Page 27 of Snow River (Firelight Ridge #4)

27

“The thing about winter in Alaska is that it seems like everything stops. It’s frozen, right? Only a few birds stick around. The bears go into hibernation. Nothing grows.” Martha took a sip of her favorite new drink, coffee with a splash of brandy. “Everything stands still and you feel like you can breathe. I love winter.”

Bear grunted, wondering where this was going. He’d asked about thrift stores. She’d told him about a clothing exchange held on the last Saturday of every month—weather permitting. That was when she’d segued into this philosophical meditation on winter in Alaska.

“But the truth is that nothing stops completely. It’s more like…what’s the term…like when things are just on pause…suspended animation.”

“Okay.” He glanced around the bar, checking for other customers who might need his attention. But Martha wasn’t done yet.

“Like the river. Snow River freezes over in deep winter, but only on the surface. Underneath the ice, it’s still flowing, you just can’t see it. And all that snow melts come spring anyway.”

“Makes a damn mess every year.”

“Yes. That’s my point.” Apparently lost in thought, she cradled her mug in her weathered hands. She’d added her own special touch to her mug—a cozy knitted from her own sheeps’ wool. “People think they can hide things out here in the wilderness. They think no one will ever find it. Or they think the snow will hide it. Maybe sometimes they get away with it. But secrets have a way of surfacing even when they’ve been buried deep.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Did she know something relevant? “Are you thinking of something specific?”

Her expression shifted, as if she’d just remembered where she was. “Oh, just the dead bodies that turn up every spring. That sort of thing.”

“Are you thinking of the woman who drowned in Snow River?”

“She wasn’t there all winter, was she?”

“No. But?—”

Martha’s eyes lit up at the prospect of fresh gossip. “But what? Do you know something, Bear? You always have the best inside information.”

“I don’t know anything. The police are handling it.”

“Like we’ve seen any of them around here. Cromwell came once and none of us have seen hide or hair of him since.”

She had a point there. The case seemed to have dropped off Cromwell’s radar completely. In Bear’s view, the less he saw of Cromwell, the better, but it must be frustrating for Rita Casey’s family. It was also possibly that huge progress was being made, and no one thought it important to share with anyone in Firelight Ridge, especially Bear.

That old wound throbbed for a moment. Now there was a secret buried deep, but subject to exposure at any moment. Cromwell had him by the balls. If he decided to spread the story around here—well, who really knew. All kinds of “outlaw” types wound up in these mountains, so quite possibly, no one would care.

But he would. Especially if Lila?—

Just then, the woman herself burst through the door of The Fang. As always, she was like a beam of sunlight in the place. Maybe it was the black-painted walls, or the faded black plywood floors, but it all seemed perfectly designed to set off her white hair and bright spirit.

Lila hurried across the room, not even acknowledging the customers who waved hello to her. That was very unlike her. His gut tightened with the fear that something else had happened.

She murmured an apology to Martha, then tugged him into the kitchen prep area. Then she went even farther than that, into the supply closet where he kept everything from cases of whisky to cans of tomatoes.

“I think we’re safe,” he assured her when the door was shut behind them. “What’s going on?”

“We have to call Officer Cromwell.”

Crap. That was the last thing he wanted to do. “Why?”

“I found a match to Paulina’s drawing.” She pulled out her phone so he could see. “It’s an FBI Most Wanted poster from the eighties.”

Bear pulled the string that dangled from the closet’s single light bulb so he could get a better look at the photo. It flickered, then stayed lit. He’d have to change that bulb soon.

Squinting at it, Bear could see the similarity between the two drawings. But what could he possibly say to Cromwell about it? An artist’s rendition of a face she’d seen once forty years ago matched an FBI Most Wanted poster, but neither had any known connection to the murdered woman in Snow River. “Sorry, Lila. I just don’t think this can be considered evidence. There’s no connection to the case he’s working. If anything, we could call the FBI. Maybe they’re still looking for this guy. But it’s a long shot, I gotta say.”

She was shaking her head impatiently as he spoke. “No no, there’s more than that. After Gunnar dug up this poster, I went back to the general store and went online. This murderer,” she waved the phone at him, “is no ordinary killer. He shot and killed a candidate for Senate. He’s some kind of paid assassin.”

That sounded overdramatic. “Someone paid to have a candidate for Senate assassinated? Is that what you found out?”

“No,” she admitted. “I can’t prove that.”

He flexed his jaw to hold back his impatience. Lila was letting her imagination sweep her away. Someone had to keep a grip on reality here. “Then how can I bring that to Cromwell?”

She gave a nearly invisible wince. “It’s speculation, but the pieces fit together. I looked up the assassination, that part is real. Charles Greenley was leading in the polls, and he was shot during a campaign rally. His big issue was putting a limit on oil drilling in Alaska, especially the North Slope.”

“And he was leading?” Hard to believe, when oil production was such a huge part of the Alaskan economy.

“I don’t know anything about the politics of all that, just what I read about him. He advocated for a more diverse economy. But that wasn’t why he was in the lead.”

