Bluetick Revenge Page 19

  “Business,” I said.

  “Lighten up, Hoss. It’s a joke. Nobody comes here for pleasure in January.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “That’s okay. I’ll just have you fill out the registration form, and we’ll take good care of you. What’s your name, by the way?” He slid a registration form across the counter to me.

  “Pepper,” I said. I extended my hand and we shook hands. Then I opened my wallet and handed him five hundred-dollar bills. “I’ll be paying cash,” I said. “I’d kind of like to avoid leaving a paper trail.” He and Chris eyed each other; then he slid the registration form away from me.

  I thanked Chris for his hospitality, and Fred led me down the hall to room 1, which was the room closest to the front desk. Fred turned on the lights, then found the thermostat and turned it up.

  “It’ll heat up pretty quick,” he said. “Meanwhile, there’s a space heater over there that you can use. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll have coffee for you in the morning.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  It was a nice room. Spacious. Beautiful log furniture. Expensive television set. I turned the space heater on and looked at my watch. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. I peeled the curtain back and looked out the window. It was darker than a CEO’s heart.

  Fred let me borrow his Jeep to drive around town and look for a place to eat. As I was leaving, he said, “Pick up some beer on your way back, will ya?”

  I found a decent-looking restaurant and ordered king crab and diet Coke. I stopped at a liquor store on the way back and purchased a case of very good beer.

  Fred was nowhere to be found when I returned, so I left his keys and twenty-two bottles of beer on the front counter. I took two beers to my room. The room was starting to warm up. I sat down on one of the chairs but left several layers of clothing on. I opened a bottle of beer and considered my next move.

  Karlynn was probably still in Alaska. Even if she had a passport, she couldn’t use it without alerting the feds to her whereabouts. Where in Alaska? I would’ve chosen Anchorage. Anchorage has shops, supermarkets, taxicabs, electricity, indoor plumbing, and other things we take for granted in the lower forty-eight. But if I worked on the premise that Karlynn was in Anchorage, that meant I would have to drive from one motel to the next showing my photo of her. And she might not even be staying at a motel. Maybe she had made friends with someone or found a situation where she could trade her labor for room and board.

  What would be the most productive use of my time? I could check the bars, place an ad in the paper, maybe even tap into whatever criminal/biker community there might be in Anchorage, but that sounded like a lot of work.

  How was she getting around? She couldn’t have rented a car; that would have required a credit card, and the feds could trace credit cards. For that matter, how did she get to Alaska? I knew she had been at the airport, but if she had taken a commercial flight, she would have had to present a driver’s license or some other form of identification, and she was smart enough to know that. It seemed reasonable to assume she had flown in on a private plane. That was a manageable project. If I could find out how she had gotten to Anchorage, I might find out what she had planned to do when she arrived.

  I looked at my watch. It was 7:45.1 drank the second beer, then climbed under the covers and went to sleep.

  35

  IT WAS DARK WHEN I awoke, but the digital clock told me it was eight-thirty. I enjoyed a hot shower, then walked out into the lobby. Fred was gone, but there was a fortyish blonde in a sweatshirt sitting next to the wood stove, drinking coffee and reading the morning paper.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “Help yourself.”

  I poured some coffee into a mug, with a little cream, and sat down in the chair beside her.

  “Are you Fred’s wife?” I said.

  “Sister,” she said. “My name’s Renee. I live here too.”

  “My name’s Pepper.”

  “What brings you to Alaska?” she said.

  “I always wanted to freeze my ass off in total darkness, and I had a little free time this week, so I figured what the heck.”

  “A sense of humor. I like that in a man.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I laugh my ass off at myself.”

  “We are intrigued by the fact that you paid cash and didn’t want to fill out a registration form.”

  “Don’t be. I’m just looking for a friend who might be in some trouble. If anyone else is looking for her, I don’t want to be the one that leads them to her.”

  “Your girlfriend?”

  “No, she’s too low-maintenance for me.”

  “Usually men complain about women who are high-maintenance.”

  “There’s got to be a happy medium,” I said. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a bush pilot, but I don’t get much business this time of year, so I help keep Fred in line and I read a lot. What do you do?”

  “I’m a freelance investigator,” I said. “I used to practice law, but I decided there had to be an easier way to make money.”

  “Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?” she said. I guess she wasn’t big on segues.

  “I’m sort of involved with someone,” I said.

  “Just dinner,” she said.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Okay, let me know when you’re ready. Ring the bell if nobody is here.”

  I filled my coffee mug again and started heading for my room. “Come to think of it,” I said, “you might be able to help me. I think the person I am looking for flew into Anchorage on a private plane. I’d like to find the pilot. He or she might know what my friend planned to do in Alaska. Do you have any suggestions on how I might go about it?”

  “Have you got a picture of your friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go get it. I’ll scan it in and we’ll send it out on the pilots’ List-serv.That covers just about everyone with a pilot’s license in Alaska.”

  “You just saved me a lot of phone calls,” I said.

