Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

Two Filipino women had the window and middle seats beside Cutter. Both were blessedly small in stature, so he didn’t have to jockey for a place to put his shoulders, as often happened with him on commercial aircraft.

Lola Teariki sat directly behind him, always close by to perform her self-appointed duties as his Jiminy Cricket. Cutter didn’t want to break it to her, but he already had a huge conscience. That’s why he was always on the verge of slapping some jackass who was in need of a slapping.

He thumbed through a copy of the Economist as the jet lumbered down the runway, pausing on an article about breast cancer and hair dye. He closed his eyes and thought of his fourth wife. The charm, she called herself, as in fourth time was the charm. Barbara hadn’t ever dyed her hair – so it hadn’t been that…

Cutter’s stomach fell away as they lifted off. The twins squealed a little. Mim hushed them. The landing gear clunked as it folded inward. The twins squealed again, but quieter this time.

Cutter looked out the window, past his two seatmates, and watched Anchorage fall away as the plane climbed out to the north. They made a slow arc, passing back over the south end of the runway. The craggy mountains behind Anchorage were still blanketed with snow. Some of it was old, and cracked, and beginning to sluff off, but from the air, it looked smooth as marshmallow cream. Patches of ice still floated in the shadowed ponds and streams. Dark trees speckled the river bottoms that ran along each valley floor. Lola must have been looking out the window as well, because she kicked the back of his seat as the wing passed almost directly over Point Woronzof, the place where the torso had washed ashore. Some areas across Cook Inlet – Point MacKenzie, Knik Goose Bay Road – were plenty developed, though still awfully remote. But the oxbow lakes and swamps above the Susitna River mudflats were nothing but old duck-hunting shacks and the odd cabin tucked in among scrubby trees. Any of it would be a great place for a killer – but then, Cutter had known more than a few of those who’d hidden in cities like Dallas, Detroit, or Denver. A soundproof basement and disinterested neighbors provided all the isolation anyone needed. But somewhere down there, in the bowels of Anchorage or in some remote cabin, someone was chopping women into pieces and throwing them into the sea. Cutter didn’t blame Lola for wanting to find the guy. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have been going to Juneau. He would have been on the ground, hunting.

Chapter 11

Lori Sovoroff Maycomb looked skyward, toward the wispy white waterfalls high on Mount Juneau, and banged the back of her head softly against a pillar outside the federal building. Midday sun, a welcome gift in Southeast Alaska, warmed her face. Shoulder-length black hair blended with the dark marble façade of the pillar. She was thirty-one, going on sixty. Some days she felt even older. Her husband had often told her she was pretty, but she knew her nose was a little too crooked and her cheeks a little too high for that to be so.

A gaunt twentysomething lady and an older blue-haired woman, both not smart enough to get out of jury duty, stood soaking up the sun by the bronze pelican sculpture. Another juror, this one with a pointy beard, tried to impress the women with the urban legend that there had been some mix-up with the artwork and a federal courthouse in Florida got the bald eagle sculpture meant for Alaska. Sounded cool, but Lori Maycomb knew the truth was much more mundane. The guy who ordered the art for Juneau just liked the pelican sculpture.

Maycomb thought of correcting him, but remembered the edict from Judge Forsberg barring anyone from speaking to a juror. The guy wouldn’t believe her anyway. He’d read it on the Internet and he wanted to believe – so, done deal.

Sitting on truth made Maycomb jumpy. It always had.

She hoped the unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of her lips might calm her, trick her body into thinking she was getting a little nicotine. It did not. Waiting for a source to call was murder on her nerves. It made her itchy, like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.

The Skeletor-looking creeper slouching in the pickup across Ninth Street didn’t help either. He was gawking at her again, thinking the bill of his baseball cap hid his stares. He’d been there when she left for a sandwich, waiting for somebody, and had spent the last ten minutes since she returned stealing glances. She thought about flipping him off, but, judging from his stares, he’d probably like that.

She was surprised the downtown parking Nazis hadn’t run him off already.

Her cigarette drew side-eyed glares from the yoga pants and Patagucci-wearing hipsters trotting up and down the steps on their lunchtime mail runs. None of them actually challenged her. If they had, she would have pointed out that the sign on the wall said no smoking not no holding an unlit marlboro in your mouth.

She checked her phone, cursed to herself at how undependable most people were, and did a mental count of how many cigarettes she had left in her self-imposed daily allowance. Not enough, not when she had to put up with this kind of tension. Sitting in court gave her too much time to think. And now it was almost time to go back upstairs for another unbearable half day of listening to lawyers tell the portions of truth that were convenient to their narrative.

She’d ducked out of the trial fifteen minutes before the noon recess, expecting a call from her source. The call was supposed to blow things wide open. But it hadn’t come. Maycomb had walked down Willoughby