Taking Liberty (9 page)

Locklear and Engel were both on their tiptoes, like I’d found a winning lottery ticket and they wanted in.

I reexamined the object. The plastic had bubbled and buckled. Browned. One side no more than a discolored blur with an inch stripe of black magnetic tape, relatively unscathed. On the other side was a scuffed image of what appeared to be a fishing boat and the traces of some colored text.

“Rae, take a look at this.”

She leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “It’s photograph, printed into the plastic. An advertisement. Some kind of fishing excursion.”

“Companies pay high dollar for in-pocket realty,” I said. “Which makes this a room key.”

“You mean from a hotel?”

“Not just any old hotel, Rae. I’m thinking it’s where the victim was staying. Or, better still, where the killer was holed up, and maybe still is.”

___________________________

We had a keycard, but it didn’t automatically come with a room. Neither had we any way of knowing which hotel it belonged to; the reverse side was too blurred-out to distinguish any hotel logos. Alaska was a big place – the biggest State in the Union – with hundreds of lodges, motels and guest houses spread unevenly throughout its six-hundred-and-sixty-three-thousand square miles. In every sense, the clichéd needle in the haystack. No saying that the keycard was even tied to a hotel in Alaska. Visitors came here from all over the world. It could prove impossible making a connection.

When faced with the prospects of a monumental search, it’s wise to narrow the criteria before committing valuable man hours.

I got Officer Locklear to contact his colleagues back at base and had them set about compiling a list of accommodations located within a few hours’ traveling distance of Akhiok. We knew the victim had traveled to Akhiok. Maybe he’d hired a local boat captain or even a floatplane taxi to get him here. Chances were, he hadn’t been a day-tripper from Anchorage – which meant some kind of lodging in the area. No privately-owned bed and breakfasts. No fishing lodges with a handful of rooms. Only those lodgings big enough to use electronic keycards.

The fact that the victim had had the keycard clutched in his fist meant something. I had to find out what.

With his colleagues making the checks, Officer Locklear led us back through the sleepy village toward the smoked-glass bay. The whole place was deathly silent. No kids out building snowmen or sledging in the deep snowfall. No locals spreading Christmas cheer. No boats coming and going. In fact, no movement at all. Somebody had been murdered and everyone was indoors for the holidays.

“Why didn’t you mention you’d been here before?” Rae asked as we crunched over compacted snow.

“Rae, I’ve been to lots of places before. Besides, it was a long time ago. It didn’t seem relevant.”

We worked our way down to the frozen shoreline, coming out onto the snow-covered beach about two hundred yards farther around the thin crescent, west of the boat launch. Across the black water I could see our skiff still jammed up tight, but no signs of the boat captain. We slipped and slid over snowy shingle until we arrived at a place where Officer Locklear assured us was the crime scene location. After another night of unbroken snowfall there was no evidence that anything had happened here, least of all a murder.

He pointed out the slightest of depressions, “The body was right here.”

“Which way was it facing?”

“That way. Out across the bay.”

I looked around at the deserted curve of beach. A brilliant white contrast to the dark water. Looked at the lumpy islands across the bay. At the larger land mass of the Aliulik Peninsula jutting across the horizon like a humpbacked whale stranded after a high tide. The sky had brightened some more. Searchlights of weak yellow sunshine probing through clouds weighted with snow. I could see freezing fog clinging to the rocky islands out in the bay, and what looked like a bald eagle far out against the patchy sky. Behind us, the snowy tundra inclined to form hills and mountains, with a scattering of structures braced against the chill in the foreground.

“Which one is the Tsosie residence?”

“Right next door to my family home.” Locklear pointed to the nearest building, about twenty yards back from the beach. Yellow window frames against gray wood.

“You live here?”

“Not exactly. My family does.”

“We’d like to speak with Julie,” Rae reminded him.

Locklear nodded. “It’s Christmas Day; she should be home.”

Along with everybody else, I thought. Everyone keeping their distance, both from the murder scene and from those investigating it.

Small town mentality.

We were about to return to the medical clinic when Locklear’s cell phone chimed. He dug it out and answered, nodded, once, twice, then:

“It’s the Kodiak Inn,” he said as he hung up. “The keycard’s an exact match.”

___________________________

All at once, interviewing Julie Tsosie wasn’t our top priority.

We wasted no time finding our boat captain. Turned out he also doubled as the proprietor of Akhiok’s one and only general store.

“Far as you can get from civilization and still buy a Hershey bar,” he told us as he came outside. He saw the urgency in our faces and added: “You kids left the gas on?”

Forty minutes later we splashed down at Kodiak Air Station.

