The Land of Death and Devil’s Club, page 1
The Land of Death and Devil’s Club
Synopsis
Special Liaison to the FBI Louisa Linebach may have defied all odds by identifying the bodies of three missing men in the Kenai Peninsula, but she won’t be satisfied until the man she’s sure is responsible for their murders is behind bars.
Mr. Drew is secretive, smart, rich, and well-connected, and it’s going to take more than regular police procedure to catch him. Louisa has a plan—a stakeout with Kenai Fjords National Park as home base. As Louisa watches Mr. Drew’s crew coming and going, she begins to put together how the operation works with the help of Seward Police Chief Mikey Harper; Louisa’s love-interest, medical examiner Anna Fenway; and National Parks Service ranger Dolly Agapov, who has a very personal reason for wanting the mysteries surrounding Mr. Drew solved.
The case is turned upside down when Dolly’s grandchild, Ryne, goes missing—and it’s not clear whether Ryne’s been ensnared by the crime ring, or if they’re risking their life to help Louisa. Only one thing is for sure. If Louisa doesn’t catch Mr. Drew soon, the body count will rise.
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By the Author
Come Find Me in the Midnight Sun
The Land of Death and Devil’s Club
The Land of Death and Devil’s Club
© 2024 By Bailey Bridgewater. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-63679-660-4
This Electronic Original Is Published By
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: June 2024
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Anissa McIntyre
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design by Inkspiral Design
eBook Design by Toni Whitaker
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the staff of Kenai Fjords National Park, who remember park tech from 2009 in surprising detail. Thanks, as always, to Anissa.
For Dad, who always wanted to see Alaska.
Author’s Note
This book features Native Alaskan characters. Alaska would not be the captivating land that it is without Native Alaskans, and I felt that leaving people of the Alaskan tribes out of this story would further erase Indigenous identities. I do not, however, delve deeply into the customs or beliefs of Dolly, Ryne, or Jeannie out of respect for Native Alaskans, who should maintain the right to tell their own stories when and as they see fit. I hope that readers who want to learn more about Native Alaskan history and culture will seek out writing by Indigenous authors.
Chapter One
July 2009
I grin when I walk into the Bake, though I begged Mikey—Chief Michael Harper, and my former partner—not to make me do this. He’s gone all out. The chalkboard near the door announces the entire place has been reserved by the Seward Police Department. All other patrons are politely asked to make reservations for another evening. A couple in front of me wearing nearly identical blue sweaters and khaki pants turns around looking somber. A cruise ship is in town, and this was likely their only chance to try the best restaurant in Seward. I want to apologize personally, but I restrain myself. This is, after all, my party. No apologies this evening.
Of course, it’s a sham. There’s no way I would let Mikey throw a going away party for me otherwise. I’m only here because I’m not actually going away. I just need the wealthiest, most well-connected drug lord in town—Mr. Drew—to think that I am. That means everyone else in town has to think I’m leaving too. I stop at the podium and scan the room. Mr. Alaku stands in a corner surveying all while he supervises the wait staff. The Seward Police Department is here, including former Chief Willington. Anna and the medical forensics team are present, as well as a couple journalists I recognize from five years ago when we closed not one but three missing persons cases, all within a week of one another. Granted, one of the bodies was misidentified, but we didn’t know that at the time. Anna has already spotted me. She’s wearing a huge grin, even though she’s talking to the police department’s intern.
The biggest surprises, and the people I find myself walking to immediately, are Chief Myla Rodriguez and Fritz of Whittier. They found the body of one of those missing people, Kyle Calderon. Fritz, the Whittier medical examiner, taught us some very important information about poisonous berries in Alaska. My hand is out, ready to shake before I even reach them. Chief Rodriguez removes her napkin from her lap, placing it on the table as she rises and extends her own hand.
“Chief, it’s so great to see you. You didn’t need to come all this way—”
“None of that. Fritz and I are always delighted to get out to Seward in the summer. We’ve all been cooped up in the Tower for nine months—you’d be hard pressed to keep us there once the weather is nice. Besides, meeting you and Harper on the Calderon case made us realize that we really need to be better connected to our fellow officers across the state. We’ve been working on that ever since you left us.”
Fritz stands to grasp my hand in his chilly palm.
“And you may not have known this, but Dr. Fenway and I go way back to med school. I never pass up a chance to see her if one arises.” He winks dramatically and glances toward her. She laughs and waves her napkin at him in what could be a gesture of either dismissal or surrender. Anna is open about her sexuality, so I’m assuming Fritz’s crush is something of a joke between them.
When Rodriguez sits, Mikey indicates a chair between him and Anna, which I take. The waiter approaches and places an old-fashioned in front of me. I raise my brows at Anna, who grins. She knows my love for good whiskeys.
