Thin Ice Read online

  “The only places we have any good Internet are here and the library. The library closes at noon for an hour. Everyone clears out there and will head back over when they reopen. The bagel sandwiches here are good. Cheap too.”

  I nodded. Good Internet in only two spots? Benedict was getting better and better.

  Francis led us past the luggage desk toward an office and what seemed to be a luggage storage as well as one of the largest freezers I’d ever seen. Either he noticed my curiosity again, or he was used to giving the tour.

  “For the fish,” he said. “We get lots of fisher folks here. They get their fish processed—you know, filleted and frozen—down with Pip, and then we hold the stuff in our freezer until they leave town.”

  Again, I nodded as I followed him into the office. He motioned for me to take a seat as he set the typewriter on the end of the tidy desk. A potbellied stove took up the corner, its large round flue stuck up through the ceiling. One wall was made of bookshelves packed with what looked like official airport or flying notebooks.

  He handed me a towel. “Donner, your ride, should be along shortly.”

  “Who scheduled my ride?” I asked as I used the towel on my hands and face. I hadn’t had enough time to do more than call the hotel, reserve the room, and book my flight. “The hotel?”

  Francis shrugged. “Guess I don’t know the details.” He sent me a quick smile as he crouched and opened the door to the stove. He poked at the burning wood pieces inside. “None of my business, of course.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not quite understanding what he meant.

  Francis closed the stove door, stood, and wiped his hands on his jeans before he moved to the coffeepot. “No other bags?”

  “This is it,” I said.

  He looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t say more. The backpack contained what I needed to work, a few toiletries, a couple of shirts, and five pairs of underwear, all of which I’d purchased with cash at the hospital gift store. My mom had gone to my house and gathered the typewriter, my laptop, and the portable scanner that put my typewriter-written words into a format my publisher preferred. Mom had brought the items to the hospital and hadn’t asked me why I wanted them. She would have done whatever I’d asked, without needing to understand why. Millicent Rivers and I had lived that sort of life since I was seven years old—unpredictable and on the fly. Our mother/daughter silent communication was based on the simplest of simple: trust. I suddenly missed her. I would see her again. I wasn’t hiding forever. Hopefully.

  Francis turned and brought me a steaming mug decorated with a smiling frog. He sat down in the desk chair, but he didn’t pour himself one.

  “Are you from here?” I asked.

  “Yep. We were born and raised. Our paps came to search for his fortune in gold. Didn’t find any, but he was good with a plane. Now, Hank flies, and I’m air traffic control, as it is. We have other planes coming and going but not many.”

  “Bigger planes?” I asked.

  Hank laughed. “Some a little bigger. Eight-seaters, but we have quite a few small in and out. Other than the ferry, and that only runs one day a week in the winter, three in the summer, there’s no other way to get here.”

  “There’s a way to get here by boat?” I hadn’t managed to discover that in my hurried research.

  “Sure, ferry from Juneau. Cruise ships pass by but they don’t stop here. There’s a lot of the year that no one comes or goes much. Can’t because of the weather.”

  I was glad that access to the area was at least limited some of the year; okay, I’d done my speedy research fairly well, if not perfectly. “Good.”

  “You’re used to living away from civilization, then?”

  “No, I’ve lived in Denver, Colorado, all my life. This will be my first time … away.” Another lie. In fact, I’d lived in Milton, a small Missouri Ozark town, and then St. Louis when my books began to sell, all my life; nothing like Denver, so all the better.

  Francis’s eyebrows came together and he bit his lip. “I see. Well, you’ll get used to it here, and hopefully you won’t have to stay long.”

  “I’m looking forward to being here.”

  He sent me a quick sympathetic smile. “Okay. Might as well have a good attitude, I guess.” He leaned forward in the chair and put his elbows on his knees. “You kill someone or something?”

  “No!” I said, wobbling the coffee inside the frog mug I’d balanced on my leg. “I just needed to get away from it all.”

