Bad River

Book 6: Arliss Cutter Novel

by Marc Cameron

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

From a remote village perched on Arctic permafrost to the Badlands of South Dakota, searching for answers about his brother sets Arliss Cutter on an icy trail of murder and madness into the darkest heart of the Alaskan wilderness. New York Times bestselling author and former U.S. Marshal Marc Cameron captures the beauty and brutality of both man and nature in his newest high stakes suspense for fans of Paul Doiron, CJ Box, Allen Eskens, and Jane Harper.

"Cameron’s novels hook you from the first line, cement your eyes to the page, and grip your heart in a vice. I can’t think of another writer whose work I admire more." —WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER

"A double-barreled blast of action, narrative, and impossible-to-fake authenticity.” —CJ BOX

In the Inupiaq village of Wainwright on the Arctic Ocean, two teenagers discover a frozen body in the permafrost wall of their family’s cellar. They recognize the face through the ice. It is the face of a young woman who went missing—two years ago . . .

In South Dakota, Arliss Cutter searches for answers surrounding his brother’s mysterious death. But his visit only raises more questions without any leads. Until he returns to Alaska—and learns that his brother had something in common with the frozen body in the ice cellar . . .

Inside the young woman’s pocket is a fossilized animal tooth—similar to the one Arliss’s brother picked up on a trip to South Dakota. A bizarre coincidence? Or are the two connected somehow? Before Arliss can figure it out, his brother’s widow and children become the targets of a brutal home invasion. Arliss arrives on the scene in time to save them—but his actions trigger a larger investigation that puts his own neck on the line. From South Dakota to Anchorage to the Inupiaq villages of the Arctic, Arliss follows this bloodstained trail of clues to a remote lodge on the banks of the Kobuk River. Here, in this unforgiving wilderness, he will find the answers he seeks. Here, in this untamed, often violent land, he will come face to face with the terrible truth—and the man behind his brother’s murder . . .

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

THE ZIPPER-PULL THERMOMETER ON SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD WILLADEAN Benson’s baby blue Costco parka read nine below zero. It was almost two in the morning, but it had been dark for a long time. Weeks. The sun had disappeared in mid-November and would not peek above the horizon again for another month—not until late January. Just a glimpse of a cold orange sliver—and that’s if the sky happened to be clear.

And then more dark.

Willadean gritted her teeth and tugged the collar of her store-bought parka tighter against her neck, chilled more at the thought of the boys from the party than the angry wind that screamed through overhead power lines. Frigid air pinched her nose, seared her lungs, seeped into her joints. Crystals of frost rimmed her long lashes.

Willadean’s father had a strict rule about late-night parties, especially parties with boys from neighboring villages, so she’d crawled out her bedroom window and left the much warmer caribou fur amauti on a peg by the front door.

Her house was on the other side of town—not far if she hadn’t had to worry about the bone-numbing cold or polar bears or Gordon Ivanov and his creepy friends.

She picked up her pace, trying to ignore the white-hot pain in her lungs. Over her head, a river of green fire bathed the night sky. Aksarnirq—the aurora borealis. Beautiful, sure, but it was just one more thing to worry about.

According to Willadean’s grandmother, whose name was Tiqri-ganiannig, but everybody called Foxy, the old ones believed the aurora were walrus spirits playing kickball across the frozen sky with a human head. This, Grandma Foxy assured Willadean, was pure foolishness.

Mostly.

The aurora were not walrus spirits at all, but spirits of the long dead guiding the recently dead toward the afterlife with their colorful torches. If the lights happened to be especially active, these long dead spirits might indeed be playing a game of kickball, but it was very, very rare for them to use a human head.

Inside by the warmth of the oil stove, Grandma Foxy’s stories seemed nonsensical, but out here, alone in the frigid darkness, the sky awash with swaying curtains of green and red and purple—walrus spirits and human heads were not that difficult to imagine.

Another gust of wind barreled in off the frozen Chukchi Sea, shoving Willadean sideways. A storm was coming. She could hear it shrieking out on the ice. Dark clouds and blinding snow would soon chase the lights south across the tundra. She broke into a shuffling trot, breathing through her nose and teeth to curb the burning in her lungs. She needed to be home before the storm hit—before Gordon Ivanov realized she’d left the party.

A heavy scraping noise loud enough that she heard it even above the moaning wind yanked her attention to the left.

Her neighbor, Charlie Leavitt, had seen a humongous polar bear over by Wainwright Inlet just a couple of days ago. Polar bears were quiet, though. You rarely heard them coming.