“You really shouldn’t have, Mikey.”
I speak as if the crowd is truly a surprise, and some of it is. I didn’t want to know all the details because I’m not a natural actor. Mikey and I simply agreed, sitting up late in my hotel room like we’d done years ago, that there should be a going away party at the Bake (owned by Mr. Drew), that Willington (a friend of Mr. Drew) should be invited, and that all the staff who worked closely with the Branden Halifax, Kyle Calderon, and Lee Stanton cases five years ago and more recently should be invited, because they deserve to be celebrated too. There’s no doubt in my mind Mr. Drew is already aware of the party and that the reason behind it is that I’m leaving Seward and the department wanted to thank me for my help. He may know that I’m now also a special liaison to the FBI. That fact has been kept very quiet—only Mikey and Anna know it here in Seward—but I’m guessing Mr. Drew’s police connections run far and wide.
That’s why only three people—Mikey, Anna, and a National Park Ranger I haven’t met yet—know I’m coming back to Seward tonight after I deliver the Tank to the Anchorage station. It’s why the only people in Anchorage who know are my chief, Chief Quint, and my FBI handler, Senior Special Agent Mensel, as well as anyone else they’ve deemed it crucial to tell. The rest of the Anchorage officers—that rowdy group in which I’ve finally managed to find my place—have been told I’m being sent on special assignment in Seattle. It’s where I initially came from, so it’ll make sense as long as they don’t dig too deep.
From across the room, Valeria Close, who works the Seward PD desk at night and has an amazing memory for town history, calls out.
“Hey! Where’s Tails?” The entire room laughs.
“I thought the food would have enough texture without his hair added in.” Laughter again. The entire crowd is looking our way; Mikey stands and clinks his butter knife against his wine glass hard enough I worry he’ll break it.
“Since we already have your attention, I’d like to just say a few words about why we’re here tonight.” The wait staff, who had been circulating with water and taking orders, stop and make themselves nearly invisible in some trick I wish I could learn.
“This is Officer Linebach’s last evening here in Seward, at least for the foreseeable future, and before she goes back to catching the big bads in Anchorage, we wanted to give her a proper send-off.” There are hear, hears from the group, some of whom raise glasses already mostly drained of wine. “As you all know, Officer Linebach reunited three families with their missing loved ones and, even though I know it’s not the way we ever want those reunions to happen, it is an extraordinary accomplishment. Most families here in Alaska never get to put their loved ones to rest, and on behalf of the police department, medical examiner’s office, and the town of Seward, I wanted to say thank you.”
I look directly at Mikey as he talks, though sweat seeps into the armpits of my pale gray suit jacket. I should take it off, but not now while everyone is looking at me. I make myself smile. I was hoping Mikey would keep this short and sweet since he knows I hate being the center of attention, but he continues.
“I know the
The wait staff is promptly there taking my order. Next to me, Anna places her order. I try not to laugh when I hear her request three separate dishes. I wish for a second that it was just me and her, that we could share food like we did here before, but only Mikey knows we’re interested in each other. We can’t risk Mr. Drew finding out. I may need her professional help, and it won’t do for the very man I’m trying to catch to have eyes on her.
The meal passes pleasantly enough. When I’ve finished my scallops, I make the rounds of the room, checking in with each of the tables, thanking everyone for coming out and expressing my appreciation for everything they did in helping to solve the cases. It’s usually the lead officer who gets all the credit when a case closes, but no case is solved in isolation—a lesson I’ve learned here in Seward. Without Mikey, Anna, my colleague at the DNA lab, and the families of the men themselves, we would have gotten nowhere.
But for this next part, I have to go it alone.
The thought causes butterflies in my stomach, which is unusual. I preferred working alone at the beginning of my career, but now the thought makes me uncomfortable. This is a special assignment of my own design—though I have Chief Quint’s support, there’s not much he can do to help me from Anchorage. I’ll still report back to him as my primary boss, but I’ll really just be informing him of what I find. If I get in a bind, Seward PD will have to help me out of it. And while Mensel and the FBI approve of the work I’ll be doing, the fact that I’m not a full special agent means they’ll only really invest in me if I find something concrete that absolutely merits the full force of their resources. They don’t like speculation and uncertainty, so my job is to get them evidence. The thought of not being able to do that makes me sweat.
I find reassurance in Mikey’s smiling face as he speaks to another table visitor. He’ll still be there, just down the mountain, behind his desk at the station. Anna will be there too—either at the hospital or in her adorable little yellow house. And I’ll have Tails.
Still, I’ll be isolated at a seasonal outpost that I’ve never even seen, somewhere in Kenai Fjords National Park. And I have no idea for how long.
