“I’ll make sure Franken is updated,” the chief said, trying not to smile. “We can singe the bridge but not burn it down.”

  “I’ll take what I can get.” She leaned back and relaxed. “Okay, I’m done gloating.”

  “I’m impressed, Maureen. It’s nice to have someone in the orbit of this office able to track down details that move the investigation forward. Unfortunately, it means I’ll have to send the deputies out to re-interview everyone about what they’d seen or heard four rather than two days before the body was found.”

  He wrote a note to himself and looked up. “Good work,” he said.

  “Mrs. Pynchon told me she saw a skiff near Swallow Reef about that time. It had a yellow line painted around the hull, just above the water line. But I don’t know how much that will help us find the killer. I noticed the harbormaster’s skiff has a yellow line. I’ve seen Marcus poking around in it at all hours. He was all the way out at the ISI dock the other night.”

  “I’ll ask Michele to talk to Blackie about skiffs with yellow paint at the waterline, including his own.”

  The chief stood up and headed to the file cabinet, removed a folder, and brought it to his desk. Flipping through it, he found the memo Blackie had sent him and laid it on the desk. He ran his finger down the dates on the right-hand side of the paper and stopped when he came to the date September 27. He pointed it out to Maureen.

  “Two days before we found him, there were no boats tied to the two tramper buoys at the far end of Captains Bay,” he said, indicating the list of tramper vessels in town that the harbormaster had sent over. “But on September 27 there was a Russian cargo vessel tied there.”

  “Russian?” Maureen immediately thought of Viktor and his brother.

  “Michele can follow up on these leads with Blackie. But before we start investigating, there’s something else I want to discuss.” He turned toward his computer and worked the keyboard, sending a document to the printer in the corner of his office.

  “Could you grab that for me, Maureen?”

  She pulled it off the printer and tried to hand it over.

  He waved her off. “Read it.”

  She skimmed the document and looked up at him. “This is an application for a state coroners license.”

  “I understand you’re heading to Anchorage in a couple of days.” His folded arms lay across his chest. “I’d like you to be part of our team, Maureen. It’s different than a medical examiner. A coroner does not have to be a medical doctor. But you will need some training.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “Why don’t you stop at the state office building while you’re in Anchorage for that vet hospital job interview and talk to the health department about the coroner position.”

  Still standing, one hand holding the application, the other on her hip, she remained speechless.

  “It’s nice to have options,” he said. “Fill out the application if you think it might work for you. It shouldn’t interfere with your job in Dutch as a veterinarian.”

  Maureen wasn’t sure what to think. She still did not know whether she wanted to make the move to Anchorage.

  The chief leaned back in his chair, knitting his fingers together behind his head and giving his elbows an expansive stretch. “I need a coroner in Dutch.”

  Now he was smiling.

  “And I’ve set up a meeting for you with Casey’s birth mom while you’re in Anchorage. Since you’ll be there, I thought this meeting better done in person than over the phone.” He slid her a paper with the address and phone number scribbled on it. “She’s expecting you.” He shared with her what he had learned, including information that Casey’s father may have been a fisherman. That nugget set Maureen’s head spinning.

  Chet poked his head in the door.

  “Got something here, Chief.”

  It was his turn to wave around a piece of paper. “Take a gander at this. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  He explained it was one of the email communications between Casey and his mother.

  “Right there,” he said pointing to the email exchange. “He asks his mom to find out the ownership of the Cape Chirikof LLC.”

  He looked at the chief and then at Maureen before he laid down a second piece of paper. “Here’s her response.”

  Chief St. George picked up the paper and read the email exchange. “It says Rob Stokes is not the sole owner of the Cape Chirikof. His brother, One-Eye, owned half of it.”

  Chet rubbed his hands together. “A motive, perhaps?”

  Chapter 23

  Maureen walked with Dr. Kittredge down the brightly lit hall of the Anchorage veterinary hospital. Blue jeans poked from beneath the stiff hem of his starched white smock. A shock of blond hair was combed back behind his ears and grazed his shoulders. He looked like a surfer gone serious. They stopped in front of a glass door. A sign overhead identified it as the entrance to the imaging lab.

  Opening the door, he led Maureen through a small office area and waved at the young woman behind the desk.

  “Hi, Chad,” she said, smiling as they made their way past the entrance into a narrow corridor with glass doors on either side.

  Stopping at the first door, Kittredge reached for the handle. “This is the MRI imaging area.”

  It was not in use, so Kittredge introduced her to the sleek cylindrical machine. He rested his arm on it as if admiring a surf board. “Have you ever used one of these sweethearts?”

  “Only in med school.”

  He gave her a look of surprise. She got that a lot; people always wondered why she’d attended med school before switching to veterinary medicine. She never said why. Tic-tac-toe pet love, was why. Love and loyalty, courage, and strength. So simple. So in the moment. Unlike humans, all wound up.

  “There’s a CAT scan and two x-ray machines farther down the hall,” he said.

  Gesturing toward two chairs along the wall, he continued. “But let’s sit down. Perhaps I can answer questions you might have about the equipment and the job.”