Ghosts of swirling snow kicked up around Willadean’s boots, herding her this way and that as she moved. It would have looked like she was staggering had anyone bothered to peer out their window to check on her.

No one did.

She nudged her flimsy hood back with a sealskin mitten and strained her ears, enduring the icy sting as she scanned the shadowed spaces between junked snow machines and weathered wooden homes. In some ways, she hoped the noise was a bear. At least she would know what she was dealing with. Bears considered you food. It was nothing personal. They never pretended to be nice and then tried to corral you all alone in a back bedroom like Gordon Ivanov did.

The party had been a stupid idea. Willadean had things to do after she graduated high school, places to go. She’d dominated the North Slope in girls’ cross-country earlier that year and had come in second overall in the state. She was star forward on the Wainwright Huskies girls’ basketball team and somehow managed to impress the admissions people in New London, Connecticut, enough they gave her an early admission offer to the United States Coast Guard Academy. She wasn’t about to let some dipshit from Nuiqsit get her pregnant and screw up what was basically a four-hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship.

Another sudden movement to her left caused her to stop in her tracks. The crunch of boots against the snow fell silent, leaving nothing but the flapping clatter of something metal on the moaning wind. She sniffed the air and looked half away from the place she’d seen the movement. Grandma Foxy had taught her to rely more on her peripheral vision when it got dark. That did the trick. A dark form slowly came into focus over George and Martha Solomon’s front porch—a frozen seal skin draped over a line flagging in the wind like a weather vane.

Another rattle, this one to her right, nearly sent Willadean out of her skin. She ducked instinctively, like a snowshoe hare at the cry of a hawk. Her rational brain assured her it was just the wind. It was definitely not a spirit coming to play kickball with her head. A prolonged gust shook the broken plastic cowling of a junk snow machine mere feet from where she stood. If it had been a bear, she’d be food by now. Her hand dropped to her pocket and the knife she kept there. It might help some against the boys, but it was small comfort when she thought about polar bears or marauding walrus spirits.

Behind her, somewhere in the darkness, rough voices tumbled and fought on the back of the wind. Gordon Ivanov and at least one of his asshole friends—maybe more. Boys like that always seemed to run in packs.

Dammit.

Drunk on home brew—alcohol made from baker’s yeast, sugar, and, in this case, a couple of cans of fruit cocktail. Their slurred taunts grew louder.

She was out in the open, a sitting duck against a field of white snow under the glowing northern lights.

Ivanov called out—a nasty growl.

He’d seen her.

Willadean did what any smart prey animal would do when threatened by a predator. She ran for the shadows and didn’t look back.

Gordon Ivanov slid to a halt, his freakishly large—but warm—white, military surplus, rubber bunny boots chattering on the driven snow. He raised a fist, signaling for the other boy to stop. An oversize field parka—also military surplus—made him appear much more imposing than he actually was. The ratty fake-fur ruff looked like he’d slept in it. He was winded from his short sprint, and clouds of vapor enveloped his long face. A wisp of a black mustache added to his natural sneer. He pointed his chin at the weathered hulk of a junked snow machine, then crept slowly around it, motioning for his companion to follow.

Nothing.

Ivanov threw his head back and howled. “Where the hell did you gooooo?” Then, to his buddy, “She was right here . . .”

Allen Brown, two years younger than Ivanov but six inches taller, took a half step back and shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. “We should just leave her alone. Come on. I know where my uncle hides his whiskey—”

“If your uncle ever had any whiskey, he drank it already,” Ivanov sneered. He grabbed the other boy by the collar of his parka and jerked him closer, as much to steady himself as to get his point across. Wobbly from the home brew, both boys swayed on the uneven ground.

“Tight-ass bitch thinks she’s better than us,” Ivanov said. “All because she’s goin’ away to some East Coast college. You can’t tell me that don’t piss you off.”

Brown’s halfhearted shrug was nearly lost in his huge parka.

“I guess so.”

“Well, it pisses me off,” Ivanov said. “I mean, she left the party without even saying good-bye.” He jammed his mittened hand at the other boy’s chest. “We’re gonna hang out. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

Brown jerked away. “Five minutes ago, you were worried about polar bears—”

“Correction, numb nuts,” Ivanov said, his voice dripping with disgust. “I was talking about polar bears. I’m worried this bitch is gonna get away. Now, see if you can muster up some balls and help me hunt her down. She’s probably hiding behind one of these piece of shit machines, listening to every word we say.”

