Love Kills (21 page)

“I don't doubt that, Britt, but I'm taking heat from the people upstairs. There is growing concern that you may well become a major liability, that you weren't ready to come back to work, and that I used faulty judgment. Lord knows, I fought for you, balls to the wall. But it's a no-win battle when you take off like a runaway freight train, fail to keep us informed, and still expect our support.”

“Two more days, Fred. Just give me two more days.” I clutched the phone like a lifeline. “Reactivate the credit card,” I pleaded, “so I can wrap it up here.”

“I can't do that, Britt. Come back and we'll talk.”

“Look. I was afraid if I mentioned coming to Alaska you'd say no,” I confessed.

“You were right.”

See, I thought. I knew it. I just knew it.

“I wish I
was
in Miami,” I blurted. “More than anything. I'm lonely, broke, and cold as hell, but I can't walk away from the story now.”

“I hope to God you're taking care of yourself.” His voice softened. “You sound terrible. But my ass is on the line too. Mark Seybold has advised the publisher to rein you in. Period. Anybody who pays a lawyer for advice is a fool not to take it, and the publisher's no fool. I don't know what else to tell you. You're like a pit bull, Britt. You hang on. And never let go. That's what makes you such a good reporter. But there comes a time in life when one has to let go. This is that time. I'll see you in my office. Soon, I hope, for your sake. Sorry.”

The desk clerk stared, watching me balefully from behind the counter.

I cheerfully signaled that I needed one more minute and punched in another number.

“Holy shit, Britt,” John Lacey murmured, when I filled him in.

“I need help, Lacey. I'm not sure what to do. I can't leave because when Holt hits the wind, he's gone. Next time you can bet he won't be so easy to find.”

I began to cough. What new hell is this? I wondered. Fred was right, I realized. I sounded terrible and felt worse, achy and congested, probably from my night in that cold cell with only a thin blanket.

“I was wrong about one thing,” I croaked. “I came here with three major goals: to keep Nancy alive, expose Marsh Holt, and finish my story. I even pissed off the local police chief by insisting that Nancy's life was more important than a herd of caribou. After meeting her, I owe the caribou an apology.”

“Two out of three ain't bad.” I heard the smile in Lacey's voice. “At least you still have your sense of humor.”

“She and Holt deserve each other,” I muttered miserably.

“First,” he said, “let me talk to the goddamn desk clerk. I'll give him my credit card number to cover your room, and I'll call you there in twenty minutes.”

“I'll pay you back,” I swore, my throat raspy.

Twenty-three minutes later, the phone rang in my room.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” Lacey said. “I just made a reservation. Sit tight. Order room service. Don't leave your room until I get there. Don't answer the door unless it's me. I talked to a friend of mine who went to law school. He says that if the judge meant what he said, they could arrest you for just being on the street.”

“Okay,” I said numbly. “I'll wait for you.”

I checked my e-mail and the voice messages on my cell phone. Most were those I'd ignored from Fred as he asked, urged, then demanded that I get back to him. Why didn't I listen?

You were warned, I thought.

Feverish and exhausted, I ordered hot soup and crisp toast. I'd drift off but kept waking up, wondering how long I'd slept. Four hours or sixteen? Was this day or night?
A.M
. or
P.M
.? Neither my watch nor my travel alarm could tell me.

Was the sun rising or setting? I staggered to the window several times to search the sky. Once I thought I saw the Southern Cross and was grateful, knowing it would guide me safely home. But then I realized I couldn't have seen it in this place. It isn't visible north of Miami. I must have been dreaming or hallucinating.

The sky was blank, no stars at all. It never got dark enough. How did people here ever get their bearings?

An aberrant crescent moon hung ramrod straight in the eerie twilight, or was it dawn? I had never seen the moon in such an odd position before.

I asked Lucy, the pale and quiet dark-haired young woman who brought my soup, what it's like to live here in the winter.

“Dark,” she said softly. “I hate waking up in the morning and going to work when it's so dark. The sun rises around noon and sets three hours later.”

I imagined police patrolling a midnight shift that lasted twenty-one hours.

“We have something in common with Florida,” she told me shyly. “We have our own little Cape Canaveral. They launch rockets into the Northern Lights.”

“Why?” I sat up in bed, sipping soup from a mug.

“To learn more about them. For better insight into the relationship between the earth and the sun.”

“What do the Northern Lights look like?”