In the low light of that single bulb, her face looked stark, shadows under her cheekbones, her jawline in sharp relief. “Go on.”

“His opponent had some family scandals he was dealing with. Adam Hardwell ended up getting elected after the assassination happened. He was a billionaire who had only moved to Alaska a few years earlier. A lot of people didn’t like that, which was one reason he was behind. But the big reason was that he had a son who was a total mess. He was treated for drug addiction a few times, but it never seemed to take. He was arrested for dealing once, but the charges were dropped. He was accused of sexual assault, but those charges were dropped too. Rumor had it that Hardwell would just pay off anyone his son crossed.”

Bear didn’t follow politics much. He generally looked for who supported wilderness protection the most, and voted for that person. But he’d heard of Adam Hardwell. He’d only served one term, as he recalled. “It’s all so long ago. I don’t understand what connection it could possibly have to Firelight Ridge.”

Lila held up a finger. “I’m getting there. A month before the election of 1986, Billy Hardwell was arrested for selling drugs to a police officer. He was let off, like always, but this time the state required him to attend mandatory rehab. There weren’t a lot of options for that in Alaska at the time, so he was allowed to take part in an experimental rehab program. It was kind of a new age men’s group method, based around spending time in the wilderness away from all the temptations of ordinary life. Lots of talking sessions and instruction in survival skills. Its philosophy is actually pretty interesting?—”

Bear cut her off before she got too far down that tangent. “Which wilderness? Was it?—”

“Here. Yes. Well, at a place up Snow River a ways. There are some cabins up there that the group rented. And guess who might have cooked for the clients up there?”

“Nancy?”

“I think so, but the article doesn’t say specifically. There’s a quote. Listen to this. ‘According to one local woman hired to cook for the group, Billy Hardwell was a model patient, one of the few who offered to get his hands dirty helping the support staff.’ This article has the title The Redemption of a Rebel,” so you can imagine what angle it took. It was clearly written to make Billy Hardwell look good. Anyway, it included a photo from the trip. Take a look.”

She zoomed in on the photo that accompanied the article. A group of three women were lined up in the background of the shot, with a view of Snow River behind them. In the foreground were about ten men ranging in age from teenagers to fifty-year-olds. They all wore flannel shirts and jeans, which to Bear’s eye looked like a familiar uniform of first-time visitors to the wilderness.

“Which one is Billy Hardwell?”

“Here.” She pointed to a young man who appeared to be in his twenties, very ordinary in appearance, someone he wouldn’t notice if he came into the bar. “But this is the even more interesting part.”

She pointed at one of the women lined up behind the group. He scanned their faces, not recognizing any of them.

“That dress,” she said impatiently. She pointed at the woman on the left. “See that pattern on the hem of her dress?”

“I guess.” He shook his head, then blinked the tension out of his eyes. He’d been trying to focus on her phone for too long.

“It looks just like Allison Casey’s dress and the one we found hanging in The Fang.”

“Maybe it was a very popular style at the time.”

“Bear.” She snatched the phone away from him and glared. “It cannot be a coincidence. It just simply cannot be. That’s not my intuition talking, that’s logic.”

He nodded slowly, since he couldn’t deny that she was probably right.

Why was he even trying to deny it?

He knew why. Because he didn’t want to call Cromwell.

“We need to tell the police that someone rigged that…prank or whatever…with a dress that’s identical to the dress of someone killed in the Snow River Murders, and that the same dress is right here in an article about Billy Hardwell, and that there’s a witness who saw Charles Greenley’s killer right here in Firelight Ridge right after those murders. And there’s something else. Get this. Rita Casey was engaged to Jim Sutcliff, the guy who did that podcast about the Snow River Murders. I saw it in his obituary. That connects the two cases right there! I bet Rita Casey came here to the area to follow up on something in the podcast.”

Bear sorted through all the connections—which ones were based on Lila’s intuition and which were based on hard evidence. “Would Paulina be willing to make a sworn statement about the man she witnessed?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Isn’t the drawing enough?”

“No, she’d have to validate it.”

Poor Paulina... Cromwell was terrible with witnesses, especially women. Impatient and disrespectful. Bear hated the idea of him berating Paulina Volk.

“She might talk to you,” Lila suggested, her eyes filled with trust. “She thinks the world of you.”

He shook his head tightly. “That won’t work.”

“Why not? I know you and Cromwell don’t like each other, and that he’s sort of a prick. But if you take her statement and she signs it, wouldn’t that be enough?”

“No,” he said sharply. “There’s nothing I can do that they’d accept. Just drop it.”

She drew back, not afraid—thank God—but confused. “I don’t understand. Why does he dislike you so much?”

“He doesn’t even know me. Not enough to dislike me. It’s not personal.” With those brusque words, he tried to chase the issue away, to move on to something else. But Lila had her wide-open violet eyes fixed on him, and they were enclosed in a supply closet the size of a body scanner, and he was tired, so tired, of keeping those people’s goddamn secrets.

He was about to speak when someone pounded on the door. “Bear, you in there? Better come out here! They’re fighting!” called Martha.