Come Find Me in the Midnight Sun, page 21
“Eh, he seemed all right, I guess. Probably twenty-four? Twenty-five? Brown hair, scraggly. Real excited about being in Alaska, I can tell you that. He was kind of wired. Drugs maybe, but maybe not. Got the impression that’s just sort of how he is. Excited about life.”
“Did he tell you where he’s from?” I hardly hide my excitement. This has to be our Kyle.
“I asked. He was sort of cagey about it, but he eventually mentioned Portland. I laughed at him. He did not like that, I don’t think.” He laughs as he explains. “I been to Portland once. Not my kind of town. People there think they’re rugged mountain men.” His grin reveals a broken tooth right in the top middle. “Anyway, real rugged mountain men who enjoy a spiced latte when they’re done with their three-mile hike in their designer boots.”
Mikey chuckles and I laugh. “He didn’t say much of anything about it after that. I asked if he’d been in college. He just said yeah and changed the subject. Wouldn’t say a thing about his family. Just raised his beer and said he was shaking all that off now—starting over with his life by seeing the world. Something about really getting out there in it. You know. The usual.”
“Did he say how long he was planning to stay around here? Or, hell, how he even ended up out here? It’s far out from Seward.”
“Hitchhiked. Said it was too touristy down there, so he waited around the hardware store till he met a local—that happened to be Branden. Asked Branden to show him somewhere that was real Alaska. So, Branden brought him here. He said he liked it. Said he’d come drink with us that weekend. You know—weekend when Branden didn’t show. Branden wanted to help the kid out—even offered to introduce him to Mr. Drew, see if he could get him a job.”
I concentrate on controlling my breathing. “So, Branden was supposed to pick him up again and bring him here?”
“I guess so.”
I’m anxious to get back to the station. Kyle Calderon is clearly Branden’s hitchhiker, and being able to connect the two, especially around a common theme of drugs, gives us a lot more avenues than we’ve had so far with Branden Halifax. Plus, it’s more likely it was the two of them stealing from the cruise ship passengers. I’m already considering my excuse for why we need to go when I remember we intended to talk to someone else out here in Kolit’s.
“AJ, would it be possible for us to talk to your mom?”
He laughs in surprise. “My mom? Oh, shit—am I in trouble?”
“Yeah, and nope.” Per his usual, Mikey sounds nice and casual.
“Mind if I ask why?”
“Oh, it’s nothing bad. Promise.” I force my version of a Mikey chuckle. “A few folks now have mentioned some interesting theories about the airstrip where Branden’s footprints stop, and we hear your mom might know something about that.”
AJ’s eyeroll is exaggerated and Eliyah bursts out laughing so enthusiastically I think the buttons on his flannel might pop as he lolls back on his stool. “Jesus! Not the aliens—”
“Yes, the aliens, I’m afraid.” Mikey plays up the stern cop face.
“Well, it’s her favorite topic, so I hope you’ve got plenty of time.”
I look at Mikey and crack a smile. “Well, I didn’t have any big plans for the night. You?”
“Nope! Just so happens I’ve got no hot dates!”
AJ and Eliyah laugh. “Well then, have at her. I’ll walk you over. He throws a dishrag at Eliyah. “You mind?” Eliyah catches it but makes no move to head behind the bar—just nods into his beer.
As we walk the couple hundred yards down the street, I ask AJ a question that’s been nagging me the past couple days.
“Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve noticed nobody but Marli seems too bothered about Branden disappearing.”
AJ looks thoughtful as he steps over the raised cracks in the makeshift sidewalk. “Oh, it’s not that. We’re plenty upset about it. Hell, it’s about the only thing anybody talks about. We really like Branden and we’re worried for Marli and those kids. It’s just…I don’t know. You live around here long enough, you get to know a lot of people who disappear.”
“Do you know a lot of people who’ve disappeared?”
“Yeah. Five or six. Mainly men who’ve come through town. And my brother.”