  Kittredge leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his lap with hands clasped in front. Maureen could see this was the let-your-hair-down part of the interview process.

  “First of all, please call me Chad.” He smiled, then did his best to be charming. “This is a great place to work. We’re fully loaded with a great staff and awesome equipment.”

  The doctor let his eyes rest briefly on the MRI scanner. Then back to her. “What would you like to know about working here?”

  She knew this was the best-equipped veterinary hospital in the state and that it provided services to many rural communities. Most villages were in remote locations, some still on a honey bucket system of sewage retrieval, a feature that did not attract resident members of the medical community. In fact, that was why she was here. The job she’d applied for was as coordinator of rural services. As coordinator, she would manage the rotation of village visits.

  “Why is the position vacant?”

  “The current coordinator is heading back Outside. It wasn’t the job. Living in Alaska takes a toll on those separated so far from family and friends. But ask him yourself.” He pulled a business card from his pocket, scribbled a name and number on it, and passed it to Maureen.

  “The schedule?” she asked, intrigued by working in the Bush. “How much time here? How much time working in the villages?”

  “Well, as coordinator, you’d have a staff of two other veterinarians. The three of you would be covering most of western and central Alaska that’s off the road system, excluding Bethel, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor, where they have resident veterinarians.”

  Maureen wondered whether they’d find someone to replace her in Dutch. They’d been without one for several years before she arrived.

  Kittredge continued. “You’d probably be traveling to the villages about half the time.”

  She leaned back in the chair. Spending time in the villages is what had drawn her to the job opening. She was still trying to assess the other half of the job, the working in Anchorage half, including what it would be like to work with the surfer dude doctor.

  “You’d often travel by small plane and sometimes stay in a villager’s home. It’s a great way to see the real Alaska, the one few ever see.”

  Maureen asked about the villages and whether they had medical facilities. As an example, Chad described a village located at the mouth of the Kanektok River, where it flows into Kuskokwim Bay and the Bering Sea. The area surrounding it was flat, grassy tundra pocked with swampy ponds in the summer and inaccessible except by plane or boat. In the winter, only planes and snowmobiles got you there.

  “It’s a fly-in destination for legendary salmon sport fishing. So, bring your fishing rod and waders.”

  He told her it was a small Yupik community that swells in size for several weeks in the summer when the salmon are running, and villagers from the delta region arrive to let loose their gillnets from small, outboard motor-driven, aluminum skiffs. In summer, families set up fishing camps along the river bank where they catch and slow-smoke salmon fillets on open-air racks. Veterinarian visits are scheduled once a month, he said, using a room at the town hall.

  “All the medical equipment is mobile and travels with you as the visiting veterinarian,” he said.

  “But you’ve been to the Bush, working in Dutch and servicing the surrounding villages on the islands and the peninsula. That’s why you rose to the top of the candidate list pretty quickly. The difference here is that after your travels, you get to come back to Anchorage.” He raised an eyebrow as if to say that was a no-brainer step-up from Dutch.

  Maureen was still trying to size him up. “What do you do when you come back here?”

  “Me?” His face lit up as if pizza had been delivered. “Snow board in the winter. Hike in the summer. And I’m in the Anchorage opera chorus.” He laughed at her expression of surprise. “A tenor. We’re doing Carmen next month.”

  Maureen watched him stand up, hands in his white smock. “Let’s swing by one of the operating rooms,” he said, nodding toward the west wing of the building.

  She was intrigued and asked him about the opera schedule as they walked down the wide, window-lined corridor.

  “Wait,” she said. “I sent a bluetick coonhound here. He needed amputation of his right hind leg. Can we visit him? His name is Blue.”

  They found the dog resting in a recovery area on the second floor. Maureen checked his chart. “Looks like he’s recovering well.” The dog was sleeping, so they didn’t disturb him.

  Farther down the hall, they entered a room with a viewing window. They looked down into an operating room. Three doctors hunched over a sedated moose. It lay on its side but with its upper hind leg tethered in a sling that hung from the ceiling, giving the surgeons unobstructed access to the abdomen area. The abdomen was covered except where an incision had been made.

  Maureen had no experience with moose but had field dressed injured horses. If she had a specialty outside domestic house pets, it was tending to the semi-wild horses in Summer Bay. The trick was to tend to the horses in the herd without the big roan stallion shaking his mane and pawing at the dirt. Bringing a bushel of apples helped divert his attention. Often they’d been apples left at the clinic by One-Eye. She’d miss those horses if she took this job. She’d miss those apples no matter what she did.

  The operating room below them was stocked with sophisticated equipment, none of which was in her Dutch Harbor office. An array of bright surgical lights hung above the table, and a fully loaded anesthesia cart was parked alongside the moose’s head.

  Maureen thought about her antique X-ray machine and the surgery table parked in the far corner of her basement office. If she’d had just some equipment like this in Dutch, she’d have been able to operate on Blue herself.

  But watching the action below, she couldn’t help wonder why the moose wasn’t hanging in a meat house.