She hesitated. “Imagine translucent fabric curtains whipping back and forth across the sky.”

I couldn't.

Lucy, a native of Alaska, had spent her childhood living above a little outpost grocery store owned by her parents. Often, she told me, they'd be awakened at 3
A.M
. by would-be customers pounding on their door, tourists who thought it was three o'clock in the afternoon.

Time is slippery when you are feverish, half dreaming, and disoriented. I slept erratically, kept ordering soup. I waited for days, but Lacey never came.

I left message after message for Detective Sam Stone in Miami, hoping he had checked out the scuba-diving death of Gloria Weatherholt. But he was never there, and no one could tell me when he would be.

Lacey had forgotten me, I realized, and I finally resigned myself to confinement in that small room forever.

When my phone finally rang, I couldn't find it. I fumbled about among the blankets and sheets, looking for it, then answered wanly.

“Pack up,” Lacey said. “Get ready to check out, I'll pick you up in half an hour.”

“Who is this?” I yawned and blinked.

“Lacey. What's wrong, Britt?”

“Where are you? Why didn't you ever come?” I complained drowsily.

“I did. I'm here.”

“But it's been four or five days.”

“We talked yesterday, Britt. Are you all right? You sound funny.”

As though in a dream, I dragged myself out of bed, took a shower, packed my things, and waited until he called from the lobby.

Lacey pulled the car, a rented Ford Explorer, up close to the lobby door, carried out my bag, and hurriedly helped me into the rental.

“I didn't want to risk having a cop spot you from a passing patrol car. You sure you're okay? You don't look so good.”

“Thank you,” I murmured. “Nice to see you again too.”

He felt my forehead. “Shit. You have a fever.”

“I'm okay. I just want to finish my story and go home.”

“What more do you need?”

“Is Nancy still alive?” I mumbled. Why couldn't I stop yawning?

“We'll know soon.” He swerved onto the rutted unpaved road to the honeymoon cabin.

“Wait!” I sat up straight. “We can't go
there
,” I said. “They'll call the law.”

“We're not visiting them—yet,” he said. “We're just driving by. We're their new neighbors.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

He smiled. “There was a vacancy, the cabin closest to them, not quite a mile away. It's rented to Mr. and Mrs. John Lacey. I thought it best not to drop your name. Watch it, I think we're passing their place right now.”

“That's it.” I scrunched down in my seat.

“Nobody around,” he reported. “There's a black Range Rover out front.”

“That's the car they've been using.”

“The next left should take us to our place,” he said, consulting a map.

The engine strained, climbing higher and higher up the mountain. There seemed to be only woods and wilderness until another rustic cabin came into view.

“Bingo,” Lacey said. “We're home.”

He had grocery bags stashed in the back of the Ford. The rental agent had stopped by earlier to prepare the place. Flames crackled and sputtered in the fireplace. The cabin was warm, cozy, and welcoming.

“Thanks, Lacey. Remember, I'm running a tab. Save your receipts. I'll pay you back. How did you afford this?”

“Maxed out my credit cards.” He shrugged.

“Sorry.”

“It'll be worth it,” he said, “to see that bastard's picture in the paper, to see him behind bars for life—or, better yet, in the ground. If not for you, Britt, I wouldn't have known what really happened. There never would have been justice for Suzanne.”

Without the cover of darkness, it would be tricky to surveil Holt's cabin.

“I thought we'd stay in touch by cell phone and work in shifts, so if he took Nancy somewhere, we could follow them. If the situation started to look dangerous, we could raise hell, make a lot of noise, and call the cops. But I don't think you're up to it.”

“I am,” I assured him. “Don't worry, I've caught my second wind.”

He nodded, but his eyes remained concerned. “If I can catch Nancy alone, I'll try to get through to her,” he said. “I brought some pictures of Suzanne to show her.”

“Been there, done that. It didn't work.” I shook my head. “She's smitten. And what honeymooner is ever alone long enough to listen to reason?”

“Don't know,” he said sadly. “I've never been one.”

“Me either,” I said.

He cooked hamburgers and vegetables and insisted I eat.

I just picked at the food, no longer the ravenous chowhound I'd been for months. I cleared the dishes and Lacey left on a “recon mission” to check out Holt's cabin. He returned, excited, after forty-five minutes.

“They're home,” he said. “I looked in a window. They were eating dinner. Looked romantic, like they're in for the evening, but he could be planning anything.”

