CHAPTER EIGHT

Glennallen was a much larger community than Nelchina, but still tiny by Faith's standards. The community consisted of a small cluster of homes and businesses just west of the junction between Alaska Highways One and Four.

Other than its greater size, the main cluster of Glennallen looked much like Nelchina. Old, faded buildings of wood and occasionally sheet metal lined the roads, faded signs announcing their wares to the public. The people looked much like the people of Nelchina too. Rugged, aloof, polite but mistrustful. They stared at the agents as they pulled into the parking lot of Tundra Outfitters, a small wooden building that advertised the sale of every wilderness need.

Turk went on high alert the moment he stepped out of the vehicle. He looked at the shop the way he had stared at the top of the shelf behind Valerie North's cabin. Faith noted the reaction immediately.

They walked into the shop to find a heavyset man in a cowboy hat with a handgun in a belt holster leaning on the shop's counter, talking to a tall, wiry man in a gray polo shirt above khaki pants. The wiry man also carried a gun.

Turk growled softly when he saw the two of them. Faith resisted the urge to draw her own weapon, but she waited for Michael to casually walk to the other side of the shop and find a good line of sight to cover her in case things went south. The two men seemed to take no notice of them but continued their conversation, something about increased bear activity on the volcanic shield.

She waited for Michael to stop before calling to the two men. "Excuse me. I'm looking for Garrett Pines."

The two men stopped and turned toward her. Their eyes were flat and hard. The heavyset man remained where he was with his elbows on the counter. The wiry man stepped aside so Faith could see his gun more clearly. Neither of them spoke. Turk growled more loudly this time, but that only prompted a brief chuckle from the heavyset man.

"I'll rephrase," Faith said. "I'm Special Agent Faith Bold of the FBI. The man standing in the corner over there is my partner, Special Agent Michael Prince. This is my K9 unit, Turk. I need to speak to Garrett Pines."

The wiry man spoke. "Why?"

"Are you Garrett Pines?"

No answer. Faith resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Battles of wills like this were always pointless. They always ended with the person of interest agreeing to talk to them or getting dragged into custody and made to talk to them.

Then again, their persons of interest weren't usually armed and in the company of other armed men.

"I need to speak to Garrett Pines regarding the murders of Valerie North and Ethan Holloway."

That got a reaction from both men. The heavyset man's eyes widened. The wiry man's eyes narrowed.

"I'm Garrett Pines," the wiry man said. "Why do you need to talk to me?"

"Would you like to have this conversation in front of your friend?" Faith asked.

After a brief pause, Garret said. "Go on ahead, Quint. I'll see you later."

Quint stood slowly, raising himself to his full height and resting his hand on his gun. Faith kept his eyes on Garrett as Quint walked slowly toward her. He stopped in front of her and waited for her to step aside. She kept her eyes on Garrett and didn't move. After a moment, Turk growled. Quint chuckled and walked slowly around Faith on his way to the door.

When the door closed behind him, Garrett said. "If you wouldn't mind flipping that open sign around to closed, I'd be happy to talk to you in my office."

Faith obliged, then followed Garrett to the small back room of the shop. The "office" consisted of a small desk and a single chair, which Garrett took. Faith and Michael stood in front of him, Turk ahead of them.

"Do I need a lawyer?" Garrett asked.

"Did you kill Valerie North and Ethan Holloway?" Faith replied.

"No."

"Then I don't see why you would."

Garrett scoffed. "In my experience, law enforcement is more interested in completing a case than they are in solving it."

"In my experience, murderers are more likely to withhold information than innocent people."

Garrett smiled thinly. "That's because most people aren't aware of their rights."

"Such as the right to not be murdered in one's own cabin?"

Garrett sighed. "You obviously think it's me. Why?"

"You were forced to pay money to the two victims after losing a lawsuit, correct?"

"No."

When he didn't offer any more than that, Michael said, "The strong silent act is cute, Garrett, but you can drop it now. You were an eight-year veteran of the Marine Corps, and rather than renew your enlistment, you decided to go to prison for three years for aggravated assault with great bodily harm. What did you do to the guy?"

"I broke his jaw and both of his arms."

"Ooh," Faith said mockingly. "You're so tough."

"I stand up for myself," Garrett corrected. "And I don't particularly care what you think of me."

"Fair enough. Let's focus on what Ethan Holloway and Valerie North thought of you. You were sued for refusing to honor your product guarantee, is that correct?"

Garrett looked irritated. He shifted his feet and said, "That's what they claimed, yes."

"What's your version?"

"The two of them didn't know what they were doing. For the record, Valerie North never sued me. Ethan Holloway did. Miss North was called as a witness to the complainant. Ethan claimed that I sold him a defective ice pick. The handle snapped when he was using it to climb Denali. Valerie was on the climb with him, and she witnessed the handle fail. Here's the thing: I sold him an icepick designed to chip pieces of ice off of a block."

"That a common item out here?"

