CHAPTER SEVEN

The lodge in Nelchina was a quaint wooden structure with small but comfortable rooms. The nearest restaurant was in Glenallen, twenty miles east, so the agents stopped by the Nelchina General Store for food to make at the hotel instead. The sun had set hours ago, and in small towns like Nelchina, that meant businesses were closed and people were home for the evening, even though sunset occurred several hours earlier in Alaska in January than it did in Philadelphia.

Wyatt had to return to Anchorage with the helicopter, so the agents were on their own for the evening. They ate their microwaved meals quickly and without relish and drank the coffee the hotel provided with considerably more relish as they touched base after the first day of their investigation.

"Bullet points," Michael began. "The killer's a survivalist and probably a hunter."

"Which is just about the same as saying a resident of rural Alaska," Faith countered.

"True. But we also know that he had a personal grudge against the victims. At least, we strongly suspect that."

"Considering the effort it would take to lay different traps for different people, I'm pretty confident in that," Faith confirmed. "I also think that the killer was close with them at one point. He might still be close."

"I agree," Michael said. "He knew where their cabins were, and Wyatt made it clear that wasn't likely."

Faith leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee. "What's your impression of Wyatt?"

Michael thought a moment. "He's not happy to have outsiders here."

"I got that impression, too," Faith replied. "He's been perfectly polite and helpful on the surface, but he's been a little vague with his details."

"Yeah," Michael agreed. "I don't buy that bit about friendships living off of handshakes and conversations. I know people from Alaska, and they have internet and cell phones just like everyone else. Hell, we have internet here in a town of what, fifty? And each time we point out an opportunity in the investigation, we get some corny response about how ‘things are different ‘round these parts.' Seems like a nice guy, but I don't think he's going to be helpful to us."

"Do you think he'll interfere with us? If we expose skeletons in the town's history?"

Michael thought for another moment, then shook his head. "He's an Anchorage native. They're a decent-sized city. He might feel loyalty to the state, but I don't think he would feel a need to protect the reputation of a little mountain town a hundred fifty miles away. I think he just wants to do things his way and doesn't like that he's not the shot-caller."

"He wasn't wrong about moving slowly to find details, though," Faith replied, playing devil's advocate. We did find more evidence when we slowed down."

"I'm not saying he's going to make things harder for us," Michael replied. "I just think we're going to need to do the legwork ourselves. If we use the locals, it'll need to be for mundane tasks like go talk to this person or go find out where this ATV spring came from. Basically, what we're already doing but without the expectation that he'll take initiative with that information or that he'll get us those results without extensive follow up. In short, we're on our own."

She scoffed. "What else is new?"

"Exactly."

She sipped more of her coffee and sighed. "Okay. So we have a survivalist hunter who was once close with our victims and used that to his advantage to set up traps to kill them. I'm leaning toward coward since he used traps instead of direct attacks, but the hunter outsmarting the prey angle can work too. If we want to learn more, we need to find out who Ethan Holloway and Valerie North are associated with. We should start by looking at social media. Wyatt says they weren't active, but I'll bet we can find something helpful there."

"Agreed. I'm going to make more coffee first, though."

"Already? You just had a cup."

"Do you anticipate sleeping before we find a new lead?"

"Good point."

"Yep."

Michael made the coffee while Faith looked up Ethan's and Valerie's social media accounts. It wasn't encouraging at first. Wyatt might harbor some resentment at the arrival of two outsiders to take over his investigation, but he wasn't lying when he said the two of them weren't active. Valerie North had social media accounts, but she didn't appear to have ever used them.

Ethan had once been very active on social media, but that ended abruptly two years ago. His last post read, "No point in connecting with people anymore. Those who say they love you only lie to you." This accompanied a notification that his status had changed from married to divorced. He'd never actually deleted his social media accounts, but he hadn't been active since then.

Still, it was something to follow up on. "Michael, can you look up Carol Holloway please? Ethan's wife of ten years. They split two years ago, and Ethan stopped being active on social media after that."

"Got it. Any connection to Valerie?"

"Valerie doesn't seem to have ever posted on social media," Faith said. "Looks like Wyatt wasn't pulling our chain there."

"Jeez. I guess I was wrong to assume."

Faith rested her hand on her chin and looked pensively at the screen. Nearly all of their previous cases had been in proximity to cities. Even the few exceptions had city-like amenities. This area did too since they were fairly close to Anchorage, but Anchorage was an island in a very extensive stretch of very sparsely populated land. To add to that, the culture of Alaska so far seemed very much to be one of self-reliance, as Wyatt had said. They had caught most of their killers so far by looking at how the killers' actions impacted the friends and family of his victims. Without that visible impact, it would be difficult to find this killer.

"Stop biting your nails," Michael scolded.

Faith pulled her hand away from her face and reddened slightly. "Sorry."

"Have you been doing that again?"