Marvin Benson woke up to the thump of an Arctic storm buffeting his house—and another sound he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. A low and mournful moan. Creepy as hell. If he’d heard a noise like that when he was a kid, he would have run to his mom and dad. Now he was the dad, so he sat up in bed and listened, trying to figure out what was making the eerie racket.

It was dark, which meant nothing in the Far North. It could have been midnight or ten in the morning at this time of year. Benson blinked away the fog of sleep and glanced at his clock. Five minutes after four. No wonder he had to pee. His wife snored softly beside him, on her back, an open Bible splayed across her chest. She often fell asleep reading the Good Book while he surfed his phone for YouTube tutorials on how to fix snow machines or soup up his four-wheeler. She worked hard, and when her head hit the pillow, she was out. It would take more than a blizzard to wake her up.

Heavy winds shook the house and rattled the doors. Benson liked a good storm. It cleaned things up, scouring away trash and covering up the little piles of the neighbor’s dogshit with little white snowdrifts. The trash just blew somewhere else, and the dogshit was still there, but he didn’t have to see it. He counted that as a blessing.

He swung his legs out of bed, then gave a little start when his wife suddenly spoke in the darkness.

“You hear that, Marvin?”

“Mmm,” Benson grunted. “I’m going to check after I pee.”

The moan grew louder with each step as he shuffled up the hall, so loud he forgot he had to go to the bathroom. Willadean’s room was on his right. Four decades of hunting seals on the ice had rendered his feet numb to the cold. It took a moment before he noticed the river of frigid air flowing from under the door.

He knocked. The last thing he wanted to do was barge in on his sleeping teenage daughter.

No answer.

He knocked again.

“Willadean! Are you okay?”

Still nothing but the ghostly moan.

Panic that only the father of daughters can know gripped his chest as he eased open the door. A sickening dread chilled him to the bone. Snow howled in from the bottom of Willadean’s window where it had been left open little more than an inch. Her quilts were neat and undisturbed.

Marvin’s wife crowded in beside him, still clutching her Bible, took one look at their daughter’s empty bed, and began to scream.

SUPERVISORY DEPUTY US MARSHAL ARLISS CUTTER AND HIS PARTNER, Deputy Lola Teariki, sat in the early morning darkness, listening to the bark of a distant dog and tick of the slate gray government-issue Chevy Tahoe as it cooled under the patter of a steady rain. A running engine would have given away their position.

There was a hierarchy to the hunting of men. Some of the rules were spoken; some were understood instinctively by those who did the hunting. Crimes against persons trumped property offenses. Fraudsters and embezzlers were hunted in the margins when time allowed, often by newer deputy marshals still learning the ropes. Violent felons rose to the top of the stack—and went to the real man hunters, deputies with former law enforcement experience or just a particular acumen for the job.

Fugitives like Kevin Edward Dupree, wanted for crimes against children, earned a scrutiny akin to the light of a thousand suns.

Ordinarily, Cutter would not have bothered kitting up for a surveillance, but this morning the Alaska Fugitive Task Force was dressed in full battle rattle—ballistic vests with trauma plates over their hearts and lungs, oblong pouches with individual first-aid kits, and M4 carbines. A green Kevlar helmet sat on the floorboard between his leather boots.

An arrest was imminent, and Eddie Dupree had a lot to lose.

Information from the Thornton brothers had given them Dupree’s latest burner phone. The number had gone active around five in the morning three times over the last seven days, pinging in or around the Holiday gas station and convenience store at Boniface Parkway and DeBarr Road in midtown Anchorage. Two visits could have been a fluke. Three was a pattern, and patterns were a man hunter’s friend. Patterns got people caught.

It was ten minutes until four in the morning. Wanting to be early, the task force had already been on station for half an hour. Technically, it was still summer. The first day of autumn was still a couple of weeks away—but Alaska hadn’t gotten the memo. Each day was five minutes shorter than the day before, and the first snow of the season—termination dust, they called it—had fallen on the craggy Chugach Mountains to the east of the city. Here at the lower elevations, a steady rain sent chilly rivulets cascading down the windshield. The syrup-sweet smell of wet birch crept into the vehicle with the chill, mingling with the pleasant odors of fresh coffee and Lola Teariki’s coconut shampoo.

Periodic wind gusts tossed the birch trees and ripped away leaves, plastering the lonesome Tahoe with mottled yellow spots. In the passenger seat, Cutter found himself grateful for the heavy ballistic vest, even though it threw him forward at an angle that caused his sidearms to dig into the flesh above his belt.