“You shouldn't have gotten that close. What if he caught you?”

Lacey ignored the question. He looked agitated, full of restless energy and fearful possibilities. “Holt could be planning a fatal walk in the woods for her, or a fire, or even a fake accident with the Range Rover. He might even try to drown her in one of the streams.”

“She's looks pretty strong physically,” I said. “And even though she didn't believe me, hearing my warnings over and over must have made her start to look at him in a slightly suspicious light, if only subconsciously. She may not be as easy to kill as the others.”

Lacey showed me a pair of small binoculars and a small compass he'd used. “Follow it due south, to their cabin,” he said. “Due north brings you back here.” He paced the room, the firelight casting shadows on his boyish face. He looked so young it scared me.

“This is no game, Lacey. He's older, more experienced, and very dangerous. If he had caught you at that window—”

“Don't worry, I won't get hurt. What I'm worried about is you, Britt. Don't you have enough to just go home and write your story now?”

“Probably,” I admitted reluctantly. “But it's better to overreport than under. When you wrap up a big investigative piece and have the bad guy dead to rights, that's when you want to talk to him. Your final interview is always your target. It can make great copy. They tend to protest too much, try too hard to explain, and you can catch them in one damning lie after another. Holt is so slick and smart, that may not happen in this case. But if nothing else, I want to see Nancy safely out of his hands before I leave. Though when you meet her, you'll wonder why.”

He sat across from me at the rough kitchen table. “You know, Britt, at first I seriously considered buying a gun and taking care of Holt myself,” he confessed. “But thanks to you, I'm thinking straight now. I believe your story will do it for us.”

Before returning to stand first watch at the honeymooners' cabin, Lacey took a swig of the blackberry brandy he'd brought to keep warm. This may have been early summer in Alaska, but we were both thin-blooded natives of warmer climes.

He'd be back, he said, when he was sure Marsh and Nancy had retired for the night.

“Be careful,” I pleaded. “Stay away from their windows. He'll probably try to hurt her on one of their daily outings. We can follow them in the morning. That's our best chance to catch him in the act.”

Lacey set his cell phone on vibrate in case I had an emergency. I hugged him goodbye, then napped in a chair by the flickering fire, cell phone in my lap.

I wasn't sure what time it was when I awoke. It still appeared to be dusk, but it felt cold and the fire had gone out. I checked my watch and saw it was six hours later. Six hours? Where was Lacey?

Too worried to sit and do nothing, I struggled to pull on my boots, listening, hoping to hear his key in the lock. He had the compass. But normally my sense of direction is good. I put on my jacket and began to plod south through the woods, but the uneven light and the clouds that shadowed the landscape made the unfamiliar terrain tricky. Ungainly and clumsy, I stumbled, slid, and skidded several times, unable to get my bearings. I couldn't risk falling down out here alone or becoming hopelessly lost.

Then I remembered another compass, the one in the instrument panel of the Ford Explorer.

With a sense of urgency, I made my way back to our cabin and wasted more time frantically searching for the car keys. Did Lacey take them with him? Then I remembered where he usually put them and, sure enough, found them atop the back tire up under the wheel well.

The clean fresh smell of Lacey's shaving lotion made me feel less alone as I drove the Ford back toward Holt's cabin. I pulled off the road about three quarters of the way there and cautiously continued on foot, watching for him through the trees.

What I saw made me gasp and prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. The Range Rover had been moved. Now it was parked on the far side of the cabin. No lights. The newlyweds had to be in bed.

Increasingly clumsy as my energy drained, I slowly but surely worked my way around the cabin, trying to search in a grid pattern. No sign of Lacey. Then, suddenly, there was. A glint of metal caught my eye, about a hundred and fifty feet from the cabin. It was a compass, the little whistle-shaped compass Lacey had shown me. Did he drop it and become lost?

I eased myself into a sitting position on the forest floor, hoping they didn't have fire ants in Alaska and that I would be able to get up again. I searched, groping through the undergrowth around me. Suddenly a strong smell assailed my senses and something gummy dripped onto my right shoulder. I stared up and saw sap oozing from a deep wound in a pine tree right over my head. The smell was piney, and the fresh gash appeared to have been made by the blade of an ax. I trained my little penlight onto the ground beneath the wound, not far from where I found the compass. It was as I feared. The ground and its carpet of pine needles were disturbed, as though there had been a struggle.

