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

court over, she couldn’t get the phone back fast enough. A sequestered jury was big news and her bosses would want to know. Greta Nguyen from the Juneau Empire newspaper had been in the courtroom too. She was probably already down at her car phoning in a story so her editors could get something up on the online edition.

Maycomb took a right outside security and hustled down the hall. The marshals would bring prisoners out of the courtroom soon. They would lock down the hallway and their office until they got everyone ready for transport to the basement via freight elevator. Her phone would be trapped until they were done. She made a left past the elevators and found the Marshals’ Office still open. A CSO named Dale Winslow was inside with his back to the door. His dark blue blazer hung over the back of a chair and he stood in white shirt and gray slacks, staring out the window through a pair of binoculars at the misty-green slopes of Mount Juneau, which loomed above the city. Five years ago, before he’d retired, he’d stopped Maycomb on suspicion of driving under the influence. He’d let her go with a warning since she was less than a block from home. He was white, but married to a Tlingit woman, and was known to be less of a hard ass than some.

The office was stuffy and dark, with industrial carpet that had probably been on the floor since shortly after statehood. The obligatory photo of the president and the attorney general hung inside the entry, though a little crooked since few bosses ever came here to check. Otherwise, the only decoration on the drab green walls was a large poster of the US Marshals Top Fifteen most wanted fugitives and an OSHA poster about blood-borne pathogens.

Lori cleared her throat. “Whatcha looking at up there, Dale?”

“Mountain goats,” Winslow said, excited. He motioned her forward, like a grandpa wanting to show her something cool.

“Just here to pick up my phone,” she said.

Winslow sighed. “Suit yourself. But they’re pretty neat goats.”

He opened the lap drawer of the desk in the cramped front office. He shuffled through a pile of rubber bands, boxes of staples, and a half-dozen staple pullers, until he found her iPhone, then slid it to her.

“Looks like you missed a call or two.”

She gasped when she checked her call log, unable to contain her disappointment. “Nine. I missed nine—”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Winslow said. “Maybe they left messages.”

Lori was already on her way out the door, hitting redial. Her source wasn’t the type to leave messages. Her heart sank when she got no answer. Any source sitting on a story with as much potential as this one wouldn’t keep calling forever. At some point, they would go looking for someone else to talk to. Someone who was available. Someone who answered the phone. Maycomb sent a text via Signal, supposedly secure, but it was still crickets by the time she reached the street. She pulled up short when she saw the skinny guy in the pickup was back, watching. Half panicked, half pissed, she lit a cigarette and strode up the street toward her car.

“Hey!” Dean Schimmel’s timid voice came across Dallas Childers’s earpiece as soon as he answered.

“‘Hey’ doesn’t tell me shit about what’s going on, numbnuts,” Childers said. His hide in the willows gave him a perfect line of fire to the road, but he’d forgotten his mosquito dope and the toothy little bastards were eating him alive. “Give me details.”

“O… okay,” Schimmel stuttered. “You’re not gonna like it, though.”

Childers wanted to rip his head off. “I’m not gonna like what? Just tell me when they leave the building.”

“They’re leaving now,” Schimmel said. “But it’s not just them. There’s a Juneau PD car in the lead. A big guy and a Polynesian lady in the prisoner car. Two more marshals in another sedan following.”

“What?” Childers slapped a mosquito that was drilling straight into his forehead. “They’re running a full-blown motorcade? Did you spook them?”

“I… no,” Schimmel said. “Nobody’s said a word to me. That reporter from the radio was here, but she left already.”

“Okay,” Childers said, wondering what Dollarhyde would say about this. The guy wasn’t much on failure. “I’ll call the boss. You stay with them.”

The phone rang just once, as if Dollarhyde was waiting, ready to snatch it up, hungry for news. Childers gave him all he knew, which wasn’t much.

“That’s fine,” Dollarhyde said, surprisingly chipper. “I was about to call you anyway. Another matter has come up that needs your attention. It’s tricky, and last-minute, but I’m sure you’re up to the task. You got a pen?”

Childers took a tattered notebook and pencil stub from his shirt pocket and lay it in the grass beside the stock of his Nemesis .308.

“Tell me what you need me to do.”

Childers took in the instructions, made a few notes that no one but he would understand if the book fell into wrong hands, and then ended the call. He began to disassemble the rifle while he called Schimmel back. He slapped another mosquito on his face.

Schimmel picked up, still breathless with nerves. Childers cut him off before he could puke more nonsense into the phone.

“Shut up and listen to me,” Childers snapped, unscrewing the Vanquish’s removable barrel from the action and slipping both pieces into his backpack. “I’ll explain the rest of it when we’re not on the phone. First, I need you to get a boat – something fast – and meet me in Auke Bay.”

“At the marina?”

“No, dumbass,” Childers said. “The roundabout in the middle of town. It’s a boat. Of course I want you to meet me at the marina.”

“Got it,” Schimmel said. “Auke Bay.”

Chapter 15

Levi Fawsey sat at the desk in his father’s study, staring down in disbelief. A tear plopped on the first page in the open folder.

His chest tightened, his throat convulsed, making it impossible to do anything but whisper. “What have you