“Oh wow. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right. That was a long time ago.” AJ lets out a long sigh. “Damn. Twenty-seven years ago, now.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind?”
“Oh yeah, it’s okay. We lived out on the way to Anchorage then. You would have passed by the place when you drove out here if you went along the coast. Anyway, when I was a kid, my little brother liked to play out by the water. No big deal. We all did. But if you got too far from the house and went down along the water headed south, you’d hit the mudflats.”
I can guess where this story is going. The mudflats are stretches of sandy beach that look stable, but can easily become like quicksand, trapping a person. Tourists often see animal prints on them and assume it’s all right to walk there. What they don’t know is that animals often get stuck themselves. I’ve gotten quite a few calls to the mudflats already, most ending badly.
“My brother…we think he wandered and got himself stuck. Then the tide came in.”
“Oh no—”
“Yeah. There were footprints that led there. About his size. Then nothing.”
“He was never recovered?”
“Nah. But it seemed straightforward at least. It made us all feel a lot better to know that, more than likely, that’s what happened.” He pauses outside the door of the place he shares with his mom. “Not like this stuff with Branden. This doesn’t seem straightforward.” He turns toward me and looks me directly in the eye. His stare is almost disconcerting. “I just hope, no matter what happened, Marli doesn’t always have to wonder—that she feels like she knows what happened to him.”
I think I understand.
* * *
AJ lives in the upstairs apartment, and his mom is on the first floor. AJ just walks us straight into her place, past the landscape oil paintings in pine frames hung on spruce logs. The whole apartment smells like an evergreen forest with a hint of cinnamon coming from the back. It makes me want to curl up with one of the fleece throws flung across the sofa and take a nice long nap. Preferably with Tails, who’s probably eating junk food at the station. When we arrive, AJ’s mother is in the kitchen, which is separated in the back of the house. And she doesn’t seem surprised in the least to see us.
“Aah,” she says, stirring a large pot of a cinnamon-scented liquid, “there you are! I made something to drink.” She ladles an auburn liquid into three blue speckled camp mugs that are already on the counter. How did she know three people would be visiting?
“Oh, I’m all right, Ma. Thanks, though.” AJ pecks his mother on the cheek. Her face crinkles when she smiles.
“Nonsense. It’s good for you.” She fills one mug halfway, then tips in a splash of bourbon. She hands the steaming cup to her son. She hands the other mugs—no bourbon—to me and Mikey. AJ drinks his while he introduces us, then he excuses himself to return to the bar.
“Mrs. Butler, we’re interested in the airstrip—the one Branden Halifax’s truck was found next to. Given the rumors we’ve heard, sounds like some strange things happen there. We’ve been told you keep an eye on what goes on around here.”
She pats the silver-white bun on top of her head. The hair is still thick, and it falls out of place the more she pats it. She eyes us with mischief, then motions for us to sit on the reclining sofa.
“Oh. Well, that’s Mr. Drew’s strip. Mr. Drew himself supposedly hasn’t used it since the early ’90s, you know. But I wouldn’t say it’s out of use…”
“So, who used it after the ’90s?” She seems very happy I asked. I belatedly feel as if I have been lured into a trap.
“Well, the guests, of course. That’s where they pick up the young men they take.” She says it matter-of-factly, like we’re talking about what happened on last week’s episode of The Golden Girls over a spot of tea. This tea happens to be spiked. Mikey redirects the conversation.
“How many people do you know who’ve gone missing from around here?”
“Oh, since I was a kid, probably thirty, thirty-five. Not all from Seward, of course, but I read the papers for the whole peninsula.”
“Do you remember anything about the other people who went missing, Mrs. Butler?”
She pats her hair again while she looks at Mikey. I hide a smirk behind my fist. I think she’s flirting with him.