"Not that I've noticed."

"Well, you never noticed."

Heat climbed further up Faith's cheeks. When she and Michael were together, he would always scold her for biting her nails. It was a nervous habit that flared up every few years, starting her first combat tour in Afghanistan.

It wasn't a good sign that it was happening again. It meant that her stress was getting more difficult to handle, and her mind was compensating by falling back on old coping mechanisms.

"Okay, got her. Took a while because she's not Cindy Holloway now. She's Cindy Levinson. She split with Ethan and married a guy named Tucker Levinson, who also happened to be her boss for the last four years of her marriage."

"Ouch. Also motive. Where do Cindy and Tucker live?"

"Miami."

Her face fell. "I don't suppose they've been out this way recently?"

"Nope. I have a picture dated two nights ago of the two of them in Dubai having cocktails on a restaurant in the Burj Khalifa."

She sighed. "Well, shit."

"I mean, that would be more of a motive for Ethan to kill Tucker than the other way around," Michael said, "but we'll keep looking."

With social media a dead end, they checked public records first. That proved to be a slog as well. Alaska's public records system was horrifically outdated, and every request seemed to take forever to process.

"Progress really is optional here," Faith groused as she sipped her third cup of coffee.

"When your state has half the population of Philadelphia, you can get away with a slow-moving records system," Michael replied. "I do wonder how many people just slip through the cracks up here."

"Not Ethan and not Valerie," Faith replied firmly. "They don't slip through the cracks."

She expected Turk to give his ordinary bark of solidarity, but when he didn't, she turned to see him sleeping soundly next to the mattress. The single mattress.

"Um… did they not have double rooms?" she asked Michael.

"I didn't think we'd sleep tonight," Michael replied. "But I'm fine sleeping on the easy chair. I do that a lot at home."

"I mean… we could sleep back-to-back." He gave her a fishy look, and she shrugged. "Just saying."

He smirked. "You afraid of bears?"

She rolled her eyes. "Change of plans. You can sleep outside."

"Hell no. If anyone's sleeping outside, you are. You're skin and bones. Bears won't want you. Meanwhile, I am a plump and luscious treat for the discerning bear."

She giggled. "Plump and luscious?"

"Like a pound cake, honey. Here are the records. Anything specific we should be looking for?"

"Not yet. I just want to get to know the victims a little bit better."

"Wonderful. You want Valerie or Ethan?"

"I'll take Valerie this time."

"Be my guest."

He emailed her the records. They did have internet, but it was slow. While she waited for the documents to arrive, she looked back at Turk. In this light, she could see the gray in his muzzle more clearly. Her eyes traveled from there to the scar that ran from the left side of his forehead down his eye and across his lips. That wound had been left by Jethro Trammell. There was another scar—not visible now—where Franklin West had stabbed Turk in the side and a third high up on his ribs where a disturbed former Marine Corps medic had stabbed him as well.

He really had suffered a lot. Maybe the Boss was right. Maybe it would be better to give him a little bit of rest before he reached the end of his road.

Her computer chirped to let her know the emails had been received. She opened them and introduced herself to Valerie North.

She was born in Anchorage and lived there until she was twelve years old. She'd spent the following six years in Juneau, then returned to Anchorage for college. After graduation, she'd lived in Eureka Roadhouse, a small village a few miles west of Nelchina. She'd been there ever since.

As for a criminal record, there wasn't any. A few traffic violations, one which had gone delinquent and led to a bench warrant that was dismissed without ever being enforced. And that was it. Nothing that suggested a lead Faith could follow to find out what happened to her. Just the basic vital statistics of a woman who had wanted to live apart from others and by all accounts succeeded in doing so.

"I've got something," Michael said.

Her spirits jumped. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. It looks like Ethan Holloway once filed a civil suit against a company named Tundra Outfitters. It looks like a product quality issue, and they refused to make things right. Guess who was named as a witness for the complainant?"

Faith raised her eyebrow. "Might that be Valerie North?"

"It might be," Michael replied. "It looks like the suit was settled out of court, but the details are sealed by the court. I could get a warrant to have those details released, but I think we have enough for our purposes."

"Agree," Faith said. "Let's get an address for Tundra Outfitters and go talk to them. How long ago was this suit, by the way?"

"Seven months. Settled three months ago."

"And now, three months later, the complainants are dead."

"Hell of a coincidence."

Michael looked them up and said, "Okay. I have an address in Glennallen. They open at eight tomorrow."

"We'll be there."

The two agents showered quickly and dressed for bed. Long practice had given them experience in doing so without compromising each other's modesty.

Michael was asleep almost immediately, but Faith lay awake a while longer. She had once been much like the victims: aloof and scornful of human connection. She couldn't imagine how hard it would be to face death, knowing you left behind no one who cared about you.

I care , she thought. I'll fight for you two.

When she finished that thought, she was finally able to sleep.