Cutter moved the Colt Python revolver over a skosh, adjusting it and the smaller .40 caliber “baby” Glock 27 that was doing a number over his right kidney below the base of his ballistic vest. He’d carried guns of one kind or another professionally for almost twenty years—nearly four “lustrums,” his grandfather would have said. Grumpy always had loved his dusty words.

His weapons now situated over fresh pieces of meat, Cutter took a sip of coffee and reconciled himself to the fact that he’d have permanent divots in his hip by the time he retired—in another couple of lustrums.

A battered Dodge Ram pickup ripped past on DeBarr Road, its tires hissing rooster tails off the wet street.

Deputy Sean Blodgett’s voice broke squelch over the radio. He and his partner, Nancy Alvarez, a TFO (task force officer) on loan from the Anchorage Police Department, were parked under a small stand of fir trees at the base of a cell-phone tower in a gravel lot across DeBarr.

“That had to be Troy Swenson in the Dodge,” Blodgett said. “We have paper on him for jumping bail on that robbery a month ago downtown by the Performing Arts Center.”

The fact that a robbery suspect would be released on bond boggled Cutter’s mind.

“Eyes on the prize,” Cutter said. “We stick with the plan and focus on Dupree. We’ll grab up Mr. Swenson later.”

Cutter’s grandfather, Grumpy, a Florida Marine Patrol officer who raised Cutter and his older brother, had always said there were only three kinds of people out between midnight and four a.m.—cops, paperboys, and assholes. Paperboys were a dying breed, but in Cutter’s experience, Alaska had just the right amount of assholes to provide plenty of job security for a professional man hunter.

Kevin Edward Dupree was a prime example. The thirty-nine-year-old convicted sex offender had federal and state warrants for impersonating a federal officer, misconduct involving a child under sixteen, and manufacturing child pornography. The kind of warrant that floated to the top like the turd he was.

Lola Teariki, a fit twenty-something deputy US marshal, held a pair of government-issue Vortex binoculars to her face with one hand while she tucked an errant lock of black hair back into her bun. Her mother was a slight Japanese woman, but the Polynesian genes of her Cook Island Mori father seemed to have won out. Muscular arms bulged under the dark-blue USMS mock turtleneck that protruded from her own ballistic vest. The high bun tended to make her face look harsh, belying her bubbly personality. Cutter shared the resting mean-mug, but not the bubbles.

Sighing like a rambunctious child cooped up inside on a rainy day, she lowered the binoculars and used the steering wheel to push herself back slightly, then drew a deadly looking little knife from a sheath hidden behind her buckle. The black handle fit her hand perfectly. A wicked three-inch blade that resembled a steel claw extended straight out of her clenched fist.

“Nifty get-off-me blade, eh, Cutter?” she said, holding the weapon up between them.

Her husky voice carried the pleasant Kiwi accent of her Cook Islander father, throwing away her Rs and clipping her vowels. Cutter’s name became “Cuttah.”

He recognized the little blade as a Clinch Pick. Small but lethal.

“My Japanese auntie and one of my brothers each gave me one of these puppies for my birthday.” She reached into the pocket of her vest and produced an identical knife in a black Kydex sheath, passing it across the console to Cutter. “I’m not sure about giving a sharp instrument to an emotional time bomb such as you, but what am I gonna do with two supercool little stabby things? Besides, it seems like you’re always dropping your grandfather’s revolver. I figure a last-ditch weapon like this might come in handy one day.”

Cutter took the Clinch Pick in his fist and used his thumb to pop the blade out of the Kydex sheath.

He had to admit, it was a cool little stabby thing.

He pushed it back toward her. Though they operated as partners, Cutter was actually her supervisor.

“Lola . . .”

“Bullshit,” Lola chuckled. “Screw policy. I reckon we can call it a birthday gift.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“It will be.”

“How about I borrow it for a while?” he said. “Try it out.”

“Sweet as,” she said. “Borrow it as long as you want.” She tucked her Clinch Pick back into its sheath on her belt and raised the binoculars again. “I haven’t heard anything about Ethan’s case lately. How’s that coming?”