  While my photo of Karlynn was circulating in cyberspace, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I had my copy of Bugg’s address book with me, and it suddenly dawned on me that I could use the computer shared by Fred and Renee to seek information about the name and address associated with each number in the book.

  One by one I conducted a Google search on each phone number in Bugg’s book. Some queries produced no results, but others did. Within a few hours I had names and addresses to associate with many of the phone numbers. I didn’t know what I would do with them, but part of being a good investigator is getting as much information as you can. Some may turn out to be irrelevant, but some may be highly relevant. You never know.

  It took several hours to check every number in Bugg’s book, and in the process I determined that not all the numbers in the book were phone numbers. Telephone numbers in the United States consist of seven digits or ten digits. But some of the numbers in the back of Bugg’s book consisted of eight or nine digits, and those had no initials. What was up with that?

  Fred’s sister checked her e-mail around noon, but so far nobody responding to the message she had sent out on the pilots’ Listserv had seen or heard of Karlynn.

  With nothing else to do, I took an afternoon nap—a treat we rarely get to indulge these days. It wasn’t hard to fall asleep. It was already dark.

  Renee was one of the few people in Anchorage not driving an SUV or a big truck. She drove a small truck. But it ran and it got us to the restaurant she had selected just fine. It was a steak house, much like a steak house in any other American city, but more expensive and less formal. A steak house with a dart board.

  A waitress in jeans came to our table. Renee ordered beer, so I did too. Renee had replaced her sweatshirt with a red flannel shirt and had traded her jeans for tan corduroy slacks. It looked as if that was as dr
essed up as anyone in Anchorage was going to get.

  “What made you decide to be a pilot?” I asked.

  “My dad was a bush pilot,” she said. “I’ve never imagined doing anything else. Fred has a pilot’s license, too.”

  “You said you don’t get much business in the winter?”

  “Not too much. A friend of mine flies for an air ambulance service. Sometimes I fill in for him.”

  “A jet?”

  “A Learjet Thirty-five. Ever flown in a private jet?”

  “Yeah. A friend of mine in Denver runs a charter service. He makes a lot of money flying corporate executives around. His name is Jeff Smart.”

  The waitress arrived with our beers. No glasses, just two cold bottles of beer. She asked if we wanted to order dinner. Renee suggested the elk steak, so that’s what I ordered.

  “Do you have children?” Renee asked.

  “Two dogs,” I said. “Do you?”

  “Two boys. One lives in Seward with his dad; one lives in Juneau. So tell me about this woman you’re sort of involved with.”

  “She’s a math professor. She’s teaching in China for a year.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “It was working pretty well until she went to China.”

  “Long-distance relationships are hard,” she said.

  “We spent some time together at Christmas, and that was nice. But she wants to adopt a little girl from China and I’m not sure that’s what I want.”

  “You don’t like kids?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I said.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. I’m still trying to sort it all out.”

  “I married young,” she said, “but my children were a blessing. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Were you ever married?”

  “Came close once.”

  “Want to throw some darts?” she said. Renee knew how to change topics in a hurry.

  “Sure,” I said. She led me to a little corner near the bar, where there was a dartboard set up. We each asked the bartender for another beer.

  “I should tell you that I’m really good,” she said.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  She was really good. “If it makes you feel any better,” she said, “you throw harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. Did you see the way the bartender was looking at you?”

  “I don’t know why,” I said, “but that does make me feel better.”

  My elk steak was medium-rare and covered with sautéed mushrooms and some kind of mushroom sauce. It was delicious.

  By the time we finished dinner we had each consumed three beers, and that’s a lot for me. I was feeling good. Renee drove us back to the motel. Fred was there watching a bass-fishing program, which struck me as odd because the nearest bass was probably two thousand miles south of Anchorage. Renee walked behind the counter, disappeared from sight for a few seconds, and came back out with two more bottles of beer.

  “Let’s go down to your room,” she said.

  “Not a good idea,” I said.

  “Afraid I’ll get you drunk and take advantage of you?”

  “I’m afraid I would enjoy it,” I said. “But I don’t think I’d feel too good about myself in the morning.” She stood there for a few seconds, still holding the two bottles of beer.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said. Then she turned and walked behind the counter.

  It’s a good thing I had the self-discipline to say, “Just walk away, Renee,” because Jayne called me on my cell phone a half hour later. I told her I was in Alaska and what I was doing there. She brought me up to date on her experiences in China. Eventually we got around to talking about our relationship.

  “I love you,” she said, “but I am serious about this adoption. I want to do this. And I’m not going to wait forever.”

  “How long are you going to wait?” I said.

  “I don’t know. How long are you going to continue to think about it? At some point you have to make a decision.”

  36

  I HEARD SEVERAL LOUD KNOCKS on my door. “Wake up, Clark Kent,” said Renee. “We’ve got a lead on your friend.”