  He nodded as if to tell me he knew better. “Well, you are going to Benedict House, though it’s been some time since we had an accused killer in town, and that was for self-defense. Most of them are nonviolent offenders and most are from Anchorage. I just wondered.”

  “I … I guess I don’t understand. Killers at Benedict House?”

  Francis looked at me a long beat and then rubbed his chin just like his brother had. “Uh-oh. Damn that Viola, she didn’t tell you, did she? She just took your money and didn’t tell you anything. She’s been told to shape up, but she’s a greedy one, that woman. But … oh boy, I bet there’s a big misunderstanding.”

  The pieces were there, but I hoped I was putting them together incorrectly. I needed to hear the words.

  “Please tell me, what is Benedict House?” I said.

  “It’s a halfway house. For women only though.”

  “Not sure that makes it better.” I thought a minute. “Actually, yeah, that does make it a little better. However, I’m not staying at a halfway house. I’ll just go someplace else.”

  “You might be able to find a place. We have a few summer lodges and some cabins for rent, but it’s June and most things are taken. The fishing is pretty good around here. Whale watching, river running, and Glacier Bay National Park right over there.” He nodded. “I’m not sure you’ll find anything quickly. Other folks not convicted of crimes have stayed at Benedict House without incident, though it’s only been for a night or two, and when they were stuck here with no other options. How long did you reserve a room for?”

  I swallowed hard the irony that I, victim in ways I couldn’t have imagined before three weeks ago, had been mistaken for a criminal, even a nonviolent one. I thought about my friends and former coworkers at the Milton, Missouri, police department. Before my books took off, I’d been their secretary, their dispatch, and in an unlikely turn of events, their math whiz. They’d get a good country-police-force laugh at this one. There was also a time I would have been excited to immerse myself into some research for a book to be set at a halfway house. Not so much after the last three weeks, though. I held back a sardonic laugh. “I thought two months would be okay.”

  Francis smiled, with more pity this time. “Well, something might open up by then.”

  “Great.”

  The only person who knew where I’d gone was the lead investigator on my case. Detective Majors swore she would find Levi Brooks and put him behind bars, and she swore she would keep the place I was running away to a secret. She’d been the one to take me to the airport directly from the hospital, all the while noting she was against my self-discharge. She’d been surprised by everything I had planned while recovering from the brain surgery needed to clear a subdural hematoma and the various cuts, scrapes, and bruises that had come with me flinging myself out of Levi’s van when the brief and fleeting opportunity had presented itself. At least that’s how I sort of remembered it happening. I still wasn’t one hundred percent clear on the sequence of events.

  I had reserved a room with someone named Viola. Using a credit gift card I bought with cash at the gift shop, and calling the phone number using a hospital switchboard phone, from a room that wasn’t mine. I hadn’t had to use an alias. Even Levi thought my real name was Elizabeth Fairchild, not Beth Rivers. Credit for that went to my mom suggesting the idea of a pen name when I submitted my first book to publishers four years into my secretarial career, ten years ago. She thought it would give me some separation from my day
job and any level of celebrity I might achieve. She’d predicted my writing would make me, or at least my books, famous. She’d been right.

  But neither of us had predicted that someone like Levi Brooks would uproot my life.

  Mom had wanted me to choose a pen name for another reason too. When my father disappeared when I was seven, my mother’s life had turned upside down and inside out. Mine had too, but she’d become obsessed, still was. We still didn’t know what had happened to my dad, but Mom had wanted the success she knew I was going to have to be separate from him, wherever he or his body was.

  For now, I’d be me, just Beth Rivers, though no one in Benedict would ever know I was also Elizabeth Fairchild, the name even the media had used to tell my story.

  And, I’d find another place to stay, eventually. Hopefully quickly. “You said nonviolent, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Theft, mostly. Fraud. So, watch your stuff.” He lifted his eyebrows.

  “Right.” I took a sip of the strong coffee.

  The rumble of a loud engine reached us inside the small building.