My pulse begins to accelerate, and I try to be subtle as I look at the fitness tracker on my wrist, tapping it until it shows my heart rate. Ninety-seven, ninety-nine. I take a deep breath in, then exhale slowly through my nose. Ninety-two. Better. I smell Anna’s amber and jasmine perfume before I see her.
“It can’t be time already, can it?” she asks. “We’re all talking about going over to the Hotel for a drink. I want to see Marge.”
“Oh no, I just…I wasn’t looking at my watch. I mean I was looking at my watch, but—” I try to wave at my left wrist to indicate the fitness tracker…which is on my left wrist. Anna laughs, a delicate tinkling sound like windchimes that makes my heart leap. “Okay, let me start over. I was checking my pulse.”
Anna raises an eyebrow. “Do I need to take you down to my office?”
I blush. It’s a morgue joke, not a sexy joke. Probably.
“Oh! No, it’s…I’m fine. My…” I don’t want to say my therapist in front of a crowd. Some people are still weird about anything related to mental health, especially when it comes to law enforcement. “It helps.”
“I get it.” Anna knows a little about my struggles with anxiety. She starts to reach out but glances around and wraps both hands around her glass of white wine instead. “Think you’ll join us?” She’s stunning this evening in an ankle-length blue and white striped linen dress. Anna always looks so effortlessly put together—even when she’s working in the morgue as Seward’s medical examiner. I adjust the scooped neckline of the knee-length jersey dress I bought for the special occasion. I’m not usually one to wear dresses, but this one felt like I could go for a run in it if need be, and the coral color complements my brown skin and eyes nicely.
“Honestly, I probably shouldn’t. Please give my regards. It’s a long drive back to Anchorage.”
She nods. She knows it’ll be at least five hours round trip, and I’m not even sure what getting up the mountain in the semi-dark will look like. I won’t know until I meet the mysterious park ranger who will follow me to Anchorage and take me to my new home.
“That’s true,” she lowers her voice, “but I will miss you an awful lot.” She doesn’t just mean at the Hotel. If all goes well, I might not see Anna for weeks. Possibly even months. I’ll be staking out Mr. Drew’s operation, and no one can come and go that he wouldn’t already expect to see. I’m likely to be lurking around his airstrips, his property, and wherever it is he’s sending his men to run drugs and quite possibly kill one another off. Anna and Mikey coming and going will raise his suspicions unless they’re obviously on a call that’s not related to him.
“Mind walking me out after I say goodbye to everyone?”
She agrees and turns to chat with Fritz as I go around the room one last time.
Chapter Two
I make it outside before Anna does, and I stroll to the end of the block to look out over the harbor. The sun sparkles across the waters, which shimmer in shades of turquoise and deep purple. The sun will remain there, supervising the movement of the orcas and the sea otters until finally relinquishing its place in the sky around midnight. If I leave now, I should arrive back in Seward after the sun is as safely tucked away as it gets in mid-summer, when it’s up from about four a.m. to midnight. I can peruse my new home under cover of that all too momentary darkness. I’ll be thankful for these impossibly long days while I’m watching Mr. Drew’s operation, but right now I’d love to be standing here with Anna, holding her in the dark and watching the stars.
A sea lion gasps a half-laugh and I jump, he’s so close by. He looks at me.
“I know, but a girl can dream, right?” He slaps one of his enormous flippers against the rocks. I huff. “Well, you don’t have to be judgmental about it.”
My rude friend is right, though. Whatever it is that’s rekindled between me and Anna doesn’t stand much chance with me out in the middle of the mountains and her here. Combine that with the fact that I’m not exactly the best at relationships, with all their elusive unwritten rules, and the odds seem pretty stacked against me. But that’s the way it has to be. And really, it’s probably better that I’m going now. If things had already developed the way I hope they will, it would be impossible to leave her, and that would mean never catching Mr. Drew. For myself, for the families whose loved ones I found, and for the entire community, he needs to be behind bars. But putting him there isn’t going to be easy. Circumstantial evidence isn’t going to cut it—not when he can buy the best lawyer in the state. Hell, he could fly someone in from wherever he wanted.
I remind myself to not let my thoughts spiral, and focus on the sea lion instead. I’m still staring at it when Anna approaches.
“Ma’am, this guy bothering you?” She imitates a cop. As if he understands, the sea lion slides into the harbor with a slap of water against blubber.
“Yeah. He was giving me a reality check that I didn’t entirely appreciate.”
“Pretty sure that’s why they’re here.” She leans her elbows against the rail that stands between us and the rocky slope leading into very, very cold water. “This scenery’s a little too picturesque. You could convince yourself you’ve died and gone to heaven if some asshole sea lion wasn’t there making rude noises.”
