested on new charges or swept up as bycatch, when their associates were arrested.
Barring special circumstances—like murder suspects or outlaws who had harmed children—six months of no leads got the case stamped INACTIVE.
Still, federal warrants never went away.
The stack grew larger by the week. There was rarely enough breathing room to focus long on a particular fugitive.
Most days each team left the office with a stack of seven or eight warrants and pinged all over Anchorage and the Matsu Valley like pinballs, interviewing relatives, surveilling funerals, following old girlfriends.
… They dragged a fast net. When a lead didn’t pan out quickly, they moved down the list. Focus was primarily on the most violent—the worst of the worst or, as often happened, the most politically expedient in the eyes of headquarters.
Sometimes, a turd floated to the top while they were working on someone else—like Leo Bouchard, Malosi’s presumed killer.
On the docks below, the crew were still in the process of running lines to secure the ship.
Passengers were up stirring, many of them at the buffet, filling up on free food before they disembarked for their misty Juneau adventures in a little over an hour.
Special Agent Nguyen with the FBI would arrive soon.
Cutter was eager to hand over the homicide investigation and focus on the hunt for Bouchard—not an easy task on a thousand-foot ship among four thousand people and no cameras.
Seagulls squabbled along the docks. The muffled voices of dockworkers and crew were suddenly eclipsed by a loud splash. The voices below immediately rose in volume and timbre.
Twenty seconds after the splash, the captain gave three long blasts on The Polar Star’s horn, followed by a Code Oscar announcement over the intercom. Man overboard. Someone had fallen in.
Or jumped.
Cutter leaned over the balcony rail as far as he dared, searching the surface of dark water, barely visible through the fog.
Sixty feet below, Leo Bouchard swam to a ladder off the stern of the ship, scrambling up to the wooden wharf.
Special Agent Nguyen was likely still home enjoying her morning coffee.
The dockworkers made no effort to stop him.
That wasn’t their job. Someone from ship’s Security shouted over the rail, but there was nothing they could do.
Even the captain, who possessed Godlike authority while aboard his vessel, held zero sway on land.
Once he stepped foot in Juneau he was nothing more than a tourist with a Dutch passport.
Bouchard hauled himself up on the thick wooden planking, then took a scant moment to turn back toward The Polar Star and blow it a kiss, before sprinting into the fog.
“Wily bastard,” Cutter whispered, pissed but half impressed with the man’s guts and ingenuity.
An electronic chirp made Cutter turn in time to see Lola breeze in from the hallway. The immediate wind tunnel caused by the open balcony sucked the door out of her hands, slamming it like a pistol shot.
“Well, that woke the neighbors,” Lola said. She wore a T-shirt and running shorts. He should have known better than to think she’d slept in. “You hear the man overboard announcement?”
Cutter hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Leo Bouchard just jumped.”
“Is he dead?” Her Kiwi accent turned dead into did.
“Not even close,” Cutter said.
Cutter and Lola’s phones rang at the same time. Lola answered first. “Yeah,” she said. “Cutter just told me. Thanks, Ajit. We’ll make a plan and call you back.”
Joellen staggered out of her room a moment later, hair ratted like she’d spent the night draining every last bottle in the minibar.
“Somebody go overboard?”
She brightened when Cutter told her what had happened.
“Outstanding,” she said. “The threat against me has fled, so you can flee as well. Go back to your happy life and leave me to the rest of my vacation.”
“She’s got a point,” Lola said. “A couple of supplemental reports and we can turn this whole mess over to the Feebs. Then we are outta here.”
“Right,” Cutter said. “Still, we don’t know if Leo was the only player left on board. They did bribe a member of the security crew to take the cameras offline—and then kill him to cover their tracks. I’ve seen cartels that didn’t operate with that degree of advanced planning.”
Joellen chewed on her bottom lip. “So, you believe more people are involved?”
“It’s possible,” Cutter said.
“No way of knowing now,” Joellen said. “Leo Bouchard ran. I bet anyone he was working with will slip off this ship and beat feet. If it was some kind of cartel that wanted me, they would have chopped my head off back in Miami. Smartest money has them after Steve Cruz.”
“I agree with her,” Lola said. “About Steve anyway.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Joellen said. “Y’all put on your strategy hats and figure out what you’re going to do. I’m tired of trying not to get killed. I’ve got a date with a team of sled dogs on top of a glacier.” She wheeled and disappeared into her room.
“Dodged a bullet for sure,” Lola whispered.
“Yes, I did!” Joellen said from around the corner. Then, more quietly, mimicking Lola’s Kiwi accent, “… depends on who you’re making the gravy for … I’m on team Mim … You perky little shit …”
FBI Special Agent Sarah Nguyen arrived at ten minutes to eight, none too pleased that Cutter had allowed his ex-wife—someone at least peripherally involved in Malosi’s homicide investigation—to leave the ship and get on a helicopter for the top of a glacier.
Cutter and Lola redeemed themselves by volunteering to take copies of Leo Bouchard’s Texas driver’s license photos to Juneau PD while Nguyen combed over the crime scene with Ajit.
“There’s a 1:21 p.m. flight to Ketchikan on Alaska Airlines,” Lola said as they walked out of Juneau PD, a blocky glass building on Egan Drive near the airport.
Fog and mist had given way to a deluge of biblical proportions, pelting the parking lot.
They stopped and waited for a beat under the covered awning by the flagpole.
“Think we could ask the chief for another day? Still gives you plenty of time to get home and make gravy.”
“Plenty of time,” Cutter repeated.
“Well,” Lola said, bouncing in place. “What do you reckon?”
“I can’t stop thinking about Bouchard. He went to a lot of trouble just to get at Joellen.”
Lola threw back her head in exasperation. “I wish I could argue with you. We’re definitely missing something. One of those little details you’re always talking about … your grandpa’s horseshoes.”
“Horseshoe nails,” Cutter said. “But you’re right. We have three choices. Head to Skagway aboard The Polar Star. Fly to Ketchikan tonight. Or return to Anchorage and meet with the chief about that special task force you want.”
Lola gazed at the line of evergreens across the PD parking lot.
“Or we could stay the night in Juneau, away from your witchy ex, and avoid the FBI agent who’s already pissed at us.
Then we fly to Skagway tomorrow morning by seaplane.
See this thing through. Either way, you still have a time cushion, oh Great Maker of Gravy. ”
“That is not a bad idea, Teariki.” Cutter took out his phone and clicked through several pages while he spoke. “Might even get lucky and run across Leo Bouchard.”
“Possible,” Lola said. “Don’t know if you realize this, but we’re damned good man hunters.”
Cutter held up the phone. “They have rooms at the Baranof.”
“Ick!” Lola acted like she might gag. “Too close to the Alaska legislature. Slimy. They get politician gunk all over the furniture.”
“The Sheraton, then,” Cutter said.
“Sweet as.” Lola looked up from her phone. “That’s just across from the Hangar. They got massive burgers!”
Cutter clicked through his Marriott app while Lola worked on their transportation.
“Rooms are booked.” He returned the phone to his pocket.
“First available flight to Skagway on Alaska Seaplanes is at 7:40 a.m., a few minutes after the ship docks. There’s an earlier one, but it’s fully booked. You want to try a different carrier?”
“Nah,” Cutter said. “That morning flight is fine.” The rain picked up, hammering the metal awning and turning the parking lot into a river.
Lola grinned. “I got an idea. How about we go back inside and talk to that patrol officer? Jamie, I think his name was. He’s kinda sweet on me, I think. Bet he’d be keen to help us look for Leo Bouchard.”