  ****

  Maureen walked across the parking lot looking for a puny white sedan, the only rental available for this last-minute trip. There it was, the pint-sized runt of a car, parked between two giant SUVs armed with studded snow tires meant to show the road who was boss. The two-story animal hospital loomed behind her. She reached for the car’s door handle. They’d offered her the job. She had a week to inform them of her decision.

  She drove down Lake Otis Parkway, passing the University of Alaska on her way downtown. Maybe dinner at the Eagle’s Nest? Perched atop The Captain’s Hotel where she was staying, views from the Eagle’s Nest would be spectacular. A steak and a rich cabernet to celebrate? To celebrate what, another tough decision to make? She turned onto G Street and pulled alongside the Evolution bar instead. It was already busy as the after-work crowd filtered into its dim confines. She found an available stool at the small horseshoe bar and counted herself lucky.

  Unwinding a blue cashmere scarf from around her neck, Maureen looked around the crowded drinking hole. The tall tables in the windowed alcoves by the street were plugged with people, some standing, some sitting, all drinking. Most still wore jackets, now unzipped or unbuttoned. The packed room extended around the back of the bar and past a jukebox that blasted rock music loud enough to compromise most conversations.

  Maureen nodded to the bartender so that she came her way. The short woman with a puffy hairdo leaned in to take her order. She ordered her usual Boston bottled beer. “And a hotshot.”

  “Make that two but hold the hotshot on mine,” said a man’s voice behind her.

  Maureen looked over her shoulder to see Franken flash his badge at the guy sitting next to her, signaling it was time for him to move.

  “What are you doing here?” Maureen’s expression did nothing to disguise her disappointment.

  “The chief told me you were coming to Anchorage,” he said. “I expected you to stop by the office in follow-up to our phone call. Hearing nothing from you, I had you tailed from the pet hospital. Here you are, and I’m off duty.” He motioned to the worn leather stool next to her. “May I sit down?”

  “You tailed me?” Maureen laughed. The beer and cinnamon hotshot arrived just in time. She drank the shot and chased it with a swig from the cold bottle.

  “Our medical examiner re-examined the data,” said Franken, removing his black leather gloves. He laid them on the bar. “He concurred with your preliminary report on the cause of death for both victims and has revised the estimated time of death on Benjamin Stokes.”

  Maureen noted that he said this without contrition. He should be apologizing to her, damn it.

  Franken continued, “It turns out the telemetry data you passed on helped us get a break in the Stokes case.” He took a swig of beer. “Good job.”

  That’s more like it, she thought. “Have you made an arrest?”

  “Not yet. But the telemetry data you sent tells us that we were wrong about the time of death. You were right to be skeptical. Now that we know the killing occurred two days earlier than we thought, new evidence has come to light.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for one thing, there was a longline vessel anchored in the far end of Captains Bay at that time. The crew heard what could have been shots fired near the reef and saw a skiff in the area. It was reported to the harbormaster but ignored by us because the timing was off. And, according to the chief, a woman who lives near the reef also saw a skiff about that time. She gave a good description of it.”

  Maureen felt smug. And why not? She’d been the one who got the description of the skiff from Mrs. Pynchon. Clearly, the chief had shared her report with Franken, which was the right thing to do even if she hadn’t yet warmed to the idea of working together with him.

  “Have you found the owner of the skiff?” she asked.

  “Not yet. But we will.”

  “What about the Russian cargo vessel?”

  “The FBI’s checking it out.”

  He took a sip of his beer. “Thanks to the telemetry information you dug up, the new time of death makes these facts pretty darn important.”

  “Glad I could help, Franken.” Maureen allowed her bottle to clink with his but didn’t crack a smile. She noticed he looked more relaxed without his trooper hat standing at attention on top of his closely cropped hair. He’d probably left it in the patrol car parked in front of a nearby fireplug. She figured he must have been tailing her himself. How else could he get to the bar so quickly?

  Franken took another sip of beer. “I like Alaskan beer better than this Boston beer.”

  “Yeah, well, I like the Boston Red Sox better than… Oh yeah, we don’t have professional sports teams in Alaska.” She faced away from him toward the TV tuned to the fourth game of the World Series. She wondered when he would leave so she could watch it.

  He followed her eyes to the television screen. “The Yankees suck, right?”

  Maureen’s head turned in his direction, an eyebrow cocked. She looked him over again. He must be in his forties. Big hands, she thought, like a pitcher.

  “Yeah, they do.” She set her beer down on the bar. “What can I do for you, Franken? You’ve invested some effort in finding me.”

  He set his beer on the bar next to hers. “Call me Joe.”

  “Okay, Joe.”

  “Everyone knew Ben Stokes was a drug addict,” he said, looking directly at Maureen. “What no one knew, or no one should have known…” He paused, lowering his voice. “…that he was also a confidential informant. He was helping us with a drug probe in Dutch. An important investigation. FBI in the mix.”

  Maureen was shocked and angered. “Don’t you think the chief should have been informed?”

  “He was informed but not included in the investigation. And he was prohibited from sharing the information about Stokes, even with his deputies. It’s our investigation, and we don’t want it screwed up, simple as that.”

  Maureen thought Franken looked like a jerk again. “Sounds like a clear motive for his murder.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Why did One-Eye become an informant?”

 

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