My groping hands connected with something wet and sticky, but the uncertain light of the endless dusk made it impossible to determine whether it was mud, blood, or tree sap.

“Oh, no,” I whimpered, fearing the worst.

Panicked, I scrambled away on all fours, gripped a sapling to pull myself to my feet, then used the compass to find my way back to the Ford. Standing behind it for cover, at the fringe of the woods, I took out my cell phone.

We had agreed that I would only call him in an emergency. This was an emergency. I knew his phone was on vibrate.

No answer. I left a pleading message. “Lacey, please call me. I'm panicking. I'm out looking for you now. I need to know you're safe.”

Every sound, every leaf that fell, chilled my blood. How could I protect myself out here alone? Suddenly my heart stopped and I braced, frozen with fear at the
whoosh
of an ax swing from behind me. The blow never landed. What I'd heard was only the rush of wings, a startled night bird taking flight. I wondered if the creature felt as helpless, endangered, and disoriented as I did.

Forcing myself to stay calm, I slowly made my way to Holt's Range Rover, pausing every few steps to watch and listen for any movement near the cabin. I touched the hood. The engine felt warm. I ran my fingers around the doors feeling for blood, body fluids, or other evidence of foul play. I whispered Lacey's name, in case he was inside and could hear me. Nothing. I lightly tapped a fender with my fingernail. Not enough force to set off a car alarm, but enough for him to hear in case he might be conscious, tied up inside.

No response. Nothing.

I steeled myself and crept closer to the cabin. Trembling, I inched my way around to what had to be the bedroom. The windows were too high to see inside, and I couldn't find anything to stand on. As I stood beneath it, alert, focused, and straining to hear, there came the sounds of muffled laughter.

The honeymooners were frisky. But where was John Lacey?

I carefully made my way back toward the Explorer, desperately searching the gloom for any sign. Suddenly a car approached up on the road about forty feet to my left. A patrol car. I crouched as it passed, heart pounding, resisting the impulse to run out and flag them down. No one would believe me. How could I help Lacey, or Nancy, from a jail cell? The police would only complicate matters, and I still hadn't e-mailed the latest version of my story to the
News.

I began to think clearly as I cut through the trees, moving stealthily on the soft pine needles. With my immediate future uncertain, my mission was to dispatch the updated story to the
News,
with a copy to Sam Stone. Then the truth would be alive and out there, in case I wasn't. I prayed the cops wouldn't spot the Explorer and stop to check it out.

Panting, I paused to catch my breath. That's when I heard footsteps behind me. Moving through the trees, gaining on me. I heard his rapid movement and heavy breathing. Too exhausted to run, I turned to confront Holt—and gasped.

I looked up into the soft brown eyes of a moose. Startled, he stopped. We stared at each other. The huge animal could have stomped me into the ground in a heartbeat. But in that breathless moment of eye contact I felt a connection; it was as if the giant wild creature sensed my fear and despair.

We stood motionless for several beats, until the great beast snorted, flared his nostrils, broke eye contact, and walked slowly into the dusk. I watched, breathing hard, until he disappeared.

 

I prayed to find Lacey, or a note from him, waiting at the Explorer. Nothing. I drove slowly back to our cabin, inching along the roadway, scanning both sides for a clue to his whereabouts. Nothing.

No sign of him at the cabin either. I locked the door behind me and picked up the fireplace poker to use as a weapon against anyone who tried to break in.

The time difference between Fairbanks and Miami is four hours. I worked on the story as I waited, counting the minutes until I knew Sam Stone would be in the office. Then I called, praying to hear his voice. He was my last hope. His voice mail answered. Again. Where the hell
was
he?

“Stone, you've got to help me,” I said breathlessly. “Holt may have killed John Lacey, the man I told you about. He went to surveil Holt's cabin last night and never came back. I'm afraid he's either dead or injured. Please call me back.”

A mindless computer voice prompted me to press nine to send the message.

I did and was about to hang up when the mechanical voice added: “To speak to someone else, press zero.” I did that too.

It rang several times as I continued to pray that God and the machine would connect me to a live human being. My heart leaped when I heard a voice. Not a tape, not a computer, a real person.

“Lieutenant Riley, can I help you?”

My energy level crumpled; I wanted to weep. Why her, why did it have to be her?

“Hello?” She said it again.

Any voice, even hers, from home, four thousand miles away, triggered my emotions.