  I hopped out of bed in my boxer shorts to open the door. She handed me an e-mail she had printed. I read it:

  Renee:

  I flew this woman from Juneau to Anchorage a few days ago. She told me she had taken the ferry from Bellingham. Hope this helps. Don’t know if I can provide much more info, but give me a call if you want to talk.

  Dan Montgomery

  Juneau Air Charter Service

  I glanced at the digital clock. It was seven-thirty. I looked at Renee and said, “It’s morning, right?”

  “It’s morning,” she affirmed. I handed the e-mail back to her.

  “Do you know this guy?” I said.

  “Sure. Diving Dan has been around a long time.”

  “Diving Dan?”

  “He’s not a believer in gradual descents. He flew A-tens in the air force. That’s what they use to attack tanks and—”

  “I know what an A-ten is.” Every Marine knows what an A-10 is—even the lawyers. “Do you think he’d be up now?”

  “He’ll be up,” she said.

  I showered, got dressed, and called Diving Dan from the phone in my room.

  “How did she pay?” I asked.

  “Cash. Didn’t seem like she was hurting for it.” Maybe she really had taken half a million dollars from Bugg, as Livingston had suggested, then given roughly three hundred thousand to Matt for safekeeping and kept the rest.

  “How did you hook up with her?” I asked. “Why didn’t she take the ferry all the way to Anchorage?”

  “All I know is, she was in Juneau when I found her. She was at a McDonald’s and had a map of Alaska spread out in front of her. She looked out of place, so I asked her if I could help. Next thing I know, she’s my copilot.”

  “Did she say anything about where she was going?”

  “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  “She’s going through some hard times,” I said. “Did she say anything at all about where she was going or why she was in Alaska?”

  “She was pretty tight-lipped about that,” he said. “I got the impression she’d been around the block once or twice and just didn’t trust people.”

  “You guys must’ve talked about something,” I said.

  “She had plenty of questions about Alaska. What are the best jobs, where are the best places to live, stuff like that. She even asked me if motorcycles were big up here and were there any outlaw gangs.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her lots of people in Anchorage and the coastal areas like motorcycles in the summer. No outlaw gangs that I know of, maybe some wannabees. ’Course, there are some places up here, like Barrow, where are there damn few motorcycles because you can’t drive there. And even if you could, only an idiot would ride a motorcycle in Barrow. Even in the summer it doesn’t get above forty degrees there.”

  “You told her that?”

  “What?”

  “There are no motorcycles in Barrow.”

  “Something like that. I don’t remember my exact words.”

  In sharing my Alaskan adventures with Karlynn, I had described Barrow as the “flattest, whitest, most desolate place on earth.”

  It made sense.

  The fact that Karlynn might be in Barrow was not good news. It wasn’t good news, because I knew it would be thirty degrees below zero and windy as hell. And it wasn’t good news, because my mother lives there.

  I asked Renee to fly me there, but she said I’d be better off taking a commercial jet. They do better in the cold and wind, and on a jet I could get there in about three hours.

  The flight on the 737 wasn’t bad until we started to descend; then the wind just buffeted the hell out of the aircraft. It felt as if God were playing air hockey and the jet was the puck. I don’t remember what time we
landed. I had more or less lost track of time. It was dark, cold, and forty-four feet above sea level. That was all I needed to know.

  I took a taxi to the government-built housing my mother lives in. The taxi was a big Chevy Suburban. My mom works as a nurse for the U.S. Public Health Service. Why the U.S. government built a hospital three hundred miles above the Arctic Circle is best left to historians, though I suspect it had something to do with white guilt. The locals were doing just fine until the white man showed up.

  My mom’s apartment building sits on concrete pillars because it was built on tundra. If you are going to erect a building in Barrow, you are pretty much stuck with tundra. The tundra softens up during the summer, but the pillars allow the building to sink a little during the thaw without turning your first floor into a basement. They also serve another purpose—they prevent the polar bears from climbing in through your bedroom window and eating you.

  Mom was waiting for me when I knocked on her door, as was Scamp, her nuclear powered Jack Russell terrier. I had called from Anchorage to give her the good news about my visit. She gave me a hug, offered to cook me something, and did all the things mothers do. I removed my parka, hat, and gloves and stared out the window. Her apartment had a great view of the ocean, except that the ocean was frozen solid and it was pitch black outside.

  I took a diet Coke from the refrigerator and sat down on the couch. My mom sat in a recliner. “You’re not eating enough,” she said. “You’re thin as a rail.”

  “Mom, I’m weighing in at about two-twenty these days.”

  “How’s Jayne?” she said.

  “Fine,” I said.

  She started talking about the latest political turmoil at the hospital in Barrow and asked whether she could be sued if one of the government doctors malpracticed on one of the natives. She doesn’t like it when the doctors disagree with her. She has been a nurse for fifty years. She thinks they’re all incompetent.

  Eventually she got around to asking me what I was doing in Barrow, and I explained that I was just trying to find a young woman who needed some help. I didn’t tell her about Bugg, or the Sons of Satan, or Skull. Or Anvil or the FBI or the drug money.