  “Sounds like Donner’s truck,” Francis said.

  He stood and sent me a long look. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. “Here, here’s my number. You don’t know me or my brother, but if the Benedict House is just too much to deal with, we do have an extra room or two. Call me, or just tell someone to direct you to the Harvington place. You’re welcome to stay there.”

  I took the note after too long a pause and said, “Thank you.”

  Before I’d been stalked and kidnapped, I would have thought the gesture kind, sweet. I remembered those sentiments, even as a reactive panic started to tighten my throat.

  “Oh, please don’t be worried,” Francis said. “This is just the way we are. Friendships and trust are formed fast in Alaska. We have to. Mother Nature is brutal out here. It’s okay though, I understand your concern. Ask around about us. We’re harmless.”

  A thin layer of perspiration had broken out above my lip. “Thank you, Francis. That’s extremely kind. I’m not worried at all. I’m touched. I’m a little thrown by the fact that I’ve reserved a room in a halfway house, but I’m truly honored by your invitation.”

  He inspected me a long moment. Clearly, he didn’t believe that set of lies. Nevertheless, he nodded. “Alrighty. Let’s get you to Donner’s truck. He’s an impatient one, and I’m afraid he wasn’t expecting to drive anyone around today, at least according to the string of colorful words he used when he called me to let me know. Try to ignore his bad humor.”

  Francis grabbed the typewriter and moved to the door, stepping to the side for me to exit first.

  I steeled myself for some bad humor and walked out to the small parking lot and back into the rain.

  Two

  Donner Montgomery was not in a good mood. That was easy to determine, even if all I could see of his face were his eyes. His eyebrows too, underneath the Chevy cap. His dark beard was so long and bushy that I couldn’t see the frown that must have gone along with the perturbed green eyes. After Francis introduced us, Donner took the typewriter, hefting it like he was going to throw it carelessly into the space behind the passenger seat of his truck, which was a Ford, an interesting contradiction to the cap that I silently noted to myself.

  “Uh, that’s fragile,” I said just as the Olympia was about to be flung.

  His eyes transformed from perturbed to distinctly bothered before he carefully placed the Olympia in the spot behind the seat. He reached for the strap of my backpack.

  “I got this,” I said as I twisted my shoulder away from him.

  “Hop in,” he said as he turned and made his way around the back and to the driver’s side.

  I did as he commanded and buckled up, noticing the worn-thin fabric bench seat and the greasy stains along the gunmetal gray seatbelt strap. The inside of the truck reminded me of my grandfather’s trucks when I was a little girl. Gramps had been Milton’s police chief, my boss for a while, and his trucks had always been old and filled with stuff: stained, and smelling of that tinny oil scent that came more with a mechanic’s life than a law enforcement officer’s. Milton had seen some big crimes; it had almost become a thoroughfare for drug runners and human traffickers, but Gramps had saved the town from such a fate. He’d been a great lawman, and he’d been a tinkerer. When he wasn’t saving Milton, he spent his free time in his barn, under one hood or another. I sniffed, enjoying the olfactory reminder.

  Once he was in the truck too, Donner grumbled something incoherent, and turned the key. The engine seemed almost as loud as the airplane’s.

  He wasn’t friendly, but that was okay. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk anyway. I took note of what he wore—a National Park Ranger jacket, faded jeans, and work boots. Was a ranger also a law enforcement officer? I thought so but didn’t know for sure and I didn’t want to ask. If he was a lawman I wondered if all small-town lawmen folk enjoyed tinkering under old trucks’ hoods. As the heater vents sprung to life, I reminded myself that it was June in the rest of the world. A shiver moved through me and Donner angled his eyes my direction. I sat silently and hoped the ride would be brief.

  “Where’re you from?” he asked a few beats later as he slid an old lever that would make the warm air even warmer. At least, that was what it was supposed to do; it was hard to tell if it worked.

  “Denver.” I looked toward his profile. Even with the beard and the attitude, I had to admit it was an appealing profile. I forced my eyes away and wondered why I’d even noticed.