“Well, it so happens I do know quite a lot about the people who’ve gone missing. At least the ones from around Seward. There was Caroline, who went missing when I was a kid, and then there was that young man Patrick a few years later. And that was just after Mr. Drew came into town and all his guys started to go missing. First there was that awful young man, George. He was trouble and I’m not sure anyone missed him at all. And—”
“Excuse me—I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. Did you say the young men started to go missing when Mr. Drew moved here?” I check to make sure Mikey’s scribing.
“Well, no one else will mention this, but after Mr. Drew moved here, the disappearances happened a lot more frequently, and it was mostly young men in their twenties or early thirties.”
“Were they people who knew Mr. Drew?”
“Yes. All of them would have known Mr. Drew. Fact, pretty much all of them worked for him in one or another of his businesses.”
“Mrs. Butler, are you saying you think Mr. Drew has something to do with the disappearances of the young men?” Mikey leans forward as he asks his question.
“Well, of course I do! It can’t be a coincidence, can it? The number of missing persons goes up by the dozens and they all know him? My goodness, anyone who can’t see the connection has their eyes closed. He’s clearly the one who delivers them to the aliens.”
I blink rapidly. She looks my way and I pretend I have something in my eye. Thank goodness Mikey covers me.
“Why would he do that?”
“Well, you’re the police, I suppose that’s what you have to find out, right?”
Mikey seems momentarily at a loss, so I ask a more practical question. “Mrs. Butler, have you seen aircraft taking off from the airstrip near his house?”
“I have. They come in the middle of the night. But they still must have lights, you know, so I see them. At two or three in the morning, they land for a few minutes, then take off again. Like they’re picking something up.”
“So, you think the planes are picking people up from Mr. Drew?”
“Yes. I think they have an agreement where he supplies them, and they leave him alone. Maybe they help him. Don’t you think it’s weird he’s never disappeared? All alone on that mountain? He’d be the first person they’d go after, and yet they don’t.”
I squeeze my eyes and rub the spot where the bridge of my nose meets my head. “Well, I think that’s about all we need, Mrs. Butler. Should be enough for us to get started.” On what is unclear, but she seems satisfied because she nods. I am so relieved Mikey got us moving. “If we need anything else, we’ll call in on you, all right?” I hold my breath, but thank everything, he doesn’t give her a business card. “And thank you again for the drinks. That was just great.”
She walks us to the door and fills us in on town gossip the whole way.
Chapter Twenty-two
When we’re safely back in the Tank, I look at Mikey and he bursts out laughing. His mirth escalates until he’s howling, cackling so hard he grabs his side and falls over the arm rest. I can’t help it—I smile too.
“My God!” The corners of his eyes are wet as he gasps. “My good Lord. If only the chief could have heard—”
“She was killing me. Possibly literally. My brain may be rotting as we speak.”
“She is a character, that’s for sure. Your facial expressions were priceless. I could have died laughing just looking at you!”
“I’m pretty sure she would have kept us there for days if she could have.” I turn to him with a serious expression and my eyes wide. “That’s where the men went!”
His face falls in sudden confusion. “Wait. What?”
“They didn’t die or get abducted by aliens. AJ’s mom invited them over for spiked tea and just talked them to death! She must have them buried in the basement. I bet that’s why she lives on the first floor…”
Mikey’s laughing all over again. Suddenly he grabs for the door handle. “Well, we better go back in there and do a search!”
I slap at his hand screaming “No!” and “Stop!” As we pull away, he’s still recovering, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“Well, that was certainly a way to spend the evening.” Mikey genuinely sounds like it was the most fun he’s had in a long time.
“That it was. Possibly a waste of time, but definitely a way to spend the evening.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Her theories on Mr. Drew are pretty compelling.”
I can’t even tell if he’s serious or not. “Hang on. Are you kidding right now? The aliens?”
“If a bunch of men really did go missing after he moved here, that’s grounds for us to keep talking to him, isn’t it?”
Clear grounds, but I’m amazed Mikey’s on board with this line of thinking.