Cutter’s older brother had been killed in an oil rig explosion on the North Slope of Alaska two years before. At first, it was thought to have been an accident. New clues pointed to a murder. Cutter didn’t talk about it to most people, but he and Lola had been through enough that she’d become more like a kid sister than a partner. She’d earned herself a pass. That didn’t necessarily earn her an answer—frankly, because Cutter didn’t have one. It had been a busy summer with mandatory supervisor school in Georgia and an excruciating stint as acting chief while Jill Phillips rotated to USMS headquarters on TDY. When he did find time to follow up, he found that virtually every lead had dried up.

“Working on it,” he said.

Deputy Blodgett broke squelch again, rescuing him from going into more detail.

“We’ve got movement outside the stop-n-rob . . . At the east end, in that little alcove by the ice boxes.”

Lola threw her binoculars to her eyes.

“Popongi!” she said.

It was the Cook Island Mori expression for “good morning,” but Teariki often used it when a target showed up on an early morning surveillance.

There was momentary silence while everyone studied the situation through their binoculars and attempted to identify the players through rain-streaked glass.

“It’s just some dude talking to Squish,” Alvarez said at length. “Definitely not Dupree. Repeat. Negative on Dupree.”

“Copy,” Lola said over the radio. Then, just to Cutter. “Squish Merculief . . . I feel for that kid.”

“Squish,” Cutter mused. “That’s an interesting name . . .”

He peered through his binoculars again to find a wisp of a woman loitering outside the convenience store. Even from that distance, he could see the sunken eyes and gaunt hollows of her cheeks. She moved in short, jerky motions, as if startled by every sight and sound.

“Poor kid was in bad shape when I saw her a couple of months ago,” Lola said. “Couch surfing at a place we hit at Penland trailer park. We had to give her two doses of Narcan just to save her ass. She bolted awake in a full-bore panic, looking for her next fix.”

“Narcan’ll do that,” Cutter said, his voice muffled against his hands as he continued to study the scene.

His heart sank. Squish’s baggy yellow plastic raincoat swallowed her up and made her look like a child. She was probably only in her early twenties, but life on the street had taken the bark off her and added years. Small and weak, she reminded him of someone from a long time ago in a very faraway place.

Lola brightened. “Hey, Dupree’s been popped for fentanyl possession before. Maybe he’s dealing now and she’s here for a meet with him.”

“Could be,” Cutter said, not counting on it.

A blessed silence fell over the car, but as usual, Lola didn’t wait long before filling it.

“Mim told me the boys want a dog.”

Taken aback, Cutter turned sideways in his seat. The thought of Lola chatting with his widowed sister-in-law was like sailing in uneven seas.

“When did you talk to Mim?”

Lola gave a little shrug. “I ran into her when we were both doing laps at the Dome a couple of days ago.”

“Ah,” Cutter said.

She raised her eyebrows up and down. “That girl’s got a set of legs on her.”

Cutter kept his eyes on the windshield. He couldn’t help but picture Mim’s legs. He’d met her when they were only sixteen, fallen in love with her right then and there, moments before his smooth-talking older brother had swooped in and . . .

“I had a dog for a while,” Lola said. “He was like a bad boyfriend. Warm enough in bed . . . but needy as hell.”

Cutter eyed her again.

“I don’t want another dog,” she said. “But I reckon the boys should get one.”

“Of course, you do,” Cutter said.

Conversations with Lola could change directions at the blink of an eye. Thankfully, she’d veered back to the case at hand. She snatched up the powder-blue warrant file from between the seats and looked at the photo taped to the cover page.

“Why do these dicks always have to say they’re deputy marshals when they decide to pretend to be cops?” It was a rhetorical question, so Cutter simply left it alone.

“Eddie . . . Edward . . . Edwardo . . . ,” Lola mused. She curled her lip, scrunching her nose as if the name were bitter. For her, every warrant was personal. A mission. Cutter knew exactly how she felt. “He looks like a normal dude,” she said. “But North Las Vegas coppers found a fake Marshals badge on him and a USMS raid jacket along with heaps of sex toys in a tackle box in the back of his car.” She shook her head in disgust. “I mean, give me a break. An FBI badge and a trunk full of sex toys . . . that would make sense—”

Nancy Alvarez’s voice crackled over the radio.

“You guys seeing this?”

Cutter threw the binoculars to his eyes.

Squish Merculief had gone inside the store. She stood at the counter engaged in an animated conversation with the clerk.

“I know this guy,” Alvarez said. “Micah something or other . . . He’s a level-ten pendejo. Tells me every time I see him how he woulda been a cop but for . . . insert excuse of the week. Likes to let folks see the butt of his Hi-Point he keeps in his waistband. Last time I went in, he was sporting an ankle monitor.”