I’d told Locklear to stay with the body until arrangements were made to ship it out to Anchorage. I had thought he’d be inconvenienced with the prospects of bumming around the fishing village another day or two. I was wrong. He’d smiled through his gloomy countenance for the first time. Locklear had family in town; spending Christmas in Akhiok was a gift.

Officer Hillyard picked us up in his Ford Expedition and Rae apologized profusely for our dragging him away from his family again. No imposition, he said. All the same, he broke the speed limit getting us to Kodiak. Roof lights flashing and sirens wailing. Not a whole lot of other traffic to contend with.

We arrived at the Kodiak Inn and shucked off our parkas in the heated lobby. Same receptionist working the front desk.

“Long shift,” Rae commented.

“Great overtime pay,” he answered back. “What can I do for you guys? You need a turndown?”

“What we need is to see your guest list.”

I held up the melted keycard. “Or tell us which room this belongs to.”

The cheery clerk lifted a card reader onto the counter. “It’s against protocols – and I could seriously get my knuckles rapped for doing this – but since it’s Christmas and you’re the Feds, go ahead and slide her in.”

I levered the warped plastic into the slot, so that the inch of magnetic tape went in first. It was a tight fit. Not quite straight. The kid tapped at a keyboard, said to give the card a wiggle, then tapped some more. I saw him scan the information flashing up on his computer screen.

“Room two-oh-nine.”

“What’s the name on the booking?”

“Mr. Nathan Westbrook.”

“When did he check in?”

The kid peered at his screen. “Let me see . . . the weekend, for a total of a one week’s stay.”

I leaned on the counter. “Was a credit card used to make the reservation?”

Another glance. “No, not in advance. According to our records, Mr. Westbrook is a call-in customer who paid for his entire stay in cash, up front. Looks like his MasterCard was swiped into the system for the security deposit.”

“We’ll need a copy of that.” I saw his brow wrinkle and added: “We’re the Feds, remember?”

He pressed keys and a printer whirred into life. He handed us a printout.

I looked it over: Westbrook’s MasterCard information with an expiration date deep into next year.

The kid took a new keycard from a pack. “If you remove the old key, I’ll fire you up a new one.”

I retrieved the card and slipped it in a pocket, together with the printout.

The kid inserted an unblemished version into the slot and tapped keys, then handed it over. “Take a right at the landing.”

We took the stairs to the gallery, turned down the first hallway and counted doors until we came to Room 209. There was a paper swingy dangling from the door handle:
a cartoonish drawing of a yawning bear with the words
‘Beware! Sleeping Grizzly!’
scrolled above it.

“What are we thinking here?” Rae whispered. “Is Westbrook the victim or the killer?”

I got out my Glock. “Let’s take no chances either way.”

I waited for Rae to ready her own firearm, then inserted the new keycard into the door lock. There was a whir, a click,  and a little green light lit up. I leaned on the handle and shouldered open the door. Followed the Glock into the guest room.

Rae was tight on my heels. She peeled off, into the bathroom. I headed into the bedroom area. Swept the iron sights across a King-sized bed facing a multifunction cabinet. There was a writing desk in the corner, with a swivel chair tucked under. A blood-red sofa over by a brightly-lit window. The last hotel room I’d snuck into had presented me with a surprise dead body on the bed. Not this time. There wasn’t even any indication that the bed had ever been slept in. Smoothed down and pillows plumped. No signs of a suitcase. No loose change piled on the nightstand. No used clothes discarded on the floor. No Nathan Westbrook.

I heard Rae shout: “Clear!”

I holstered the Glock. “Same here.”

I pulled open drawers: all empty. I examined the multifunction cabinet: a flat screen TV, a microwave oven, a small refrigerator. I opened the cooler. The miniature liquor bottles, soda cans and candy nibbles all looked present and correct. I went over to the writing desk. There was a lamp, a telephone and a hotel welcome pack on the leatherette inlay. The complimentary notepad hadn’t been written on, but the big mirror hanging above the desk had.

“Rae, you better come take a look at this.”

She joined me in the bedroom, eyes narrowing as she read the words written across the mirror. “Oh my gosh. What’s with that?”

“I think it’s Westbrook’s last dying thought.”

There were uppercase words scrawled on the glass, at chest level, each letter gone over several times to make it stand out. It looked like they were written in blood, but was probably red permanent marker:

THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT

The letters were slightly leftward-leaning, with a curling arrow sprouting out at the ends, pointing upward at my dumbstruck face.

“I think the local cops jumped the gun,” I said. “We only went along with the homicide scenario – that there was a second person involved, a killer – because Locklear and his cohorts had reported it that way. They assumed it was a murder because it’s unthinkable somebody could commit suicide by sitting on a desolate arctic beach and torching themselves to death. But now I’m thinking they got it backwards. I’m thinking this isn’t a homicide, Rae. It’s a suicide. We came all this way for nothing.”