"It's not uncommon," Garrett confirmed. "The winters are long and cold, as I'm sure you know, and a lot of people don't have electric refrigerators. So for the summer, they use iceboxes. They're usually kept in the basement, where the temperatures don't rise as much. They'll chip off huge blocks of ice and place them in the bottom of the icebox. The pick I sold is for that purpose. It's very sharp, and the pick is very strong, but the handle's not designed to hold a person's body weight. You're supposed to place the pick at a weak point in the ice, then use a hammer on the flat side to drive the wedge deeper and separate the ice. It's a very different use case."

"And this never came up when you sold him the product?"

"It's written very clearly in the item's user manual."

"That's not an answer."

Garrett lifted his hands and let them drop. "I'm not obligated to protect people from their own stupidity."

"Not even yourself, huh?" Michael interjected.

Garrett gave him a stony glare that Michael returned with an easy smile.

"Here's what I think happened," Faith said. "Stop me when I'm wrong. Ethan came in asking for something. It was clear that he didn't know what he was looking for. Rather than help him, you unloaded a product that wasn't what he needed and hid behind the ‘it's not my fault you're stupid' defense. His lawyers pointed out that it is your fault that you misrepresented a product by omission of pertinent information and allowed their client to put himself in mortal danger so you could… actually, why did you? Wouldn't it just have been easier to sell him the product he needed?"

Garrett laughed nervously and planted his hands on his knees. The cracks in his fa?ade were beginning to show. "I don't need to talk about this. We settled everything. I ended up reimbursing him for the product and paying for his medical bills. I even paid his court fees. No one forced me to do this, I decided to do it."

"Because you were backed into a corner and had no choice."

"If it makes you feel better to believe that, sure."

"Must have frustrated you," Faith said. "To have been caught like that by an annoying idiot like Ethan."

"It's always frustrating when you end up paying someone twenty thousand dollars because they didn't read a warning label."

"Not to mention the loss of goodwill your business must have suffered. That would be enough to drive a lot of people to kill."

"And yet, I didn't kill them. Sorry, agent. I'm not your guy."

"Can you tell us where you were two nights ago?" Michael asked.

Garrett laughed and looked up at the ceiling as though appealing to Heaven for help. "This is Alaska, agents. People don't go out at night here unless they're heading into the wilderness."

"Or murdering people in the wilderness."

"I was at home," he snapped. "Watching television. Where I am every night when I'm not working here or on a hunting trip."

"What about last week? Take any hunting trips then?"

"No. I was at home."

"And no one can prove that?"

"No."

Faith considered her options. At the moment, they didn't have enough to arrest Garrett for the murders. There was no evidence of the killer at the scenes other than the scenes themselves. No fingerprints, no boot prints, no hair, nothing. Garrett had motive and no alibi. He had the equipment necessary to commit the crime, but she had no way of proving that.

She tried another tack. "We recovered the murder weapons, Garrett. We're looking into them right now. Are we going to find out that they came from your store?"

"I sure hope not, but who knows? I sell knives, guns, snares, bows, bear traps… you name it. There's a lot of lethal stuff in this building, and I don't do background checks on everyone who walks in here."

"Might want to start," Michael suggested.

"You might want to go screw yourself. This is America. We have a right to bear arms."

"Someone bore those arms to murder two people," Faith reminded him. "There's no constitutional right to murder people." She handed Garrett a card. "If you think of anything, please call us. And postpone any of your upcoming hunting trips. We'd like you to stay close to home." She smiled. "In case we need anything."

Garrett shook his head. "All right. If it'll make you feel better."

They started to leave, but Faith thought of one more question on their way out. "You like ATVs, Garrett?"

He stared blankly at her. "What?"

"I thought I might rent an ATV while I'm out here," Faith said. "I was wondering if you had a suggestion?"

He stared at her a moment longer. "Use the truck instead."

Worth a shot. "I'll think about. Thank you."

They stepped inside the truck, and Michael turned to Faith. "So what do you think?"

"He's shady as hell. And he has motive and resources. He's clearly an asshole, and he has a tough guy shell that masks an anxious and insecure personality."

"So you like him for it."

"I do. But we don't have enough to bring him in right now."

Michael frowned. "Yeah. We can watch him, though."

Faith nodded. "That's what we'll do. We'll get some supplies and set up down the street. When we see him leave, we'll follow him."

"You don't want to have the police do that?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. We'll watch him today. If we don't notice anything, then we'll go from there."

Michael checked something on his phone. "Well, we have internet, so I'll accept that for now, but I don't think we should put all of our eggs in a Tundra Outfitters basket."

She raised her eyebrow. "You don't like him?"

He rubbed his chin. "I don't know. The guy who set those traps prides himself on being unseen. He wanted his prey to have no idea what was coming to them. Garrett strikes me as more of a peacock. He'd want them to know it was him. If they had been shot in the face, I'd like Garrett, but… yeah, I don't know. We'll watch him for now, but I think we should look for other options too."

Faith looked at Turk. He still stared at the shop, his eyes alert, his body coiled like a spring. "You like him, boy?"

Turk met her eyes. She recognized uncertainty in his gaze and sighed. "We'll get him," she said. "Whoever he is. We'll get him."

She had a good feeling about Garrett, but after talking to Michael, that good feeling was a lot less powerful. And if it wasn't Garrett, then they were back to square zero, and that was a place she very much didn't want to be. Not when their killer was already two steps ahead.