Cutter watched as Micah reached over the counter as if to touch the young woman. She took a step back. It was impossible to tell from all the way across the street, but it looked to Cutter as if she’d suddenly grown smaller.

Sean Blodgett spoke next. “Anyone got eyes on Dupree?”

“Negative,” Lola said.

Inside the convenience store, Micah came around the counter, putting himself between the girl and the door. He was at least a foot taller than her. The short sleeves of his convenience store uniform shirt were rolled up to show off mirror-muscle biceps. He put a hand on her shoulder.

She jerked away.

A low growl rumbled in Cutter’s chest.

Squish took another step backward, clearly scanning the store as if for an escape.

Micah scanned too, glancing out the window to see that there was no one in the parking lot.

He leaned in toward Squish, as if to kiss her.

She crawfished backward, bumping into a display of potato chips and falling to the ground.

Micah followed, looming over her.

Lola had her binoculars up now.

“This guy’s got some nerve—”

Cutter slammed his hand against the dash. “Go!”

Lola looked at him, incredulous. “He hasn’t—”

Cutter undid his seat belt and started to open the door to get out.

“Okay, I’m going!” Lola snapped.

“Then go now!” He pounded the dash again, still ready to bail if the G-car didn’t start to roll.

She threw the Tahoe in gear and, after a quick check for oncoming traffic, stomped the gas to shoot across DeBarr Road, hitting the concrete median at an angle to bounce and bump over the top.

Blodgett’s headlights came on in the trees to the west of the store. “Did you guys spot Dupree?”

Cutter snatched up the mic. “Negative.” Then to Lola as he threw open the door and jumped out of the still-rolling Tahoe, “Tell them what’s going on.”

“All righty,” she said. “As soon as I figure that out . . .”

Cutter only heard part of it, already sprinting straight for the door.

Inside the store, Squish tried to shrug off Micah’s advances, wanting no part of whatever he was suggesting.

The muscular clerk grabbed her by the hood of her raincoat and dragged her across the floor toward the candy aisle, apparently so hyper-focused he failed to hear the ping of the door chime. The hapless kid didn’t even look up until Cutter snatched a handful of greasy hair and lifted him onto his tiptoes.

“US Marshals!” Cutter barked. “Knock it off!”

Screaming in surprise and pain, the clerk dropped the young woman like a hot potato.

“Hands!” Cutter growled. “Let me see your hands!”

Micah stretched his arms to the side like wings, hands open wide, eyes clenched tight.

The door chime pinged again as Alvarez entered the store, her pistol drawn, angled toward the floor.

“Micah,” she said. “You got your handgun on your belt?”

The kid kept his arms so straight it looked like his elbows might pop. He nodded, then opened his eyes to look up and find a frowning Arliss Cutter—and lost control of his bladder.

“Well, this warrant shit the bed,” Sean Blodgett groused while Cutter turned their prisoner over to a responding APD patrol officer. “What happened to ‘eyes on the prize,’ boss?”

Cutter didn’t answer. There was no point. Blodgett and everyone else on the Alaska Fugitive Task Force had worked with him long enough to know what he would and would not stand for.

Nancy Alvarez took a statement from Squish Merculief.

“I’d be glad to press charges against that pervert.” The young woman rocked from one foot to the other, hugging herself tight. Her face twitched and squirmed, like she had a bad itch. “Guys like him think they can give you a cup of coffee and . . . you know . . .” She swayed in place, blinking at Alvarez. “Can I go?”

The task force officer folded her notebook. “Have you got any outstanding warrants?”

Squish gave a noncommittal shrug. “How am I supposed to know that?”

“I’ll take that as a no. You need a place to get warm?”

“I’m good,” Squish mumbled.

Alvarez gestured with her chin toward the sidewalk. “Go on then. I’ll check to see if you’re wanted some other time. You’ve been through enough shit for one night.”

Squish brightened some now that she wasn’t going to jail, but her face continued to twitch and jerk. “Who are you guys here looking for?”

“What?”

Squish laughed. “I may be a junkie, but I’m smart enough to know you guys didn’t just swoop in to save my skinny ass.”

Alvarez chuckled and hooked a thumb over her shoulder at Cutter.

“Pretty sure he did.”

“Come on,” Squish said. “Maybe I can help you, get a little crime-stoppers money or something.”

Alvarez glanced at Cutter, her brow up at the possibility. He gave a slight shake of his head. If word got out on the street that they were looking for Dupree, this location would be blown for good.

“Nobody in particu. . .