“Yes, it is. And those will be easy numbers to find.” The pieces start to develop a picture. “Hey, what if he’s having them run drugs? That would explain the padded envelopes and the cash, and why they so frequently disappear. It would also explain what the cook on the cruise ship said. If that was Branden and Kyle on board, they were attempting to sell to the kitchen, and apparently at least Kyle was stealing while at it.”
Mikey turns to me, bobbing his head happily. “Dang. That’s why I like working with you. You take a theory and run full tilt.”
I do some sort of awkward laugh and break eye contact as quickly as possible. I’ve never known how to take a compliment.
When we reach the station, the officers are gone. There’s a woman at the desk with multiple telephones. She wears a blue sweater, gray slacks, and no badge. I don’t know her position, but she seems to be in charge of the place once everyone else goes home. I ask about Tails, and he emerges from underneath her desk, stretching dramatically.
“He’s been fast asleep under there since nine thirty. Must be his bedtime.”
“Hopefully he wasn’t too much trouble.” The dog sits in front of me, ready for ear scratching.
“None at all. He’s a pleasure. The guys even stayed late to play with him.”
“Well, thanks a lot. And hey, do you do any record pulling, by chance? Would we need to wait until tomorrow if we needed a little bit of information?”
She snorts. “I’ve been around here for so long they’ve had me do just about every odd job you could imagine plus dispatch. Only thing I won’t do is make the coffee. That’s my line.”
“Understandable. You make it once and it’s on you forever.” I learned that lesson the hard way. “Would you mind finding out what year Mr. Drew moved to the area when you get a chance?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure it was when I was ten or eleven, so right about 1985.”
“Uh, wow. That’s some recall—”
“My dad changed careers to run fishing tours for him since tourism was picking up. He’s smelled like fish ever since.” She laughs.
At least her dad is still alive. That’s more than can be said about a lot of men who work for Mr. Drew.
We need those numbers, but I don’t want to tip off Willington. I turn toward the door, but then act like I’ve just remembered something totally unrelated. I turn back.
“Oh, and if you could, we also need statistics on the number of missing persons who’ve disappeared from the Kenai area in the last thirty years.” That should give us good grounds to compare who went missing before and after Mr. Drew moved here. She jots down my request.
“Oh hey, an autopsy report came in for you just a few minutes ago. Didn’t know if you’d want to hold it for tomorrow.”
I rush to her so fast she backs away from me. “I’d like it now, please.”
She flips open a file on her desk and produces it. Mikey leans over my shoulder to read. Kyle Calderon. Cause of death: Cardiac arrest caused by poisoning. There’s a lot I need Anna to interpret, but the examiner has written in the notes section. Deceased young, so cardiac unusual. Likely cause is poisoning by baneberries in large quantity. The examiner’s contact information is at the end of the report, but we have all the confirmation we need—at least concerned with how he died.
Now for the why.
* * *
Before we head out for the day, I review the stats pulled overnight. They confirm what AJ’s mother stated—not about the aliens, of course, but about the dramatic increase in people going missing after Mr. Drew’s arrival. There were missing persons cases before; a couple kids, a woman, a couple older men. Those continue after he arrives, but the number of missing men aged eighteen to forty starts climbing the year after he gets here by just one, then averages out to four per year after that. Some years there’s none, but one year seven men in the age range go missing. It’s incredible to me no one has drawn the correlation before. Or they have, and they think it’s better to ignore it. Maybe it’s no coincidence Mr. Drew is good friends with Chief Willington.
I need more information from Marli, and not just about Mr. Drew. I want to know if she was aware of Kyle. He was in her house. If he and Branden were dealing drugs or stealing together, she had to have known something about it.
Because of the heavy snow, it takes us about three times as long to get to Marli as it did the last time we visited. Other than that, nothing seems to have changed. Marli wears her bathrobe over some fleece leggings and a turtleneck sweater, and she still looks exhausted. The puffy bags under her eyes are beginning to take on a semi-permanent look, as if they might have been tattooed.