  When I didn’t continue, he did. “Wow. That’s a long way away. What did you do to be carted to B. House?”

  “Oh, no, I’m not going to Benedict House because of its … status. I just rented a room there. No one told me I couldn’t.”

  He nodded and the attitude and irritation evaporated just like that. Maybe I hadn’t needed to come up with a story, just let everyone assume that I was a criminal in need of rehabilitation. I wished I’d thought of it, wished I’d known what Benedict House was when I’d talked to Viola. There might have been a way to make that work.

  “Dammit to hell, Viola. You just visiting, then?” he asked.

  “No, I’m moving here for a year or so. I just reserved the room for a couple of months to see where to go from there. I’ll have to see if I can figure out anything else sooner.”

  “Gril will take care of it,” he said.

  “Who’s Gril?”

  “The police chief. He’s the one who sent me out to get you. He didn’t explain that you … well, I thought I was picking up another felon.”

  “Police chief?” I said, red flags raising, warning bells going off in my head. “Why would he care about someone coming to town if I weren’t a criminal?”

  Donner thought a moment. “It’s probably just that, then. Maybe Viola told him what was going on and he thought he should warn you. We don’t even rank big enough to be a small town. Chief Gril knows everyone in and out of here. He didn’t pass any other message on to me, but he couldn’t come get you because he was called out to a crime scene.”

  I nodded, still wondering how Chief Gril knew about my arrival, and planning to find out as soon as possible. “What happened? What kind of crime scene?”

  “One of our residents was found dead.”

  I swallowed hard as my heart rate sped up and sweat popped out above my lip again. The reactionary panic came on quick. Hang on. There was no reason to think a death in Benedict had anything to do with me or Levi Brooks. At least not yet, not before I even got there. Still, the panic blossomed and spread like spilled liquid.

  “Murder?” I was impressed that I kept my tone even.

  “Don’t know the details yet, but Gril was busy.”

  “You have many murders in town?”

  “Not many, but some. Old age, Mother Nature, and stupidity are our biggest killers. People get stupid sometimes. Bears get hungry sometimes.”

  “But that’s not what h
appened this time?”

  “I don’t know. I’m probably speaking out of turn. Anyway, welcome to Benedict. I’m glad you’re not a felon.” He sent me an apologetic smile, via his eyes. Still couldn’t see his mouth.

  “Thanks.” My gratitude was distracted.

  We were silent again as he drove the truck between woods of tall spruces, and I told myself to calm down.

  “We have about ten miles of paved roads,” Donner said. “This one T’s with one that leads down to the dock.” He nodded as we came upon a couple of buildings in the trees to our right, one brick, one industrial. “Brick building is Pip’s, the fish processing place. The other is the school.”

  “High school?”

  “All the schools.”

  I glanced back at the building. “That’s pretty small.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  As we continued for a mile or so more, I was glad I hadn’t tried to walk.

  “We have some businesses downtown, but if you need a lot of groceries, you’ll have to travel about a half a mile west. And when I mean a lot, I mean bulk. Suzanne Tosh opened Toshco’s last year. She ferries into Juneau once a week, picks up stuff from Costco and resells it here. It’s been good, but we’ve all been trying to figure out where to store all the paper towels.”

  “Never thought you’d need so many, huh?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Are there cab services, Uber, in town?” I asked as we traveled in between more spruces, darkening the path ahead. The tunnel-like illusion made me squint.

  “How much do you know about Benedict?”

  I heard his question, but I couldn’t respond when my eyes caught sight of something on the side of the road. After we passed it I whipped my head around to check if I’d really seen it. As I looked back over my shoulder, I couldn’t spot the lone daisy I thought had been there. Had there really been a single flower by the side of the road, on the edge of the Alaska woods? Or was that just something else Levi Brooks had done to me? Was I going to see daisies where there weren’t any? I gritted my teeth and turned back to face front.